In 2000, the G.O.P. nominated a governor with a smarmy desire to please minorities, and a solid record of achievement to back his words. But neither record gains for black Texas school kids nor a shadow Bush Cabinet that “looked like America” served to turn the Democrat tide. Republicans suffered their worst defeat among African Americans since Barry Goldwater reaped the reward of his principled opposition to federal civil-rights laws.

In the presidential contest, Republicans lost the black vote 90%-to-10%. The Democrat tactic of race-baiting to increase minority turnout in targeted metros cost the G.O.P. Senate seats in Michigan, Missouri, and Florida. Indeed, a 50% voter increase among African American Floridians, 93% of whom voted Gore/Lieberman, nearly cost George W. Bush the presidency. (See “The Simplest Outreach,” National Review, 3/5/01.)

Subsequent polling by the Torrance Group, Zogby International, and the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies clarifies these patterns. The fab news for Republicans is that they have a genuine opportunity to capture a larger percentage of black votes. The not-so-fab news is that the chance is anchored on a generation of pluperfect political underachievement.

Black America’s Political Action Committee (BAMPAC) hired Torrance to poll African Americans twice, in 1999 and 2001. In the pre-election poll (1999), blacks affiliated with Democrats over Republicans 70%-to-3%. In 2001, the margin got worse: 84%-to-4%. Only 2% of African Americans considered themselves “strong Republicans.”

During the 2000 election, Republicans were portrayed on black TV and radio as bigots who dragged black men to their deaths; who harassed, incarcerated, and executed innocents; and who denied African Americans their fair shot at an education. The consequence of this campaign, largely uncontested, was that over one-half of blacks who were “independent” or “non-affiliated” in 1999 self-identified as Democrats in 2001.

The BAMPAC poll shows exactly how poisonous the Republican label has become. “There is a proposal,” respondents were told, “that would use some federal funds to pay faith-based organizations, such as churches, to help in delivering services to the needy.” So worded, African Americans favored it, 58%-to-30%. But when told “President Bush has proposed using some federal funds to pay faith-based organizations, such as churches, to help in delivering services to the needy,” support dropped to 39%, and opposition rose to 44%. The mere identification of a proposition with the hated Republicans reduced its popularity 19-percentage points.

The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies found a similar pro-Democrat slant in how blacks regarded the “personal retirement account” plans of George W. Bush and Al Gore.

That the Republican label has become pure poison in black America helps explain the G.O.P.’s unpopularity even on its signature issues. African Americans trust Democrats over Republicans to cut taxes 64%-to-15%; to provide for the nation’s security 58%-to-21%; and to pay down the national debt 68%-to-12%.

But if the polls sketch the G.O.P.’s fallen estate, they also indicate the path to recovery. African Americans, while generally liberal, are far less liberal than Democrat.

At first blush, conservatives may be dismayed to learn that by 46%-to-9% blacks prefer a white Democrat to an African-American Republican. But this shows that anti-Republicanism is less racial than many whites assume. Indeed, it confirms the party’s wretched experience in running black candidates in the urban core. Republicans will not win black votes by cheap racial tricks.

On most G.O.P. issues, African-American opinion is more favorable than recent elections would lead one to infer. According to the BAMPAC/Torrance data, African Americans favor across-the-board tax cuts to targeted tax cuts 55%-to-29%. They favor school choice 61%-to-22%. By 58%-to-29%, black parents would restrict the sales of CDs and videos with sexual or violent content. The 2000 Zogby Culture Poll records black support for vouchers at 70%; military budget increases at 61%; and private retirement accounts at 79%.

On some social issues, African Americans are certainly more liberal than whites. For instance, they oppose the death penalty 51%-to-31%. But in other areas, they are arguably more conservative. Fifty-eight percent of blacks oppose all abortions, except in cases of rape or incest, or to preserve the life of the mother. Blacks oppose taxpayer funding for abortion 66%-to-27%, and support parental notification laws 85%-to-13%.

According to BAMPAC, only 30 percent of African Americans have ever cast a ballot for a Republican. But this is thrice the percentage who voted for George W. Bush in 2000. And it correlates closely with the 27 percent of African Americans who self-identify as “somewhat conservative” or “very conservative.”

The Republican opportunity in black America is predicated on its ubiquitous, overwhelming, and excessive failure. The gap between how blacks vote and what they think has grown huge with Democrat success — just as the gap between white Irish Catholic sentiment and Democrat liberalism had in the mid-1970s. At present, the Republican vote potential in the urban core is no greater than 30 percent. But it is no less. And it is requires only one “sale” — the identification of Republican party with their own platform issues among African Americans.

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Niggling Doubts: PC kills words (National Review Online, 020917)

John Derbyshire

The issue of the word “niggardly” has raised its head once again. Stephanie Bell, a fourth-grade teacher in Wilmington, North Carolina, has been reprimanded for using that word in a classroom discussion about literary characters. A parent, one Akwana Walker, declared herself offended by the usage. Ms. Bell has been hustled off to “sensitivity training,” Ms. Walker’s daughter has been transferred to another class, and the rest of us are left pondering what modern civility demands of us in cases like this.

The beginnings of this little controversy were, to the best of my knowledge, back in 1995. In June of that year, The Economist, discussing the impact of computers on the productivity of office workers, said the following thing: “During the 1980s, when service industries consumed about 85% of the $1 trillion invested in I.T. in the United States, productivity growth averaged a niggardly 0.8% a year.” In a subsequent issue, the editors of the magazine noted with amusement that this harmless statement of an econo-factoid had drawn a letter of protest from a reader in Boston who thought the word “niggardly” inappropriate in a respectable publication. The editors yoked this together with another letter, this one from New York, which objected to their saying, in a piece about second-generation Hispanic Americans, that: “spicing their language with a little Spanish is the easiest way of being cool.” Unfortunately the compositorial software had split the word “spicing” with a hyphen to make a line break. Sighed The Economist in mock exasperation: “Why do we get such letters only from America?” (Though widely read here, The Economist is a British magazine.)

A great deal of political correctness has flowed under the bridge since 1995, of course. Yesterday’s joke is today’s outrage, and probably tomorrow’s lawsuit. In 1999 the mayor of Washington, D.C., fired (but later rehired) an aide who used “niggardly” in conversation. Shortly afterwards, a student at the University of Wisconsin called for the banning of the word on campus after a professor used it in a discussion of Chaucer. (“So parfite joye may no negarde have.” — Troylus and Cryseyde.) There have probably been some other sightings I don’t know about.

On a topic like this, of course, the sarcasm comes thick and fast. When will the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith take on “juice” and “jewelry”? When will the legions of G.L.A.A.D. assemble to stamp out “query,” “faggot” (the kind that burns, but not with homoerotic passion), and “dike” (like the one the little Dutch boy stuck his finger in)? How do Puerto Ricans feel about it when we say “spick and span”? Should we still be serving crackers with our cheese? And so on, ad infinitum. I do think that there is actually a serious issue here, though — at any rate, there is if you take manners seriously, as I do, and as I think conservatives, above all people, should.

In the first place, black people are a special case, and “nigger” is a special word. I have commented before in this space that there are only two races in the U.S.A.: blacks, and nonblacks. All attempts to make parallels between the black experience in America and that of (say) Chinese laborers, or (say) homosexuals, ring hollow, it seems to me. Whatever worthy things these latter people have to say, however sound the case they want to make, their ancestors were not chattel slaves, bought and sold by the boatload like so much pig iron. I have heard it said that when these other groups try to draw such parallels, black people get angry. I can certainly understand that; I think I’d be angry, too. This consideration, supposing I am right, effectively kills all the jokes about “juice” and “cracker.”

Let me say, as a digression before proceeding further, that I do not cringe at the word “nigger.” I am not in awe of it. I grew up with it, actually. Not the way low-class white southerners used to grow up with it, as a term of bitter contempt for people believed to be inferior; nor even as educated white northerners used to grow up with it, as a signifier of the supposed stupidity, backwardness, and cruelty of southern whites; but as an ordinary noun free of any emotional content. As a child, I used to pick teams for street games by chanting: “Eeeny meeny miny mo, catch a nigger by his toe.” The school uniform for the girls-only secondary school in my provincial English town came in two prescribed colors, spelt out in a booklet handed out to parents of new students at least as late as the early 1960s: “sky blue and nigger brown.”

This is just a British-American difference in sensibility. I believe the word “nigger” was always considered unpleasant by educated Americans, certainly in the 20th century. A common fixture on English bookshelves 50 years ago was Agatha Christie’s great 1939 thriller Ten Little Niggers. When an American publisher brought out the book over here in 1940, though, they changed the title to And Then There Were None, considering that the original simply would not do. (They kept the story’s locale as “Nigger Island,” though.) A brisk search of the web shows Christie’s masterpiece being produced in England as a play, with the original title, as late as 1962. It was only in the mid-1960s, I think, that it began to dawn on English people that the N-word might give offense, and that “Nigger” stopped being used routinely — as routinely as “Prince” or “Fido” — as a name for any dog that happened to be black. (There is one in the 1954 British movie The Dam Busters. The last words spoken in that movie are, in fact: “Nigger’s dead.”)

I therefore came at the whole issue of “niggardly,” in the first place, with a certain un-American insouciance, rather like The Economist. What’s all the fuss about? Then, thinking about it more, I got angry. Who are these censors, these Dr. Bowdlers, these Mrs. Grundys, tampering with the English language in the name of their precious, much-displayed “sensitivity”? “Niggard,” “niggardly” — these are fine old English words in good standing for centuries, used not only by Chaucer but by Shakespeare (“Aye, to a niggardly host, and more sparing guest” — COE 3.i), Milton (“A penurious niggard of his wealth” — Comus), Gibbon (“It is the niggard praise of Zosimus himself” — DFRE, Ch. 27), and Johnson (“dreaded the appellation of a niggardly fellow” — Adventurer, No. 34). The etymology is obscure, probably Scandinavian, but at any rate nothing to do with blackness.

I am also temperamentally hostile, as I think most conservatives are, to the exaggerated “sensitivity” being trotted out by these word killers. “The word causes pain,” someone said to me, in all seriousness, in a discussion about this. Pain? Has this person ever suffered an impacted wisdom tooth? Pain? What a crock! In that hilarious send-up of 1840s American attitudes in Chapter 21 of Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain speaks of the essays read out by young ladies at a small-town school recital: “A prevalent feature in these compositions was a nursed and petted melancholy...” Not much has changed in 160 years, only that now, too busy to be bothered with melancholy, we have a nursed and petted “sensitivity” to every imagined slight, however trivial. This grates on me. If you are not willing to suffer occasional bruises and abrasions in encounters with people whose “sensitivities” are different from yours, better go and live in Tierra del Fuego. Or, as I once overheard someone say in a similar context: “If your skin is really as thin as that, I wonder your insides don’t drop out.”

It was in conversation with friends (all nonblack) that I saw some of the other side of the issue. One friend, who has serious credentials as a conservative thinker, said this: “John, you are a gentleman, and I know you would not knowingly give unnecessary offense. I am sure, therefore, that you would in fact avoid the word ‘niggardly’ in a group that included not-very-well-educated black fellow citizens.” I had to admit that he was right: I would. Later that evening, watching TV, I caught a very good biographical program about the jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald. Now I am a huge fan of Ella, who was of course black. At the same time, the program confirmed a thing I had suspected from similar material: she had little education, and in fact was probably not very bright. So: Here is a black person who I admire tremendously, and in whose presence (which I never was) I would be awestruck; yet for whose intellect (other than musical) I have no very high regard. Would I have used “niggardly” in conversation with Ella? No, of course I wouldn’t.

So it really is a matter of civility. It is, furthermore, a matter of a small minority of folk bowing to the desires of the majority over something not very consequential — another thing I am, on the whole, and with numerous qualifications, in favor of. In a civilized society, majorities should respect the rights of minorities; but minorities also owe a certain deference to the feelings of the majority. (One reason why I am hostile to the louder propagandists of the homosexualist movement.)

