The ever-enterprising Jamie Glazov, whose symposiums-by-correspondence are one of the great strengths of Front Page, (not just because they have noticed us in the past)
posted one today to discuss Jared Taylor’s definitive essay on the New Orleans disaster, Africa in our Midst: Lessons from Katrina.

Glazov defined his proposed subject carefully:

1) …nobody else has reported these outrages in the comprehensive manner Taylor has and 2) many black leaders like Jesse Jackson have used the events surrounding Hurricane Katrina as an indictment of white people.

Jared Taylor is a white nationalist who has clearly rejected a multi-racial society. At the end of his report, he draws racist conclusions that we here at Frontpagemag.com find repugnant. At the same time, we are appalled that no other journalist or commentator has had the courage or the integrity to describe these horrific events without which the picture of this disaster — and the way we understand our responsibility as a nation — is not and cannot be complete.

Today Frontpagemag.com has assembled a distinguished panel to discuss what happened and why someone like Jared Taylor is singled out to be the messenger

The “distinguished panel” consisted of Carol Swain, the black Vanderbilt Professor (who actually is a real scholar, and who had the temerity to invite my brother to speak at her Princeton Conference this year, for which she was brutally condemned) Debra Dickerson, a black journalist, and Jennifer L. Hochschild and Marc Cooper, who manufacture ethnic propaganda from comfortable slots at Harvard University and the Nation (and LA Times) respectively.

The result is worth glancing at if only to appreciate the contrast betweeen the febrile, hysterical hatred which characterised three of the four participants and Taylor’s considered, reasonable, and fact-based style.

Debra Dickerson, in fact, did a New Orleans Police Officer, and ran away. Glazov was obliged to say

It is Debra Dickerson’s turn in this second round, but unfortunately her schedule became very hectic and she regrets she could not find the time to continue

(Keep in mind this was a written exchange, and Dickerson’s web site shows little sign of any work for several years.)

Cooper furiously objected to Jared Taylor being mentioned at all. Asserting that

If I would extract one grand lesson from the incidents of violence, whatever their real scope, it would be that these prove that blacks are pretty much like everyone else in the world

he berated FP

just what is the point that FP is so eager to make here? And what is so compelling about it that they would go to the extreme of quoting an avowed racial extremist to make that point?

so that Glazov was fully justified in his sad concluding remark:

Mr. Cooper…we are much dismayed by your inability to see past Jared Taylor and to effectively deal with the issues we have asked you to discuss.

Harvard Professor Hochschild displayed a similar commitment to free speech and open debate

Some parts of the essay are simply despicable and don’t warrant discussion

and although displaying some nascent neo conservative sensitivity to being mugged by reality

My one point of agreement with Mr. Taylor is that rapists and shooters should be held to account… Christian exhortations for humility …notwithstanding…people who shoot at rescue helicopters should not be able to get away with it

she then defaulted back to the conventional left line:

It is the structure and dynamics of permitted inequality, not the relative degrees of evil of a given looter or political official, that we should focus on.

Carol Swain, who has concerned herself with studying the Radical Right was reasonably fair to Jared Taylor:

Although we are united in our condemnation of Jared Taylor, it is important to note that the New Century Foundation, an organization he heads, has recently published the second edition of a volume called The Color of Crime: Race, Crime, and Justice in America, where he uses FBI statistics to support his contentions that blacks are more criminal than other racial and ethnic groups. In the past, Taylor’s data have been reanalyzed by researchers who have not quibbled with his numbers… Because of his ability to reach a wide intellectual audience, we need to take him seriously by addressing his arguments about the unacceptable levels of crime within the black community

.

She added:

The diatribes of black leaders hurling accusations of white racism, while carefully avoiding any serious condemnation of the lawbreakers, were unfortunate because such predictable behavioral patterns merely serve to reinforce negative stereotypes about the group…

But in fact Carol Swain appears to have seen New Orleans primarily as a religious problem:

These horrid events highlight a critical need for people to be guided by moral and ethical principles such as those found in the Ten Commandments … It is a spiritual poverty as much as a material poverty that explains the desperation of many black people and their failure to fully overcome the vestiges of the past…Black people need to rediscover their spiritual roots and their once deeply held belief in a living God that holds people accountable to a moral code of behavior.

This was hugely offensive to Hochschild and Cooper

Hochschild: I am not a Christian(email to hochschild@latte.harvard.edu)

Cooper: Finally, I don’t share Ms. Swain’s religious beliefs nor do I care much to focus worldly events through a biblical prism

Consequently they gave no consideration at all to her point of view.

After Jared Taylor is repressed, could Carol Swain be next?

