201005 American Renaissance

8/8/2019 201005 American Renaissance

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/201005-american-renaissance 1/16

American Renaissance - 1 - May 2010

Race and Paternalism in Schools

Vol. 21 No. 5

There is not a truth existing which I fear or would wish unknown to the whole world.— Thomas Jefferson

May 2010

American Renaissance

Federal intervention to“narrow the gaps.”

by Raymond Wolters

In the United States, education hashistorically been a local responsi-bility. The federal government had

essentially no role in education until theestablishment in 1953 of the US Depart-ment of Health, Education, and Welfareand the 1954 US Supreme Court Brownruling that banned legally segregatedschools. In 1979, there was a sharpincrease in federal involvement whenwas set up under Jimmy Carter. ManyRepublicans have argued that there isno Constitutional authority for federalmeddling in schools, and Ronald Rea-gan tried unsuccessfully to abolish thedepartment.

There have been federal interventionsin various aspects of K-12 education—national standards are an example—butthe most intrusive and controversialrevolve around race. Forced integra-tion was unquestionably the most hotlycontested attempt by the central govern-ment to reorder educational priorities.Not only did it dramatically change thecharacter of many American schools,it prompted massive white flight tothe suburbs and increased residentialsegregation.

Now, federal involvement centers on

attempts to close the racial gaps in per-formance. Instead of continuing the Re-publican effort to get the US governmentout of local schools, President GeorgeW. Bush raised involvement to an un-precedented degree with the 2001 “NoChild Left Behind” law that mandatedthat all racial groups would perform atthe same level. In the succeeding years,from 2002 to 2004, the department’sbudget grew 70 percent.

Most governments try to expand

their power, and federal intrusion intoimportant, new areas of American lifeis always noteworthy and sometimesworrying. The federal record in K-12

education is not brilliant. The campaignsto integrate schools and to narrow racialgaps in achievement brought much dis-ruption and little lasting success. Thatthese efforts should have been centeredaround race only underlines the intrac-

society as a whole. One might evenargue that absent the American raceproblem, the federal government wouldnever have concerned itself with K-12

education.Educational reformers are now plan-

ning a new campaign, to emphasize theimportance of early childhood, pre-K

intervention—and, again, it is centeredaround race. It is increasingly commonto argue that black and Hispanic childrencannot be brought to parity with whitesand Asians without very early govern-ment action. The more moderate reform-ers propose starting formal education atage three, two years before kindergarten.The more ambitious would have public

education begin virtually at birth.

Paternalism

My purpose here is to emphasize thepaternalism of the school reformers—their belief that they know best and theiron parents of all races. In the 1970s and1980s, most reformers favored court-ordered busing to achieve racially bal-

Continued on page 3

I emphasize the paternal-ism of school reformers—

their belief that theyknow best and can imposetheir policies on parents

of all races.




Letters from ReadersSir — In the conclusion of his April

cover story about the cancellation of the AR conference, Jared Taylor writes

ominously about the unpredictable con-sequences of institutional indifference tothe legitimate interests of whites. Whatdoes he think is going to happen? Vio-lent demonstrations? Armed uprising?That might happen if whites still hadancestors, but I think the most likely out-come is despair. A few screwballs maybungle an attack on something, but theonly effect will be to discredit sensible,non-violent race realists.

when you have even a little public,

media, or institutional support. Whiteshave nothing. This is why I laugh whenpeople write about the “courage” of black civil rights marchers or gay-rights protesters. They certainly hadopponents, and at least some blacksfaced physical danger. But they hadenormous support from the media andfrom the political establishment. Thesame was true for Soviet dissidents.Their own authorities brutalized thembut they were lionized in the West. Thatkind of outside, institutional support isa tremendous morale booster.

Today, the only real courage is on theracialist right. It takes guts to speak outwhen you know that the government, thepress, schools, churches—everyone—will denounce you. I believe Mr. Tayloris right to say that more and more whitepeople now see the treason being donethem, but how many will do anythingfor their own people? Courage is a rarequality in men, and it is rarer than everamong whites.

Bernard Schneider, Ossining, NY

Sir — Thanks to Stephen Websterfor his very interesting April articleabout the thugs who think they havethe right to shut down anyone whodisagrees with them. There was a time

when even the Democrats would havefound their behavior so contemptiblethey would have pressured them intobehaving themselves. Not any more. Isuspect many on the mainstream left areperfectly happy to see AR shut down—if they even know it happened.

The United States is becoming moredivided, spiteful, and uncivil as theyears go by. Even among senators andcongressmen, disagreement is muchsharper and nastier than at any time Ican remember—and I remember the1950s.

I think this is because so much onwhich Americans disagree has nowbecome matters of faith rather than ra-tional debate. Race is the most obviousexample of emotion and assertion leav-ing no room for facts and analysis, butabortion and homosexual rights are alsobeyond rational discussion. Even thequestion of the role government shouldplay no longer permits polite disagree-ment. Anyone who opposes PresidentObama’s federal power-grabbing is a“racist” or a “hater,” and some of Mr.Obama’s opponents call him a Nazi or

a Communist. (He is many unpleasantthings but he is not a Nazi.)Add racial division to unprecedent-

edly bitter political division and youhave a very volatile society that couldsplit along many fault lines.

Sarah Wentworth, Richmond, Va.

Sir — It is interesting that RussiaToday interviewed Jared Taylor aboutthe forced cancellation of this year’s

AR conference while the Americanmainstream media ignored the story.Evidently the spirit of free speech isalive and well in Russia, but not here.

During the Cold War we Americansviewed Russia as a land of politicalenslavement and thought control, buthistory is full of irony. Today ours isthe country in which the media parrotsthe ruling orthodoxy and excludes theviews of dissidents.

William McGaughey, Minneapolis,Minn.

Sir — In the conclusion of yourApril report on the survey of Hispanicyoung people by the Pew ResearchCenter you compliment the center forpublicizing data that show Hispanics arenot assimilating. You seem to be sug-gesting that the Hispanics who run the

center are bravely publishing facts thatimmigration-control advocates mightuse to support restrictive policies.

How could AR be so naive? If His-panics are not assimilating, if they are

dropping out of school and going to jail, whose fault is that? Why, yoursand mine, of course. In the currentclimate of egalitarianism and whitecapitulation, the failures of Hispanicswill not be used as arguments againstimmigration. When is the last time you

heard FAIR (Federation for AmericanImmigration Reform) or NumbersUSAor CIS (Center for Immigration Studies)or even the Minutemen talk about Mexi-can illegitimacy or crime rates? There isonly one reason to publicize the failuresof Hispanics, and it is the same reasonfor publicizing the failures of blacks:to persuade whites to open their pursesyet further and pay for more uplift andcompensation programs.

Tom Candless, Albuquerque, N.M.

Help Wanted

We need someone smartand hard-working to join our staff in Oakton,

Virginia. The ideal candidate is arecent grad who can write clearly,understands computers and the In-

ternet, is committed to our people,and can move to northern Virginia.We offer a good salary and medicalinsurance.

Please send your resume to AR,Box 527, Oakton, VA 22124.




anced integration but also recognizedthat most white parents did not think

mixing. Therefore, if integration wereto be achieved, it would have to be im-posed by authoritative judges.

In the words of Jennifer Hochschild,a professor who was then at Princeton,“democracy” should “give way to liber-

alism.” Since most parents chose not tosend their children to racially balancedschools, courts should insist that theydo so. Quoting John Dewey, ProfessorHochschild maintained, “what the bestand wisest parent wants for his child,

that must the community want for all itschildren.” If most Americans would notvoluntarily choose to have racially bal-anced schools, “they must permit elitesto make that choice for them.”

James Liebman, a Columbia lawprofessor who worked on school inte-gration cases for the NAACP, explainedthat one goal was to withdraw controlfrom parents and to give children “awider range of choices about the per-sons with whom they might associate

and the values they might adopt asthey approach adulthood.” A principalpurpose was to deny parents the right to

send their children to schools that wouldreinforce “the ‘personal features’ andvalues those parents have chosen as theirown.” Liebman urged federal judgesto protect the “autonomy” of childrenfrom the “tyranny” of their parents. Thecourts should make sure that childrenwere exposed to “a broader range of . .. value options than their parents couldhope to provide.” As Liebman saw it,family life was too often “marked byexclusiveness, suspicion, and jealousyas to those without.”