The minority I am speaking of in this case is the minority, the very tiny minority, of people who love and cherish words. We — yes, I am a member of that minority — are the only people really affected by this matter. Let’s face it, the great majority of Americans would never use the word “niggardly” at all, with intent either innocent or malign. It is simply too quaint and old-fashioned for everyday speech. The only people actually inconvenienced by a proscription against it are those like me, who take pleasure in keeping obscure old words alive, and in seasoning their speech with occasional oddities, curiosities, and antiquities. The founder of National Review is another such: I once heard him deploy the word “usufruct” in the ordinary flow of talk. For the overwhelming majority of people, though, who believe that the purpose of speech is just to get your point across, this isn’t really an issue.

It is possible, of course — I am trying to look on the bright side here — that by protesting the word, the Grundys are doing more to keep it alive than anything that I or Bill Buckley could ever accomplish. As a result of these news stories, millions of people must have become aware of “niggardly,” who otherwise would never have heard it, let alone thought to use it. If this is right, and the word has a new currency, it is probably not the currency I would wish for. The word’s new lease of life is probably among manufacturers and retailers of sophomoric humor. I bet that even as I write, some adolescent boys, in the stairwell of some high school somewhere in America, are accusing each other of being niggardly, and sniggering at their own outrageous wit. I bet... Wait a minute. “Sniggering”? Oh, my God....

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Who Needs Jesse Jackson?: A declaration of independence. (NRO, 020925)

Having solved all the problems of black America, Jesse Jackson is now turning his stern, lidless gaze to the grave matter of Barbershop, the No. 1 film in America. It is an entertaining, amusing, and morally uplifting comedy about black people. It was written, directed, and produced by black people, and stars an all-black cast, save for one character, a white guy who wants to be black. There is no gun violence, or lurid sexuality, or excessive filthy language sullying the movie. You’d think if Jesse were to protest Barbershop, it would be over the fact that there aren’t more movies like it.

So why does Jesse hate Barbershop? Why is he demanding that MGM, the distributor, censor the film? Because it features black people saying things of which Jesse Jackson does not approve.

A little context: The movie centers around a working-class black barbershop on the southside of Chicago. It is a place where black men of all ages come to hang out, tell jokes, talk about women, and anything that comes to mind. As Eddie (Cedric the Entertainer), a veteran barber as hilarious as he is cantankerous, describes it, the barbershop is “a place where the black man means something. Cornerstone of the neighborhood. Our own country club.”

The barbershop is also a place where black folks are free to speak their minds. Eddie takes advantage of this to trash-talk black icons. He makes a wisecrack about Martin Luther King’s tomcatting ways. Later, Eddie tells the guys, “Black people need to stop lying,” then outlines three “truths” he believes blacks should acknowledge: 1) “O. J. did it;” 2) “Rodney King should have got his ass beat;” and 3) “Rosa Parks ain’t do nothin’ but sit her black ass down.”

Rosa Parks, of course, became a civil-rights hero by refusing to sit at the back of the bus. Eddie asserts that lots of black people did what Parks did, but Parks got famous because she was a secretary for the NAACP. This stirs everybody in the barbershop up, and Eddie gets chastised for disrespect. Someone says, “You better not let Jesse Jackson hear you talk like that.”

To which old Eddie utters the most liberating line we are likely to hear in any movie this year: “F**k Jesse Jackson!”

As Ward Connerly and Clarence Thomas can attest, Jesse Jackson is not about to put up with uppity black people wandering off the reservation. Claiming to speak for the King and Parks families, and unnamed civil-rights leaders, Jackson wasted no time in condemning Barbershop for “the insensitivity of using Rosa Parks and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., as the butt of jokes and trying to turn tragedy into comedy. We hope the actors and producers would care enough about these grievances to apologize.”

Fair enough, though it’s a hoot to see Jackson pretending that he’s really mad at the insults to King and Parks, and not the film’s profane anti-Jackson lese majeste’. Far uglier offenses against Christianity, of which Jackson is rumored to be a clergyman, crop up in movies all the time, yet one is hard-pressed to recall the last instance in which Jesse Jackson stuck up for the good name of Jesus Christ. Still, whatever his reasons, if a man thinks a work of art is tasteless and offensive, he has every right to say so, to encourage others not to see it, and to protest the use of his tax dollars to subsidize its showing, if it comes to that.

But then Jesse goes further: “We also hope that [the filmmakers] will delete the portion of the film that is insensitive and inappropriate to both Dr. King and Rosa Parks from future DVDs, videotapes and any other future releases.”

Whoa! This is censorship of a particularly outrageous and nasty kind. What Jackson is demanding is the removal of parts of a movie that are absolutely essential to its moral. He is insisting on controlling what black artists are allowed to say.

For one thing, it’s absurd to claim that any human being has the right to be spared any negative commentary at all. King’s infidelities are no secret, no matter how impolite it is to bring the topic up (as did Spike Lee in Malcolm X, and there was no Jackson protest over that). There’s no accounting for Eddie’s bizarre opinion about Rosa Parks, but its validity is not the point; the fact that Eddie is free to voice it very much is. Jesse Jackson not only doesn’t want a black man to say these things in a movie, he wants any record that these things were ever said in a movie expunged from history. They understood this kind of sentiment well in Stalin’s Russia.

Jackson claims that there is historical precedent for this kind of censorship. He cites World Trade Center scenes from the Arnold Schwarzenegger action thriller Collateral Damage that were removed before the post-9/11 release of the film, for reasons of sensitivity. Jackson also brings up alleged scenes from the Michael Jackson video “Dangerous” that were cut after Jewish groups complained of anti-Semitism.

There are important differences. Removing images of the Twin Towers from the Schwarzenegger film could be accomplished without affecting the artistic or moral integrity of the movie. The Michael Jackson controversy was not about the album Dangerous, but about a song from his 1996 compilation HIStory, titled “They Don’t Care About Us.” It contained the lyrics, “Jew me, sue me/Kick me, kike me,” which brought protests from Jewish groups. It is egregiously self-serving for Jesse Jackson to compare the clear and pointless racism of those lines to Barbershop Eddie’s comments about King and Parks, which are crucial to the broader message of the movie.

What is that message? That the younger generation of black Americans are throwing away the gains of their ancestors through laziness, self-centeredness, lack of discipline, greed, and a weakness for seeing themselves as eternal victims — a crippling vision encouraged by leaders like Jesse Jackson, who has for decades attempted to be both the mouthpiece and orchestrator of African-American opinion.

From Jackson’s point of view, so much of Barbershop is rank heresy. During one discussion, a young ex-con barber named Ricky (Michael Ealy) calls slavery reparations “stupid,” and an insult to his dignity as a black man. Eddie agrees, saying, “We got welfare and affirmative action, is that not reparations?” He adds, “What do you think [reparations] gone do? Ain’t gone do nothin’ but make Cadillac the No. 1 dealership in the country!”

“We don’t need reparations, we need discipline,” Ricky says. “Don’t go out and buy a Range Rover when you livin’ with your mama.”

The constant theme of the film is the importance of hard work and self-reliance to black progress, and the conviction that this has been forgotten. The younger barbers complain about being haircutters, but old Eddie reminds them that back in the day, barbering was considered a noble profession. When Calvin Jr. (Ice Cube), who inherited the barbershop from his late father, tries to sell it to finance his dream of becoming a record producer and building a mansion, Eddie reminds him that Calvin Sr., simply by being an industrious businessman who cared about the community, made the barbershop an institutional mainstay of the neighborhood. There’s no reason why Calvin Jr. shouldn’t want the same realistic and respectable things for himself, Eddie contends.

Barbershop argues (alas, a bit too ham-fistedly) that young African Americans need to quit dreaming about the glamorous life, cease obsessing over racial consciousness, knock off the victimhood fantasies, ignore the pieties of Jesse Jackson, and get serious about building their futures. That a movie preaching such a message has been the No. 1 film at the box office for two weeks running is very good news.

Here’s the best news: Before Eddie begins his iconoclastic monologue about Rosa Parks, et al., he prefaces it by admitting that he wouldn’t say this in front of white people. Of course, the filmmakers knew white people would be watching this movie, which makes this line both a confession and a sly declaration of independence, an acknowledgement that the sense of racial solidarity that kept these things from being discussed openly is outdated, and no longer serves the interests of black Americans. Barbershop is an example of black self-confidence, and an affirmation of traditional values against the culture of grievance, shiftlessness, and dependency that has kept so much of inner-city black America down. And its makers defiantly say they don’t need anybody’s permission to say these things.

In that way, the whole movie is one big “F**k Jesse Jackson.” No wonder he wants it censored. Will MGM let him get away with it? Will other black artists?

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Supreme Justice: Ten years of Justice Thomas — and Thomas bashing (NRO, 021018)

By John A. Foster-Bey

October 15, 2001 marked the ten-year anniversary of the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. While the hearings should have been used as an opportunity for the nation to hear and assess the legal philosophy and judicial perspectives of the second black nominee to the Supreme Court, liberal opponents to his confirmation chose instead to attack his character and private life rather than debate his ideas. Unfortunately, in the intervening years, much of the mainstream media continues to miss the opportunity to engage the justice’s ideas.

A recent case in point is “Supreme Discomfort” an article in the August 4, 2002 Washington Post Magazine by Kevin Merida and Michael Fletcher. While the authors attempted to provide a balanced presentation of supporters and opponents of Justice Thomas, the most striking aspect of the article was its focus on the remarkable level of animosity expressed by many of the traditional liberal black-activist and civil-rights leaders. The key question is why this black Supreme Court justice should raise such hostility from some blacks. Why is Justice Thomas seemingly so threatening to members of the traditional black-leadership class? The answer may be that he opposes their view that government must be the prime engine in solving the problems of the black poor and oppressed, and, in so doing, he threatens their legitimacy as leaders — as well as the rewards and benefits that come with that leadership.

Donna Brazile, a political liberal, who expresses a good deal of respect and even admiration for Justice Thomas captures the controversy surrounding him. She told the Post reporters, “He will never fit in Thurgood Marshall’s shoes. Those are shoes he doesn’t want to wear.” Brazile’s statement really is about the expectations of the liberal white and black establishment. Thurgood Marshall is seen as the prototype for a “black” Supreme Court justice: intellectually and legally strong, but reliably, almost reflexively liberal. For the black — and for that matter the white — liberal community, ascent to the Supreme Court means being like Thurgood Marshall.

In many ways, the fact that he is not trying to be like Justice Marshall is at the center of the controversy surrounding Justice Thomas. For example, it is hard to believe that the liberal establishment — black or white — would have given Anita Hill’s accusations any credence at all if Justice Thomas had been a committed liberal jurist who aspired to follow in the footsteps of Marshall. The validity of this view was demonstrated in the liberal leadership’s and activists’ willingness to overlook the possible sexual indiscretions — among other things — of a sitting president in order to support a reliable ally. The same might be said of the rather muted criticism from liberal blacks (and whites) of Jesse Jackson when his problems with a female subordinate were publicly revealed. There is no reason to believe that the same support would not have been given to Justice Thomas during his confirmation hearings if he were a liberal — regardless of the validity of Anita Hill’s charges.

The question that this raises is: Are the efforts to vilify Justice Thomas really in the best interests of the black community — or the nation as a whole? Because he is a Supreme Court justice, Clarence Thomas is arguably one of the most, if not the most powerful blacks in the country. In addition, he represents the cutting edge of an emerging debate between the traditional black liberal leadership (and its white liberal allies) and a new black conservative alternative about how best to address the future development of the African-American community. If discourse and debate is central to a healthy, well-functioning democracy, there should be a least some concern that the political development of the black community is being limited by the attempts of many black liberals to silence black conservatives, such as Justice Thomas, with name-calling (“Uncle Tom”) and marginalizing.

The real importance of Justice Thomas is that he is the first truly powerful “black conservative” in a prominent public-policy role. As a Supreme Court justice his rulings and opinions have the capacity to influence the direction of public policy for decades to come. While there are a growing number of black conservative intellectuals and public policymakers, none as of yet have his potential influence. This alone makes him a lighting rod.

The passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act brought the longstanding debate in the black community between self-reliance versus reliance on government effectively to an end — at least among the African-American leadership class. The debate was embodied in the early-20th-century positions of Booker T. Washington — who argued for self-reliance and internal development — and W. E. B. Dubois — who argued for massive political and systemic change. With the enactment of the new law, advancement for the African-American community was henceforth primarily tied to increasing the federal government’s role in promoting opportunity for blacks. This meant not only reducing and eliminating illegal forms of discrimination, but also finding ways to make up for past injustices. While in the past African Americans argued that eliminating barriers and unfair, unjust, and illegal constraints were all that was needed, the new orthodoxy argued that the black community needed a progressive, activist government committed to promoting the rights of African Americans and redressing the wrongs of the past. Thus was the foundation for affirmative action and a variety of other race-based programs born.

However, despite the public ascendancy of this “progressive” view, the debate about the strategies and goals for bringing the African-American community fully into the American mainstream continued — often out of sight of the media and the liberal white political establishment. Thus while the progressive-government position of the black political and civil-rights establishment captured the public stage, there were still those who thought relying on government programs and largess to insure the black community’s development would provide some benefits to a few, but in the long-term would not produce the foundation necessary for sustainable achievement.

It wasn’t until the 1980s, that the views of such black intellectuals as Thomas Sowell began to gain public prominence. These views espoused a modern alternative to the mainstream black leadership’s liberal, activist-government approach. Black conservatives suggested that government programs such as affirmative action might not be in the long-term best interest of the black community, especially if these programs tended to treat blacks as victims forever in need of government protection. Moreover, black intellectuals such as Shelby Steele worried that these programs confirmed for both whites and blacks, that blacks did not have the intellectual capacity to compete successfully in society without help. These positions placed black conservatives — the intellectual descendants of Booker T. Washington — squarely at odds with black liberals — the intellectual heirs of W.E.B. Dubois. For black liberals, these government programs, especially affirmative action, were critical to the survival and success of the black community. To question the efficacy of such government programs as affirmative action was heresy.

Justice Thomas’s public opposition to affirmative action quickly labeled him as being outside of the established black liberal consensus. While he could be tolerated as a lower-court judge, to elevate a black conservative like him to the Supreme Court was unthinkable. The bitterness over Thomas’s victory in the confirmation hearings continues to rankle.

The vilification of Justice Thomas by black liberals impoverishes the black community and the nation. His ideas and values represent important contemporary and historical currents in the black community. Too many African-American liberals have translated legitimate differences and debates about policy with Justice Thomas into unjustified character assassination. We should all be beyond that; what is needed is a vigorous and honest debate and exchange of ideas between black conservatives like Justice Thomas, black liberals, and others, not name-calling and vicious personal attacks.

— John A. Foster-Bey is a senior associate and director of the Program on Regional Economic Opportunity at the Urban Institute in Washington, D.C. The opinions expressed are his own and do not represent the positions of the staff, board, or officers of the Urban Institute.

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Say It Ain’t So (NRO, 021030)

A “funny” story told by John Derbyshire

I am sorry for the following lapse of taste in contemplating something as horrible as the Beltway sniper killings, but I could not help smiling at the obvious agony of the media lefties when the identity of the arrested couple became clear. You can just imagine the conversations around newsrooms and TV studios. “They’ve caught the guys? ... Hey, that’s great! ... What? They’re black? Oh, no, can’t be ... Are they really? Oh, my God, this is terrible. And what? One of them’s a Muslim, too? This can’t be real, this has to be some kind of nightmare. We’ll have lynchings, the Klan will be marching, mosques will be torched. They’ve got the wrong guys — it has to be angry white Christian males. Has to be. This can’t be right...”

The great American public is not, of course, as incorrigibly “racist” as our elites think. Nor are they as stupid. Do the media lefties really think people don’t see through their games? I was working in Manhattan back in December of 1993, when Colin Ferguson, the Long Island Railroad killer, did his work. My homebound commuter train was the one behind his. Of course, we were stuck between stations for nearly two hours. This was pre-cell phone, and I had no way to contact my wife, who was watching the coverage of the story on TV, and was, naturally, worried sick. Neighbors came in to rally round and watch the TV coverage with her. Telling me about it afterwards, she remarked: “Everyone kept saying: ‘Oh, it must be a black guy. If it was a white guy, they would have told us.’”

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Black Racism and the Beltway Snipers: A Media Double Standard (Free Congress Foundation, 021213)

By Daniel G. Jennings

Something has been noticeably absent from our nation’s news media in the last month or so: follow up stories on John Muhammad and John Lee Malvo, the suspects in the Beltway Shootings. There have no big stories on the cable news networks or the network news magazines, no special features in the major

news magazines or the big daily newspapers and no specials on the cable news networks.

Why is there no follow up on the two men who threw our nation’s capitol into terror for over a month and commanded the attention of the major news media? Why doesn’t the media want to talk about Muhammad and Malvo and their motivation?

The most likely reason is that Muhammad and Malvo were black racists who used a distorted version of Islam as the motivation for their violent rampage. Black racism is something that the US media doesn’t like to talk about or report on. Even if it was the motivation for one of the worst racist killing sprees in American history.

The instigator in these shootings, John Muhammad is quite probably a black racist. He is a black man from a poor background who has been a failure in life. Like many poor blacks, Muhammad blames his personal failures on a racist conspiracy directed against him, just like many poor whites blame their problems on Jews or Affirmative Action. Some news reports ignored by the major media have stated that Muhammad practices a very distorted version of Islam called the Five Percent Nation. The Five Percent Nation (based upon teaching not found in the Koran or any traditional Muslim Holy Book) teaches a tiny percentage of pure blacks will one day inherit and rule the world. Like the Christian Identity nonsense which distorts Christianity by teaching that whites of British ancestry are the modern day descendants of the Biblical Hebrews, Five Percent theology is a cheap attempt to use religion to justify gutter level bigotry.

Compare this to the media frenzy after the Oklahoma City bombing.

Back then were dozens of stories about the evil militia movement and white supremacy. According to the national media there were thousands of racist militiamen all over the nation ready to follow in Timothy McVeigh’s footsteps. Dozens of stories claimed that talk radio was promoting racism and anti-American terrorism. There were TV specials and exposes of the militia galore and lots of efforts to relate conservatism and libertarianism to gutter level racism and terrorism.

We’ve seen nothing like this since the Beltway Shootings. There hasn’t been a single expose of Five Percentism or the Nation of Islam on the major TV networks or cable. No Frontline specials on PBS and no big exposes in the national news magazines or the major daily newspapers. No reporter has written anything about the weird history of Black Muslims in America or their twisted beliefs. There have been no stories about the Nation of Islam’s blatant sympathy for Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan during World War II. No stories have asked any questions about the death of Malcolm X. Malcolm was blown apart with shotguns after he started criticizing Nation of Islam founder Elijah Muhammad and asking questions like where the money Black Muslims were collecting was going. Malcolm was also pointing out the fact that the Nation of Islam’s beliefs looked nothing like traditional Islamic theology.

Nor has anybody asked if John Muhammad was targeting successful middle class blacks in his rampage. Muhammad went into counties in Virginia and Maryland with large populations of successful middle class blacks and targeted blacks who had achieved the American dream. A bus driver, a businessman and children at a middle school in an upper class black suburb.

The way the media has treated the Beltway Sniper affair is disturbing because it shows that our journalists have become completely timid and afraid to ask important questions or cover important stories because they might offend some people. Perhaps the real story of the beltway snipers is not that of black racism but that of the failure of our timid and politically correct media to do its job and tell us the whole story.

Daniel G. Jennings is a freelance writer and journalist who lives and works in Denver, CO. He has worked as a reporter and editor for daily and weekly newspapers in five states.

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The GOP’s Race Problem…and ours (NRO, 021221)

By William J. Bennett

As a Ph.D. candidate in philosophy at the University of Texas in 1967, my peers and I were looking for teaching posts. Most of my colleagues were looking to teach at quiet and civil liberal-arts institutions like Oberlin. My dissertation adviser, John Silber, told me, “Oberlin is not for you Bennett — I have a place that will really test your mettle. I think you should go to the University of Southern Mississippi.” Never one to turn down a challenge, off to Hattiesburg I went.

I was from Brooklyn and I was not prepared for what I saw in Hattiesburg. I arrived three years after the famous murders of three civil-rights workers in Mississippi, and saw a society still steeped in segregation and racism. Martin Luther King spoke in Hattiesburg while I was there and I attended his speech and wrote a few columns justifying his principles — just as I had taught in my classes his Letter from a Birmingham Jail. There may be no better exegesis on just and unjust laws than is found in that Letter. I thought so then, and I think so now. King set the standard, and still does. My teaching contract was not renewed the following year.

Driving back to Texas, I was being “tailed” by another car and I pulled over to the side of the road to confront the driver. He said, “With your license plates and all that crap in your car, I thought you were a n****r.” We nearly came to blows. The next year, driving up to Cambridge, Massachusetts to begin law school, I was driven to the side of the road by a group of college students. Confronting them, one said, “With those Texas license plates, we thought you were some kind of racist coming up here to organize against us, or worse.” I realized there were two kinds of prejudice: Both kinds are repugnant, both kinds make snap judgments based on almost anything but the “content of character.” In the worst cases, those judgments are based on race, sometimes, however, they are based on geography, sometimes any other kind of irrelevant condition. The common denominator is prejudice, and small-mindedness.

In a lesser-known portion of King’s Letter, he writes, “Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up, but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.” We see a boil today that prevents our moving forward because we refuse to call it by its proper name: racism. We saw it in Trent Lott’s comments lamenting Strom Thurmond’s defeat for president in 1948 (even though Lott is not a racist) and we see it in race-based admissions programs at places like the University of Michigan where there are differing standards of admission for white and black applicants (even though admissions officers are not racists).

Having been a lifelong Democrat until my forties, I finally became a Republican in 1986. I became a Republican because I thought that party had it right on issues of freedom and the defense of our nation’s founding principles. I thought the Democratic party of my earlier life had lost its way. Indeed, the Republican party was founded, like our nation, on moral principles dedicated to freedom and equality, condemning slavery, electing as its country’s president Abraham Lincoln. And the Democratic party had a legacy opposed to Lincoln’s.

President Eisenhower was the first president to send federal troops to the South since Ulysses S. Grant. Eisenhower deployed the 101st Airborne in order to integrate a school in Little Rock, a school the Democratic governor was blocking black students from attending. During the civil-rights battles of the 1960s, again, it was the Republican party in the Senate that gave LBJ his landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act — Republican senators like Everett Dirksen pushed the bill through the Senate; Democrats like Robert Byrd, Sam Ervin, and Albert Gore Sr. opposed that bill and, in fact, only four Republican senators opposed it while 18 other Democrats joined the Byrd, Ervin, Gore “no” vote. It was too bad that Barry Goldwater, one of the Republicans who opposed the bill, became the nominee of the Republican party in 1964; his opposition to the Act was misunderstood: He opposed it for libertarian reasons, not supporting the idea that the government should be able to tell businesses what to do (Goldwater’s credentials on civil rights were already established as he had desegregated Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix, years before). The Byrd, Ervin, and Gore sentiments were not so noble.

Nevertheless, with Goldwater’s candidacy, the GOP began to lose its credibility with the black community, sometimes rightly, sometimes wrongly. But the Republican legacy on race has more positive than negative to offer, which expands the controversy surrounding Trent Lott into a new boil that needs to be lanced. Thurmond was wrong in 1948, morally, and, now, legally. No celebration of yesterday’s segregation can be tolerated; it was a contradiction of our nation’s founding principles, and an ugly one.

Most Republicans, like most Democrats, believed in Martin Luther King’s colorblind society where people would be judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin. They still do. Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan had it right in his dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson some two generations before King: “[I]n view of the Constitution, in the eye of the law, there is in this country no superior, dominant, ruling class of citizens. There is no caste here. Our constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law. The humblest is the peer of the most powerful. The law regards man as man, and takes no account of his surroundings or of his color when his civil rights as guaranteed by the supreme law of the land are involved.”

