Actually its worse than you imagine. By “white” standards, many blacks suffer serious mental illness, and the paranoia that you saw is only one of many illnesses. Mike Levin’s book Why Race Matters covers this is some detail (as does Phil Rushton). I suspect that it has a genetic basis given that it persists in the face of clear contrary evidence. If so, this suggests that the situation is hopeless—blacks are hard-wired not to fit into “white society.”

Perhaps the best we can do is adapt to it as one might adapt to having a crazy person living in the house. Just avoid certain topics, make believe you do not hear some things and so on.

Indeed, outward signs of this mental illness has become evidence of being authentically black. To be normal by white standards makes a black white. Again, the implications of this are profound, as whites keep looking for a “white” black leader. Obama perhaps knew that being crazy, or at least associating with a crazy person like Wright, was the ticket to acceptance.

The experiences of Mr. Berman and his family reflect those of my own—except my sister was “only” fondled, not raped. In fact, I took two swimming classes at City College in 1975, becoming one of the few white boys in America to learn to swim in Harlem, so I am very familiar with the locker room situation about which Mr. Berman spoke.

But what really made me a race realist was my summer at the Jewish Wel-Met Camp in 1974, the first seven weeks of which I was the cabin counselor to 13 boys, most of them middle- and upper middle-class Jews from Long Island. However, during the last three weeks the camp participated in a federal program called “School Camping.” The idea, as with most liberal programs, was very good. Impoverished kids from Bedford Stuyvesant spent three weeks in a rural up-state New York setting, with their mornings occupied by remedial reading and math classes by a staff of black college student counselors. To make a very painfully long story short, only eight of the original 27 white staff remained after the three weeks and in that time I saw for myself what an all-black environment was like. I had grown up with black and Puerto Ricans in the lower East Side, but blacks comprised no more than 20 percent of the neighborhood, yet of course, along with their mulatto Puerto Rican allies, committed the vast majority of the muggings and rapes. Now, in an exclusively black environment I was witness—and subject—to the unending savage behavior of some of the “campers.” Among many other incidents in those three weeks, I was called a Honkie MF-er and two girls came after me with knives. Enough for me!

As I have said before, my past is America’s future, unless we racial realists start making our dormant ostrich-like fellow whites aware of the impending dangers they and their children will shortly face in an America that fades to shade.

In your post today about race relations in America, you write:

The discovery that it was not just ignorant street people, but successful, articulate black professionals who believed these insane and wicked conspiracy theories, made a devastating impression on me.

This mirrors my experience almost exactly. As a young man, raised a liberal Democrat and a believer in Progressive causes, I assumed that whatever racial tension there was existed because of the relatively recent oppression of blacks combined with lingering racism. When I transferred from a small community college in Orange County, California to the University of California, Berkeley as an undergrad, by living in Berkeley near the Oakland border and by taking a job waiting tables at a bay-front steak house in Emeryville, also next to Oakland, I had my first experience living and working in a black majority area.

I was stunned at the constant hatred and hostility directed at me on a daily basis. Me, who believed in their cause and wanted only the best for them. The depravity and depressing violence and small-mindedness on display in every day life was bad enough, but what really got me was working at the steak house. This restaurant was not cheap. Just more than half its patrons were black. These people were very well off indeed. They drove the most expensive cars, dressed impeccably in the latest fashion, wore brand-name watches and fine Jewelry and, through conversation, I would learn that they were lawyers, doctors, businessmen, government executives, school administrators, pastors, newspapermen. They were highly educated and many, many times more successful here in America than any member of my family.

And they were seething with hatred. It informed almost every thing they did or said in relation to me. I was seen as, and treated as, the enemy, simply for existing. It was shocking, and deeply personally distressing. I’m embarrassed now to admit that the immense awfulness of this fact, and what it necessarily implied about the true state of race relations in America, led me to a profound depression. After six years in the Berkeley area, I reluctantly but most definitely concluded that either this issue will not be resolved ever or, if it is eventually resolved, it will not be in my lifetime.

Two stories capture my experience, the first negative, the second hopeful.

I was waiting tables at the steak house one night. I had a five table station. Around 9 pm I got what was to be my last round of the evening. I sat a middle-aged black couple, a middle-aged white couple with their college daughter, and two businessmen who looked like they were on a business trip. Then my station got closed. So, these three parties were it for me that night. I took drink orders in the order seated, followed that up after delivering drinks with food orders, went to soup/salad/bread, and then the entrees followed up.

When I set the black man’s steak down, I knew I had a problem. There was an eerie hostility coming off of him, rank hatred, and it was directed at me. I couldn’t figure out what the problem was, but I made a point to double up on the attentiveness and the service. Everything was going just fine, but he was staring at me to the point of ignoring the woman with him, who I believe was his wife. It was moderately unsettling, but I was busy enough with side work and winding down stuff to keep it out of my mind mostly. After I had done my dessert tray bit and had left checks on all three tables, the businessmen called it a night. Then the white parents and their daughter left. The black couple were talking, interrupted by stares at me. Finally, the man sets down a credit card, so I go collect the bill. He was paying with an Amex Gold Card (back when that meant something) and his name had “MD” after it.

