Via Reason:

Last week [January, 2011] a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit against the Drug Enforcement Administration by Lee Paige, the DEA agent who literally shot himself in the foot with an allegedly unloaded gun while talking about firearm safety to a roomful of Florida children—right after announcing, "I'm the only one in this room professional enough . . . to carry this Glock 40." In a complaint he prepared on his own, Paige claimed DEA officials made him a "target of jokes, derision, ridicule, and disparaging comments," ruining his career as an undercover agent and motivational speaker, by releasing a widely viewed video of the 2004 incident. U.S. District Judge Jack Shanstrom said Paige had failed to present any evidence regarding the source of the video. Rather than celebrate a court victory for the DEA, let's just watch the video one more time.

In recent days, a video has been circulating online depicting the savage beating of a customer at a Baltimore McDonald’s by two teenaged African-American females. Richard linked to it in one of his recent posts. Here it is again. The victim of the beating appears to be a Caucasian female. After repeatedly taking some rather brutal blows, the victim is shown apparently going into a seizure. Loose hair that had apparently been torn from her head (or wig) is shown on the floor near the victim. The employees of the McDonald’s in question apparently stood by and did nothing to assist the victim. The only effort at intervention was made by an elderly white female customer. The incident was filmed by a McDonald’s employee by the name of Vernon Hackett whom we are told has subsequently been dismissed from his position.

It has since been revealed that the victim was a 22-year-old transgender woman by the name of Chrissy Lee Polis. (For those unfamiliar with PC terminology, a “transgender woman” is roughly defined as a former “he” turned “she” in terms of self-identification though not necessarily surgical alteration.) It also turns out that Chrissy Lee Polis is an epileptic, which likely explains the onset of a seizure during the attack. The probable motivation for the attack was the two perpetrators having taken offense to the fact that Polis was attempting to use the women’s restroom. For a time, the video was being circulated in some white nationalist circles as a chilling example of a brutal crime being inflicted on a white person by ghetto blacks (which it clearly was). Upon the revelation of the victim’s proclaimed “gender identity,” some in the white nationalist milieu indicated their inclination to withdraw or scale back their sympathy. But clearly this was a horrific and despicable crime, regardless of the racial or sexual identities of either the victim or the perpetrator. Predictably, gay rights and “sexual minority” organizations have demanded that this incident be investigated and prosecuted as a hate crime.

Of course, what is interesting about this case is not merely that a violent crime occurred. Murders, assaults, robberies, and rapes are routine daily occurrences. Nor do the racial or sexual identities of either the victim or the perpetrators make this crime particularly unique. The fact that the crime occurred at a McDonald’s is no big news either. Someone was shot to death at a McDonald’s a few blocks from my residence some years ago. If Chrissy Lee Polis had been just another “normal” white person, this case would be getting scarcely any attention at all. There might be a few posts on various paleoconservative, white nationalist or alternative right websites about the hypocrisy of a mainstream media that turns hate crimes against racial or sexual minorities into front page news and national scandals whose memory lingers for years (the Matthew Shepard case, for instance) but ignores comparable crimes committed by minorities against whites (for example, how many Americans have ever even heard of the Wichita Massacre?). But that would be about it.

If she had not been a sexual minority, the victimization of Chrissy Lee Polis would not likely be receiving the attention of the Huffington Post, Daily Kos, San Francisco Chronicle, and other representatives of leftist opinion. Nor would she be receiving the attention of London’s Daily Mail, the Australian, the India Times, or other outlets of the international press. It is unlikely that she would be getting the recognition of even neocon mouthpieces like Lucianne.Com. Even the “movement conservative” press generally had little to say about the events in Wichita at the time of their occurrence. Nor would her attackers be facing the prospect of having hate crimes charges brought against them. In fact, the crime would likely be just another among countless routine criminal assaults reported to local police departments, though if Chrissy Lee Polis’ attackers had been skinheads or stereotypical “white trash” types rather than equally stereotypical “ghetto” types it is likely her case would be receiving much more attention than it currently is.