It is because Justice Harlan and Reverend King were right that Strom Thurmond in 1948, and Trent Lott along with the University of Michigan today, are wrong. Strom Thurmond bolted the Democratic party in 1948 because the Democratic party placed a civil-rights plank in its platform. Race was not one of many issues for Thurmond and the Dixiecrats; it was the single, driving issue. When Thurmond ran for Senate, he returned to the Democratic party — not becoming a Republican until 1964. Thurmond’s candidacy for president was the same candidacy George Wallace (another Democrat) would attempt 20 years later and that David Duke would emulate in 1992. They all tried to divide us on the meaningless grounds of race; “meaningless,” because race means nothing when it comes to personhood, and it should mean nothing when it comes to law.

Abraham Lincoln put it best in the context of race defining slave status: “If A can prove, however conclusively, that he may, of right, enslave B, why may not B snatch the same argument, and prove equally, that he may enslave A? You say A is white, and B is black. It is color, then; the lighter, having the right to enslave the darker? Take care. By this rule, you are to be slave to the first man you meet, with a fairer skin than your own.” By the logic of race-based servitude status, albinos would enslave us all.

That was racism a century ago, and the reason Harlan and King wanted to end all distinctions based on color: They are meaningless and they are a departure from our founding principles that all are created equal. To think of people deserving rights or privileges because they black, white, or any other color, perpetuates the idea that race should matter in law or privilege. Thurgood Marshall put it best in his brief for the NAACP in the Brown v. Bd. of Education case: “Distinctions by race are so evil, so arbitrary and invidious that a state, bound to defend the equal protection of the laws must not invoke them in any public sphere.” Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell echoed that sentiment in the Bakke case: “The guarantee of equal protection cannot mean one thing when applied to one individual and something else when applied to a person of another color. If both are not accorded the same protection, then it is not equal.”

A few years ago, I wrote that we had converted moral equality into a perverse system of numerical equality by converting the theme of racial unconsciousness into a policy of racial consciousness with racial set-asides, quotas, and affirmative-action programs. And we, as a nation, were on a path to fanning the flames of racial resentment. Equally disturbing, these policies were placing on many blacks what Shelby Steele calls “the stigma of questionable competence.”

The most-blatant forms of injustice in law today are seen in cases like that of Jennifer Gratz, a young white woman who was denied admission to the University of Michigan. This young woman, the daughter of a police officer, did everything expected of her; she graduated from high school with a 3.765 grade-point average; she finished near the top of her class; and she was involved in extracurricular activities like tutoring.

Here was a clearly qualified individual who was nevertheless denied admission to a university: She was of the wrong skin color. And the Supreme Court will be hearing her claim this term. Already, however, it has been established that the University of Michigan was using an admissions policy that added admission points to racial minorities, creating a double standard for admission to the university, making it harder for one race to get in over and against another. That is what was done to black applicants at the University of Alabama in the 1950s. It was wrong then, and it is wrong now.

In a recent speech, President Bush stated, “We will not, and we must not, rest until every person of every race believes in the promise of America because they see it in their own eyes, with their own eyes, and they live it and feel it in their own lives.” Every person of every race will never believe in the promise of equality and the promise of America as long as double standards based on race are allowed to continue in this country: one admission standard for whites, a different standard for blacks. And every person of every race will never believe in the promise of equality and the promise of America as long as political leaders who venerate segregation — however innocent their explanation — are not called to task: one school, one neighborhood, one bathroom, one restaurant for whites, another for blacks. These policies — segregation having been discarded, double standards being employed — are of a piece, they are both racist and they are both bad for our country.

The White House should weigh in with an amicus brief in the Michigan cases before the Supreme Court this term and, in so doing, help bring to a conclusion our long march toward equality and freedom. Our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution — along with the legacies of Lincoln and King — demand equality as a means toward freedom. It is the right means, and now is the right time to finally end both forms of race-based policies that look to who one’s great-grandparents were rather than who we are. We are all one people, living in one nation, and we need, finally, to act like it.

— William J. Bennett, who co-wrote Counting By Race with Terry Eastland, is a former Secretary of Education.

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The Cancer of Race: The lessons of the Lott affair (NRO, 030102)

By Ward Connerly

SACRAMENTO, CAL. — I’ll bet that Senator Trent Lott never wants to attend another birthday party in his life. In less than three weeks, Lott went from being the next Senate Majority Leader to just one of 100 United States senators. Being a U.S. senator is not too shabby of a perch from which to gaze at the world, of course, but it is a far cry from being the guy who can dispense political pork, at will, and be the primary deal-cutter in one of the world’s most-powerful clubs.

According to the rules of the Senate Republican Conference, Lott would have automatically become Senate Majority Leader on January 7, 2003. When he announced on December 20, 2002 that he would step aside and allow a new election to be held for the position, Lott confirmed just how contentious the issue of race remains in American life.

Race in America is like a blister that never heals — always raw, annoying, sensitive to the touch, and vulnerable to becoming inflamed at the slightest provocation. In his political innocence — of that I am genuinely convinced — Lott unwittingly laid bare the perpetual wound of race.

In so doing, he not only exposed himself to a level of condemnation that threatened his political career, he also created an opening for race to be the source that divides the American people for years to come. Or, if addressed honestly and openly, Lott may have provided the American people with an opportunity to put salve on a nagging sore.

I want to say this about my state: When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have had all these problems over all these years, either.

Taken by themselves, those words amount to harmless political rhetoric. Lott did not call black people a derogatory name, express hate or bigotry against them, or even expressly state that his words were related to race. There is nothing in his comments that others don’t say often about nearly every political candidate who has run for office, and lost.

It is only when we put those words in the context of Strom Thurmond’s 1948 candidacy for president that they assume significance. And, even then, we are left to wonder what Lott truly meant by “all these problems?” Certainly, a reasonable inference can be drawn — and I hasten to add that I have drawn such an inference — that Lott was referring to the philosophy held by Thurmond about race, in general, and black people in particular. Inferentially, Lott seemed to be endorsing racial segregation imposed and enforced by the government.

With those words, Lott provided the racialists of America — those who believe that “race matters,” that race is what defines us, and that America is an “institutionally racist society” — with an opportunity to put the issue of “race” on the front burner of American life.

Unfortunately, and not unpredictably, the Lott issue rapidly morphed into the typically ugly and inflammatory kind of discussion America has about race whenever it has such a conversation. Lott enabled the racialists to do what they do best: Attack the motives of others with whom they disagree, exploit race for political gain, and demonize all Republicans as mouth-foaming, pickup-driving bigots.

Former Texas governor Ann Richards said on Larry King Live that Republicans need to take sensitivity-training seminars to teach themselves how to deal with minorities. I have been a Republican since 1969, and I would take a Biblical oath that Republicans are no more or less capable of discussing race issues than Democrats. Perhaps more timid, but certainly no less “sensitive.” As a Republican, the only sensitivity training I need is to equip me to remain civil when interacting with half-witted people who think I need “sensitivity training” to be able to talk about race.

And, then, America’s “first black president,” according to novelist Toni Morrison, took the Lott controversy to a new level of demagoguery. Bill Clinton said, “How can they jump on him when they’re out there repressing, trying to run black voters away from the polls and running under the Confederate flag in Georgia and South Carolina? I mean, look at their whole record. He just embarrassed them by saying in Washington what they do on the back roads every day.”

Race is a moral dilemma for America; however, when confronted with issues of morality, I would not prescribe the counsel of Bill Clinton to anyone.

Have they no sense of shame or concern about the effect that such irresponsible commentary can have in our nation? Have they no concern about the consequences of dividing and polarizing the American people along lines of race? It is easy enough to relapse into patterns of resentment and anger about race without having high-profile individuals provoke us into doing so.

For over 40 years, I have been struggling in my own way to breathe life into America’s vision to be a nation where the color of one’s skin and the fact of one’s ancestry are of no consequence. I now realize, because of the disclosures about his past, that for most of those 40 years, Senator Lott and I have been at odds with the other’s vision of what America should be.

In 1959, as a junior in college, I pledged a fraternity that had never had a nonwhite member. My fraternity brothers and I believed devoutly in the principle of not letting our “race” define who we were or judging each other based on the sum of our racial parts. If the brothers of Trent Lott’s fraternity had sought to pledge me instead of those of Delta Phi Omega, it would have been a future United States senator who would have “blackballed” me from becoming a member.

In 1962, when my college sweetheart and I decided to exercise one of the most fundamental freedoms that Western democracy can offer — the right to marry the person of one’s choice — Lott embraced an ideology that regarded our marriage as “immoral.” As late as the mid-1990s, Lott’s footprints were on the lawn leading to Bob Jones University, an institution that as late as 1998 opposed “interracial” dating.

In his appearance at Black Entertainment Television, “Lott Apologia version 4.0,” Lott became a tragic and pitiable figure pleading to a special interest for their support to allow him to become leader of the Senate. He was reduced to negotiating the terms of his leadership, and he cut a very bad deal for himself, for the Republican party, and for the country. Once again, in matters involving race, politics triumphed over principle.

I am delighted that Lott was forced to remove himself from consideration as Senate Majority Leader. But, it is truly a measure of our misplaced priorities and values when a statement made at a birthday party that might be interpreted as an endorsement of racial segregation can overwhelm issues of war and peace. For making such a statement, one gets the political death penalty. But, for having sexual liaisons in the Oval Office — and lying about it — one gets invited to give speeches all around the globe and receive speaking fees in excess of $100,000 per engagement.

By embracing race preferences, Lott essentially betrayed those of us who have placed our careers, sometimes our very lives, on the line in defense of a principle that we believe defines what America was meant to be: a place where every person will be treated with dignity and as an equal by his or her government. Lott essentially said that Justice Clarence Thomas, Shelby Steele, Tom Sowell, Walter Williams, Deroy Murdock, Larry Elder, and I deserve the abuse we have received from our fellow Americans who are “black” because of our stance in opposition to race preferences. He embraced the race ideology of the Congressional Black Caucus and the NAACP, and rejected that of Abigail Thernstrom, David Horowitz, Rush Limbaugh, Michelle Malkin, Roger Clegg, and Ed Blum. In effect, he cast his political fortunes with those who choose to define America as it once was, instead of with those who want to make America what it was meant to be.

Tragically, the lesson we learn from the story of Lott is that there are so many others in all ranks of our nation’s leadership who constantly make the same short-term choice as Lott in the name of political expediency and “minority outreach.” They place politics above principle for the same reason as Lott. The only difference is that they never had a racist past to surface and cloud the sincerity of their current motives. The long-term damage they do to America — and all people of the nation — is no less. Racism, whether imposed by the government in the form of segregationist policies, or countenanced by those of good intentions who look the other way when the goal is the pursuit of “diversity,” is still racism.

There will be those who will try to portray the words of Senator Lott as being reflective of the racial sentiments of the entire Republican party. Ironically, many of them are among the first to make allegations of “profiling” when they are judged according to the actions of others. The Republican party is not responsible for the utterances of Senator Lott anymore than the Democratic party bears responsibility for the actions of Clinton. If, by such perversion of logic, all Republicans are “racists” because one of their leaders made a statement that some construe as racist, then all Democrats are adulterers and liars because of the actions of one of their leaders. And, as they say, “action speaks louder than words.”

If skeletons can be found in Republican closets about race — and I am certain they can — Democrats should be careful not to urge scavenger hunts in theirs, because they are not as pure as the “driven snow” either. In the final analysis, no one benefits from name-calling and efforts to see who has been the most “insensitive” about race in America. One thing that the saga of Lott makes demonstrably clear is this: The race issue is no longer about overcoming oppression and realizing the promise of equal treatment; it is about “sensitivity” and saying something, even if inadvertent, that may cause feelings to be hurt.

To get our nation beyond this point will require moral leadership that is currently lacking on the national stage in either of our two major political parties. While one party largely exploits race, the other runs from it like a deer in headlights. The three weeks that America essentially wasted on an issue that had no effect on the life of any citizen are illustrative of how race can overshadow issues of war and peace, the economy, and a host of other matters of far greater consequence than the color of my skin or who my ancestors were.