In a series of remarkable decisions,

the US Supreme Court essentiallyadopted this view and forced its vi-sion of racial integration on reluctantAmericans. I have written about theresulting social upheaval in my 1984book, The Burden of Brown (see re-view, “Integration . . . Disintegration,”AR, July 1993). Eventually, in the faceof resistance and sustained failure toachieve many of integration’s goals—especially the equalization of blackand white test scores—the court turnedaway from busing for racial balance. Indecisions handed down since 1991, the

high court has provided a road map thatallows school districts to move awayfrom court-ordered busing. In doing so,the Supreme Court took account of thefact that most white parents, and manyblacks also, regarded busing as an inter-ference with what Justice Lewis Powellcalled “the concept of community” andwith the “liberty to direct the upbringingand education of children under theircontrol.”

The demise of court-ordered busing

did not mark the end of what might becalled “reform paternalism,” but thistime the targets of paternalism are dif-ferent. Unlike forced busing, whoseprimary targets were whites who wouldnot otherwise associate with non-whites,school reformers who support earlychildhood and pre-K education haveaimed their ministrations primarily atblack and Hispanic parents. And manyof these parents, like the white parentsof the 1970s and 1980s, have takenexception to being told that they do notknow how to run their lives and reartheir children.

The push for early childhood andK-12 programs has occurred againsta background of persistent racial andethnic disparities in academic achieve-ment. Despite all previous reform ef-forts, already by kindergarten 85 percentof African American students, and 75

percent of Hispanics, score below theaverage for whites and Asians. Theseproportions remain about the same as

students move through the grades, andby the senior year of high school theaverage black student is reading and

computing at about the level of the aver-age white eighth-grade student.The intractability of the achieve-

ment gaps has led many reformersto think something is wrong with theculture of the underachieving minoritygroups. This explains the shift awayfrom K-12 toward early childhood.This trend received a special boostfrom a Nobel Prize-winning economist,James J. Heckman, who teaches at theUniversity of Chicago. One of Prof.

Continued from page 1

American Renaissance is published monthly by the

New Century Foundation. NCF is governed by section501 (c) (3) of the Internal Revenue Code; contributionsto it are tax deductible.

Subscriptions to American Renaissance are $28.00 per year. First-class postage isoutside Canada and the U.S. (air mail) are $40.00. Back issues are $4.00 each. Foreignsubscribers should send U.S. dollars or equivalent in convertible bank notes.

Please make checks payable to: American Renaissance, P.O. Box 527, Oakton, VA22124. ISSN No. 1086-9905, Telephone: (703) 716-0900, Facsimile: (703) 716-0932,Web Page Address: www.AmRen.com

American Renaissance

Jared Taylor, EditorStephen Webster, Assistant EditorRonald N. Neff, Web Site Editor

Anti-busing poster.




Heckman’s econometric models mea-education by comparing the life histo-ries of youngsters who either did or didnot receive early childhood education.After comparing the recipients’ rateof employment, welfare dependency,criminal behavior, and incarcerationwith that of a control group, Prof.Heckman concluded that the economic were substantial. “Rates of return areeight to one.”

Prof. Heckman based this conclusionon studies of a few intensive programs

that had targeted disadvantaged childrenand continued to study them until theywere adults. One of these programs wasthe Perry Preschool in Ypsilanti, Michi-gan. From 1962 to 1967, Perry providedthree-year-old disadvantaged black chil-dren with two and a half hours of dailypreschool. Perry also placed teacherswith advanced degrees in the children’shomes, where they spent 90 minuteseach week giving the Perry parents les-sons in child rearing. The students werethen compared with a control group atages 14, 15, 19, 27, and 40.

The Abecedarian Program in Cha-pel Hill, North Carolina, was anotherintensive program. The children wereenrolled at the age of three to fourmonths and continued with substantialintervention up to age eight.

After noting that the Perry and Abec-edarian children did better than similarchildren who did not receive enrichedearly childhood education, Prof. Heck-man concluded that academic problemsand achievement gaps stemmed from

“the lack of stimulation afforded youngchildren,” and that families were “themajor source of inequality in Americansocial and economic life.”

Prof. Heckman recognized that“American society has been reluctantto intervene in family life, especiallyin the early years,” but he thought“paternalistic interventions inthe early life of children incertain dysfunctional families”could close the achievementgaps. Such intervention wasurgent because of “the growthin single-parent families,”especially among blacks,70 percent of whom arenow born out of wedlock.Because “an increasingfraction of all US childrenare growing up in adverseenvironments,” he wrote,

“the best way to improveschools is to improve thestudents sent to them.” Stu-dents could be improved byreforming the way parents rearedtheir children.

Prof. Heckman urgedthat the way to bring upthe underperformers was to “catch ’emyoung,” because the traditional methodsof school reform came too late to makemuch difference. Once students startedschool, “test scores across socioeco-nomic groups are stable, suggesting

that later schooling has little effect inreducing or widening the gaps thatappear before students enter school.”Prof. Heckman did not say that all es-sential aptitudes were determined byage three. Nevertheless, because he wasan economist, he wanted to act wherethe return was highest, and he thoughtthe payoff from early intervention wasgreatest. His research helped establishthe foundations for the push for earlychildhood education.

Richard E. Nisbett, who teaches psy-chology at the University of Michigan,

-hood education. Like Prof. Heckman,Prof. Nisbett recognized that previousschool reforms had had “only modesteffects on student achievement” and alsoconcluded that the Perry Preschool andthe Abecedarian program, as well as asimilar program in Milwaukee, couldaccomplish a great deal.

Prof. Nisbett’s 2009 book, Intelli-gence and How to Get It, challenged thehereditarian view that intelligence and

academic talent are substantially undergenetic control. Prof. Nisbett acknowl-edged that “many if not most expertson intelligence” were hereditarians andbelieve that heredity accounted for muchof the variation within racial groups.

He also cited a 1988 poll in which a

of psychological measurementbelieved that heredity was partlyresponsible for the 15-point gapbetween the average IQs of whites

and African Americans.Nevertheless, Prof. Nisbett

insisted that “the accumu-lated evidence of research,much of it quite recent,provides good reason forbeing far more optimisticabout the possibilities of

actually improving the intel-ligence of individuals [and]

groups . . . than was thoughtby most experts even a fewyears ago.” In addition to therecord of youngsters who hadattended intensive preschools,

Prof. Nisbett cited studies thatsuggested the IQs of ad-opted children increased

substantially if they were reared byupscale white parents.

Earlier adoption studies had foundthat the IQs of adopted children re-sembled those of their birth parents morethan those of their adoptive parents.

Many scholars had therefore concludedthat intelligence was relatively im-mune to changes in environment. Prof.Nisbett, however, criticized the earlierstudies on the ground that the environ-ment of adopted children usually didnot change much, since most adoptedchildren moved from one middle-classfamily to another.

Prof. Nisbett put great emphasis onthree recent French studies that com-pared poor children who were adoptedby well-to-do parents with similar poorchildren who were not adopted. Ac-

cording to Prof. Nisbett, the IQs of the adopted children increased by animpressive 12 to 18 points. Prof. Nisbettmade much of these studies because theysupposedly demonstrated that preschoolprograms could boost the intelligence of disadvantaged children if the programssimulated the practices of upscale adop-tive families. Prof. Nisbett strongly con-cluded that parents can affect a child’sintelligence.

Although he rejected the idea that

James J. Heckman.