What we have here is an example of the “clash of victimologies” that is likely to become more evident as political correctness becomes ever more institutionally entrenched and as the realities of demographic transformation become ever more difficult to ignore. If indeed the two girls who perpetrated this are prosecuted for a hate crime against a transgendered woman, tensions between the organized African-American lobby and the organized “LGBT” lobby are bound to escalate. It is the standard political line of Sharpton-esque race hustlers and demagogues that virtually every black criminal, no matter how obvious the offender’s guilt or how malicious the offender’s actions, is somehow a victim of racism, social injustice, white privilege, this, that, or the other thing. The most obvious and celebrated case of this type was the elevation of O.J. Simpson, a wealthy celebrity with a lengthy history of severe domestic violence who became a cold-blooded double murderer, into an ostensible civil rights martyr, as though he were some poor black kid railroaded for a petty burglary by racist cops and unable to afford a competent defense attorney.

It will be interesting to observe to what degree the self-appointed spokesmen for African-Americans call for solidarity with the two teenaged hooliganettes, make excuses for them, attempt to absolve them of responsibility for their actions, or attribute their legal status to racism. Perhaps they will try to make the issue go away by simply ignoring it. However the high priests of the civil rights industry respond to this situation, this incident is bound to raise doubts in the minds of many “LGBT” people about who their political friends actually are. After all, a transgendered woman who attempted to wander into the women’s restroom in a McDonald’s located in some stuffy white bread suburb might get some funny looks, maybe some teasing. At worst, some shocked little old lady or concerned soccer mom might summon a couple of patrol cops who in their bewilderment would go about their usual routine of asking for ID, running a name check, issuing a warning, and cracking jokes as they drove off in the squad car. No doubt the recipient of such treatment would consider herself harassed and embarrassed, but it hardly compares with being a victim of aggravated assault bordering on attempted murder. No doubt many from the “LGBT” community might begin to recognize that “victim” status does not necessarily translate into “tolerance," and subsequently start to wonder if replacing the traditional European-American majority with Third World immigrants would be in their best interests, given that the majority of immigrants originate from countries where “sexual minorities” are not exactly honored.

This incident has created an interesting dilemma for the Left. Which class of official victim groups are they going to side with on this one? The Battle of McDonald’s provides an illustration of why, I believe, the Left as it is presently constituted will fail in the long run, whatever its present level of institutional influence and however much it may be able to endure for a few more decades. The Left will eventually self-destruct because its core tenets are self-contradictory and cannot be sustained in real world social practice. The Left’s core constituent groups: racial minorities, immigrants, the LGBT community, feminists, “secular humanists,” the black and Hispanic underclass, wealthy Jews, etc. have interests that are ultimately incompatible with one another. As the Left becomes more powerful in the short run, as the realities imposed by mass immigration become more apparent, and the tensions between the official victim groups begin to surface to an ever greater extent, the coalition of the officially oppressed will begin to self-cannibalize. Each interest group within the victimology paradigm will begin to battle each other for the “More Oppressed Than Thou” championship title. This will be the death blow for PC. It’s only a matter of time.

Last week, I travelled to Providence College in Rhode Island, where I attempted to trick unsuspecting undergrads into believing that cognitive racial differences are real—and thus affirmative-action and “diversity” programs are bootless and destructive—by making crude appeals to… science.  At least, that’s what the foul-smelling “anti-fascists” with hoops through their noses claimed as they tried to disrupt my talk.

My trip was sponsored by the Providence College Republicans, in conjunction with Youth For Western Civilization. (YWC’s Tim Dionisopoulos, who organized the event, has a helpful recap here; as you can tell by Tim’s intelligent explication of my arguments, he’s no ordinary undergrad.)

The screenshot of me smiling and waving before a banner that read “Hate Not Welcome” pretty much sums up the antifas’ epic failure:

• They weren’t able to shut us down. Indeed, they slinked off after I made it clear that I didn’t take them seriously and would not cease my presentation.

• More important, on the video, they themselves appear like “fascist” stereotypes. Image is (almost) everything, and the image of last week’s event is of sloppily dressed thugs screaming obscenities at a calm, civil gathering of students.

I doubt that the One People’s Project, which instigated the protest, will be bragging about a great blow struck for social justice any time soon.