It is my fervent prayer that President Bush will realize the moral imperative to give proper focus to the issue of race. The nation yearns for that leadership and history will judge him by his actions or his inactions, whichever the case may be. To begin, he needs to make clear that “diversity” should not be an excuse to discriminate.

As the federal government said in its amicus filed in Brown vs. Board of Education,

Racial discriminations imposed by law, or having the sanction or support of government, inevitably tend to undermine the foundations of a society dedicated to freedom, justice, and equality. The proposition that all men are created equal is not mere rhetoric. It implies a rule of law — an indispensable condition to a civilized society — under which all men stand equal and alike in the rights and opportunities secured to them by their government.

Under the Constitution, every agency of government, national and local, legislative, executive, and judicial, must treat each of our people as an American, and not as some member of a particular group classified on the basis of race or some other constitutional irrelevancy. The color of a man’s skin — like his religious beliefs, or his political attachments, or the country from which he or his ancestors came to the United States — does not diminish or alter his legal status or constitutional rights. “Our constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens.” [citing Justice John Harlan in Plessy v. Ferguson]

If that was good for America in 1954, President Bush, why is it not equally as good now, when, in nearly every corner of American life, we breathe the fresh air of equality? If we can defend our way of life abroad and chase through caves looking for terrorists who seek to destroy it, why can we not muster the political courage to defend in court the culture of equality envisioned in our Declaration of Independence?

Let us not put ointment on the wound of race, let us cut it out of the body politic like the cancer that it is. That will require deregulating race, getting the government out of the race business altogether, not asking American citizens the odious question about their ancestry, because it should be no more relevant to the government than one’s religion — and that question is forbidden. “The Racial Privacy Initiative,” to be soon considered by the voters of California, is a critical step in that direction. The president could also issue an Executive Order eliminating those silly little race boxes from government forms; and he could help to eliminate the race question from the Census.

America does not need another generation of “racial healing” programs. America needs to consign race to the ash heap of history where it rightfully belongs.

— Ward Connerly is founder and chairman of the American Civil Rights Institute.

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Alumni Preferences: They’re different (NRO, 030130)

If I had a nickel for every time I heard the following, I could buy the University of Michigan: “There’s nothing wrong with a university giving applicants a preference for being black or Latino, because universities give preferences all the time to sons and daughters of alumni.”

The short answer to this argument is: “Don’t change the subject. Whether legacy preferences make sense is a completely different question from whether preferences on the basis of skin color and national origin make sense.”

Racial and ethnic discrimination is, after all, morally very different from legacy preferences, and the social costs — the resentment, stigmatization, troubling precedent being set, and so forth — are much higher. It is also true that legacy preferences are generally less heavily weighted than racial and ethnic preferences, and that, even if the former were objectionable, they are perfectly legal and so no one can sue over them. Racial discrimination, on the other hand, is at odds with the Constitution and civil-rights laws.

But having given the short answer, let me spin this out a bit further. For purposes of this discussion, I’m going to assume that legacy preferences have a disparate racial impact, but that they are not racially motivated. That’s a reasonable assumption. Their principal justification is economic — they encourage alumni to donate money to the school — and they also help create community and tradition for the school. That said, let me also say at the outset that my own inclination would be to get rid of alumni preferences for state schools, simply because it doesn’t seem fair to hold it against the child of the taxpayer who is supporting them that he didn’t go there.

The reply to my short answer might be that, while it is true so far as it goes, it ignores the kernel of a valid point in legacy/race equation: Neither is about academic ability, and since alumni are more likely to be white (or Asian) than black (or Latino), therefore it makes sense to counterbalance legacy preferences with preferences for blacks and Latinos. This is especially true since the disparity is in part a result of past discrimination (although this argument doesn’t work particularly well since preferences are given to Latinos relative to Asians, even though the past discrimination suffered by each was roughly comparable).

But the overwhelming majority of white and Asian applicants to any school are not children of alumni, so giving a preference to other groups simply results in double discrimination against most applicants, who are neither legacies nor the right skin color (it also would give a double preference to blacks and Latinos who happen to be legacies).

But, the objection continues, whites and Asians are more likely to have parents who are alumni from somewhere, and blacks and Latinos are more likely to have parents who are alumni from nowhere, so the net effect of legacy preferences is to help whites and Asians get in somewhere — assuming all schools have them — so why not counterbalance this?

But the logical counterbalance in this case would be a preference to all students for whom neither parent went to college. Why assume that all whites and Asians have a parent who is an alumnus, and that no blacks and Latinos do? Besides, a student may have strong and legitimate reasons for wanting to go to, say, the University of Michigan rather than his father’s alma mater at Mesa State in Colorado, and it’s not at all clear why the preference he might get at the latter — but doesn’t want — should justify racial discrimination against him at the former.

Just because a selection criterion has a disparate impact on the basis of race — even when the impact can arguably be traced in some way to past discrimination — doesn’t justify an overlay of racial preference on top of it. It makes more sense simply to modify the criterion in a race-neutral way, or to get rid of it altogether, than to add overt discrimination to it. (I’m not even comfortable with choosing facially neutral criteria with an eye on the racial and ethnic bottom line.) And to the extent that racial preferences are justified as a means of addressing America’s past history of discrimination, the Supreme Court has already rejected the argument, and it is not being advanced by the University of Michigan today.

Let’s get more fundamental. It is certainly true that a parent’s assets — wealth, status, connections, and so forth — can help pave the way for the child, to college and elsewhere in life. And there is no doubt that this results in some children getting more than they would be entitled to if they had to rely on their own merits and other children getting less.

The basic conservative answer to this is that we can’t remove all unfairness from life and, if we try to do so, we are likely to create worse unfairness due to a variety of unintended consequences. There is little to be done about the phenomenon of people wanting to make life pleasant for their children, and even if we could stop them, do we really want to?

But even if we do want to ameliorate the disparities in fortune among ourselves, it does not follow that we should use racial and ethnic discrimination to do so. There are more poor whites in this country than poor blacks, and most black people are not poor, so why use race as a proxy for status?

In the Wall Street Journal last week, Al Hunt complained bitterly that George W. Bush ignores “the affirmative action, as a legacy, that got him into Yale 38 years ago, and carried him through much of his life.” Hunt is not the first person to make this point and, no doubt about it, Dubya’s life chances weren’t hurt by having as his father the most powerful man in the world. But, believe it or not, relatively few whites can claim a president as father, and it makes little sense to punish all of them for the few who do.

— Roger Clegg is general counsel of the Center for Equal Opportunity in Sterling, Virginia.

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The Real Racial Disparities: Blacks and abortion (NRO, 030131)

By Anne Hendershott

Undeterred by data demonstrating otherwise, Democratic leaders like Reps. Charles Rangel (N.Y.) and John Conyers (Mich.) continue to complain that the black community will suffer disproportionate casualties in a war with Iraq. Their erroneous claims that blacks are more likely than whites to come home from war in body bags have led them, and others, to support the return of the draft for reasons of “racial equality.” The truth is, although blacks enlist in the armed forces at slightly higher rates than whites, and stay longer (bringing their overall participation in the military to 21 percent), they have historically suffered casualty rates far below their participation rates. Contrary to the claims of Conyers and Rangel, 12 percent of Americans killed in Vietnam were black — a figure that is proportionate to their numbers in the overall U.S. population.

Sadly, however, Conyers, Rangel, Sharpton, et al. continue to miss the real story of racial disparity in casualty rates: the disproportionate numbers of black casualties in the war on the unborn. While Sharpton and the other Democratic presidential hopefuls celebrated the 30th Anniversary of Roe v. Wade at NARAL’s gala, the black community continued to be decimated by abortion rates that are nearly three times the rate of whites.

The most recent data from the Centers for Disease Control indicate that while 56 percent of all women who obtained legal abortions were white, the abortion rate (the number of abortions per 1,000 women aged 15-44 per year) for black women was 2.9 times that of white women. For every thousand black women, 32 have abortions, as compared with 11 for every thousand white women. Likewise with numbers of abortions per 1,000 births: The abortions/births ratio for white women was 184 abortions per 1,000 live births; for black women, it was 543 abortions per 1,000 births. This means that abortion ratios for black women were 2.8 times greater than those for white women. Sadly, black women were also more likely to obtain riskier abortions late in their pregnancies, while white women were significantly more likely than black women to obtain abortions before 16 weeks.

While these data most likely reflect inequality in access to health care, data also indicate that the racial disparities in abortion rates have increased steadily since 1989. In some localities, including Mississippi, Louisiana, Maryland, and Georgia, more than half of all abortions are performed on black women. Black women in New York City and in the entire state of New Jersey receive more than 47 percent of all abortions performed there.

Comparisons by race cannot be made in California, because the state — unlike any other state — refuses to comply with requirements to report statistics on abortion. California’s reporting requirement was enacted in 1967 as part of a larger abortion law called the Therapeutic Abortion Act. Yet even with the threat of losing federal funds, California has consistently refused to report its abortion data. Michael Quinn, the chief of California’s office for health information, was recently quoted in a Catholic newspaper account as saying that “California does not actively collect abortion statistics because they are highly sensitive and highly political.”

Abortion data — like all casualty data — are indeed sensitive. They reveal life-or-death decisions for women and unborn children and for this very reason should be disseminated widely. California needs to be encouraged to provide data on abortion. For policymakers to address the real casualties among blacks would take courage — far beyond the grandstanding on the military draft by Sharpton, Conyers, and Rangel. They might begin by listening to the poignant lyrics of hip-hop artist Nas in his recent mega-hit, “One Mic.” Nas knows that his community has been devastated by abortion and in a courageous plea, the rapper simply asks women to stop abortion because “we need more warriors here.”

— Anne Hendershott is a professor of Sociology at the University of San Diego and author of the recently published The Politics of Deviance.

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Jesse’s Twirl: Jackson’s usual MO in Chicago (NRO, 030220)

Mean-spirited cynics (like, well, me) heard the news that 21 people died in the stampede at a black nightclub in Chicago, and thought, “Jesse Jackson is going to take advantage of this somehow.”

It took about 2.8 seconds for Jesse to make the scene, inviting survivors and the families of victims to show up at Rainbow/PUSH headquarters to grieve. And now he’s conspiring with Johnnie Cochran to sue the city and the nightclub’s owner, Dwain J. Kyles, in connection with the disaster. A real defender of the people, that Jesse.

Well. You find once you spend much time perusing the details of Revvum Jackson’s affairs that the cynical approach is simply realism. The cynic was not surprised, then, to discover that Jesse’s outreach to the families of the dead was nothing more than an exercise in C.Y.A. We now know that in the recent past, Jackson and other black ministers and politicians lobbied the mayor and police officials on behalf of the club, on the grounds that its owner was the victim of a racist “witch hunt.”

According to newspaper accounts, club owner Kyles, who had piled up numerous building code violations, and was at the time of the stampede defying a court order barring entry to the club’s second floor, is a close friend of Jackson’s. Jackson has known the Kyles family for decades. Dwain Kyles’s father, the Rev. Samuel B. Kyles, was a cofounder of Operation PUSH, Jackson’s Chicago-based organization. Last April, Jackson wrote to city officials praising the Kyleses for their involvement in civil rights, and called the club “an example of the best that our business community has to offer.”

The New York Times reported Wednesday that several black Chicago ministers said they were told by Jackson’s people to rally behind the club, to hold functions there and take business there as a way to support the establishment in the face of racist harassment by city inspectors. “There was a move to close ranks around this business,” one pastor told the Times. “There were people who felt, including myself, that maybe the city was on a witch hunt to close black businesses.”

Now that Jesse’s Very Good Friend, on whose behalf he played the race card, is certain to face criminal charges and civil lawsuits in connection with the deaths of 21 black Chicagoans, Jesse is desperately trying to change the subject. This lawsuit he’s trying to gin up with Cochran is an act of chutzpah reminiscent of the legendary man who murders his parents then throws himself on the mercy of the court, claiming he’s an orphan.