At VDARE.COM, we often publish stories about various companies and/or employers who aid and abet illegal immigration. It’s only fair that we applaud those who do not.

A story from Vida en el Valle, translated and published by Pacific News Service, reports a new policy at Greyhound Bus Lines - “threatening to fire employees who sell bus tickets to undocumented immigrants.” Greyhound cites a federal law which prohibits the transport of illegal aliens.

If only more American corporations/employers respected this law. Way to go Greyhound!! [Congratulate Greyhound]

Read the whole story including the backlash from illegal alien lobbyists: Greyhound Prohibits Selling Tickets to Undocumented Immigrants 9/29/05

Re Juan Mann’s article on HR 3333 [Impeach Bush—And/Or Abolish The EOIR?]

I’d considered writing about this bill-and I honestly think in many ways Juan Mann did a better job than I would have.

However, I think Juan missed how small the proposed fines in HR 3333 are relative to what might be effective.

Right now, fines for employment of illegal aliens are around $10,000 per violation. HR 3333 roughly doubles that amount. However if we look at the price families in India are willing to pay for US citizenship for their grandchildren via the dowry market, that price is roughtly $50,000 for a 50% chance at a green card via and H-1b visa-or roughly $100,000 per green card.

For a fine to be an effective deterrent, the effective penalty times the probability of getting caught must exceed the potential benefit. Even under much improved enforcement, we probably won’t see more than a third of all employers that violate immigration regulations fined. That means that for each violation, we need to collect at least $300,000–on the average.

However, many of those collections would bankrupt smaller employers and contractors that simply don’t have that level of assets. We need additional criminal penalties for the employers (particularly those that are de facto accomplices for various crimes like murder)–and ways to attached the assets of people that indirectly finance illegal immigration(i.e. providing a mortgage to an employer that hires illegal aliens).

That most likely means a fine of at least $500,000 per violation for the larger employers–plus criminal penalties. These funds could be used to cover the various health and insurance costs associated with illegal immigration-as well as a jobs and infrastructure program for Latin American that would decrease the need for emmigrate.

My hometown propaganda rag, the Atlanta Journal Constitution, runs an “Atlanta and the World” section of six to eight pages each Wednesday.

To say that it is an effective way of shamelessly disseminating leftist open borders propaganda to the barely aware daily readership of a million plus readers is an understatement. As an example, I offer one of my favorite, front page Atlanta and the World stories from July:

“Immigrants subsidize care” …with a sub header: “Medical study debunks myth on health costs”

in which the AJC presents a convoluted study [“The study,makes no distinction among U.S. citizens. Legal residents and un-documented immigrants”] that apparently proves that given enough immigration, American health costs would decrease to zero.

A quote from Dr. Sarita A. Mohanty, who was involved in the study in the AJC

“We felt there was a misconception about the amount of health care immigrants were using nationwide,” said Dr. Sarita A. Mohanty, the study’s lead author, who moved from Harvard to the University of Southern California while it was in press.”

Not so objective an approach?

From the AJC:

But the study’s authors, who based their analysis on federally collected health care data, said it debunks a persistent myth: That extending medical care to immigrants has contributed to the United States’ out-of-control health care costs

The basis of the study?

The study examined medical-spending data on 21,241 people gathered by the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality during 1998. [Health Care Expenditures of Immigrants in the United States: A Nationally Representative Analysis August 2005, Vol 95, No. 8 | American Journal of Public Health ]

So…in a nation of 290 million plus, the study uses data from 21,000 people collected eight years ago. No mention of Dr. Madeleine Cosman’s study [PDF] published in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons…this year.

I failed to note all of this in July, but was reminded of it today when I read another piece in Atlanta and the World this morning regarding that all-American outfit, MALDEF.

The AJC, again, was selective in information provided to the reader that MALDEF sued in several federal courts to stop Arizona’s Prop 200 legislation that requires proof of citizenship [ Oh, the humanity!] to vote in that state, or that it joined forces with other race-based organizations to oppose the federal REAL ID ACT…regulating driver’s licenses to illegal aliens being a human rights abuse you understand.

Let’s not overlook the fact that the AJC Chaired the annual 2003MALDEF fundraiser dinner here , or that it did not report on the American citizens and real, legal immigrants protesting just outside that event…

Voter ID that proves citizenship and requires a photo to vote does not seem to be an issue with MALDEF, or with Cynthia Tucker at the AJC when it occurs in Mexico.

Si?