As I was beginning to say “Thank you, I’ll be right back” the man grabbed my wrist—to get my attention, he let go right away—and then in a fury-fueled quiet whisper he told me exactly what he thought of me. He told me that he knew for a fact that I was giving them lousy service because they were black and that they were treated by me as my last priority because they were black and that despite being there first by a good 10 minutes, they were last. He was furious. Well, in an instant, I knew exactly what had happened. Despite taking their orders first, stuff that I learned were general black preferences had the effect of delaying the delivery of their orders to last among the trio. For the drinks, the whites had all ordered sodas or wine with waters, all of which I could get myself in the side station. However, the blacks ordered blended drinks (strawberry daiquiris, whipped cream, I still remember) which I had to get from the service bar. And the bar was very busy. Their order went in first, but they got it last (even though I pressed my friend the bartender for them). This wasn’t uncommon, because whites tended to order wine or mixed drinks while blacks almost always ordered blended drinks or cognacs. For the dinners, as fate would have it, all the whites had ordered prime rib, and they had ordered it rare to medium rare. Prime rib is cooked during the day to rare and cooked to order from there and was served only with a baked potato on the side, so it took only a few minutes to plate. In fact, for orders like that, the cooks don’t even begin to cook it until you tell them the party is almost done with soups and salads or else you’ll overlap the courses (which no one likes and is always a sign of bad service). The black couple, though, had ordered NY steaks, well done. This also wasn’t uncommon because whites tended to order steaks medium rare to rare while a black person ordering anything lower on the scale than medium-well was an event. So, as with the drinks, though their order went in first, the whites were halfway through their entrees when the black party’s food came up.

Now, I realized all this in an instant. Being then reasonable and figuring that everything could be reasoned out by people of good will, I explained that it had to do with entrees ordered—leaving out the racial angle, which I figured would have made things worse. Didn’t matter. In this guy’s mind the matter was sealed. Now, a little pride crept in here. I don’t mean to brag but I am a very, very good waiter. You could toss me on the floor right now and seat me six tables at the same time and I’d be fine. So, I assured the guy that it just wasn’t so and said that my service had been very fine. Then something else struck me about the situation. Here is this guy, dropping $200 for dinner and drinks, impeccably dressed, Rolex watch, wife with a rock on her finger that could have sunk the Titanic and he had his keys out at this point and I could see the BMW key. So I say to the guy: “Look, even if what you say is true, and it’s not, why would you care? You’re quite obviously a very successful doctor, why should you give a damn what some permanent undergrad waiting tables who lives in a studio above a pizza parlor think?” His answer: “Because you’re a white man.”

The second was a moment from earlier in my life that I will never forget.

In 1987, I participated in a semester abroad program in Paris. Towards the end, I was seriously considering joining a few American and Canadian students I knew there who had come and decided not to leave. As the day of decision drew nearer, I spent one evening up all night with friends, smoking and talking about whether or not to go home or to try and make a go of it in Europe. Suddenly, I noticed that the sun was starting to rise. While my friends all went to bed, I was so engaged in my decision that I decided to go for a walk.

I walked north, towards the Place St-Michel. Dawn was brighter but Paris’ sidewalks and streets were empty except for me and the occasional street sweeper. As I was walking along lost in thought, I have realized that a black man had turned a corner and was now walking straight towards me on the same sidewalk. There are plenty of blacks from “French” Africa in Paris so this didn’t strike me as unusual or serve to derail my train of thought.

When we got on the same block, I looked up. We were going to pass each other, both on our respective right, no issues there.

As I passed him, still lost in my own thoughts, I said without thinking “Hey, how’s it goin’?”

He replied, “Good, man, you?”

We both took two steps, stopped at the same time and swiveled around to look at each other. We burst out laughing at the same time. We both realized that we had both unconsciously known that each other was American despite that fact that there was no real obvious sign that either of us was. (I had been in France for months at that point and no longer looked like an American student; I was wearing local clothes, nothing that screamed “American,” etc.).

We talked for a bit and then said our good-byes and moved on.

I have never forgotten this; despite our differences, when in a truly foreign culture and place we instinctively knew each other and expressed a spontaneous solidarity and comradeship based on our common nationality. Blacks are Americans. They are troubled, but they are my countrymen. I am not prepared to throw in the towel on this issue, not without first trying real reconciliation.

This has always given me hope. Despite that all-too-real seething hatred and resentment, we are two people intertwined and we have more in common with each other than we realize. I’ve found as I’ve grown older that blacks in general respect white people who speak to them as adults, who acknowledge openly the differences between us and who state clearly that they are expected to behave and function like any other adult in our society is expected to. Being so used to receiving deference and seeing only weak whites, blacks recognize the absence of the normal white cringe and deference which only serves to incite more hatred and resentment.

I think a proper right-wing party or movement that went to blacks on that basis would have some success. Not at first, but over the long run. Endless apologies only serves to prolong the resentment.