Longtime Jesse observers know that this isn’t the first time Reverend’s private lobbying for friends and financial backers has been at odds with his image as the best friend of the black community. Let us consider a small but representative sampling of the ways:

Jackson, whose attempt to boycott Anheuser-Busch failed in 1982, was invoked by black employees of a company beer distributorship in Chicago, who believed they were being discriminated against. In what many observers saw as a blatant (and successful) attempt to buy racial peace from Jackson, Anheuser-Busch awarded the lucrative distributorship (with revenues of between $30 million and $40 million a year) to Jackson’s sons.

With his friend Bill Kennard running the Clinton-era Federal Communications Commission, Jackson publicly opposed a number of high-stakes telecom mergers on moral and racial justice grounds. But when these companies doled out huge sums to Jackson’s organization, and started doing business with corporate insiders tied to the Jackson family, Jackson gave approval to the deals, which were subsequently approved by the FCC.

In 1998, Jackson came out against the proposed Citibank-Travelers merger, again on grounds that it was bad for the black community. Suddenly, Travelers chief Sanford Weill became Jackson’s best friend, opening his pocketbook and making his private jet available to the pastor. Suddenly, Jackson was singing a new tune, coming out in favor of repealing legislation prohibiting banks and insurance companies from merging. Some black community activists felt this damaged the Community Reinvestment Act. As one black businessman told The New Republic, “It took a little while for [people] to realize that Jackson was really working for Weill and not [for] them.”

In the 1980s, Jackson geared up to attack Coca-Cola for doing business in South Africa. Coke responded quickly by awarding distributorships to blacks. The first to receive a Coke franchise was Jesse’s half brother, Noah Robinson. Also in line: Cecil Troy, an Operation PUSH funder. Robinson got on the Jackson family gravy train a year later when Jesse negotiated a similar deal with Kentucky Fried Chicken. As Kenneth Timmerman reported in his 2001 book Shakedown, Robinson once said, “I told Jesse, ‘If you just do the talking for us — and I handle the financial operations — we can rival the Rockefellers in riches.’”

Wall Street securities broker Harold Doley Jr., one of the wealthiest black men in the country, was an early backer of Jackson’s Wall Street Project, but bailed out when he became concerned that Jackson’s initiative was really just a racketeering scheme designed to enrich Jackson’s friends, cronies and contributors. In the fall of 2001, a disgusted Doley told me, “He’s using African Americans to enrich himself.”

Some things never change. It’s hard to see how Jackson can make money off the stampede tragedy, but he is still using African Americans to get the heat off himself. If what has been reported so far stands up to scrutiny, Jackson used his influence to rally Chicago black community leaders, urging them to mau-mau city inspectors into taking it easy on his friend Dwain Kyles, who had been found to be running a dangerous business. Now this same Dwain Kyles’s negligence, and flouting of city orders, appears responsible for the deaths of 21 black men and women. If Jesse Jackson, who is a powerful political figure in Chicago, hadn’t pushed for the city to give Kyles a break, it is possible that those people would be alive today. In an attempt to distract people from that rather inconvenient fact, Jackson is now positioning himself as an advocate for the interests of those crushed or stomped to death in Kyles’s nightclub. What will it take for ordinary African Americans to see what became clear to Harold Doley years ago: that Jesse Jackson is no friend of theirs?

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Carver And Schuyler: Teachers Of Lessons That Hold True Today (Free Congress Foundation, 030219)

By Paul M. Weyrich

February is Black History Month, something that invites controversy because conservatives say the history of blacks should not be segregated from the rest of American history in the way that multiculturalists clearly favor. Liberals say not enough attention is paid to the history and accomplishments of black Americans, a claim that rings much less true now than it did five decades ago. My liberal critics will not be surprised to find that my sympathies lie with the conservative school of thought.

I believe that there are black Americans whose lives can supply lessons that any and all Americans can learn from and that they are men and women who deserve our respect. Undoubtedly, many black Americans were forced to struggle and achieve under the system of slavery and later segregation, and many do so even today in the welfare state. But the willingness of many black Americans to push onward, sometimes when all they had on their side was faith in God, is truly a great lesson for us all. Similarly, there were black Americans who recognized they were indeed fortunate to live in our country even though they faced intense pressure to abandon their belief in the American way of life.

One American, notable for his faith, is George Washington Carver, who was born around the time the Civil War came to a close, only to have his father killed in an accident while he was still an infant. After his mother and sister were kidnapped, Carver was raised by families that were not his own. He struggled hard to obtain an education, managing to excel at his studies in agriculture at the Iowa State College of Agriculture and Mechanical Arts, having benefited from the tutelage of two professors who went on to serve as Secretary of Agriculture. He achieved fame at Tuskegee Institute for promoting the planting of legumes, most notably the peanut, to help farmers grow a crop that would replenish the soil, rather than reduce its fertility. When there was the threat of an oversupply of peanuts, he also discovered many new uses for it in order to ensure that there was a market in which demand could equal supply. Carver discovered over three hundred new ways to use the peanut, ranging from peanut butter to creosote, and did the same for other crops as well.

There are several things I find striking about Carver the man and the scientist, and they are covered in a recently published book by William J. Federer called George Washington Carver: His Life & Faith In His Own Words.

For decades, many members of the scientific establishment in this country have been viewed as being hostile to a belief in God. In recent years, that has started to change and more scientists are willing to acknowledge that God (or some kind of Divine Inspiration or force) is our Creator. But at a time when skepticism was starting to take hold in the scientific community, Carver is one man of science who retained a strong faith in God and was not embarrassed to share it.

Carver once wrote: “We get closer to God as we get more intimately and understandingly acquainted with the things he has created. I know of nothing more inspiring than that of making discoveries for ones self (sic).”

And he truly believed it. When speaking to the House Ways & Means Committee in 1921, Carver relied on the Book of Genesis to explain the many uses for the peanut:

“If you go to the first chapter of Genesis, we can interpret very clearly, I think, what God intended when he said ‘Behold, I have given you every herb that bears seed. To you it shall be meat.’ This is what He means about it. It shall be meat. There is everything there to strengthen and nourish and keep the body alive and healthy.”

When the Chairman of the committee asked Carver where he had learned so much, he credited the Bible even though it does not mention peanuts per se. But it tells all about the God who made the crop.

Another thing worth noting about Carver, particularly given these times of self-interest, is that rather than stay in a lucrative position at Iowa State College, he decided to teach at Tuskegee Institute. Booker T. Washington, the president of Tuskegee, offered Carver the opportunity to help people rise from degradation and poverty.

Carver went to Tuskegee, a fitting move for a man who insisted, “It is not the style of clothes one wears, neither the kind of automobile one drives, nor the amount of money one has in the bank, that counts. These mean nothing. It is simply service that measures success.”

By Carver’s own definition, his life indeed was a success, because his innovative work as a scientist helped to revive the agriculture of the South, serving farmers of both races. In 1939, the Roosevelt Memorial Association (now the Theodore Roosevelt Association) awarded Carver a medal for having been “a scientist humbly seeking the guidance of God and a liberator to men of the white race as well as the black.”

Another figure who has similarly wise words for Americans of both races is George Schuyler, a conservative writer who had once flirted with Marxism but soon realized that neither Socialism nor Communism really had the best interest of black Americans at heart.

Schuyler delivered a talk in 1950 called “The Negro Question Without Propaganda” that still stands today as an effective rebuke to today’s multiculturalists who are so intent on disparaging the American system as one that deserves condemnation for being racist. Schuyler said: “Actually, the progressive improvement of interracial relations in the United States is the most flattering of the many examples of the superiority of the free American civilization over the soul-shackling reactionism of totalitarian regimes. It is this capacity for change and adjustment in the system of individual initiative and decentralized authority to which we must attribute the unprecedented economic, social, and educational progress of the Negroes in the United States.”

Schuyler had a strong understanding of the beneficence of the American system and what really constitutes true freedom. He took a stand against totalitarianism at a time when many American writers and intellectuals were flirting with either fascism, Socialism, or, quite frequently, Communism. Carver’s faith in God and understanding that it is God who has created the universe and all that is on earth certainly deserves our respect, as does his emphasis on service. These two Americans have lessons to teach us -- regardless of our race -- that are as relevant today as when they lived. And as relevant in August or anytime of the year as they are in February.

Paul M. Weyrich is Chairman and CEO of the Free Congress Foundation.

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Still Fighting After 40 Years: The War Against Political Correctness (Free Congress Foundation, 030402)

By Paul M. Weyrich

George Will and Bob Novak have both written very positive commentaries paying homage to the late Patrick Moynihan. My memories are not as glowing as theirs because I remember that Moynihan had told Jim Buckley, at the time the senator representing New York State, that he would not challenge his reelection. Then, Moynihan changed his mind and decided to run after all. Jim Buckley, a very honorable man, had to learn about it by reading the newspapers.

Having gotten that off of my chest, there is much to be said about Moynihan’s having taken a stand that was anti-PC before we even used that phrase. I cannot testify to his motives and do not know whether he anticipated the uproar that the release of his report would create, although I suspect he probably did because Moynihan seemed to relish the role of being the contrarian creating controversy.

Moynihan’s 1965 report on “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action” warned that the “family structure of lower class Negroes is highly unstable, and in many urban centers is approaching complete breakdown.” The consequences of that breakdown were leading to a “tangle of pathology.” His prescription to improve conditions for black Americans naturally called upon the federal government and its resources (meaning our tax money), the answer that one would expect from a liberal serving in the Johnson administration. But Moynihan emphasized that the only true path to equality for black Americans would be the “establishment of a stable Negro family structure.” For that, the civil rights crowd accused Moynihan of heresy and many all but called him a racist because in his report ‘discrimination’ did not account for all the problems that afflicted black Americans.

When social conservatives issued very pointed criticisms in the late 1970s about the consequences of the welfare state and the sexual revolution and policies such as affirmative action, we too found ourselves on the receiving end of similar overheated criticism by the liberal establishment.

In some important ways, there’s been progress made within the black community since Moynihan put out his 1965 report. The 1996 welfare reform act helped many recipients of all races, including blacks, to get off the rolls. More attention is starting to be paid to the importance of marriage. Now, there are black intellectuals who are conservative and who would speak out in defense of Moynihan with credibility. They would even come to the defense of those non-blacks who criticize affirmative action.

There’s been progress too since leaders like Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Phyliss Schlafly and myself were leading the fight for restoring traditional values. We are no longer a ‘moral majority’ in this country as I stated in my 1999 letter. But, believe it or not, The New York Times just published a story titled, “Surprise, Mom, I’m Anti-Abortion” about kids who are pro-life despite being raised by pro-abortion parents. So, that’s a hopeful sign.

It’s just that there are times that it doesn’t seem that there’s enough real progress being made and here’s a story about a little brushfire of controversy. It’s doesn’t approach 1965 Moynihan proportions, but it’s still disheartening because it shows how far we have yet to go to become a society that cares about things other than being ‘cool’ and PC because they’re the correct things to be.

Washington Township, Indiana school superintendent Eugene White deserves to be the recipient of a “Moynihan Award” (if one is ever given) for the challenging of Politically Correct attitudes with common sense.

Superintendent White held a meeting last fall of black male students in his high school to criticize them for not caring enough about their education. He said they were putting their social life ahead of academics. Less than half of his high school’s black male sophomores received passing scores on the language arts and math statewide tests in 2001. Nearly ninety percent of white students passed.

White challenged the students to work harder, even called the students lazy. One student complained that White was “segregating” the black students by holding such a meeting and then upbraiding the boys for not working hard enough. White conceded that not every student present was slacking off, only to urge good students to help the less productive ones.

White feels that the students do not bear all the blame, parents deserve an even bigger share because all too many are not constantly urging their children to study and to do better in school. So, he has to step in where they have failed to tread.

Still, no less than a Harvard lecturer would show up in a story about White, who is black, criticizing the meeting because there was a danger in singling out black male students, presumably the underachievers. That kind of thinking could lead to no action being taken, letting things slide. Indeed, some adults in Washington Township have accused White of engaging in racist, humiliating tactics by his decision to specifically challenge the black male students to do better, though no doubt his message is not a comfortable one to hear.

