Australian NATIONAL INDEPENDENT
Issue Fourteen Spring 2000

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Selected articles from Issue Fourteen

OUR INCREASING HOMICIDE LEVELS

Our topic for this editorial is Australia's homicide rate and is largely based on figures obtained from the web site of the Australian Institute of Criminology. The homicide figures are mainly made up of murder but include manslaughter numbers and mainly concern the twelve-month period 1997/98.

In that period our homicide rate was twice that of Japan, slightly higher than in England and Germany, similar to Canada and New Zealand, and a quarter of the rate in the United States. The actual homicide rate for Australia in 1998 was 1.8 victims per hundred thousand of population.

In actual numbers this amounted to 333 homicides.

Males are almost twice as likely as females to be victims of homicide and those in the age group 25-44 years are the most victimised. In 1998 firearms were used in only 16% of cases. Most interesting are the historical trends in Australia's homicide rate.

In the period 1915 to 1997 the average homicide rate in Australia was 1.6 per hundred thousand of population but there have been dramatic rises and falls in this rate. At the end of the First World War the rate rose to about 2.2 but then tended to fall, reaching its lowest in 1941 when it had fallen to 0.8 per hundred thousand. From then it rose reaching nearly 2.5 in the mid-1980s. The rate has dropped only slightly since and in 1998 was still more than twice the rate for 1941. Throughout the period 1915 to 1998 firearms have only been used in a minority, generally less than a third of homicides in this country.

The question arises: why the variations in homicide rates? With better medical technology and ambulance services we would expect that more victims of attempted murder would survive. This is probably one of the reasons for the drop in cases between 1915 and 1941, and probably why our murder rates are lower than they would otherwise be. Nevertheless we are twice as likely to become a murder statistic now than our antecedents were back in 1941.

Think of the changes over the last six decades. Our material standard of living was lower then, we were just recovering from the Great Depression and we were at war with Nazi Germany and her allies. We also had a very homogenous society, 99% white and 90% Anglo-Celtic. Racial consciousness had not become politically incorrect and the White Australia Policy was still in force. We were proudly nationalistic although still paid allegiance to Britain and the Crown. Multiculturalism was not even thought of and we were not scapegoated for the "plight" of the Aborigines (many of whom happily volunteered for military service).

Our "progress" down the road of anti-racism and multiculturalism has been a sociological disaster bringing not only an attack on our national identity but a much more violent and crime ridden society. Its time for a serious reversal of these policies.

 

BRITAINS CHANGING RACIAL COMPOSITION

An article titled "The Racial Transformation of Britain" appeared in the American Renaissance newsletter in August 2000. The article is by Professor Richard Lynn of the University of Ulster. Here is the gist of Prof. Lynn's article.

There have been a few blacks in Britain since the sixteenth century. They acquired such a bad reputation that Queen Elizabeth tried to expel them but a few managed to stay. After the American War of Independence hundreds of runaway black slaves made it to Britain and again were considered a serious problem. About 350 were resettled in Sierra Leone. By the start of the twentieth century there were very few blacks in Britain except in the ports of Liverpool and Cardiff, serious race riots occurring in both cities in 1919.

In 1948 Britain passed the Nationality Act which conferred British citizenship on the people of the British colonies, including those in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean. This gave similar rights of entry and residence to millions of non-whites that had been enjoyed by the whites of Canada, Australia and New Zealand. It wasnt long before thousands of non-whites were entering Britain, especially from India and the Caribbean. By 1961 there were 210,000 Caribbean blacks and 122,000 Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis in Britain. Race relations were becoming strained and the riots occurred in 1958.

The government acted with the Commonwealth Immigration Act which restricted entry to immediate family members and those who would do jobs no British citizen was capable of doing. Nevertheless the influx of non-whites and in 1968 Enoch Powell was moved to deliver his "rivers of blood" speech. At the time about 50,000 "dependents" were entering Britain and opinion polls showed that the majority of Britons supported Powell. Unfortunately the government failed to heed Powell's warning. By 1991 there were at least 900,000 blacks and 1,500,000 South Asians (Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis) and 650,000 Chinese in Britain. These figures were probably under estimates as many immigrants, especially the illegals, failed to complete census forms. About a third on school children in London do not speak English at home and another third are English speaking but non-white. Whites look like becoming outnumbered in London and other large British cities.