Catch ‘em young.




races differ in reasoning power andimagination, Prof. Nisbett embracedthe theory that there was somethingwrong with the child-rearing practicesof African Americans. He attributedpart of the problem to socio-economicstatus (SES). “Compared with higher-SES parents, lower-SES parents are lesslikely to be warm and supportive of theirchildren and are more likely to punish

infractions harshly.” “The lower-SESchild is likely to have peers who are onaverage less intellectually stimulatingthan those available to higher-SES chil-dren.” According to Prof. Nisbett, the

environment in single-parent familieswas especially bleak.In addition to SES-related prob-

lems, Prof. Nisbett maintained thateven middle-class blacks reared theirchildren “in ways that are less likely toencourage high IQ scores.” Comparedwith whites of comparable social andeconomic circumstances, blacks did not“interact verbally with their children.”They were less likely to provide booksor educational toys. They were “morelikely to frown and scowl.” They did notencourage children to make “problem-

solving efforts.” Prof. Nisbett reportedthat “the IQs of black and interracialchildren raised by white adoptive par-ents were 13 points higher than those of black and interracial children raised byblack adoptive parents.”

Prof. Nisbett softened his criticism byinsisting that “genes account for none of the difference in IQ between blacks andwhites.” Environmental factors, espe-cially child rearing practices, “plausiblyaccount for all of it.” “Aspects of black

culture—at every social-class level—areless likely to promote cognitive perfor-mance compared with white culture. .. . I’m saying black parents need to dosome stuff differently.”

Prof. Nisbett nevertheless recog-nized that he was saying things thatmight offend some African Americans.If he had published his book in 1969instead of 2009, he would have beenraked with criticism. The conventionalwisdom among reformers of the 1960sand 1970s was that underclass African-American students knew they belongedto a despised group and thereforequickly turned against reformers whoshowed even a semblance of patron-izing condescension. It was said thatstudents in the inner cities would notcooperate with anyone who consid-ered their values deviant or inferior.The conventional wisdom posited that

middle-class teachers were doomed tofail unless they recognized and built oncultural strengths that already existed inthe black community.

Education writer Herbert Kohl,whose book 36 Children (1967)was one of the classic expressionsof left-liberal educational thinkingin the 1960s, summed up this ex-Won’t Learn from You.” Accordingto Mr. Kohl, disadvantaged minoritystudents would shut down and refuseto learn if they sensed that they were

being taught in ways that somehowdishonored their culture.In the 1970s, liberal school re-

formers scoffed at “the inadequatemother hypothesis” as surely as theydownplayed the importance of IQ. Theyrejected the theory that blacks were do-ing poorly in school because their moth-ers’ vocabularies were limited, becauseblack mothers were sullen and authorita-tive, or because they did not give theirchildren intellectual stimulation.

Prof. Nisbett therefore expectedto be criticized for resurrecting the

social pathology rationale in the 21stcentury. “I’ve said some things that Ireally thought would bring the wrathof people onto me,” Prof. Nisbett toldone reporter. But such criticism barelysurfaced when Prof. Nisbett publishedhis book in 2009. Instead of attackingthe idea that black families are respon-sible for the shortcomings of black left and right embraced Prof. Nisbett’sapproach.

The New York Times published a pré-cis of Intelligence and How to Get It , andcolumnists Jim Holt and Nicholas Krist-off weighed in with special applause.In an extended essay, Times educationwriter James Traub noted that the “ac-complishments of [school] reform” hadbeen “modest,” but that was because of bad parenting practices. Black childrengrew up “in a world without books oreven stimulating games.” This was trueeven of middle-class children, for thererearing habits and peer culture betweenthe black and white middle classes.”As Mr. Traub saw it, schools could notsolve the problem. The only hope was “akind of . . . paternalism in which mothersare expected to yield up their children towise professionals.”

Some conservative writers expressedsimilar views. Former Assistant Secre-

tary of Education Chester E. Finn wrotethat “to compensate for conversational,educational, and cognitive shortfallsat home, boys and girls from acutelydeprived environments need more in-

tensive instruction . . . . Their parents . .. need help.” David J. Armor of GeorgeMason University similarly opined thatblack and Hispanic infants and younggave them up for several hours a day.These children could “maximize” their

intelligence, Prof. Armor wrote, if theirparents “let others become, in effect,‘surrogate’ parents who provide the typeof care that the parents should be provid-ing.” Prof. Armor, however, recognizedthat most mothers did not wish to beseparated “from their infant and toddlerchildren for substantial periods of time.”He doubted that it would be possible toconvince these parents that they shouldlet others become substitute parents.

Barack Obama eventually emerged

Second-generation welfare mother.




as the most influential proponent of early childhood education for infantsand toddlers, and pre-K programs forthree- and four-year olds. Mr. Obama’sDemocratic Party platform of 2008promised to “make quality, affordableearly childhood care and educationavailable to every American child fromthe day he or she is born.” The editorsof Education Week calculated thatObama’s education plans would addabout $30 billion per year in additionalspending, but Mr. Obama explained:“We know what a difference earlychildhood programs make in the livesof our kids.”

On balance, it may be an advanceto have accepted the possibility that if certain children arrive in kindergartenalready behind it may not be the fault of the schools if they never catch up. Prof.Heckman’s proposal that “the best way

to improve schools is to improve the stu-dents sent to them” is a radical departurefrom the usual round of blaming teach-ers. That he has not been hounded outof the debate with shouts of “blamingthe victim” shows how little has beenaccomplished by conventional schoolreform and how desperate reformers arefor new schemes

Resistance grows

Largely in response to the effortsof the “early intervention” movement,

the nationwide enrollment of four-yearolds in state-funded pre-kindergartensincreased by 40 percent between 2004and 2009. However, this was largely inresponse to pressure from school-reformlobbies in various state legislatures. -ings, and voters in California rejected“universal pre-K” when the policy wassubmitted to them as an initiative pro-posal in 2006.

In explaining the defeat in California,proponents of early childhood and pre-K education stressed that well-to-do

people feared they would be “taxedinto oblivion” and therefore mounted acampaign of disinformation. Accordingto David L. Kirp, a professor of publicpolicy at the University of California atBerkeley, wealthy entrepreneurs “wenton TV, reinforcing people’s cynicismabout any government program.” Theexpense of early childhood educationwas certainly a consideration since,according to the calculation of anotherBerkeley professor, sociologist Bruce

Fuller, the yearly expense at the PerryPreschool was $15,166 per student (in2000 dollars), about twice what HeadStart spent per pupil. For the more inter-ventionist Abecedarian experiment, theestimated annual cost was $34,476.

But more than money was at issue.Prof. Fuller also noted that many blackand Hispanic parents opposed “universalpre-K” because they wanted their chil-dren to be cared for close to home, eitherby relatives or friends. These parentsnoted that school reformers wanted tofunnel government funds into programsthat hired teachers with college degreesin early childhood education, and manyminority parents feared such programswould undermine their children’s senseof ethnic identity and pride.

One Hispanic activist explainedthat the people who were in charge of the less formal neighborhood day carecenters were “98 percent … Latina”and “really conscious of the children’sculture.” Many African Americans hadthe same concerns. Ronald Ferguson,a black scholar at Harvard, expressedtheir view when he wrote, “Black folksdon’t want white folks coming into theircommunities and saying, ‘You ought tobe more like us.’ ”

The desire to preserve black and His-panic identity merged with the interests

of those who were already providingday care. In 2007 there were some113,000 child care enterprises in theUnited States, many in private homes orchurch basements. Most did not providethe sort of socialization that early child-hood reformers recommended. Manycould afford to hire only high schoolgraduates who supervised play but didlittle teaching.

Many of the smaller, less-formal daycare centers were subsidized by the fed-

eral welfare reform legislation of 1996,gave poor parents vouchers they coulduse at any child care provider, licensedor not. By 2008, the federal Child CareDevelopment Fund was paying for about$10 billion a year in vouchers for 1.75million preschool children. One scholarat the Brookings Institution joked thatwelfare reform had turned out to be “amoney machine for child care.” Thethousands of small operators who werecollecting those billions of dollars didnot want to see the system change.

Does early intervention work?

Aside from whether the presumedon whether one believes the reports onthe effectiveness of early intervention.James Heckman and Richard Nisbett

claim that money spent on early child-hood programs eventually saves taxpay-ers’ money. Their research involvescomplicated calculations and assump-tions that compare the money spent onprograms with later income from taxes

and later spending on welfare and pris-ons. As noted, Prof. Heckman calculated Abecedarian as eight to one, but otherscholars have put the ratio at about 2:1,and even that may be too high. Robert

Weissberg, a political science profes-sor at the University of Illinois, haswritten that “this is advocacy research”and “biases are everywhere.” “Faultyassumptions are just piled one on topof another.” Prof. Nisbett has concededthat “a huge amount of research needsto be done to establish whether some-thing like the Perry or … Abecedarianprogram would be effective and feasibleif scaled up to national proportions.”