I know this is over-long, this is obviously an issue I am passionate about.

You didn’t tell us how the situation in the restaurant ended.

Ah, yes, I see that I didn’t. He made a big show of signing the AMEX bill in front of me and filled out a giant “$0.00” in the tip column. He and his wife then angrily left. I spent the rest of the evening having “Can you believe this?” conversations with friends. I watched them leave in the parking lot, the exterior walls of the restaurant being almost entirely glass. They just got into their gold BMW and left, no further words said. Looking back, I think he was a little taken aback that I had stood up to him a bit and questioned his motives. I also got the sense that his wife didn’t entirely agree with him.

One of our assistant managers was a very big, and very intelligent, black guy named Tim. He and I talked about it and he explained to me that this is what we have to deal with on a regular basis. He was a good guy, he stuck up for us often and got called “house nigger” all the time For his trouble (the ONLY time I heard the so-called N-word hurled around at blacks in my three years at this restaurant was in this context). Tim’s advice was that these people have giant chips on their shoulder and there is nothing you can do but move on and deal with them as best as you can.

It was a real education, being the subject of race-based intense hatred. This guy was just my first experience of many. Being a big guy, and reasonably confident, I didn’t get it as bad as some others. The worst off were pretty white waitresses, who would be horrifically abused and treated at the hands of black women. I also saw first hand and up close the intense anger black women have at any white woman who shows up on a black man’s arm. In fact, another thing that I will never forget about working at this restaurant was a black waitress named Shawna who was a Cal student and very intelligent. We were discussing the trial of OJ Simpson, which had just begun, and she quietly said, “No black women are going to vote to convict a successful black man for killing his blond wife.” We all scoffed. When the verdict and the story came it, we all remembered her take at the very beginning.

It’s a slow process, getting liberalism beaten out of you. I guess that is why I have more sympathy for average white liberals than many right-wingers do; I once stood in their shoes. They’re trying to do the right thing, trying to be helpful, and they don’t understand why people like me are stirring up problems.

How we get to those people without their defense and anger shields going up immediately, I have no idea. Perhaps things really have to get worse before they get better.

During the whole time the customer was staring at you with hatred, why didn’t you ask him if something was wrong?

The short answer is that I was confused. I was new at that sort of thing then.

First, there was uncertainty as to the accuracy of my own perception since such hatred was then inexplicable to me. When I realized that I could not be imagining things and was in fact perceiving the situation normally, I was then reluctant to take the matter to him directly, since my thought was that would lead to a scene, and our managers were not supportive of staff in customer-staff disputes. When he began speaking to me directly about what was bothering him, I disregarded those concerns, motivated both by anger at such baseless charges and also his obvious assumption that I would not take issue with him for fear of my job, and then questioned him directly about it. I told him he was being ridiculous.

Of course, this was a learning process for me. I shortly learned that the more confident a white person you are, the more you will attract the hostile glares of black men, who are engaging in a power display, seeing if you’ll back down or say something. It would embarrass me when I’d see friends look down at the floor or whisper, “Let’s get out of here” while on BART or the bus, or some store. I always stood my ground and after some years of this began to make it a point to address such challenges loudly. Unless they were with a group, the black men always backed down at that point. I noted very quickly that just the fact that a white guy would confidently challenge them was enough to get them to back down. Sometimes it visibly shocked them. They almost never expected it.

This did lead to trouble for me, but it was a point of honor. I did get jumped by a crowd of middle and high school black kids one night when I didn’t back down upon being threatened by them. I took quite the beating, but focused on one of them so that at least one of this “rat pack” (as the responding U of C police referred to this group, apparently a common occurrence) would remember me.

The minor incident I describe at the restaurant was just the first in a series of a painful course in education on race realism.

Like when a white girl Cal student was tortured, raped, and murdered and we all organized a protest march, only for me to see my fellow socialists drop the project when two Oakland black guys were arrested and bragged (bragged!) to the TV news cameras about how much she suffered in their van. Or like when a Korean store owner I knew finally had to use mace to defend himself from the many assaults he suffered every day at the hands of aggressive blacks, and the government investigated him. Then there was this:

Berkeley, Calif.—A “deranged” Iranian gunman with a hatred of blond Americans died in a burst of police bullets Thursday, seven hours after he stormed a bar, killed one man, wounded seven people and took 33 hostages.

I was near the crime scene that evening. Close enough to have been ordered to take cover behind a concrete wall. I remember what was said and what I heard. The fact is that this guy loudly proclaimed his hatred of “whites” and “Americans” and despite the neutral tone of this article he shot and watched a young white man bleed to death for his amusement while the Berkeley cops did nothing.

Violence against whites was regular, quasi-sanctioned by the authorities and a non-issue. It was in Berkeley that I learned this, as did many, many others, though outwardly all but a few continued to mouth the pieties and do what was expected of them, largely because they were leaving the scene upon graduation and felt it was an issue from which they could just remove themselves.

You wrote: “The practical question then becomes, given these facts about the black community, how shall whites henceforth relate to organized black America?”