The impact of different minorities varies considerably. Blacks were involved in riots in Bristol in 1980, in London and Liverpool in 1981, in Birmingham and gain in London in 1985. Crime rates for blacks are much higher than for other groups. Blacks are six to seven times more likely to end up in prison than are whites. Black unemployment rates are higher as are their illegitimacy rates. Black children do poorly at school and their scores on I.Q. tests average twelve points below white children.

Social indicators for Indians and others are not as gloomy but the presence of so many non-whites and non-Christians is undermining and displacing traditional British culture. Added to this is their younger age structure and higher birth rates, which means that their numbers are likely to double every 14 years. This could mean a non-white population in Britain of 48 million by the middle of this century.

AUSTRALIA'S POPULATION AND IMMIGRATION

IMMIGRATION FIGURES

We have obtained a copy of a letter from the Department of Immigration concerning the immigration intake for the 1998-99 financial year. In part it reads:

"there were 84,143 settler arrivals in 1998-99, of whom 21,501 entered Australia under the Family Stream, 175 under the Special Eligibility Category and 8,790 under the Humanitarian Program. The figure includes 24,680 New Zealand citizens and 1,066 other Non-Program settler arrivals, mainly children born to Australian citizens overseas.

Last financial year 16,888 persons changed status in Australia from temporary to permanent: 15,054 were granted Migration Program visas and 1,834 were granted Protection visas onshore.

In 1998-99 there were 35,181 permanent departures of Australian residents."

As we figure it this means a gross immigration level of 101,031 and a net figure of 65,850 for 1998-99, assuming the Department got its numbers right.

Where were our 84,143 settlers born? According to the Immigration Departments web site 22.2% came from New Zealand, 10.4% from Britain, 7.3% from China, 6.0% from South Africa, 3.9% from the Philippines, 3.5% from Yugoslavia, and 3.0% each from India and Indonesia.

FERTILITY RATES

A number of articles in a recent edition of People and Place (Vol. 8 No. 2) look at the problem of declining fertility rates in Australia and other western nations. An article by D.A. Coleman claims that in the 1970s women in European societies with high levels of workforce participation tended to have fewer births. By the 1990s this relationship had reversed. Nowadays women in employment in Norway and Sweden are just as likely to have a third child as those who stay home to keep house. Nevertheless a recent reduction in benefits has seen a decline in Swedens birth rate.

Peter McDonald contributes an article in which he claims that most women want at least two children. Our falling fertility rate is due to the high cost of children, the risk of making long-term commitments in the face of an uncertain future, and the uneven nature of gender equity, especially in regard to taxation and welfare when a woman leaves the workforce to have children. He points out that if families on average have only one child then after three generations the latest generation will be an eighth the size of the first. The total fertility rate (TFR) for 1999 is about 1.73 and this is still higher than many other western countries but it looks like it will decline.

Rosangelo Merlo and Don Rowland look at the prevalence of childlessness now and in the past. The proportion of women who never had children was highest among those born in the late nineteenth century although recently there has been an increase in those remaining childless. A century ago the higher fertility rate made up for those who did not have children. This is not the case today.

An article by Bob Birrell points out that part of the reason for declining fertility in Australia has been the fall in the proportion of young women who are married. Off setting this to some extent has been the increase in single motherhood. Married or otherwise, it is the poorer and less educated women who are having the most children nowadays. By and large the poorest families are those with a lone unemployed parent raising one or more children. The best-off are those with no children and both partners working.

ETHNIC CHANGES

Dr Charles Price has brought out a monograph type publication called "Australians All: Who on Earth Are We?" with a large number of statistics on immigration and ethnicity. He points out that although the Anglo-Celtic component is shrinking and migrants from the British Isles have declined proportionately this has been offset to some extent by migrants of British descent coming from New Zealand and South Africa. On the other hand we have not only been taking in fewer migrants from Italy and Greece but in at least half of the last thirty years more have returned to these countries than have arrived. The Middle Eastern component has grown, not only by immigration but also due to the high birth rates among migrants from the Middle East. Price estimates that by the year 2025 the Anglo-Celtic component in our population will shrink from 69.88% in 1999 to 62.24%. Over the same period the other Europeans will drop from 18.21% to 15.6%, while the East Asian component will grow from 5.26% to 12.1%.

Dr Price makes the slightly eccentric statement that he personally doesn't mind the ethnic changes provided "Australian values" remain. How can radical ethnic changes come about without cultural changes, including community values?