This is why immigration enthusiasts scream “racist” all the time: they know their support is a mile wide but not an inch deep - even in the American Establishment. The October 3 issue of U.S. New & World Report carries a worthy hand-wringing column from the proprietor, Mortimer Zuckerman, on the plight of black America as revealed by Hurricane Katrina. Buried deep in it is this remarkable thowaway paragraph:

So why haven’t overall poverty rates declined further? In a word, immigration. Many of those who come to the United States are not only poor but unskilled. Hispanics account for much of the increase in poverty–no surprise, since 25 percent of poor people are Hispanic. Since 1989, Hispanics represent nearly three quarters of the increase in the overall poverty population. Immigration has also helped keep the median income for the country basically flat for five straight years, the longest stretch of income stagnation on record.

This, of course, is the sort of thing that VDARE.COM, specifically Edwin S. Rubenstein, has beeen saying for years. e.g. here.

Even more remarkable, this is not new for Zuckerman. He and I were on a panel together in New York in 1994 (hard to believe now) and I remember telling him I would not have strained my family’s patience writing Alien Nation, then in press, if I had seen a wonderful U.S. News column he had just published succinctly summarizing the immigration disaster. Yeah, maybe you say this sort of thing to media moguls, but, partly because my wife was still steaming with rage, I meant it.

I don’t know for sure why Zuckerman’s stone-cold take on immigration isn’t reflected in his New York Daily News or for that matter why he doesn’t force his employee Michael Barone to stop his, ah, systematic inexactitude on the issue.

But the immigration enthusiasts don’t know either. That’s why they have to repress all criticism with such hysteria.

HispanicBusiness.com is reporting that Groups Want Katrina Aid for Undocumented Immigrants . [September 21, 2005 ]

“Groups” means the Hispanic arm of the Treason Lobby, in this case the National Alliance ofLatin American & Caribbean Communities, a fairly new umbrella organization.

They are asking for a grant of Temporary Protected Status for illegals affected by the storm. Which is backwards.

Temporary Protected Status is usually granted by the immigration authorities in the wake of natural disasters–in foreign countries.

If there’s been a hurricane in El Salvador, and everything is upside down, or a volcano eruption on the island of Montserrat, and it’s still pouring on the lava, the idea is that non-status immigrants can stay in the US until it blows over. (If it’s a permanent condition, the authorities may revoke that.)

But this isn’t a problem in Mexico, it’s a problem in New Orleans, and Texas, where there are limited resources to deal the American victims of the storm. The illegals would be better “Protected” being whisked to a place of safety–in Mexico where it’s warm and dry , and the Government of Mexico has looting under control. (It is in fact a government monopoly there.)

Perhaps the illegal aliens in question could catch a ride out of the area with that Mexican Army convoy that arrived on September 7.

And perhaps, as I suggested in August of 2001 [Dear Mr. Fox: Please Find Attached our Poor/ Tired/ Dispossessed, Etc.] we could send them refugees from other countries, too. After all, if they’re willing to send trooops and aid north, which they usually receive, they can take in a bunch of needy refugees (from Somalia, or whereever) which they usually send.

After all, they have a lot of vacancies down there, and we’ve been told, repeatedly by Ben Wattenberg that “immigration is good” [Scroll down for the "is good" part] : now all we need to do is make the Mexican government believe it.

James Taranto and John Brimelow, that is.

While James Taranto rarely agrees with John Brimelow, or the rest of us at VDARE.com, on immigration, race relations, profiling and so-on, based on three recent columns, Taranto seems to be agreeing with John Brimelow’s theory that “the biggest casualty from Hurricane Katrina is going to be race relations.”

Taranto’s columns don’t emphasize the looting, raping, shooting at helicopters and general chaos, but rather the pointless whining of black spokesmen, and the general divorce from reality of the black electorate. Here’s what Taranto had to say three days in a row, shortly after Katrina:

• The Truth About Race in America

  The truth about race that Katrina illuminates, then, is that, at least when it comes to matters involving race, black Americans are extreme political outliers. This is why attempts to play the race card are politically futile: They have to appeal not just to blacks, but to a substantial minority of whites. The Gallup poll results makes clear that the current racial appeals are not resonating with whites.

• The Truth About Race in America–II

  Of course it is human nature to empathize with people who are “like us,” which is why people care more when a disaster strikes their country than a foreign land. Thus it’s perfectly understandable that black Americans would respond with a heightened fervor to the sufferings of fellow blacks after Hurricane Katrina.

  But it makes no sense to expect nonblacks to empathize with blacks because they are black. Transracial empathy must be based on what people of different races have in common: that we are fellow Americans, or fellow human beings. The use of a natural disaster as an occasion for racial grievance is a hindrance, not an aid, to national solidarity and empathy.

• The Truth About Race in America–III

  It’s hard to make people feel guilty when they personally have done nothing wrong. It’s hard to argue that racial disparities are the product of extant racism when there is no direct evidence that such racism is anything but extremely rare, and when public policy actually favors blacks over whites.