The other day, I emailed Richard an article by Bill Kauffman praising the "reverse migration" of Blacks to the South in general, and author Ernest Gaines's return to Louisiana in particular. Richard asked me to write a short blog on it. As I began, I found it difficult to concisely express my thoughts without saying something more substantial about Kauffman, whose worldview (or, as I’m sure he’d like to call it, “local-view”) is popular among a number of libertarians and traditionalist conservatives, particularly the “Front Porch Republic” types.

For those of us tired of the traditional Left/Right paradigm in American politics, one has to appreciate Kauffman’s attempt at a new political historiography of sorts. He champions localism, populism, and anti-imperialism over corporate capitalism, empire, and political centralization.

In this vein, he proudly rejects the neoconservatives, cosmopolitan libertarians, and the Fox News crowd, while embracing Agrarians, decentralist libertarians, and a number of figures identified with the Left such as William Jennings Bryan and Gore Vidal (who wrote the forward to his excellent book, America First.)

I’d imagine that Kauffman would happily admit that he has a Romantic and sentimental view of America that animates his commentary much more than any sort of thorough political analysis. With enthusiastic prose, he will make historical figures and contemporary political and cultural figures he champions come alive.

Or through YouTube, have we simply become more aware of their behavior? 

Brawl Mars DMV Music Awards Outside Washington: MyFoxDC.com

UPDATE: James Edwards notes that the McDonald's beating case has taken a strange twist. The White woman was... a man! And the Black attackers may be charged with a "hate crime."

I thought something was fishy when I read that police were investigating the brutal beating that took place at a McDonald’s in Maryland as a “hate crime.”

There’s just no way that they’d ever consider a Black on White crime to be a hate crime. Unless, of course, the White person was a homosexual, or in this case, a transvestite.

That’s right, gang. The White “woman” in the video here could possibly be a male, but nobody seems to know for sure. Some news outlets report her to be a female. Others make mention that he/she is a transvestite. The Police say they don’t know.

Rarely do I find an issuance from The Heritage Foundation to have added to humanity's storehouse of wisdom . . .  But things might change since Jason Richwine came on board last year. Richwine can skillfully crunch numbers and, most important, isn't intimidated by racial taboos. 

Here's a selection from his latest report, "The Myth of Racial Disparities in Public School Funding":

In 2009, white public school eighth-graders outscored their black classmates by one standard deviation (equivalent to roughly two and a half years of learning) on the math portion of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) test.[1] Racial differences in achievement like this one are pervasive in the U.S. education system, and the gaps have persisted for decades.

The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), a standardized test battery given to 15-year-olds in all 34 OECD[2] countries, puts the gaps in stark terms. If white American students were counted as a separate group, their PISA reading score would rank them third in the world. Hispanic and black Americans, however, would score 31st and 33rd, respectively.[3]

Blaming “Unequal Funding.” A common hypothesis is that Hispanic and black students perform worse in school because less money is spent on them. In 1995, Columbia University’s Linda Darling-Hammond claimed, “The resources devoted to the education of poor children and children of color in the U.S. continue to be significantly less than those devoted to other American children…and it is these inequalities that create and sustain the ‘bell curve’ of differential achievement.”[4]

Part of the NAACP’s official statement on education policy reads: “Quality public education for African American and Latino students is persistently threatened as a direct result of inequitable school funding.”[5]

Responding in 2001 to criticism that blacks and Hispanics perform poorly on the SAT, College Board President Gaston Caperton declared, “Tests are not the problem…. The problem we have is an unfair education system in America—an unequal education system.”[6]

Even conservative author John McWhorter, while downplaying structural and institutional explanations for the racial achievement gap, still asserts that the alleged funding disadvantage for black students “is a real one.”[7]

These commentators are mistaken on two levels. First, increasing school spending has rarely led to better outcomes.[8] Second, and more fundamentally, based on data from the U.S. Department of Education itself, the assumed funding disparities between racial and ethnic groups do not exist.

{snip}

Table 1 displays three columns of results. The first shows the raw per-pupil spending figures for whites, blacks, Hispanics, and Asians. The second column shows per-pupil spending on white students. The third column adjusts this percentage with the CWI to reflect differences in the cost of living. All three data points for each group are then broken down by census region.

Nationwide, raw per-pupil spending is similar across racial and ethnic groups. The small differences that do exist favor non-white students. After breaking down the data by region, the non-white funding advantage becomes more pronounced. In the Northeast, for example, blacks receive over $2,000 more than whites in per-pupil funding per year. The region with the smallest differences is the South, where spending on black and Hispanic students is only slightly higher than on whites.