PAULINE HANSON RETURNS

Pauline Hanson and her One Nation Party is on the comeback trail and this has been evidenced by an article in The Bulletin (29/8/00) and a recent Background Briefing Program on Radio National. The party is being re-registered in Queensland and New South Wales. It was never in danger as a Federal Party as it was registered when Hanson was a Member of Federal Parliament.

Apart from the de-registrations the main problems faced by One Nation have been internal. Nevertheless there is still plenty of support for Hanson; her fighting fund has attracted $400,000 although she still owes $250,000 to the Electoral Commission. As The Bulletin article admits the fighting fund would not have been helped by big business. On the other hand of the eleven One Nation members elected to the Queensland Parliament in 1998, one committed suicide, five defected to become independents and the other five defected to form the City Country Alliance. This leaves one PHON senator (Len Harris) and one Legislative Councillor in NSW (David Oldfield). Even Oldfield seems to be on the outer at the moment over his attempt to found two new parties, the No GST Party and the No Nuclear Dumps Party.

Then there are the tactical mistakes made by Hanson herself. Perhaps the most obvious was her decision to run for a House of Reps seat in 1998 instead of the Senate. She would not only have gained the Senate seat but having her on the ticket could possibly have attracted more votes and allowed another PHON senator to be elected. Trying to become the MHR for Blair allowed Labor and Liberal a chance to gang up on her in a way they could not have been able to with the, more-or-less, proportional representation system used to elect the Senate. It also led some naive PHON members into thinking that they would be better off without proportional voting when in fact proportional voting suits small parties more than does first-past-the-post voting.

Hanson was depicted in the Background Briefing program as vindictive and out for revenge. Revenge on the major parties that ganged up on her in 1998 and revenge on the Queensland MPs who defected. This could lead to more tactical errors. The major parties are hardly likely to give PHON their preferences and it would make sense for all PHON candidates to put them at the bottom of the how-to-vote cards whether they are sitting members or not. But preferences are important and if Hanson and her party are to succeed realpolitik must prevail, even if this means swapping preferences with the City Country Alliance. In a tightly fought electorate a few preferences could mean the difference between winning or losing. For that matter PHON should seek out any minor parties or independents with similar policies to theirs and try to obtain their preferences as well.

Pauline Hanson had the courage to bring up topics that others would not. Her success in attracting support probably had something to do with the Howard government bringing many Aboriginal welfare benefits into line with those given to others in the community and may have spurred their harder line on illegal immigrants. It would be a pity if PHON had to stay on the sidelines. Hanson and her party have shown that they have a lot of support in the community and if the party and its campaigns are managed properly they can become an important part of the Australian political scene.

SCIENCE

DID THE ORIGINAL AMERICANS COME FROM EUROPE?

In a previous issue we reviewed an article in Discover magazine that suggested that Europeans first settled in America thousands of years before Columbus or the Vikings. This could mean that the real indigenous people of America were white. Recently another magazine, American Scientist published an article looking at the genetic evidence for early settlement in the Americas. Here is the gist of the article.

The ancestors of American Indians are generally thought to have arrived from Asia about 12,000 years ago. Much of the evidence is contradictory. For instance the famous Kennewick man appears to be of Caucasian origin although he died in America thousands of years ago. Artefacts found by archaeologists in North America have been dated as far back as 11,000 to 14,000 years ago. Others found in South America are believed to be as old or maybe even older. Linguistic research indicates entry in the Americas anywhere from 12,000 to 35,000 years ago. Research on nuclear DNA genes gave a date of 30,000 years ago and research on dental variation indicates the emergence of ancestral Amerindians 18,000 to 20,000 years ago. Most of the research seems to have added to the confusion. It is generally agreed that most of the ancestors of the American Indians were from Asia. Research using mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) seems to confirm this.

Mitochondria are tiny bodies that exist in most animal cells. Although they are outside the nucleus of the cell they have a small amount of DNA which can be used to trace ancestries and compare the relationship between different populations of a particular species. Mitochondrial DNA is maternally inherited and its study could be said to be the study of female genetic history. The reason it is used instead of nuclear DNA is that it does not appear to undergo a recombination during division (as happens with nuclear DNA). This means that mutations accumulate in a steady chronological fashion within maternal lineages. Hence it appears possible to reconstruct branching of female lineages along the accumulated changes in their mtDNA.

It is also possible to use the presence of identical mutations in mtDNA from different populations to show relationships and evidence of past migrations. For instance if the same mutation occurs in geographically separated groups this could be an indication of common ancestry or contact between the groups. An accumulation of unique changes in a group could indicate long term isolation from other populations.