There seem to be three differences between blacks in America and Muslims:

1) no coherent and psychologically motivating ideology of militant opposition (i.e., no jihad);

2) no organizing sense of supremacism based on a coherent ideology (i.e., no Koran and Sunna spelling out the supremacism of Us vs. the inferiority of Them);

3) no spiritually and historically rich tribalism.

When I say there are none of these three things, notice my adverbial and adjectival qualifiers. I am not saying there is nothing vaguely comparable to the three features of Islam, nor that there have not been attempts by certain black intellectuals and/or demagogues over the decades to formulate a sociopolitical entity amounting to a black “umma” that would unify all blacks against whites. The Nation of Islam and the Black Panthers are two notable examples of such attempts, and J. Edgar Hoover rightly saw them as concerted threats. Nevertheless, blacks do not enjoy, and have never enjoyed, an overall ideology such as Muslims enjoy in Islam by which to try to undermine and menace us. Such an overall ideology cannot merely be artificially manufactured; it has to grow organically, as Islam did, over centuries. And it must be rooted in psychologically motivating (albeit pneumopathological) spirituality. If blacks had this, things would be considerably bleaker by now for whites. At best, they cultivate a kind of amorphous, relatively incoherent and decentralized Intifada against whites.

After reading about Mr. Berman I had to write about my own experience if only to get it off my chest. I too am a native New Yorker and had similar experiences. My awakening began at a very young age. Before I was ten I attended a private school and enjoyed school and excelled as much as a ten year old can. Then my family moved and I was thrust into the NYC public school system. The school was actually in a very nice neighborhood and the local kids were very nice. The problem was that they bused in kids from the closest ghetto which ruined everything. On my very first day of school I was assaulted (for no other reason then being new and white) by a black and his cronies. His last words to me was “white devil.” Of course I had no idea what he was talking about. Thus was my baptism of fire to race relations. It didn’t get any better. All through junior high school the only problems I ever had was at the hands of blacks. I was even slashed on the arm once by the same guy who assaulted me in grammar school. My sin? I was friendly (just friends) with a black girl whom he liked. I would later find out in my high school years that the individual who slashed me was killed by a fellow black. High school was even worse. This time the high school was located in the ghetto and us whites had to travel to get there. Luckily (or not so luckily as I would later find out) I had the opportunity to go to another school. Because I was interested and had a talent for music I managed to get into a school in the city (one that I am sure you are familiar with) that had a music program ( we were the official band for Manhattan and would play at certain functions for the mayor). The first half of the day would be spent on academics and the second half on music.

What I didn’t realize at the time was that the academic part would be anything but. There were three whites in the entire “student body,” of which I was one. I won’t bore you with what that was like as I am sure you could guess. I lasted about a year until one day after taking the Regents exams I was jumped and stomped on in the schoolyard by blacks. The only reason it stopped was because of a Puerto Rican friend who intervened. Otherwise it would have continued as I was surrounded by at least 60 bystanders who were cheering my attackers on. Nothing was broken but my face and head were the size of a basketball. I only thank God that sneakers were in fashion then and not the heavy hiking boots of today. The reason for my attack was unknown. I never bothered anyone and pretty much kept to myself. Needless to say my mother pulled me out of that school and the principal did nothing to find the perpetrators. He stated they did not go to the school. Yeah right. I got a scholarship to a private school which I enjoyed and graduated from.

If all this were not enough I have had a family member raped by a black. I was mugged by a black in Times Square. My father was mugged by a black. A black dragged my mother in between subway cars and tried to throw her off while the train was moving. On another occasion while my mother was waiting on the subway platform blacks threw some metal strips from a moving train in my mothers face cutting her and just missed blinding her by a hair. After experiencing all of this I think the question blacks should ask themselves is why any white person who went through this would be friendly towards any blacks at all? Yet I am and so is my family. Not foolishly. We are very choosy now. So who really is the devil after all?

Reading your recent entries about black savagery in the USA brings to mind my conclusion that blacks are happy and well contained within Africa only. There is no place for them in other societies. In Africa blacks are largely amiable and easy going. They are content until contact with other races reminds them that they are backwards and will ever be thus. In Africa the family breakdown and polygamy is contained within the tribal system which is lost when blacks emigrate. Isolation and containment is the best strategy for blacks.

I went to an integrated high school in Indianapolis, so I can tell similar stories of being whaled on with sticks by black students while black security guards watched and laughed; similar stories of refusing to blame my attackers, because I was a good liberal. But those rows are already well hoed in this thread. I’d rather talk about something Karen in England brought to my mind.

Just last week I spoke to a (white) boyhood friend of mine who is working a stint in the US Virgin Islands, which he says is virtually all black. He went on and on in wonderment at how different are the Virgin Island blacks from anything he has known here on the mainland: they are happy, relaxed, intelligent, friendly. No chips on their shoulders, no barely contained rage. He feels perfectly safe at all times, is welcomed everywhere, and has made quite a few friends in the month or so he has been there. It has opened his eyes to what he now realizes he has never before seen: black people acting the way white people do in the US.