Only a small number of students

Early intervention will narrow the gaps.

Violating their sense of ethnic identity?




so that no child is left behind.

participated in the Perry and Abecedar-ian programs. Between 1972 and 1977there were a combined total of 111mostly African American children inAbecedarian’s full-time program and inthe control group. And there were only123 students in the Perry study: 58 Perrystudents and 65 in the control group. If even a few of these children had atypicalexperiences, the overall results would beout of kilter. And although Abecedar-ian’s interventions were intensive, withone adult for every three infants andtoddlers and one adult for every six of the three- and four-year olds, the resultswere not spectacular.

In her book It Takes a Village (1996) ,Hillary Rodham Clinton reported thatthe average IQ of the Abecedarian three-year-olds was 17 points higher than thatof the control group. Mrs. Clinton did notmention that by age eight the advantage

had faded to three points. Meanwhile,43 percent of the Perry graduates wereemployed at age 40, compared with 35percent of the control group, and 21percent of the Perry graduates had been with 31 percent of the control group.According to Prof. Fuller of Berkeley,who calculated the costs of the program,“exposure to Perry explains less than 3percent of all the variation in earnings… and about 4 percent of the variabilityin school attainment levels.”

Like so many results that advocates

of environmental change celebrate, theyappear to fade after a few years.Today’s emphasis on early childhood

and pre-K education would appear to beonly the latest cunningly contrived iro-ny. In the 1970s and 1980s many whiteparents protested against the favoriteschool reform of those decades. Theysaid court-ordered busing interferedwith communities and with their libertyto direct the upbringing and educationof their children.

Today, school reform has reached thepoint where many Hispanic and African

American parents, for reasons that insome respects resemble those of whiteparents a generation ago, are uneasyabout proposals that would place veryyoung children in childcare for long pe-riods of time. Just as they did in the eraof busing, the reformers think they knowbest. But given the precariousness of thesocial science research and the expenseof the early childhood programs, there isreason to be skeptical. Among the skep-tics are Hispanic and African American

leaders and parents who naturally donot want others to take over the job of rearing their children.

Raymond Wolters is the Thomas Muncy Keith Professor of History at theUniversity of Delaware. An expanded,annotated version of this essay is sched-uled for publication in the Spring 2010issue of The Occidental Quarterly.

Postscript by Jared Tay-lor

Few observers are prepared to notesomething else these two intrusivereforms—busing and government-runpre-K—have in common: that theywould probably never have been at-tempted except for the fact of race.There was always non-racial segregation

-tion. Families have always separatedtheir children to some degree on thebasis of wealth, religion, class, etc. Thechildren of the wealthy have consis-tently achieved at higher levels than thechildren of the poor, and the most ablechildren have always far outstripped theless able children of their own race. Itis only when these divisions fall along

racial lines that the federal government

It is impossible to imagine the disrup-tion of school busing being forced uponAmericans in order to make the childrenin the nice part of town go to schoolwith the children from the other side of the tracks—or to get the children fromthe Jewish day school to mix with theEpiscopalians.

Of course, racial segregation in theSouth was different from such volun-tary, residential segregation becauseit was required by law. And yet, evenoutside the South, government compul-sion eventually forced families to mixagainst their wills. Why was race theonly fault line the federal governmentfelt compelled to erase, even at the costof great disruption to neighborhoodsand schools?

Likewise, hardly anyone notices the

huge academic achievement gaps withinraces. The test scores gap between thehighest and lowest quintiles of whitesis greater than the average achievementgap between blacks and whites, yet noone tracks it, worries about it, or devisesmassive programs to narrow or elimi-nate it. Most people would welcometeaching innovations that generally raisethe performance of school children, but




Vice President Alexander Stevens.

children outperform other children of the same race and demand that the gapbe closed. That is why it is impossibleto imagine the smothering bureaucracyand paperwork of No Child Left Behindfor that purpose. Some human differ-ences are accepted as part of the naturalenvironment; it is only when there is aracial component that what are prob-ably natural differences are treated asnational crises.

The same arguments can be made

about early intervention. Would anyonebe pushing it were it not for racial differ-ences? And if it really works, who is tosay middle-class white children wouldhours of expert instruction? The reform-ers think they know best how to rearchildren. Surely they are not so modestas to believe that only certain peoplechild-rearing practices of barrio Hispan-ics can be improved, why not those of white suburbanites? After all, it is thewhite suburbanites who will be taxed to

pay for early intervention. Why shouldthey not reap some of its benefits?Again, without the problem of race, theconcept of large-scale, government-runearly intervention might be nothing buta curiosity. As it is, the presence of dif-ferent races in the United States, andthe persistent differences in outcomewill guarantee an interminable paradeof intrusive “reforms”—at least untilthe day Americans come to terms withthe fact that racial equality in achieve-ment is as much a chimera as equality of achievement within a single race.

“What Shall We Do With the Negro?”Paul Escott, “What Shall We Do With the Negro?” Lincoln, White Racism, and Civil War America,

University of Virginia Press, 2009, 304 pp., $29.50.

Racial politics during the

Civil War.reviewed by Thomas Jackson

Paul Escott, who teaches historyat Wake Forest University haswritten a fascinating account of

Civil-War-era racial attitudes and howThis is not a happy account of crusadingabolitionist heroes; instead it is a seriousattempt to understand what white peoplethought about race and how that affected

their actions.Prof. Escott puts Lincoln under themicroscope, and makes no apologiesfor dispelling the rosy illusions manyAmericans have about “the GreatEmancipator.” To a lesser degree, healso examines Jefferson Davis’s viewson race and slavery, as well as thereasons Southerners gave for leavingthe Union. Prof. Escott traces how and demonstrates that the North wasin many ways just as “racist” as theSouth. There is probably no other book

that gives so well-rounded and unsen-timental a picture of the racial thinkingthat drove decisions both in the Northand the South.

Why secede?

It was racial thinking that drove thecountry apart, much as some would denyit. Confederate heritage organizationshave been hunting for years for anypossible reason other than slavery to

explain why the South seceded. They

say protective tariffs that hurt the Southand a distinctly sectional spirit promptedsecession. This was part of it, but Prof.

Escott quotes effectively from the dec-larations of secession. Nothing could beclearer: Southerners thought Lincoln’selection was a threat to slavery. As theSouth Carolina declaration put it, it

meant the federal government now be-lieved “that a war must be waged againstslavery until it shall cease throughout theUnited States.” Alabama declared that

the election of Lincoln was “so insulting

and menacing” to slavery that secessionwas the only way to preserve it.Prof. Escott also quotes Confederate

Vice President Alexander Stevens, whowrote of the “great truth” on which theConfederate government was founded:“that the negro is not equal to the whiteman; that slavery—subordination tothe superior race—is his natural andnormal condition.” Some declarationsof secession also cited northern states’refusal to enforce runaway slave lawsas a reason to leave the Union. Prof.Escott adds that Southerners believed

their hierarchical, patrician society wassuperior to the more populist North, butleaves no doubt that the main motive forsecession was to protect slavery fromoutside interference.

But was Lincoln’s election in No--tionist campaign? It is true that he hadfamously claimed that “government can-not endure permanently half slave, half free,” but in his Cooper Union speechin February 1860 he told a New Yorkaudience that although slavery shouldnot be extended to the territories, it

should remain unmolested where it was.The ultimate goal for him was separa-tion: “In the language of Mr. Jefferson,uttered many years ago, ‘It is still in ourpower to direct the process of emancipa-tion, and deportation, peaceably, and insuch slow degrees, as the evil will wearoff insensibly; and their places be, pari pasuany decision on emancipation wouldhave to come from the states becausethe federal government had no power

Stevens: “The negro isnot equal to the whiteman; slavery—subor-

dination to the superiorrace—is his natural and

normal condition.”




to bring it about.Most Republicans were anti-slavery

in the sense that they did not want itbrought into the territories and wouldhave endorsed Lincoln’s view that thenew lands were to be “for the homes of

free white people.” Only a small minor-ity were determined to abolish slavery

where it already existed.than a month away. In his inauguraladdress he said, “I have no purpose,directly or indirectly, to interfere withthe institution of slavery in the Stateswhere it exists. I believe I have no lawfulright to do so, and I have no inclinationto do so.”