Since White’s fall meeting, there has been an improvement in the percentage of black male sophomores passing the high school’s standardized tests, although it cannot be ascertained just how much credit, if any, can be attributed to his efforts. The improvement is still not enough to satisfy White, who is continuing to prod his students to do better. Fortunately, White has not been stopped by a PC juggernaut, but then the Indianapolis area is not the hotbed of Political Correctness that New York City, Philadelphia, Boston, and San Francisco have proven themselves to be. In those towns, with their PC newspapers and radio stations and protestors just waiting for a cause, I predict there would be an even greater negative reaction about Superintendent White’s meeting and the message that he delivers.

After complimenting Superintendent White for deciding to tackle the truth in a positive way about his black students, I’ll present my own quibbles with him and the Harvard lecturer. Unlike the Harvard lecturer, I see no problem in singling out the black students to let them know they are squandering the education that should be their passport to success and putting it in the stark, unflattering terms that Superintendent White did last year. If Superintendent White wants to talk as a black man who has achieved success to black students who are on the opposite path, then more power to him. But the sooner the truth about the low scores and grades and wasted potential of the black students are faced up to the better. It’s very likely that things would be even better in the black community today if more black leaders and government policymakers in 1965 took Moynihan’s warning to heart, rather than dismiss it.

But why not bring in the white students whose grades and test scores were below average and present the same message to them too? Twelve percent of the white students were failing that standardized state exam two years ago. Couldn’t they have benefited by hearing a similar message, whether they like it or not? All students working below their potential should be told it’s time to stop slacking and start studying. Does it follow that if the white students with poor test scores heard Superintendent White speaking as a black man scolding the black male students that racist feelings would be created or that the black male students would feel inferior because he scolded them with a little more zeal in front of white students who had similar bad grades and test scores?

At least Superintendent White did the right thing by urging many of the black male students of North Central High School to do better, no matter the harm it should do to their ‘self-esteem’ to be told that they need to stop slacking and start studying.

When more public school administrators like Superintendent White start speaking up, challenging slacker students to do better because they have the potential to, then you know we will be making ‘progress.’

Paul M. Weyrich is Chairman and CEO of the Free Congress Foundation.

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Back to Cincinnati: The return of the Grievance Industry Road Show (NRO, 021202)

There is an old saying in the Los Angeles Police Department, one handed down to each succeeding generation of rookie cops: The LAPD badge is oval rather than star-shaped so it won’t hurt as much when somebody shoves it...well, you know the rest. Among my duties over the course of my career has been the training of young police officers freshly graduated from the police academy. One thing I have always taught the trainees placed in my care is that we should treat everyone with that level of respect they prove themselves deserving, and that if we have a legal reason for wanting someone to behave in a certain fashion we first ask him, then we tell him, then we make him, through the judicious application of violence if necessary. A cop might handle a thousand radio calls and make a hundred arrests without having to raise even his voice, much less his baton or his gun, but then there comes that one guy in a hundred who, perhaps after ingesting some mind-altering substance or another, simply refuses to go along with the program.

Such is the case in Cincinnati, where the dark clouds of controversy are once again swirling around the police department. Here is what we know: Just before six A.M. on Sunday, an employee at a White Castle restaurant in the city’s Avondale neighborhood called 9-1-1 to report a man acting strangely out in front. The man, identified later as Nathaniel Jones, 41, appeared to be passed out on the lawn, the caller said, but he was repeatedly and inexplicably shouting the word “nineteen.” A fire engine was dispatched, and shortly after arriving the firefighters requested police to respond. Two officers were dispatched for a “disorderly subject,” and soon after arriving the officers were involved in a violent struggle with Jones, much of which was captured on a police car’s video camera. On the tape the disparity in size between Jones and the officers is readily apparent: at 350 lbs., Jones appeared to outweigh both officers together. As the tape rolls, an officer can be heard telling Jones to stay back, after which Jones lunges and hits an officer in the head with his right arm. The second officer moves in, and soon all three are on the ground in front of the police car. Jones remains below the camera’s view for much of the incident, but at one point his hand is visible on one officer’s neck. Later, Jones rises to his knees to face the camera, and he appears to make a grab for one officer’s holstered pistol. At another point in the tape Jones has a grasp of an officer’s baton. More officers eventually arrive and subdue Jones, both with their bodyweight and at least one officer’s pepper spray.

Moments later the officers found Jones to be in some kind of medical distress. The firefighters, who had left when the police officers arrived, returned to the scene and began attending to him. An ambulance was summoned, but Jones was pronounced dead after being taken to a local hospital. According to the coroner, Jones suffered bruises from the baton blows, but none of them was thought to be fatal or even incapacitating. Jones was found to have an enlarged heart, and traces of both cocaine and PCP were found in his blood, perhaps explaining his bizarre and violent behavior. PCP was all the rage in South Central Los Angeles when I worked there in the early 80s, and seldom did a week go by without officers on my watch becoming involved in a donnybrook very similar to the one shown on the tape.

Whatever choices Jones may have made that contributed to his demise will matter little, of course, to the legions of the professionally and perennially aggrieved who must surely be descending on Cincinnati at this very moment. Jones was black, and five of the six officers who subdued him are white (the sixth is black), and these days that’s just about all it takes to raise the hackles of the racial-grievance industry. Jesse Jackson has quite predictably called for state and federal investigations into Jones’s death, and the sweet smell of racially charged controversy will no doubt be too alluring for him to stay away. And is there even the slightest chance that Al Sharpton won’t use the incident to garner attention to his ever-more-farcical presidential campaign? Cincinnati’s own local grievance gurus are already in high voice. Calvert Smith, president of the Cincinnati chapter of the NAACP, called Jones’s death “the proverbial straw that breaks the camel’s back.” Smith said the NAACP will conduct its own investigation into the matter, and will “take whatever measures are necessary to ensure justice.”

Whatever the eventual outcome of the various investigations, the immediate effect will be similar to that which followed the death of Timothy Thomas, the unarmed black man fatally shot by a Cincinnati police officer during a foot pursuit in April 2001. (The police officer, Stephen Roach, was tried and acquitted on misdemeanor charges stemming from the shooting.) Thomas’s death sparked days of rioting and months of protests, but a more pernicious effect was a police force enfeebled by the controversy. Violent crime skyrocketed as arrests plummeted, and the great majority of the victims were of course the very blacks whom the protesters purported to defend.

Mr. Jones’s death is indeed unfortunate; even a criminal leaves behind family and friends who mourn his passing. But it seems likely that at age 41 he at last reaped the harvest of a lifetime of his own unwise choices, namely the ingestion of drugs and what we might assume from his physique to be prodigious quantities of White Castle hamburgers. The outcome might well have been different had Jones succeeded in gaining control of one of the officers’ weapons as the tape suggests was his intent, but the voices now bellowing from rooftops would be silent as a stone if a police officer had instead been the one to die that morning.

— Jack Dunphy is an officer in the Los Angeles Police Department. “Jack Dunphy” is the author’s nom de cyber. The opinions expressed are his own and almost certainly do not reflect those of the LAPD management.

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“The O’Connor Project”: Part of the problem (NRO, 040115)

In the current issue of the left-leaning The American Prospect, Lisbeth B. Schorr has an article entitled “The O’Connor Project.” The title alludes to Justice Sandra O’Connor’s opinion last summer upholding the use of racial preferences in university admissions, which she concluded by saying that she hoped the academic performance of young African Americans would improve enough so that, in 25 years, this kind of discrimination would no longer be called for. And so, asks Schorr — director of the Project on Effective Interventions at Harvard University — what is to be done in order to make O’Connor’s hope come true?

Schorr’s answer is to spend “somewhere between $110 billion and $125 billion a year” on social programs that would end racial disparities in the following critical areas: (1) “birth outcomes” (i.e., “teen births” and prenatal care); (2) school readiness; (3) opportunities in K-12 education; (4) “opportunities for adolescents to make a healthy transition into young adulthood” (i.e., not become criminals); and (5) “opportunities that families have to provide their children a good start in life.” This list — or, more precisely, Schorr’s discussion of it — demonstrates very well the unwillingness of the Left to speak candidly and reason honestly on this issue.

Items 1, 2, and 4 are all in large part clumsy attempts to avoid saying what has been obvious for a long time: The major problem facing African Americans as a demographic group today is the fact that seven out of ten of black children are born out of wedlock. Just about any social pathology you can name, especially for boys, correlates with growing up in a home where there is no father. You can avoid the i-word (for illegitimacy) and write — as Schorr does — about “teen births,” and “the necessity of nurturing, supportive adults,” and “matching at-risk young people with adult mentors.” But it boils down to this: So long as the African-American illegitimacy rate is more than triple that of whites, you are going to have a serious “underrepresentation” of academically well-prepared blacks when it comes time to think about college.

I’m skeptical about how effectively this problem can be addressed by anything done in the classroom, but it is certainly true, as Schorr acknowledges in item 3, that a disproportionate number of African-American children go to lousy public schools. But Schorr can’t bring herself to come right out and acknowledge as well that these schools are themselves, by and large, a product of the liberal establishment — and that the principal obstacle to their reform is that establishment and, in particular, the teachers’ unions. The only way to improve the educational opportunities now available to children assigned to failing public schools is to force the schools to compete and to give these children the opportunity (through vouchers or other choice programs) to go elsewhere. And guess which side of the political spectrum favors that, and which one opposes it?

Schorr’s final item nicely complements the item that obviously ought to be on her list but isn’t. Number 5 is essentially a complaint that we don’t all have the same amount of wealth and income in the United States (unsurprisingly, Schorr proposes that the cost of her O’Connor Project be met by “rescinding the portion of the 2001 tax cut allocated the wealthiest 5 percent of U.S. families...together with a modest increase in the gas tax or a 25 percent cut in ‘corporate welfare’”). The real problem, however, is a culture gap, not a money gap.

As Abigail and Stephen Thernstrom demonstrate brilliantly with an array of empirical data in their new book No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning — and as John McWhorter confirms through his own experiences as student and teacher in Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America — it is an unfortunate but widespread phenomenon that too many African-American kids see excelling in academics as “acting white,” and too many African-American parents fail to disabuse them of this notion. Schorr knows that a culture gap exists here and in other key respects, but she won’t use the c-word any more than she will use the i-word.

Note that, while there is no doubt that illegitimacy, failing public education, and poverty are serious social problems, it is a mistake to view them as essentially racial in nature, because many whites (and Asians) face them, too, and many blacks (and Latinos) do not. For those who support racial preferences, the deep-down justification for them remains a sense that they are needed to “make up” for past discrimination against certain groups. But this justification won’t wash, as the days of Jim Crow recede further into the past, and as it becomes obvious that the remaining social problems — whomever they afflict — have little, and less and less, to do with discrimination.

Incidentally, will the use of racial preferences blessed by Justice O’Connor make it easier or harder to close the academic gap she identifies? It is ironic but likely that preferences are themselves a critical element in keeping the gap wide. They enable politicians to sweep the real problems under the rug by, to mix a metaphor, using preferences to paper over them; and preferences also remove the incentive for academic excellence at the same time that they stigmatize and encourage a defeatist and victim mentality among their supposed beneficiaries.

— Roger Clegg is general counsel of the Center for Equal Opportunity in Sterling, Virginia.

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Everyday Heroes (Free Congress Foundation, 040211)

The reparations movement may have struck out in Chicago but the game is not over by any means. U.S. District Judge Charles Norgle dismissed lawsuits seeking reparations for slavery, stating, “a plaintiff must show that he personally has suffered some actual or threatened injury as a result of the putatively illegal conduct of the defendant.”

Slavery in this country was ended nearly 200 years ago, yet this movement presses on with its case. They seek to force companies to reveal any history of their reliance on slave labor. This movement wants companies with that shameful foundation to set up trusts for the black community. The use and administration of those funds is unclear.