There seem to be five founding mtDNA lineages that can be used to trace the ancestry of American Indians. Four of these have been designated A, B, C and D. One or more of these are found in the native Indian populations of North, Central and South America. They are also found in a number of populations in Siberia, Mongolia, Korea and even northern Japan. The lineages are not distributed evenly between either American Indian populations or the Asian populations. Some populations have only one lineage, while others have two, three or four. This has been taken to indicate that there have been at least two distinct migrations from Asia the Americas.

The most interesting mtDNA lineage among American Indians however is that designated X. This is similar to one found among Europeans and once was thought to indicate intermixing that occurred after Columbus reached the Americas in 1492. Further research found mutations that indicate the American Indian X lineage is actually very ancient. More evidence of this is that four distinct sublineages of X have been found among American Indian populations which indicates that X has been in the Americas long enough to have undergone considerable genetic diversification. There is no evidence of the mtDNA lineage X in the Asian populations. This indicates a very ancient connection between America and Europe. In fact the people who brought this lineage could have arrived in the Americas more than 18,000 years ago.

The article in American Scientist hypothesises that the X lineage was brought by a migration across what is now the Bering Sea or thereabouts. It does not consider the possibility of prehistoric Europeans crossing the Atlantic despite the fact that the X lineage is found most commonly among Algonkian-speaking Indians in the eastern United States.

Politically the matters discussed in the article are very contentious although it does not go into this. If two distinct races settled the Americas thousands of years ago how can one be called indigenous. The term implies that a certain race arrived before any other humans. From the evidence the Asian ancestors of the Indians did not come at the one time but there were a number of migrations, maybe thousands of years apart. This would mean that some American Indians are more indigenous than others. Then there is the possibility that Europeans arrived before any of the Asian groups. This would mean that the only real indigenous Americans are those showing the mtDNA lineage X. If later arriving Asian descended Indians can claim to be indigenous then why can't the descendants of Europeans who arrived after Columbus. After all they were of the same race as those who brought in the original X lineage. The whole concept of indigenous people starts to look pretty silly.

NOTABLE QUOTES

"..many PC intellectuals also feel a deep resentment that they themselves exert insufficient power in society. One of their favourite theorists has been French Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser, who argued that in advanced capitalist societies the old instruments such as the army and police used by ruling classes to keep down the masses have become far less important than in the past, whereas educational institutions and the media have become far more important. Althusser termed this the replacement of the Repressive State Apparatus by an Ideological State Apparatus. These forces do exert far more influence than ever before, but it is mainly the PC, not any rightwing groups, who control them."

Geoffrey Partington "Political Correctness Reconsidered" Quadrant, June 2000

"One of the ways in which a democracy can distinguish itself from any kind of totalitarian political system is in the apolitical nature of its systems of education"

Giles Auty "Postmodernisms Assault on Western Culture" Quadrant, June 2000

BOOK REVIEWS

"HATING WHITEY and Other Progressive Causes" by David Horowitz, Spence Publishing Company, Dallas 1999 (ISBN 1-890626-21-X)

David Horowitz, author of "Hating Whitey" and an earlier work "Radical Son" attempts an honest look at the race question in the United States.

Back in the sixties, Horowitz was something of a leftie, supporting Civil Rights and associating with the extremist Negroes called the Black Panthers. Although he claims not to be a racist and actually has a number of black relatives he has moved to the right. Horowitz appears disillusioned with black radicalism but claims to be consistent in his ideas on race. In the 1960s he opposed race preferences and he still opposes them. Nowadays that means opposing affirmative action. It also means opposing anti-white racism that has developed among leftist academics and many so-called liberals.

This anti-white hatred has got to the point where an academic magazine called "Race Traitor" has emerged with the motto: "Treason to Whiteness is Loyalty to Humanity". According to the people who produce this nonsense, "whiteness" is the principal scourge of mankind and the white race should be abolished. Some even call for another American civil war. Horowitz, a Jew himself, reminds us that Jews, Arabs, Armenians as well as Europeans are lumped together as whites and hence all suffer the same denigration.

As Horowitz points out, anyone who purveyed anti-black attitudes would be thrown out of any liberal institution in America. In the same institutions anti-white racism is not only tolerated but also encouraged.