From the beginning, Lincoln’s pri-mary goal was to bring the secededstates back into the Union. Whateverhe did with regard to blacks was in the

service of that goal, and he was notalone in hoping the Confederates wouldcome back if they could be assured theycould keep their slaves. On February 28,passed what was known as the CorwinAmendment to the Constitution, whichforbade any attempt by Congress toamend the Constitution to give itself the power to “abolish or interfere”with slavery. Seven southern states hadalready seceded and did not vote on the

amendment but it still got the necessarytwo-thirds majority. Outgoing presidentJames Buchanan endorsed it, and it wasIn the brief period between’s Lincoln’sinauguration and the beginning of thewar, he wrote letters to all the governorsurging them to support state approval.The legislatures of Ohio, Maryland andbefore the war got underway in earnestand absorbed the nation’s attention.

that the war was being fought to preservethe Union and not for the purpose of “overthrowing or interfering with therights or established institutions” of theConfederate states. It was only later,after it became clear that the Confed-eracy could not be quickly crushed,that northerners begin to think of aboli-

tion as a means to deprive the South of slave labor and also as an added moralobjective for what was turning into abloody slog.

Professor Escott makes a strong casefor the view that certainly Lincoln andprobably a large number of northern-ers would have been willing to makevirtually any concession on blacks andslavery in order to tempt the Confederatestates back into the Union.

Lincoln’s priorities

Unlike the radical Republicans,Lincoln never thought of slaveholdersas moral inferiors, even saying theywere “just what we would be in theirsituation.” He was related by marriageto Confederates. His wife, Mary Todd,came from a family of 14 children, sixof whom supported the North and eightsupported the South. One of his wife’ssisters was married to a Confederategeneral.

Virtually until the end of the war, Lin-coln supported gradual, compensatedemancipation coupled with coloniza-

tion—on the initiative of the states, butwith federal support. Late in 1861, forexample, he proposed a compensatedabolition program for Delaware thatwould have been so gradual that someblacks would have remained slaves intothe 20th century. The state legislaturedid not act on it.

Lincoln thought slavery was wrongbut that a society with large numbersof free blacks living among whites was just as wrong. Gradual emancipation

coupled with colonization would solveboth problems. In 1861, he persuadedCongress to pass a resolution in favorof colonization, but nothing came of it.

In August 1862, Lincoln invitedblack leaders to the White House—thecapacity—to ask them to persuade theirpeople to emigrate. As Prof. Escott ex-plains: “He accepted as a fact that theracial problem in America was profound

and intractable; he wanted to end thereunite the sections; and he favoredthe removal of black Americans as asolution.”

Lincoln’s reputation as “the GreatEmancipator” rests mainly on theproclamation, but Prof. Escott pointsout that this document is hardly a ring-ing endorsement of liberty. As is wellknown, it promised freedom only to

those slaves in Confederate-controlledterritory, which is to say, to those slavesover whom Lincoln had no power.

It is less well known that what iscalled the Preliminary EmancipationProclamation, issued on Sept. 22, 1862,offered the Confederate states 100 days

Edwin Francis Jemison, 2nd Louisiana Regi-ment, killed in action, July 1862, age 17.




Planter family with slave.

-tives to Congress. Any state that did sowas urged to enact compensated eman-cipation, with funds to be paid fromthe US treasury. Blacks so freed wouldbe encouraged to emigrate. However,emancipation was to be strictlya matter to be determined by thestates, and any state that returned tothe union could keep slavery intact.It was only if the southern statespersisted in war that the slaves un-der their control would be freed. Asthe Cincinnati Gazette explained,“The way to save Slavery is simplyto submit to the Constitution. . . .The way to destroy it is to persistin rebellion.”

At that time and repeatedlythereafter, Lincoln stated that theproclamation was strictly a war measuredesigned to weaken the South’s capacity

like the orotund phrases of which he wascapable and thereby make it a monumentto liberty. If anything, it reads like a billof lading. At the same time, Lincoln wasso solicitous of the cooperation of borderstate slave-holders that he exemptedKentucky and Tennessee from theproclamation, even though parts of thosestates were under Confederate controland would therefore have been subject toemancipation. As he explained, “What Ido about slavery, and the colored race,I do because I believe it helps save the

Union.” Professor Escott summarizesthe three central themes of Lincoln’sthinking at this time about blacks: “thatfreedom was not an object but a meansof victory; that colonization was a majorgoal; and that no ideas of racial equalitywere being entertained.”

In his annual message of December1862, Lincoln called on Congress topass a Constitutional amendment thatwould direct the federal governmentto compensate any state that abolishedslavery during the next 37 years, up untilthe year 1900. He even provided for the

possibility that a state might reintroduce but that would require repaying anycompensation received. The amendmentwent nowhere, but shows the tentative,leisurely pace at which Lincoln wasprepared to free slaves.

Lincoln eventually approved raisingblack troops but he took some convinc-ing. In the fall of 1862 he complainedthat “if we were to arm them [blacks], Ifear that in a few weeks the arms would

be in the hands of the rebels.”In his Proclamation of Amnesty and

Reconstruction of December 1863,Lincoln drew up a road map for futureSouthern race relations. It included“apprenticeships” and “peonage” for

freed blacks that would have been little

different from slavery. His only require-ment seemed to be that no slaves freedunder the Emancipation Proclamationbe reenslaved outright.

In a famous conversation reported byGeneral Ben Butler but not otherwiseconfirmed, Lincoln was still talkingabout colonization at a time when thewar was nearly won. In April 1865, hetold the general it would be best for bothblacks and whites if blacks could be sentaway to some foreign land with a warmclimate. At about the same time, he also

expressed a mild “preference” that themost intelligent blacks might, under cer-tain circumstances, be allowed to vote.Never in his life did Lincoln talk aboutsocial or political equality for blacks.

Prof. Escott devotes a dozen fascinat-ing pages to the Hampton Roadspeace conference of Feb. 3, 1865.Lincoln, along with his Secretaryof State, William Seward, met withthree Confederate representatives,including Vice President Alexanderkept of the discussions, but lateraccounts make it clear that even atthis late date, Lincoln’s only non-negotiable demand was peace andoption. He again held out the pos-sibility of making federal money

available to compensate slaveholdersfor their property. By then, the 13th

amendment had already been voted byCongress, but Lincoln suggested thatif the Confederate states laid downtheir weapons and rejoined the Unionthey could vote as they pleased on theamendment, possibly defeating it. Heeven proposed the possibility of “pro-spective” approval of the amendment, ordate. This would have avoided what hecalled the “many evils” of immediateemancipation.

These reports from the conference




“Contrabands” who entered Union lines May 14, 1862.

show that even with the war nearly won,Lincoln was still thinking of ways tostop the killing and reunite the country,-ests of blacks to those ends. It is far fromcertain whether he could have persuadedCongress to vote money for compensa-tion, and some believe he was promisingmore than he could deliver in the hopeof tricking the Confederates into stop-ping the war. In any case, his prioritiesat Hampton Roads were what they hadonly a consideration to that end.

The Yankee view

There were certainly crusadingegalitarians in the North, but they wererarities. Most whites were like Lincoln:they liked blacks no more than theyliked slavery. When former slaves

came streaming into Union camps,commanders had to do something withthem. Several proposed sending themnorth but northern politicians would notaccept them. In some occupied parts of the South, the Army rented out formerslaves to Yankee plantation managerswho treated them more harshly thantheir former masters did.

Many Northerners in the ranks met

them docile but they are great liars andgreat thieves,” one wrote. Another notedwere “very loose.”