One adverse court decision is unlikely to stop the movement. It is important to note, however, that there are many black Americans who harbor concern about the reparations movement. Syndicated columnist Clarence Page has expressed bewilderment at the emphasis placed on reparations. “They keep us black Americans focused too narrowly on what white people need to do to save black Americans instead of what we black Americans should be doing to save ourselves.”

The republication of Dr. John Sibley Butler’s Entrepreneurship and Self-Help Among Black Americans: A Reconsideration of Race and Economics (State University of New York Press / April 2004) is coming at a fortuitous time. Butler is professor of sociology and management at the University of Texas at Austin and his writing recognizes the impact of segregation that black Americans experienced. He also finds positive lessons that can be gained from the experience that are still timely today. It is well worth remembering the strong tradition of entrepreneurship among black Americans at that time. Butler quotes Bob Woodson, Founder and President of the National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise: [Black America’s] historical zest for free-enterprise, self-assertion, and open debate within its own ranks is a peculiarly American story of trial, tribulation, and triumph. In the past, the black community had to rely on its own resources to survive…. Black American would eventually become derailed, however, but not before the evidence was in that slavery, Jim Crow laws, lynching, and race-baiting politicians could not kill the community’s collective will and determination to leap over barriers to accomplish its goals. Seemingly, the more restrictive the political, social, and economic barriers, the more determined black America became in its resolve to overcome them. And progress, for the most part, came about because it took matters into its own hands.

There are many leaders who, by the examples of their lives and work, can inspire us all. Dr. Butler discusses Dr. Aaron McDuffie Moore who was born in North Carolina during the Civil War. Dr. Moore excelled in his medical studies and set up practice in Durham. What makes Dr. Moore’s life memorable was his service to the community. He not only played a leading role in founding a hospital to train black nurses and doctors, he also helped to establish a library in his church. Because he wanted to make sure people from other denominations within the black community had access to the library, he worked to establish a community library as well.

That list alone would be a full life of service for many people, but Dr. Moore also wanted to improve education by personally paying the salary of a State Public Inspector for schools serving black North Carolinians. The Inspector visited the schools, and then issued a report with recommendations. The successful program was later taken over by the state.

Butler writes, “Dr. Moore was steeped in the tradition of self-help among African-Americans and was also exemplary of the true middle class of the Old South.” In this post-segregation era, it is clear that the philanthropic impulses of Dr. Moore is part of the history the city and the state - as a whole; black as well as white.

Fortunately, the philanthropic impulse demonstrated by Dr. Moore is not dead. Right here in D.C. there are community leaders whose actions and true concern are helping to better young lives and improve the community.

Tom Lewis, the son of a sawmill worker and a cotton picker, was the sixth of 15 children. He had to drop out of school. Through hard work and perseverance, he eventually became a policeman in Washington, D.C. Later, he received a college degree from American University. For many years, he was “Officer Friendly” working to build trust for the department among young school age children. He saw plenty of kids who needed better care and more attention from their parents. Kids actually asked him to be their “daddy.” After working in social services, Mr. Lewis set up The Fishing School, a faith-based program, in one of Washington, D.C.’s toughest neighborhoods to serve as a family center. A man who lives his faith, Tom Lewis, for many years, did not draw a salary from The Fishing School whose guiding principle is based on the saying “If you give a man a fish, you’ll feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish, and he will feed himself for a lifetime.” A second center was opened in 1988.

Kids at the two Fishing Schools receive spiritual inspiration, academic tutoring, and computer classes. The academic program has been strengthened in recent years as the success of the program has attracted more financial support. Parents and guardians are involved. A modest tuition is charged thereby increasing the family’s stake in participation.

Curtis Watkins has done a 180-degree turnaround. Once a self-described “negative element in the community”, the young Watkins now proclaims to be a spiritual person whom God has told to do better things. Initially, he became a purchasing manager at the National Association of Realtors. He never forgot his early days in a tough housing project called East Capitol Dwellings in northeast Washington, D.C. Mr. Watkins went on to found the East Capitol Center for Change helping the “diamonds in the rough”. These are people who have the right values, but are hindered by harsh neighborhood conditions. He and his organization are highly thought of by his former employer. Part of the support for the East Capitol Center for Change comes from National Association of Realtors.

Mr. Watkins is working to ensure the area youth receive the necessary instruction in academics and computer skills necessary to succeed. Other helpful and inventive ideas to help kids get ahead, such as an investment club, are included. However, it’s not easy. He describes the many young men who need to learn basic planning, decision-making and life management skills.

There are people of all colors who get plenty of attention for their talk but do little to solve their problems. There are people of every race and creed who prefer to look backward rather than forward. These people fail to recognize and take advantage of the opportunities that exist for constructive change. Tom Lewis, Curtis Watkins and many unsung heroes are exactly the opposite. They are busy grappling with real problems. Their examples of working on the grassroots level are well worth noticing. In an era when the doors of opportunity are wide open for all Americans willing to do what is necessary to walk through, these leaders are helping others walk through too by showing them how to walk on their own. Their belief in service to the community is an example to us all.

Paul M. Weyrich is Chairman and CEO of the Free Congress Foundation.

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The New Civil Rights Movement (Christian Post, 051117)

It was the Friday before Farrakhan’s Million More March. After wrestling through the hectic D.C. traffic, I arrived at CNN’s D.C. studios. Making my way through security, I caught my breath in their green room. In a few minutes I would speak concerning the Black Muslims, race relations in the U.S., and the future of the Civil Rights Movement. These questions were the refrain of a song that I heard repeatedly as I was interviewed on national television and radio programs during the next few weeks.

After these interviews, I concluded that the United States is ripe for a second, more effective Civil Rights Movement. In fact, the death of Rosa Parks, mother of the Civil Rights Movement, marked the end of the primary era of civil rights. After her body was laid in State, there could have been no greater acknowledgement of the significance of the first phase of the non-violent movement. Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Jr., and an army of others won hard-fought battles for the dignity of African-American citizens. Violent racial hostility has lessened all over the country and many blacks have access to the highest echelons of American society.

Unfortunately black poverty, as measured by comparative salary levels, home ownership, business equity and unemployment figures, has increased during the last ten years. In addition, The Great Society programs of the 1960s indirectly encouraged an alarming rate of out-of-wedlock births (approximately 70%) and the destruction of the black man’s leadership in low income homes.

Watching Oprah on weekdays or football on Sundays gives us a false sense that blacks have attained comparable prominence and prosperity with the white community. Nothing could be further from the truth.

A biblically-based New Civil Rights Movement is definitely needed to bring healing and salvation to a wounded, fractured community. George Barna and I conducted ground-breaking research on black spirituality that is recorded in the book High Impact African-American Churches. We learned that while 47% of black adults are born again, non-churched adults in the black community are poised to be reached with the Gospel. The entire Christian community should realize that its “harvest time.” The blacks of all ages should be targeted with prayer and evangelistic efforts.

What should the non-black church contribute to this New Civil Rights Movement? The greater church in America could seize this season as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to touch a “nation” within our nation. Three steps should be taken by forward-thinking churches. These are easy to accomplish but may lead to a major national revival:

1. preach racial reconciliation and the unity of the body of Christ

• like Promise Keepers has been doing for years

2. create partnerships with urban churches

• these partnerships could include

- after school tutorial programs

- crisis pregnancy centers

- prison after-care programs

- big brother, big sister programs

3. allow social justice to be included the national, moral debate

• social justice includes public policies addressing poverty and its impact on all Americans

The racial divide in America can and will be healed. The healing will come from a discerning Church which seizes its moment within the culture and commits to pay the price for change.

Harry R. Jackson, Jr.

Christian Post Guest Columnist

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Black support for Bush drops to two percent (townhall.com, 051117)

[comments by Kwing Hung: a great account of how Republicans (not Democrats) helped the blacks.]

by Larry Elder

So much for the Republican “outreach” to black voters, with only 2 percent of blacks “approving” of the president’s performance.

If only blacks knew of the true history of the Democratic Party.

“Black History Month” has been observed for 29 years, yet many blacks know little to nothing about the parties’ respective roles in advancing or hindering the civil rights of blacks. How many blacks know that following the Civil War, 23 blacks -- 13 of them ex-slaves -- were elected to Congress, all as Republicans? The first black Democrat was not elected to Congress until 1935, from the state of Illinois. The first black congressional Democrat from a Southern state was not elected until 1973.

Democrats, in 1854, passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act. This overturned the Missouri Compromise and allowed for the importation of slaves into the territories. Disgusted with the passage of this Act, free-soilers and anti-slavery members of the Whig and Democratic parties founded the Republican Party -- not just to stop the spread of slavery, but to eventually abolish it.

How many blacks know that blacks founded the Texas Republican Party? On July 4, 1867, in Houston, Texas, 150 blacks and 20 whites formed the party. No, not the Black Texas Republican Party, they founded the Texas Republican Party. Blacks across Southern states also founded the Republican parties in their states.

Fugitive slave laws? In 1850, Democrats passed the Fugitive Slave Law. If merely accused of being a slave, even if the person enjoyed freedom all of his or her life (as approximately 11 percent of blacks did just before the Civil War), the person lost the right to representation by an attorney, the right to trial by jury, and the right to habeas corpus.

Emancipation? Republican President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation during the Civil War. In 1865, the 13th Amendment emancipating the slaves was passed with 100 percent of Republicans (88 of 88 in the House, 30 of 30 in the Senate) voting for it. Only 23 percent of Democrats (16 of 66 in the House, 3 of 8 in the Senate) voted for it.

Civil rights laws? In 1868, the 14th Amendment was passed giving the newly emancipated blacks full civil rights and federal guarantee of those rights, superseding any state laws. Every single voting Republican (128 of 134 -- with 6 not voting -- in the House, and 30 of 32 -- with 2 not voting -- in the Senate) voted for the 14th Amendment. Not a single Democrat (zero of 36 in the House, zero of 6 in the Senate) voted for it.

Right to vote? When Southern states balked at implementing the 14th Amendment, Congress came back and passed the 15th Amendment in 1870, guaranteeing blacks the right to vote. Every single Republican voted for it, with every Democrat voting against it.

Ku Klux Klan? In 1872 congressional investigations, Democrats admitted beginning the Klan as an effort to stop the spread of the Republican Party and to re-establish Democratic control in Southern states. As PBS’ “American Experience” notes, “In outright defiance of the Republican-led federal government, Southern Democrats formed organizations that violently intimidated blacks and Republicans who tried to win political power. The most prominent of these, the Ku Klux Klan, was formed in Pulaski, Tenn., in 1865.” Blacks, who were all Republican at that time, became the primary targets of violence.

Jim Crow laws? Between 1870 and 1875, the Republican Congress passed many pro-black civil rights laws. But in 1876, Democrats took control of the House, and no further race-based civil rights laws passed until 1957. In 1892, Democrats gained control of the House, the Senate and the White House, and repealed all the Republican-passed civil rights laws. That enabled the Southern Democrats to pass the Jim Crow laws, poll taxes, literacy tests, and so on, in their individual states.

Civil rights in the ‘60s? Only 64 percent of Democrats in Congress voted for the 1964 Civil Rights Act (153 for, 91 against in the House; and 46 for, 21 against in the Senate). But 80 percent of Republicans (136 for, 35 against in the House; and 27 for, 6 against in the Senate) voted for the 1964 Act.

What about the reviled, allegedly anti-black, Republican “Southern strategy”? Pat Buchanan, writing for Richard Nixon (who became the Republican Party candidate two years later) coined the term “Southern strategy.” They expected the “strategy” to ultimately result in the complete marginalization of racist Southern Democrats. “We would build our Republican Party on a foundation of states’ rights, human rights, small government, and a strong national defense,” said Buchanan, “and leave it to the ‘party of [Democratic Georgia Gov. Lester] Maddox, [1966 Democratic challenger against Spiro Agnew for Maryland governor George] Mahoney, and [Democratic Alabama Gov. George] Wallace to squeeze the last ounces of political juice out of the rotting fruit of racial injustice.’” And President Richard Nixon, Republican, implemented the first federal affirmative action (race-based preference) laws with goals and timetables.

So next “Black History Month,” pass some of this stuff along.

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