  On Tuesday we noted that black Americans have sharply different views on racial matters than do white Americans and, therefore, than do Americans as a whole. What we are arguing today is that the views of whites are likely to move even further away from those that blacks now hold.

So it seems that John Brimelow was right about the fallout from the storm, if it’s even afflicting the Wall Street Journal. In fact, Taranto later linked to this Minneapolis story about a white telephone repairman being shot by black man, [A shooting with disturbing implications Tom Ford, Star Tribune September 16, 2005 ]

Under the heading There Oughta Be a Law Taranto wrote

An unwritten rule against harming people whose work brings them into different parts of the city was broken when the telephone repairman was shot as he did his job, Assistant Minneapolis Chief Tim Dolan said Thursday.

“If that line starts to be crossed, the quality of life here is going to be seriously affected,” he said.

Shooting a telephone repairman in Minnesota breaks “an unwritten rule”? In some states it would actually be against the law.

If Taranto keeps this up, the WSJ may start looking like American Renaissance. [Congratulate Taranto.]

Over at la Times in Los Angeles, a Mexophile columnist is already cheering the cultural loss of New Orleans to Hispanic illegals arriving to “help.” (Cajuns and other Louisianans are capable of making even French sound good in their wonderful musical tradition, but adding large numbers of Mexicans to the unique culture would be putting arsenic in the gumbo.)

NO MATTER WHAT ALL the politicians and activists want, African Americans and impoverished white Cajuns will not be first in line to rebuild the Katrina-ravaged Gulf Coast and New Orleans. Latino immigrants, many of them undocumented, will. And when they’re done, they’re going to stay, making New Orleans look like Los Angeles. It’s the federal government that will have made the transformation possible, further exposing the hollowness of the immigration debate. ["La Nueva Orleans" LA Times, 9/25,05]

President Bush has already greased the skids for Mexicans by suspending Davis-Bacon (which requires government contractors to pay prevailing wage) and halting sanctions for employers who hire “undocumented” workers. Even in the most serious national situations, Bush always gives advantage to Mexicans over Americans, and Katrina is no exception.

El Presidente Fox is licking his big wolfish chops at the New Orleans suffering, and could hardly wait for Katrina’s winds to die down before he was pushing Mexican workers, whom he sees as obedient remittance senders (with the amount likely topping $20 billion this year).

Thanks to House member Charlie Norwood who told Vicente Fox what he could do with his workers from the scab nation, remarking “We should not allow our national tragedy to become Mexico’s gain.”

Amen, brother!

Our contributor Paul Belien notes in his Brussels Journal that Chokri Ben Chikha, a Tunisian-descended artist in Flanders, is receiving a subsidy from the Belgian Ministry of Culture for his play “Our Lady of Flanders“, which attacks anti-immigrant discrimination and is being advertized with a poster featuring a bare-breasted Madonna. Last year, as Belien reported for us, Theo van Gogh was murdered by a Muslim “Dutchman” for making a film featuring abused Muslim women with Koranic verses on their naked backs. (Fairly discreetly, judging by Belien’s picture).

Money vs. murder - that’s an incentive structure that sends a message!

Check out this article on How Race Wrecked Liberalism by
James Nuechterlein. [First Things, August/September 2005: Articles]

If you’ve forgotten the old riots of the Sixties, you might be interested to know some of these things:

Infinitely more troubling to political moderates were the violent racial protests in the North that began in 1964 and continued, in escalating severity, every summer for several years. Within two weeks of passage of the civil-rights legislation of 1964 a major riot broke out in Harlem, followed quickly by outbreaks in other northeastern cities. Just five days after passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965 came the conflagration in Watts, one of the deadliest race riots in the nation’s history.

It would be difficult to overestimate the damage that those and subsequent riots did to the cause of civil rights. White guilt dissipated; white outrage flourished. Moderates had assumed that in supporting civil-rights legislation they were both doing the right thing and purchasing social order. When that implicit bargain broke down, they felt betrayed, and they became increasingly dubious about arguments that only further legislation would make possible a break in an endless series of “long, hot summers.”

The reaction to the riots on the Left further unsettled moderate whites. King, not surprisingly, blamed specific outbreaks mostly on official misbehavior—often police brutality—and put increasing emphasis on the economic roots of black protest. He called the Watts riot a “class revolt” of the underprivileged. Many white liberals, while insisting that they did not condone black violence, so emphasized the importance of understanding the frustrations leading to its occurrence that they seemed to be justifying it.

And the riots weren’t happening in the Jim Crow South, where blacks could complain of genuine oppression; they were happening in places like Los Angeles, where black already enjoyed equal rights, as a matter of California law.