The US government set up the Ameri-can Freedman’s Inquiry Commission tothink about what should be done withformer slaves once the war was over.the commission concluded that mostblacks would stay in the South and that

they could be made to work for wages.However, the “African race” was “aknowing rather than a thinking race,”and would never “take a lead in the ma-terial improvement of the world.”

Paternalism was widespread. The New York Times, for example, wrotethat even if they were free, blacks had nomore business voting than did women orIndians, and that it was “little short of in-sane” to think otherwise. The Times wasalso relieved to learn that most blacksseemed to want to stay in the South andwould not “swarm to the North.”

Prof. Escott reminds us that at thetime of the 1864 election, there was somuch unhappiness about the war thatat one point Lincoln despaired of beingreelected. Although his stance on blackswas essentially utilitarian, Democratsaccused him of waging war for aboli-tion and called him “a man who loves

his country less and the negro more.”Democrats circulated “Campaign Docu-ment #11,” with the title, “Miscegena-tion Indorsed by the Republican Party.”It called the Republicans “the Abolitionparty now in power,” and said that “theirobject is to unite in marriage the laboringwhite man and the black woman, andto reduce the white laboring man to the

despised and degraded condition of the

black man.”Prof. Escott notes that there wereproponents of slavery in the North,among them New Yorker J. H. VanEverie, who published a book in 1861called Negroes and Negro “Slavery”:The First an Inferior Race; The Latter its Normal Condition. Democrats circu-lated his work widely during the 1864campaign. In Van Everie’s view, “thestrongest affection” a slave “is capableof feeling is love for his master.” Free

blacks, he argued, were unnatural and“destined to extinction.”

Anti-black campaigning was effec-tive. Only after Atlanta fell to Sherman’sarmies in September did voter sentimentshift back towards Lincoln and to furtherprosecution of the war.

Prof. Escott gives us another indica-tion of the state of northern thinkingabout blacks. In the months just after thewar, Connecticut, Minnesota, and Wis-consin took popular votes on whether toextend the franchise to blacks. All threevoted not to. This result was especiallystate had voted for black suffrage but themeasure had not taken effect because of a technicality. By 1865, the majority hadturned against giving blacks the vote. Atabout the same time, Colorado joinedthe union, voting itself a constitutionthat denied blacks the vote.

The Southern view

Prof. Escott notes that there wasnever unanimity about slavery evenin the South. Washington, Jefferson,Madison, and Patrick Henry all wor-ried about its consequences, and did notwant it extended into the territories. Inthe upper South there had been activeanti-slavery societies in the 1820s and1830s, but as the sectional controversysharpened, southerners grew intolerantand it became dangerous to criticize

slavery. In private, however, even Rob-ert E. Lee wrote in 1856 that “slavery asan institution is a moral & political evilin this country.”

The most common defense of slaverywas that it was part of the divine plan.Even some northern churchmen—Alex-ander T. McGill of Princeton Theologi-cal Seminary, for example—took thisview. Ironically, it was after secession,and after slavery had been written intothe constitution of the Confederacy, thatsoutherners felt freer to criticize slave-holders. Preachers, in particular, tried

to reform the system so as to recognizeslave marriage, stop the separation of families, and to consider slaves “a sa-cred trust” rather than mere property.There was also a strong push to ensurereligious instruction for slaves.

It was not long, though, before mas-sive slave defections to Union lines be-gan to disabuse whites of the myth thatslaves were loyal by nature. “Those weloved best, and who loved us best—as




was not an uncommon complaint.As the war ground on and victory

seemed less likely, many southernersbegan to consider the unthinkable: Armthe slaves. As the Jackson Mississippian wrote in 1863, “We must either employthe negroes ourselves, or the enemy willemploy them against us.”

Late in the war, Jefferson Davis camearound to this view. He had always beena very lenient slaveholder who believedin educating slaves and punishing themonly when a jury of older, respectedslaves believed it was deserved. By theend of 1864, he was quietly promotingthe idea of freeing and arming slaves.At about that time he sent a delegationto France and Britain offering to abol-ish slavery in return for recognition, butthose countries rejected his offer.

By 1864, however, Davis’s prestigewas at low ebb, so he recruited the best-

loved man in the Confederacy, RobertE. Lee, to be the public voice for armingblacks. Lee believed that without moremanpower the South would surely losethe war and that freedmen could be loyalsoutherners. Lee found that support forblack troops was strongest among white

-ter than anyone how thinly they werestretched and welcomed any measurethat might bring victory and justify their

On March 13, 1865, by a slim major-ity, the Confederate Congress passed

a law authorizing black troops but notemancipation. Davis wanted to offeremancipation as well, but in any case,the war ended before black Confederatessaw action. Prof. Escott notes that mostsoutherners thought that even if blacksoldiers would have to be freed, theycould be kept in a state of “serfage orpeonage” that would not be much dif-ferent from slavery.

“Serfage or peonage” is a partialanswer to the question raised by Confed-

erate emancipation:If the South left theUnion to preserveslavery, what wasthe point of inde-pendence if slaveryto achieve it? South-erners expected tobe able to controlblacks—even if theyhad served as sol-diers—and by 1864or 1865, after yearsof war and hundredsof thousands of ca-sualties, the Southwas determined togo its own way.

Similar questions can be raised aboutthe South’s earlier decisions. If main-taining slavery was the main reason

for secession, why were Southernersnot reassured by Lincoln’s support forthe Corwin Amendment and his prom-ise that he had no desire to interferewith slavery where it already existed?Why did not Southern states reenterthe Union and help ratify the Corwin

Amendment? While it wasstill in the Union, the Southhad at least some northerncooperation in returningfugitive slaves. Outsidethe Union it would havenone. Within the Union,

it had some possibilityof extending slavery intothe territories; outside theUnion it had none.

The Southern answeris that independence was

always more important thanslavery. The 20 years that led up to thesecession crisis—20 years of insult andinterference—convinced the South thatreal protection would come only withindependence.

Lincoln always overestimated Unionsentiment in the South. If he believed

that Southern states would take thebait of the Preliminary EmancipationProclamation and reenter the Unionhe was wrong. By then, his armies hadinvaded the South, and southernerswere committed to repelling invasion,not striking deals. One could argue inretrospect that the South should havetaken the bait and, later, should haveaccepted Lincoln’s terms at HamptonRoads. Compensated emancipation orreadmission to the Union in time to

block passage of the 13th Amendmentwould have been much better than de-feat, occupation, and uncompensated

emancipation. Of course, there is noguarantee a Republican Congress wouldhave approved those terms.

In hindsight, Confederate politicalcalculations were disastrous. At thestart of the war, the South could havedemanded very strong assurances inreturn for rejoining the Union, but it feltits destiny was outside the Union. Thethe South’s prospects became, yet itgot the worst possible peace—forciblereunion on terms set by Republicans.

Ultimately, however, which sec-tion—North or South—had the moresensible race policy? The Confederateconstitution continued the ban on theslave trade, but an independent Southwould have entrenched slavery and thepresence of blacks. If any territorieshad joined the Confederacy they wouldhave been slave states. The North hada different policy: free the slaves andencourage them to leave the country;reserve the territories for free whitelabor. The subsequent history of theUnited States would have been vastly

different if the South had made an earlypeace and adopted Lincoln’s plan of gradual, federally-funded emancipationand colonization.

Prof. Escott’s book does not draw thisconclusion, of course, but it points thereader in that direction. It would havebeen far better if the country had neverhad to ask itself, “What shall we do withthe negro?” but the North’s answer waswiser and more far-sighted than that of the South.

Fugitive slaves.




Neighborhood in Palermo, Sicily.

The Galton Report

Galton returns! From 1997, to2001, Glayde Whitney wasScience Editor for AR, and his

column, “The Galton Report”, wasone of the magazine’s most appreciated regular features. Whitney was a scien-tist through and through, who followed wherever the data lead, no matter howrocky the road or controversial the AR in an “O Tempora, O Mores” itemin August 1995:

“On June 2nd, the Behavior Genetics Association held its annual meeting, in Richmond, Virginia. The outgoing presi-dent, Prof. Glayde Whitney of FloridaState University, gave the traditional presidential address. Prof. Whitney,who has made his reputation in animalgenetics, surprised many in the audienceby speaking about racial differences incrime rates. He gently suggested that there might be a genetic explanation for these differences.