Adjusted for cost of living, the differences narrow. Asian and Hispanic students receive slightly less money than whites overall, while blacks receive slightly more. Regional differences persist after the adjustment, especially in the Northeast.

Let's take stock of where we are. The notion that standardized tests are "culturally biased" has been thoroughly demolished. The Verbal SAT is now laden with so much "Diversity," in terms of names and reading comprehension selections, that no one who has taken the test in the past 20 years can hear this critique without smirking. Moreover, Blacks actually do more poorly in the Mathematics portion, which involves abstract reasoning, than the Verbal, which, we were told, confused them with its many references to croquet and yachting. The fixation that Black schools are "under funded" has, hopefully, now been dealt a deathblow by Richwine. Sadly, the meme that Blacks don't perform well out of a fear of "acting White" might have legs, since this psychological notion is impossible to disprove. Whatever the case, Richwine is helping policy analysts take a step closer to racial reality.     

Affirmative action is the Orwellian name given to efforts to hire, admit, or otherwise promote people of certain racial or ethnic groups, merely because they belong to those groups. The name of this game derives from the notion that it actively helps people, i.e. it is “affirmative”, rather than harming people who belong to excluded groups. In the second edition of The Affirmative Action Hoax: Diversity, Character, and Other Lies (2010), Steven Farron traces the history, the excuses, the lies, and the deceit behind this form of racial discrimination.

The origins of the policy known as affirmative action (hereafter “AA”) lie in the Kennedy Administration, when incipient concern for the civil rights of Black Americans caused many in power to notice that Blacks were underrepresented in the universities, the professions, and in government. To most of them, inequality of outcome was de facto evidence of "discrimination"; there could be no inequality of ability or intelligence between races. In Daniel Moynihan's famous report, The Negro Family: A Case for National Action (1965), he wrote, “There is absolutely no question of any genetic differential: Intelligence potential is distributed among Negro infants in the same proportion and pattern as among Icelanders or Chinese or any other group.”

Yet affirmative action, as a policy if not a name, goes back further, and most definitely was motivated by the recognition that at least one group in particular possessed greater intelligence and ability to succeed in academia and in life. That group was the Jews. In the early years of the 20th century, Jewish admissions to elite universities rose greatly. By 1919, 40 percent of Columbia's students were Jewish, and for university administrators who wanted their institutions to retain their character, “radical steps had to be taken." And here lies the origin of non-academic criteria for admission to a university, in other words the doctrine of “diversity.” At this point, university admissions bureaucracies began their cancerous growth, since while it was a simple matter to screen students based on academic merit, it was not so simple to admit students seemingly on qualities like “leadership” or “character,” when in reality one wanted only to keep out a disfavored group.

Current AA policy relies on defining favored groups, and Farron ably dissects the absurdities of this practice. For instance, “Black” denotes anyone with at least one Black ancestor, and furthermore, bureaucrats are not allowed to override the self-description of any candidate for hiring, promotion, or admission. In other words, someone who says that he's Black (or Hispanic, etc.) must be taken at face value, no matter how absurd it seems. “Hispanic” was so defined as to exclude anyone with origins in Brazil, yet fully White Argentinians and Uruguyans fall into this category. Financial success is no impediment to becoming a recipient of AA either; a Black millionaire is eligible for preference over a poor White, and in fact most AA benefits go to the middle and upper middle class. It will not have escaped notice that while AA was meant to benefit victims of historical discrimination, not only have most Blacks alive today not experienced it--especially so when they come from the middle class-- but Hispanics have never been subject to slavery or Jim Crow, and have not even been a major presence in the U.S. until recently.

YWC has published a hilarious catalog of some modern American icons: 

Where Are They Now?

Rodney King, the Jena 6, and the Duke Lacrosse stripper

By William Houston

One of my favorite hobbies for several years now has been keeping track of former "civil rights" celebrities after their fifteen minutes of undeserved media fame are over. It is an excellent way to demonstrate how political correctness has corrupted American journalism.

Everyone in America has at least a passing familiarity with these victims of White "racism," but few are familiar with their trials since then, which the mainstream media has refused to give the same amount of inordinate attention.