My instant reaction when I heard this story—a reaction schooled, no doubt, by the many hours I have spent at VFR—was, “Their traditional culture is intact. They have an understanding of the order of the world, and of their place in it. Their lives are not up for grabs. They are not forced to reinvent their lives, and their understanding of the world, at every instant. They know where they stand; they know their community is standing with them. They are not anxious, not fearful; so they are not angry.”

There is something in what Karen says about the impossibility that blacks could ever really be happy outside Africa. But it is not so much I think the mere continent of Africa that would do the trick, but rather the integrity of the culture that blacks could there maintain, where theirs was the majority culture. Indeed, I would go further, and argue that blacks could be content, and could prosper, and make many positive contributions to the general weal, wherever they found themselves in a culture that had integrity, whether or not that culture was originally African. In most of Africa, after all, the traditional cultures are a shambles, because they are all jumbled together in the cities and at war with each other, with no transcendent cultural milieu under which they can understand themselves. The integrity of some traditional culture, in which individuals can be comprehended, and can therefore comprehend themselves, is the key.

This no less true for white people than for blacks. Where there is no tradition, no homeland, we are all strangers in a strange land.

It will never work for us to send the blacks back to Africa. They are, as Kevin V. discovered when he ran into an American black in Paris, our countrymen. It behooves to find a way to live with each other. And we can, if we can recover a traditional culture. I am reminded of a photograph from Vietnam which struck me at the time with great force, and still does: a grievously wounded soldier, white, and filthy with mud and blood, sits on the ground leaning against a shattered tree. Another wounded soldier, black, limps into the frame, a bloody bandage on his head. He has just seen the wounded white soldier lying there, has just recognized him. And what is he doing? He is reaching out to his wounded white comrade, in horror and great fear for his brother’s life and welfare, and in great sorrow. The image still moves me to tears.

This photo represents for me the apotheosis of race relations in America. The moral quandary presented both to whites and blacks by American slavery represents an opportunity for us as a people to achieve unprecedented moral greatness together; or to fail thereat. If we can discover our true relation to the transcendent, as expressed in a traditional culture whole and well, we can recover ourselves, and can then love each other; can relax about each other, and get on with our joint work, which is, in the final analysis, all aimed at the same end. If not, not.

PS OK, I went and found that photo. The internet is amazing. The black man in the photo was named Jeremiah Purdie. He was a Marine Gunnery Sergeant, and the wound he suffers in the photo was his third, meaning that it was his ticket home. He suffered for years with guilt over that departure, feeling he had abandoned his buddies. And he wrote a book: The Journey that Brought me to Glory: The Black Boy, the Marine, and the Christian. By God, I am going to buy that book and read it; for I honor that man. And it seems to hammer home my point: Purdie found glory in the USMC, that most hallowed and hale of American traditional societies; and in membership in the body of Christ, who is the original traditional culture of the cosmos. Take a look at Purdie’s expression in the photo on the cover of his book, as he stands in the rain at attention to be decorated by his superior officer. Is there a hint of rage on his face? Is he angry at his white commander? No. He is a man in full, a blooded warrior. He has nothing anymore he needs to prove to himself, or to anyone else, and he is at home in the Corps forever. Semper Fi. We should all be so lucky. Rather, we should all be so virtuous, and virile.

Karen writes:

“Reading your recent entries about black savagery in the USA brings to mind my conclusion that blacks are happy and well contained within Africa only… In Africa blacks are largely amiable and easy going.”

Africans may “seem amiable and easy going” but Africa—every country there—is a bloody mess, with unacceptable levels of corruption, crime and social disorders. It has been this way probably since time immemorial. The only time, here and there in certain regions, Africa was tolerable and even progressive was during European colonialism. And as bad as Africa and African cultures are in general, the depravity and disorder endemic to that continent has been severely exacerbated by the intrusion and presence of Islam over the past 1300 years. And Islam too was, for a while and partially, constrained by European colonialism—granting certain areas, particularly Egypt and the Maghreb (the remainder of north Africa called by the French l’Afrique Blanche—White Africa), a brief breath of tolerance, order and prosperity.

Between Karen’s idea, and Kristor’s and Erich’s respective responses to it, we have quite a range of views:

Karen: Confine and isolate blacks in Africa. It’s best for both races when there’s no contact between them, because contact can only result in black resentment..

Kristor: Blacks are part of America and cannot be sent anywhere. The best hope is reconciliation between whites and blacks within a re-retraditionalized West.

Erich: Blacks on their own in Africa cannot create decent order. Only Western colonial leadership of Africa can do that.

Kristor writes:

Just last week I spoke to a (white) boyhood friend of mine who is working a stint in the US Virgin Islands, which he says is virtually all black. He went on and on in wonderment at how different are the Virgin Island blacks from anything he has known here on the mainland: they are happy, relaxed, intelligent, friendly. No chips on their shoulders, no barely contained rage. He feels perfectly safe at all times, is welcomed everywhere, and has made quite a few friends in the month or so he has been there. It has opened his eyes to what he now realizes he has never before seen: black people acting the way white people do in the US.