“Two people sittingat the head table walked out during the speech.One, the president elect of the organization, later returned and apologized

to the waiters — ‘our black brothers’ — who had beenin the room. Prof. Whit-ney was shunned for theremainder of the conference. During ameeting of the association’s executivecommittee no one would even look at him, though one person replied whenProf. Whitney spoke to him directly.The editor of the associa-tion’s magazine, BehaviorGenetics , ordinarily asksthat presidential addressesbe submitted for publication

publish this one. As usual incases of this kind, there hasbeen public condemnationbut private approval of Prof.Whitney’s remarks. Fortu-nately, he has tenure.”

We contacted Whitneyshortly after this and hebegan to write for AR. Hisarticles and columns were of enormous value because they combined

with the nose for claptrap of a racerealist—and a knack for clear writing.Since Whitney’s untimely death in 2002at age 62, AR has had a few promisingnibbles but never found anyone whowould take the job as science editor.

We are pleased to announce that an-other prominent scientist has agreed torevive “The Galton Report.” He will beusing the name Hippocrates, the father of medicine.

Richard Lynn Answers theQuestione Meridionale

by Hippocrates

Regional differences in per capitaincome are large in Italy. The north isas prosperous as central and northernEurope, but the south is much poorer.The Harvard sociologist Robert Putnam,

who has become famous for his book Bowling Alone, in which he shows thattrust between neighbors is low in multi-

racial neighborhoods, did his early workon the Italian “rich north–poor southproblem” and wrote, “To travel from thenorth to the south in the 1970s was toreturn centuries into the past . . . manylived in one- and two room hovels; farm-ers still threshed grain by hand . . . trans-portation was provided by donkeys thatshared their rocky shelters, alongside afew scrawny chickens and cats.”

Statistics showing the differences inliving standards between the rich northand the poor south in Italy became avail-able in the mid-19th century and thesedifferences persist to the present day. Itis estimated that in 1861 per capita in-comes were about 15-20 percent higher

in the north than in the south. By 1911the north-south gap had widened to 50percent, and this difference has persistedinto the 21st century.

Many theories have been advancedto explain what has become knownas “Italian economic dualism.” The

Italian economist EmanueleFelice has written that “there isa huge literature dealing withthe so-called ‘questione me-ridionale,’ the social, culturaland economic backwardness of southern Italy.” Another Italian

economist, Gianni Toniolo, haswritten that “works dedicatedto the southern question would

the economists’ questions as to the sizeand causes of Italian economic dualismremain unanswered.”

Despite the attention given to thisquestion, no consensus has been reached

on the answer. In 1993, Prof.Putnam wrote that “the his-torical record, both distant andrecent, leads us (like others)to suspect that socio-cultural

factors are an important part of the explanation.” But what arethese socio-cultural factors?Prof. Putnam favors the theoryof low “civic trust” in the southas a crucial factor, but concedesthat other socio-cultural factorsare probably involved. Morerecently, in 2009, the Italianeconomist Guido Tabelliniproposed that “culture measured

by indicators of individual values and

Ferarri headquarters in Maranello innorthern Italy.




O Tempora, O Mores!

Tremaine and Tarranisha Davis.

beliefs, such as trust and respect fordetermination” helps explain regionaldifferences in economic developmentin Italy and western Europe.

Richard Lynn, emeritus professor of the University of Ulster and speaker atAR conferences in 2000 and 2002, hasnow published what is likely to be thereal explanation: IQ differences. IQs inthe north are the same as in central and

northern Europe—100—but beginto drop south of Rome. From Naplesinto the south, they decline to 90 andto as low as 89 in Sicily. Prof. Lynnattributes low IQs in the south to thegenetic legacy left by North Africanswhen they invaded during the darkages. He estimates the IQ of NorthAfricans at about 82, so south Ital-ians have IQs about midway betweenthose of northern Italians and North

Africans. In genetic terminology, southItalians are a cline, or hybrid popula-tion, with characteristics, includingIQ, that are midway between the twoparent races.

The full text of Prof. Lynn’s researchis available at: Lynn, R. (2010), In Italy,North-South Differences in IQ PredictDifferences in Income, Education andInfant Mortality, Stature and Literacy. Intelligence, 38, 93-100.

All in the Family

Last October, 15-year-old Tremaineat the Considine Little Rock Family

Center (yes, that is its name) in Detroit.His mother, 35-year-old TarranishaDavis, who was at a gas station acrossthe street, told him he should get even,and gave him a pistol she kept in hercar. Tremaine went back into the centerof the boy, but missed. Instead, he hit19-year-old Dmitri Jackson in the head,killing him. Both mother and son wereconvicted of second degree murder.

At the sentencing in March, WayneCounty Circuit Court Judge Daniel Ryangave Tremaine 10-25 years in prison,and his mother 22½ to 40, plus an addi-

committing a felony. Judge Ryan said hegave her a stiffer sentence because therewould have been no shooting withouther. Tarranisha Davis took exception tothis, started screaming, and attacked asheriff’s deputy. As police rushed intothe courtroom to subdue her, several of Miss Davis’s family members jumpedover the railing to attack the police.

Davis. By the time order was restored,

more of Miss Davis’s relatives wereunder arrest. Judge Ryan says therehave been outbursts in his courtroombefore, “but absolutely nothing like

this.” “Basically a riot erupted,” hesays. [Joe Swickard, Brawl Erupts atSentencing of Mom Who Gave Gun toSon, Detroit Free Press, March 11, 2010.Robert Brignall, Hot Headed TarranishaDavis Starts Brawl During Sentencingfor Killing of Dmitri Jackson, DetroitExaminer, March 12, 2010.]

Code Words

At a March meeting about disruptivestudents at the Pinellas County, Florida,school board, Chairman Janet Clark,

who is white, said, “So much time istaken up with addressing hoodlums,with kids who don’t want to be inschool,” adding, “We are talking about asmall number of children.”Most of the students inPinellas County schoolsare white, but most of thetrouble-makers are black,and everyone knows it.Black school board mem-ber Mary Brown says“hoodlum” was a codeword for “black,” and

wants an apology. MissClark refuses, saying shesaid nothing about race.

Ray Tampa, presidentof the St. Petersburg branch of the NAACP, doesn’t think saying“hoodlum” is racist, but he saysMiss Clark’s refusal to apologize is“disgusting.” The International People’sDemocratic Uhuru Movement wantsMiss Clark to resign. In March it dem-onstrated outside Johns Hopkins Middle

School (where police have arrested 84students so far this year) chanting, “JanetClark! Must Go!” “School board! Mustgo!” and “First they fail black children!Then they jail black children!”

A St. Petersburg newspaper on-line poll found that only 72 of 2,676respondents thought using the wordhoodlum was “racist.” [Ron Matus andJamal Thalji, Pinellas School BoardChairwoman Under Fire for CallingDisruptive Students ‘Hoodlums,’ St. Pe-tersburg Times, March 11, 2010. ReaderPoll: Was ‘Hoodlums’ Too Harsh? St.Petersburg Times, March 10, 2010.]

Year of Mexico

As more Mexicans move to the US,

many formerly American communitiesfeel compelled to celebrate their holi-days. This is most obvious in the caseof Cinco de Mayo, a minor Mexican

holiday that now ranks with St. Pat-rick’s Day in many American cities.2010 is the year Mexico celebrates thebicentennial of its independence fromSpain, and also the centennial of the

image of the Virgin of Guadeloupe during a pro-amnestymarch in 2007.




Mexican Revolution. These events maybe important to Mexicans but they are of little consequence to Americans.

More Mexicans—nearly 600,000—live in Chicago than in any other UScity besides Los Angeles, and Chicagoand Mexico City have been sister citiessince 1991. The city was over 25 percentHispanic at the time of the 2000 census,

At a reception in March, MayorRichard M. Daley proclaimed 2010 the“Year of Mexico” in Chicago. Amongthe 70 events scheduled for the year willbe a parade on September 11, followedon September 15 by the El Grito de Independencia (Mexican IndependenceDay) Celebration in Millennium Park.Mayor Daley urges all Chicagoans to“take part in the numerous cultural, civicand academic events planned for thisyear.” [Mayor Daley Proclaims 2010

the Year of Mexico in Chicago, Press10, 2010.]