Where are these martyrs for "social justice" now?

Rodney King

Rodney King is my personal favorite: in the years since the Los Angeles riots, which led to the death of 55 people, King has been arrested for soliciting and having sex with a transvestite prostitute in Hollywood, beating his wife, multiple DUIs, vandalism, beating his own child, and indecent exposure in a public park while being high on PCP.

In 2003, King drove his car into a house after weaving through traffic and traveling at a speed over 100 mph. Two years later, he was arrested after threatening to kill his daughter and former girlfriend.

Don Lemon recently glamorized Rodney King in a CNN Presents special report called "Race and Rage: The Beating of Rodney King" to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the alleged "racist beating" of this scumbag.

King won a cool $3.8 million dollar settlement in his civil suit. He used the money to start a hip hop record label.

A month ago, Rodney King was stopped by the LAPD for erratic driving and was issued a citation for driving with an expired license. Twenty years later, Rodney King is still a threat to public safety.

Jena 6

The Jena 6 were six black students in Jena, Louisiana who in an unprovoked assault beat a White student named Justin Barker nearly to death in 2006. Al Sharpton marched on Jena with 15,000 to 20,000 supporters to protest the clear injustice that was done to Barker's black attackers.

The Jena 6 movement was hailed in the mainstream media at the time as "the first struggle of the 21st century Civil Rights Movement."

In 2007, Jesse Ray Beard was accused, convicted and sentenced for simple battery, simple criminal damage to property less than $500 and simple assault.

In 2008, Bryant Purvis was arrested for assaulting a fellow high school student in Texas.

Corwin Jones was arrested for trespassing and simple battery following an incident in which he struck a man from behind.

Also in 2008, Mychal Bell spat in the face of his female attorney and pushed her to the ground. He was arrested later that year for shoplifting, resisting arrest, and simple assault after trying to steal $700 worth of clothes from a Dillard's department store.

In 2010, Bell was arrested and charged with battery after punching someone who was "running his mouth" at a Jena barber shop.

Catrina Wallace, the sister of Robert Bailey, founder of "Organizing in the Trenches," and central organizer of the Jena 6 protests, was arrested in "Operation Third Option" in 2009 and was recently convicted on three counts of distribution of a controlled substance. She faces decades in prison.

Marcus Jones, father of Mychal Bell, is calling for a Justice Department investigation into the arrest and conviction of Ms. Wallace.

In a video recording of Jamie Kelso’s experience at CPAC, the argument was made that Blacks, Whites, and Hispanics have equal claim to the United States. Disappointingly (at least to me), this is what passes for White conservative opinion on this matter today.

Black activists today defend their equal claim arguing that the United States was built on the backs of Black slaves, implying that the United States would not have been possible without them. Hispanic activists go further, and assert that their claim is greater, arguing that they were in the continent first and that, in fact, Whites should not be in America at all.

Mr. Kelso’s position at the abovemented event was (1) that Whites have the right to a homeland and (2) that Whites in the United States have the right to call that country their homeland because it was built by Whites.

On the surface, the second argument seems a strong one, but in today’s context it is seriously undermined by the present day weakness of the first one.

That I consider the first argument weak nowadays may seem extraordinary to those who consider it irrefutable: after all, Whites did built the United States! Yet as an argument it is weak in the present day context because it not only depends on a false premise, but also relies on the implicit acceptance of a racial self-identification that is rejected by most White people today.

The argument "Whites have the right to a homeland" presupposes that rights have an existence independent of the consensus that is needed to make their enforcement possible.

That consensus does not exist today.

Only some Whites believe in the existence of such a right, and among them only some are willing to act in consequence. That is not a consensus in practical terms: that is a minority view.

The argument also presupposes that Whiteness is accepted as a valid category. Many White people today, however, do not accept that race exists, that the White race is a race, that they are members of a racial group, or that membership of that racial group has any value whatsoever. Many act as if they accept some or all those things, but only so long as there is no risk of being called a name by someone; in a debate, when called on the issue of the validity of their racial identification and interests as Whites, they reject them.

"Whites have the right to a homeland" is the type of argument that is used when preaching to the choir, when high-fiving among ourselves and patting each other on the back; not the type of argument that will sound convincing to a White person with conventional modern views on race.