What planet is Kristor living on? Read this, from the NY Times no less:

TRAVEL ADVISORY: CORRESPONDENT’S REPORT; U.S. Virgin Islands
June 5, 1994

RESPONDING to a spate of recent attacks on tourists, including a pair of robberies that ended in shooting deaths, authorities in this American territory in the heart of the Caribbean are beefing up the police force, cracking down on juvenile crime, preparing a safety advisory and taking other measures intended to better protect the visitors on whom the islands’ economy depends….

Most of the cruise lines that stop at St. Thomas already offer port lectures that include tips on security. But Mr. Dawson said the government is now drawing up a comprehensive “visitor’s safety advisory” that will soon be available to anyone arriving by boat or plane. In the meantime, advised Fran Secik, director of public relations for Kloster Cruise Ltd., the company that owns the Royal, Norwegian and Royal Viking cruise lines, it is best for passengers “to use common sense and not go off the beaten path.” She noted that many cruise lines provided “escorted shore tours with local tour operators” and recommended those as the safest way to see St. Thomas.

Because of violence against visitors, the United States Navy last October suspended port calls to the island of St. Thomas, blaming “a disproportionate number of violent crimes against U.S. sailors.” That action came shortly after the death of a Navy lieutenant who was beaten with a baseball bat and shot while waiting to use a public telephone here….

It seems to me that Kristor is making the same mistake vis-a-vis blacks that apologists for Mestizos and Moslems make. It’s only a few bad apples, they tell us. The vast majority are excellent people. Besides, I know Pedro/Ahmed/Tyrone next door and he’s a great guy, therefore any conflict between our peoples is solvable.

However, none of these Others, whether they are ostensibly American or not, will ever side with us as a whole. They will remain loyal to their own tribal identities and push for tribal empowerment at the expense of the majority. The means may differ but the goal is the same. Your neighbor and the fellow American you connect with in Paris ultimately don’t matter when you’re talking about tens or hundreds of millions of people.

I’m with Karen on this one. It will always be Us vs. Them. If removing the lot of them seems impossible now, it just means we haven’t yet realized the enormity of the threat to our civilization.

Regarding your contrast between what you see as my suggestion with regard to the African problem, and Karen’s—

Karen: Confine and isolate blacks in Africa. It’s best for both races when there’s no contact between them, because contact can only result in black resentment.

Erich: Blacks on their own in Africa cannot create decent order. Only Western colonial leadership of Africa can do that

—I do not favor a revival of Western colonialism of Africa unless it can be done right. Since the West can’t even begin to think right about cultures, the Third World in general and Africa in particular, and Western superiority, it seems highly unlikely it will be able to embark upon a new colonialist era with the requisite intelligence and boldness. Perhaps a hundred years from now. Therefore, since we cannot do the best thing, I would agree with your capsulization of Karen’s position—the second best thing.

This is a topic that has recurred here from time to time. It tends to divide into the “We should have nothing to do with Africa” camp, versus the “We should recolonize and guide Africa for its benefit, but on our terms” camp. I’ve leaned toward the latter position, while acknowledging the power of the opposing argument, as made by Karen and Rhona N. But like Erich I recognize that only a radically renewed West would be able to conceive, let alone carry out, such a project.

Here are some previous discussions about Africa, blacks, and the idea of recolonization.

Recolonize Africa? Re-Christianize Africa?
Theroux journeys through the heart of darkness
The horrible disaster of Africa
The reality of black Africa
The reality of black Africa in Britain

Mike Berman asks what planet I’m living on, and quotes a NY Times article from 1994 as an accurate representation of reality. I know nothing about the US Virgin Islands except what my friend who is actually living there right now, and whose judgment I trust, tells me. I’ll take his planet over that of the NY Times. He could be wrong, of course. Maybe he’s kidding himself to think that the Virgin Islanders as a general rule behave differently, and treat him differently, than do mainland blacks. But what would be his interest, or purpose, in doing so?

I never suggested that the Virgin Islands are a utopia, or that no one there is wicked. How stupid would that be? That there is crime in the Virgin Islands, and that it treats tourists as slow fat easy prey, is nothing remarkable, special, or new. But the mere fact of such crime is not an effective counterexample to my argument, because it does not contradict the thesis that most Virgin Islanders do not hate whites qua whites. Maybe they do; but my friend who is actually there is stunned to find that they do not.

The point of my comment was that blacks, like other humans, can do fine if they are domesticated to a healthy traditional society, which inculcates in them the virtues basic to any successful life, and that, as prevalently rational beings, they will adapt themselves to a traditional European society that discriminates against violations of its norms. That, i.e., they will do in America as the Americans do, provided the Americans in fact do what Americans traditionally have done. To the extent that America regains its traditional cultural footings, then blacks will again live in a vibrant, assertive cultural milieu to which they can have the opportunity to adapt; but until it does, until we assert the traditional American order, they will not. They will be adrift, and thus all the more vulnerable to the suasions of such as Malcolm X or Jeremiah Wright, who pit themselves against that order.