‘Turn Them Into KFC’

Many black Zimbabweans fleeingthe wreckage of their country travel il-legally to South Africa where they hopelike that. Late last year, they attackeda Zimbabwean migrant camp near thetown of De Doorns, only to be scoldedby the local media as “xenophobic.”

That word had no effect.

“We will braai (roast) them andturn them into KFC if they come back.There’s no place for them here,” saysPastor Frans Henke. “They are a differ-ent nation with different cultures. I’mnot angry with them, but they must goback to their own country.” “It’s gotnothing to do with xenophobia. It’s allabout work and resources,” says MosesMasimini, a labor broker who lives in

the area. “There’s no space here forthem. They were never part of this com-munity, and would never stand with us.”Other locals call the Zimbabweans dirty,accuse them of practicing witchcraft,and say they undercut wages. [EstherLewis, ‘If They Return, We’ll BraaiThem,’ Argus (Cape Town), Jan. 18,2010.]

Censorship Down Under

Like Canada and Britain, Australiahas a law banning “hate speech.” Ad-opted in 1975, the Federal Racial Dis-crimination Act makes it “unlawful fora person to do an act, otherwise than inprivate, if the act is reasonably likely, inall the circumstances, to offend, insult,

humiliate or intimidate another personor a group of people; and the act is donebecause of the race, colour or national orethnic origin of the other person, or of some or all of the people in the group.”The Act doesn’t have enough teeth for

some critics—for example, complaintsgo through the Human Rights Com-mission rather than straight to criminalcourts—who worry that “cyber racism”is on the rise. Their evidence? A “pro-liferation” of “racist” social networkingInternet groups such as SPEAK ENG-LISH OR PISS OFF!!! (SEOPO), whichhas nearly 50,000 members, “F*** Off We’re Full” and “Mate, Speak English,You’re in Australia Now.”

Internet “hate” accounts for 18

the Commission, and authorities wantmore power to stop it. Australian attor-ney general Robert McClelland wantsgreater commission authority to orderInternet service providers to remove“racist” content, and wants to changethe Racial Discrimination Act to makeit easier to apply criminal sanctions.[Josh Gordon, Law to Take On InternetRacism, The Age (Melbourne), Feb.21, 2010.]

Delightfully Displaced

When the Denistone East MethodistChurch was established 57 years ago inDenistone, New South Wales, northwestof Sydney, Australia, it was all white.

Thanks to immigration since the end of the “White Australia” policy, Denistonehas been transformed by Koreans, andin March, the church held its last servicein English. Reverend Les Pearson saysthe community has been “delightfully

Asianized” and is pleased that Koreansare taking over. “At a time when church-going for Caucasian people seems tobe diminishing, it is a healthy thing forour church to become more ethnic,” hesays. “We live in a land enriched bymigrants.”

Ron Hoffmann, a member for 49years, longs for the church the way itwas. “I will always remember its heydaywhere the Sunday school had 300 chil-dren, our youth group had 70 teenagers



Not just Koreans anymore.

-body into this hall.” Pastor Jim Ho Chosays now that the English-speakers areout of the way, he can hold two morningservices on Sunday as well as eveningservices during the week. [Vikki Cam-pion, Last Rites for English at SydneyChurch, Daily Telegraph (Sydney),March 14, 2010.]

Not So Pleasant Land

A recent editorial in the LondonTelegraph is about what it is like to bea white, working-class man in modernBritain. The editorial takes a swipe atJohn Denham, a member of the Britishcabinet who serves as Secretary of Statefor Communities and Local Govern-ment. The editorial gets some thingsright, some wrong:

multiculturalist patchwork the countryhas become. The word ‘communities’ isoften used as a euphemistic shorthandfor ethnic minorities, on whose advance-ment the Government has concentratedin recent years. So successfully has itdone so, said Mr. Denham, that ‘beingblack or Asian no longer means beingautomatically disadvantaged.’ He effec-tively declared the war on racism over,and claimed it was Labour that won it.

“Mr. Denham traces the improve-ments to the Race Relations Amend-ment Act introduced in 2000, after Sir

William Macpherson’s inquiry into themurder of Stephen Lawrence. But thetruth is that things have been gettingbetter for 30 years or more, as a tolerantcountry has come to terms with beingmore racially diverse than it once was.As Trevor Phillips, the chairman of theEquality and Human Rights Commis-sion, has observed: ‘Britain is by farthe best place to live in Europe if youare not white.’

“The problem is that if you arewhite—and working-class and male—Britain is not necessarily such a pleasant

land. Whereas ethnic minorities, espe-cially those who have arrived relativelyrecently, tend to have high aspirations,to ensure the best education for theirchildren, the same culture does notpervade white working-class families.Their children, particularly the boys,have for many years been out-performedat school by virtually every other socialgroup, and the decline in heavy indus-trial jobs that once offered a livelihood

compounded their disadvantages.”

The Telegraph, however, isn’t asconcerned about the welfare of the whiteworking class as it is fearful it may sup-port the British National Party (BNP).The rise of the BNP on Prime MinisterGordon Brown’s watch is a great “stain”against him, and “is the true legacy of Labour’s years in power.” [Britain IsNo Place for the White, Working-classMale, Telegraph (London), Jan. 14,2010.]

Sensitive Policemen

British police used to ask suspectsfor their Christian names and surnames.This is now thought to be offensiveto Muslims, Sikhs, and other bringers“personal” or “family” names. A new

62-page “Faith and Culture Resource”booklet for bobbies also says it is unpro-fessional to put an arm around a crimevictim or grieving family member, or tocall women “my dear” or “love.” Themixed-race suspects as being of “mixedparentage” or “mixed cultural heritage,”and warn them to call foreign blacks Ni-gerians or Ugandans, for example, ratherthan Africans. They also encouragethey go into someone’s house.

All this offends some policemen:

“Most of us are fully aware of howto treat people from different culturalbackgrounds,” says one, “but being toldwe can’t even ask what their Christianname is is just plain ridiculous. That iswhat we are brought up with—Christianname and surname—and to be honest if name and family name it’s just goingto confuse people. It’s just the latestin a long line of annoying PC-relatednonsense that we keep getting shoveddown our throats.”

Top bureaucrats say the new rules

“recognize and value important humanrights” and will ensure that officers“treat everyone with fairness, respectand dignity.” [Rebecca Camber, PoliceBanned From Asking for Someone’s‘Christian’ Name Because It Might Of-fend Those of Other Faiths, Daily Mail(London), March 19, 2010.]

Birth Tourism

Korean women have come here as

“birth tourists” for years, and now Turksare doing it. An industry has sprung upto cater to the more than 12,000 Turkishbirth tourists since 2003. “We found acompany on the Internet and decidedto go to Austin,” says Selin Burcuoglu,who had a daughter last year. “It wasincredibly professional. They organizedeverything for me.” As for her daughter,“American citizenship has so manyadvantages.”

Gurib Tourism, says his company hasbeen offering birth tourism since 2002.“We are preparing a package that coversto accommodation for several monthsand hospital expenses,” he says. Costsvary according to location—$25,000 isfor bargain cities, but if parents wantto have a baby in New York, it costs

American authorities welcome birthtourism because “otherwise they wouldprevent it. I think it is part of an integra-tion policy. They want people to becomeAmerican citizens.”

The Turkish-owned Marmara Hotelgroup recently announced a birth-tourism package that includes accom-modation at their Manhattan hotel.“We hosted 15 families last year,” saysgeneral manager Nur Ercan Magden,adding that the charge was $45,000

each. In some cases, Turkish immigrantsliving in the US open their homes toTourism in US on the Rise for TurkishParents, Hurriyet Daily News (Istanbul),March 12, 2010.]

The United States is one of the fewcountries in the world that still grantcitizenship to anyone born on its soil.Britain and Australia stopped the prac-tice in the 1980s, and India did so in2004.

201005 American Renaissance

Documents

Transcript of 201005 American Renaissance