Such a person does not accept "race", much less "White race" (pride of and identification with which they regard as evil), and therefore finds "White homeland" rather queer, if not outright immoral.

Therefore, in a time when none but a minority of Whites in the United States recognise their exclusive or primary right to the country, and / or when none but an even smaller minority is prepared actively to enforce that right, even where enforcement requires only expressing an opinion without apology or embarrassment, we can conclude that for all practical purposes Whites in the United States today do not have a right to claim the country as a White homeland.

The right may still exist in the abstract, in the minds of an unconventional minority of racially conscious White folk, but that does not make it exist in practice throughout the country today.

The right certainly existed in practice in the past, but that does not make it exist in practice today.

Evidence: tens of millions of Whites persist on voting into, and keeping in, office politicians who openly reject pro-White immigration laws. Even the existing immigration law is poorly or not enforced at all. When a supposedly conservative, politically active White youth is asked whether he cares about his racial heritage or the destruction of his race, he replies, "I don’t give a sh*t". When the question of to whom does the United States belong is posed to another such youth, he asserts in effect that to all peoples of all races, equally. These youths are not exceptional: they are the product of modern mainstream education and media and represent modern conventional opinion.

Of course, it does not have to be that way.

Nor does this mean that I accept the competing claims put forth by other groups.

To my mind, Whites in the United States are the only ones who could legitimately claim the country as their own.

I reject that Blacks have equal claim to the United States because Blacks made up but a small percentage of the historical American nation, and for whatever reasons, the economic output of Blacks on average has been vastly inferior to that of Whites. Indeed, in the contemporary United States Blacks cost more than they produce on the whole—particularly when we consider the cost of violent crime, affirmative action, and welfare recipience, where they are disproportionately represented. As Michael Levin argued in American Renaissance in 2002,

A propos whites’ supposed enjoyment of the un-or undercompensated fruits of black labor, reparationists frequently claim that “blacks built America.” This is patently untrue. At no time have blacks been a substantial part of the US population, and until the Second World War they lived largely in the rural South; they were a part of southern agriculture but played virtually no role in the development of the large cities, industrial complexes, universities and public projects that support American prosperity. In fact, it is precisely those parts of the country with the largest proportion of blacks that have traditionally been the poorest, which is the reverse of what we would expect if blacks were the source of American prosperity. Canada, Australia, and New Zealand were English colonies that developed during the same period as the United States. If slavery was the basis of American prosperity, how did these countries achieve comparable levels of prosperity without it? Blacks did not contribute significantly to science, medicine or technology. America would have been different without blacks, but not poorer.

Indeed, it is conceivable that the United States would be even more powerful had there been enough of a consensus to return all of the emancipated Blacks back to Africa upon the abolition of slavery.

Blacks only have an equal (or greater) claim if Whites cease to assert theirs, as they did in Southern Africa.

I also reject that Hispanics (who are mostly mestizo or Amerindian) have a greater claim to the United States than do the Whites. There was no United States in the North American continent before the advent of the White man, and there would be no United States now had the White man not successfully colonised and organised the region in his own image. Had the White man remained oblivious of the existence of the continent we call America, no European-style nation states would exist there today; indeed, small parts of the continent would be controlled by mostly pre-historical tribes, isolated by large swathes of uninhabited space.

The famed Aztlan claim is particularly bogus, as Mexico lost the right to control that area by weakly settling it, by being defeated in war, and by selling that land to the United States.

They only have a greater claim if Whites cease to assert theirs, as did the White Spaniards in a different but more radical way when they interbred with the Amerindian and imported African population.

So much for competing claims.

The point of this article is that if debate-oriented activism is to be successful, it must among other things rely on arguments psychologically compelling to an audience with conventional modern views on race.

I say this not to devalue Mr. Kelso’s efforts, but rather to stress that if those efforts are to be more successful next time, we need to equip him and similar activists with better arguments and debating tactics. The fault is partly with the intellectual echelons of the Right, sections of which hang on to subcultural notions not applicable to the situation as we find it today. “Whites have the right to a homeland” is a archaism, a subcultural platitude, and in practical terms a fallacy where there is no consensus that makes exclusive White rights to anything—even in traditional White homelands—enjoy either moral sanction or the force of law.