Even in a healthy, traditional America, blacks may still decide to reject it, to live as cultural outcasts and rebels. That would be a pretty stupid thing to do, but they might. To the extent they do, then I would agree with Van Wijk that they will have cast themselves into the outer darkness, by putting their tribal loyalties above their loyalty to the nation. We cannot but be at enmity with those who define themselves as our enemies. Discrimination against the cultural other is the sine qua non of any society. We should not coddle our enemies, but repel and destroy them. Are bands of black youths roving the streets and wreaking havoc? Wreak it right back, tenfold: knock them on the head, forty lashes in the public square, let’s get medieval.

And all this goes also for Muslims and Mestizos, or anyone else, who seek to rob us of our patrimony. As should be clear from some of my other comments at VFR, I am not shy in advocating the ejection of our enemies, or of treating Muslims as ipso facto inimical to the West. But we can hardly blame our enemies for preying upon us, so long as we just sit and take it. The resurrection of a healthy traditional society entails that we actively defend ourselves and our interests. Only then will blacks face a clear choice between a painful punishment to their misbehavior, or a comfortable reward to their civilized participation in our common life. Only then will illegal aliens and Muslims find it inconvenient to live here any longer as illegals and Muslims, and so either leave or abandon their former loyalties in favor of a loyalty to us.

I’m not saying any of this is likely to happen. The resurrection of traditional America is a long shot. In the meantime, concealed carry is the best thing we have going.

This is very well stated by Kristor and his basic thinking in is line with mine. As I’ve said so many times, there’s never been an attempt to take back traditional majority control of America. How can we give up on something that we’ve never even tried?

Also, Mr. Berman did not actually ask Kristor what planet he was living on. I stuck that phrase in. He used a somewhat more pungent expression, which I felt was not appropriate for this elevated discussion.

Too many here are blinded by these clear and immediate dangers to see the true source of dysfunction: the Caucasian liberal-fascist.

They have been the major source of unhappiness in culture and politics, as well as a cause of war and revolution, for well over two hundred years. Burke, Tocqueville, and the Founders wrote about them relentlessly, because they rightly feared their guile and determination. Adams and Burke foresaw what terror would unfold in the French Revolution.

Remove in your own mind every last non-Caucasian person and influence from the continent of Europe. If you could in the first place prevent the liberal disease from re-importing these same things once again—which they would do immediately—you would see with greater clarity that they need no proxy to self-destruct. Before it was this, it was self destruction through the Caucasian creation of socialism-communism. Now it is multi-faceted.

The keenest sorrow is to recognize ourselves as the sole cause of all our adversities, so said Sophocles. How long it is before we recognize our part in a problem determines how long it is to begin finding a solution. We haven’t even started yet.

Discussions of the race problem always end up with someone saying that the real problem is the left, which has unleashed the race problem. Yes, of course. But the race problem has in fact been unleashed, and we have to deal with it. Saying that we must also deal with the left tells us nothing about what we must do about the race problem, once the left has been dealt with.

As I’ve said to (or at least about) people like Melanie Phillips and Mark Steyn, “You say that we are having these problems with Islam because PC has silenced us. Fine. So please tell me, once we’ve gotten rid of PC, what do you propose doing about Islam?” They never have an answer.

Mike Berman writes:

Mr. Auster said:

This is a topic that has recurred here from time to time. It tends to divide into the “We should have nothing to do with Africa” camp, versus the “We should recolonize and guide Africa for its benefit, but on our terms” camp. I’ve leaned toward the latter position, while acknowledging the power of the opposing argument, as made by Karen and Rhona N. But like Erich I recognize that only a radically renewed West would be able to conceive, let alone carry out, such a project.

Africa is rapidly being recolonized, but the West has nothing to do with it. The Chinese are recolonizing Africa on their terms and only for the benefit of the Chinese:

Some of your commentators talk about the re-colonisation of Africa. This is already being done very thoroughly by the Chinese, without regards for “Human Rights” and with a complete understanding of racial differences. The Chinese are plundering Africa’s rich natural resources and their authorities are viewing Africa as a solution to China’s problem of overpopulation. Black societies will always be primitive and barbaric but blacks are used to that and function quite well in chaos (according to their standards).

Your entry re liberals mugged by reality reminds me why VFR is such an important site.

Not only are your own thoughts laid out succinctly and intelligently, but the input from your readers indicates knowledge, realism and compassion on an altogether different level to that of any other site dealing with the thorny issue of race and race realism.

I have sent the above entry to various liberal people I know who have the intelligence to recognise the threat Western Civilisation faces, but who would be turned off by the comments and general demeanour of sites such as Vdare or Amren.

The simplicity of your site layout adds to the appeal as well.

Congratulations and keep up the excellent work. If we are able to change the groupthink inflicted on the masses by the intense propaganda of the MSM it will be due to many sites, but yours in particular.

Read the thread on the liberal mugged by reality with great interest, albeit some puzzlement.

Like Mike Berman I am a lifelong New Yorker, but my experiences with blacks, and those of people I know, while hardly a cause for ecstasy, have not been remotely as bad as that of many people on this thread. While I and practically everyone I know has been victimized by black criminals, they have never gone beyond ordinary robbery. Further, all the bad experiences I and the people I know have had, have been with identifiably lower-class punks. By the way, I lived from 1964-1972 in the Rochedale housing project in South Jamaica, which (started) as an integrated affair but happened to be in the middle of an all-black semi-slum (which eventually, helped by brilliant NYC government policies, wrecked the place.) Rochdale was not a garden paradise!

But I have never had any trouble with middle-class blacks and have never run into the attitudes described. I don’t doubt that other people have, but I have not, personally.

Of greater interest is a point I have noticed about many of those commenting on this thread, namely, that they seem to automatically identify attitudes that are “pro-black” with liberalism or the left, and, at least by implication, those that are critical or hostile stance with the right. It seems to me that this is a product of liberal brainwashing combined perhaps with a foreshortened time horizon.

A personal note may help here. My parents were not liberals but rather right-wing democratic socialists (of the sort who were if anything more anti-Communist than most “believers in capitalism”) of a kind that no longer exists. In the late 1950s and 1960s they were automatically sympathetic to blacks and the civil rights movement, but this was never entangled with any guilt feelings, nor did it ever extend to excusing black crime or racial hatred or accepting reverse discrimination, nor have I ever been able to understand anybody who would accept any of these things.

However, I never accepted the simple left-right lineup mentioned above, because, while I hardly knew any conservatives myself, it was (or should have been) obvious to anybody living at that time that many conservative Republicans supported civil rights legislation. Obscuring this point has obviously been a strong interest for the left since, but anyone with a good memory, or who bother to looks up the votes on the civil rights bills, should know better.

Second, I encountered (and knew other people who encountered) some white people who, while otherwise orthodox liberals or even leftists—to the left of my parents—strongly disliked blacks, and did not hide it. I cannot say that this was common, but I cannot believe that my experience is unique.

Thanks for posting Mike Berman’s story. I had read it before and never forgot it.

These horrible stories spawn more questions within me than answers, but I do think I can offer something of value given that I’m a Southerner who comes from a culture that has lived for generations with blacks and have known them my whole life and have seen a wide array of cultures within.

First, I’m shocked and I want a better understanding of how Jewish people feel. Before, I believed that virtually no Jewish people were victims of blacks and Mr. Berman and the Crown Heights Jews were exceptions that proved the rule. I knew things must be changing because it just seemed more and more anecdotes were popping up.

A question: Where are the guns? I noticed that there was not a single mention of a gun or any weapon: wishing one had one; mentioning one was owned but, it wasn’t there; thought about using it but deciding against it, etc. I don’t carry a gun, but know that I can go to my usual places and if the unexpected were to happen, there would be at least one man who was armed. In my home, I am armed.

Second, I wonder if a page can be taken from the Celts. I said to my husband recently that Obama had more than a Scots-Irish problem, but a Celtic problem! He did poorly in New England states that had larger Irish populations! I joked that the Celts may have a genetic tendency that is the opposite of the ones Jews supposedly have. I think this is nonsense, of course, and believe that the simplest explanation is best: proximity to blacks challenges racial egalitarianism and Celtic descendants tend to be lower class than most other whites and thus, have more exposure to blacks. Couple this with long memories and we have a population that doesn’t suffer fools gladly and is fierce.

Blacks in the Bible Belt are the best ones with the least pathologies. Most of us are smart enough to recognize the hoodlums and know how to avoid them. In culturally conservative and Christian states, black middle class rage is rare. They feel it less because of their Christianity, and if they did, it would get them nowhere. The whites are confident and know who they are. And of course, the South is armed.

Being conservative is extremely important and touches everything from the belief in an individual to protect onesself, low tolerance for criminals that is codified, Christian values, etc. The primary difference I see between us and other vis a vis race is that we are better educated and thus live our individual lives accordingly, but there are no special race laws; codified conservatism has worked wonders.

A couple of thoughts about the Chinese colonizing Africa:

If they’ll do it in Africa, they might try it here. Although Africa is several orders of magnitude more vulnerable to colonization than the West, it cannot have escaped the notice of Chinese leaders that the West is not adequately defending itself against Muslims or Mexicans bent on colonization. Even though some Muslim and Mexican thinkers and leaders have openly expressed their intentions of conquest, the official response to this of the leadership of the West has been worse than nil; they have, in a manner of speaking, been supportive of the hostile foreigners. If, God forbid, America falls into Balkanization, the Chinese would be sorely tempted to get their piece of the action, and there would be nothing stopping them from laying the foundations for such an effort right now.

Also, I find it intriguing that a story critical of colonization appears in what I presume to be a standard-brand liberal newspaper. Presumably they’re against it mainly because it’s a sin against liberalism to be mean to black people. But if the liberal can begin to acknowledge a threat to Africa of colonization, perhaps he can one day acknowledge such a threat to America.