This hypocrisy shows up in the media. When James Byrd, a black man, was murdered in what appears to have a racially motivated crime, the event was broadly reported. America was outraged. About a year before the Byrd murder, three white teenagers in Michigan made the mistake of getting off the train in a black neighbourhood. They were surrounded by a group of blacks who killed one, a fourteen-year-old boy. Another one, a fourteen-year-old girl was forced to perform oral sex and then shot in the face. The other white teenager was beaten and shot but managed to survive. Six blacks were arrested and charged over the incident but it was not prosecuted as a hate crime. The incident was barely reported in the press and, in the few cases where it was, the racial nature of the crime was not mentioned. No public outrage was expressed.

Of all the inter-racial crimes in America 85% are committed by blacks against whites. How many are the result of black racism? According to the politically correct, "only whites can be racist". No doubt such attitudes serve to exacerbate the problem. Its not only whites who suffer from black racism; during the 1992 riots in Los Angeles, 2000 Korean business were destroyed because they were not "black owned".

Affirmative action favouring blacks has tended to be rolled back in recent years. In fact racial preferences have been made illegal in some states. Generally the drop in the proportion of blacks entering college has not dropped significantly. In fact as Horowitz points out, blacks seemed to have been making more progress before affirmative action than after it was introduced around 1970. For instance the black poverty rate fell from 87% to 47% between 1940 and 1960 five years before the Civil Rights Act was passed. Similarly black college enrolments increased rapidly in the decade before affirmative action began. One of the main results of introducing racial preferences was that black students had drop out rates up to three times that of white students. In the few colleges that did not introduce affirmative action the failure rates for blacks and whites was almost the same.

An important section of the book deals with the Black Panthers. Horowitz supported and worked with the Panthers during his radical years. Subsequently he has changed his views. His doubts about them began in the 1970s when he met black radicals like Elaine Brown and Huey Newton, leader of the Panthers. On page 96 of the book Horowitz writes:

"I will never forget standing next to Elaine, as I did months later in growing horror, as she threatened KQED-TV host Bill Schechner over the telephone. "I will kill you motherf----r", she promised him, if he went through with plans to interview the former Panther Chairman, Bobby Seale. Seale had gone into hiding after Huey expelled him from the Party that August. As I learned long afterwards, Seale had been whipped literally and then personally sodomized by Huey with such violence that he had to have his anus surgically repaired by a Pacific Heights doctor who was a political supporter of the Panthers. A party member told me later, "You have to understand, it had nothing to do with sex. It was power." But in the Panther world, as I also came to learn, nothing was about anything except power."

Horowitz goes into other crimes committed by the black radicals, including murder and drugs. When any of these crimes came to light the finger was generally pointed at the white establishment in justifying black crime.

Horowitz also turns his attention to the falling standards in Americas universities. Campuses have become dominated by the left and academic life politicised to reflect this. Courses on racism and imperialism have replaced those on writing and literature. Students are taught Marxism and the "social construction" of scientific truths. Anti-white extremists like Angela Davis or Nation of Islam spokesman, Khalid Muhammad are actually paid to come on campus and propagate their politically-correct racism. Conservatives are rarely invited and often face harassment by demonstrators when they do approach campus. To make things more ridiculous some of these hated conservatives are black.

In addition to the black-white race issue, the book deals with Americas defence problems and Bill Clinton. The chapter on Clinton emphasises Clintons relationship with the Chinese. There is evidence that Clinton owes his political life to the Chinese Communists and their agents, business associates, and friends. It appears that a Chinese banker gave hundreds of thousands to Clinton's 1992 campaign and later arranged a $3.5 million loan. Its no wonder than Clinton's administration was soft on Chinese spies.

Horowitz has certainly changed his views from three decades ago. But what about others who once shared the same ideas. Horowitz feels many will not change from their leftist stance. As he says at the end of the book:

"A century of broken dreams and the slaughters they spawned would, in the end, teach nothing to those who had no reason to hear. Least of all would it cure them of their hunger for a romance that is really a desire not to know who or what we are."

 

 

"WHY RACE MATTERS: Race Differences and What They Mean" by Michael Levin, Praeger, Westport, Connecticut 1997 (ISBN 0-275-95789-6)

In previous issues we looked at books like Philippe Rushtons "Race, Evolution and Behavior" which described intellectual, personality and behavioural differences between racial groups. Some people have looked at this question and said "so what?". In "Why Race Matters" Michael Levin, a Professor of Philosophy at the City College of New York answers that question.

Levin, like a number of other writers, points out that black Americans tend to fall well behind whites in educational and economic outcomes. The black illegitimacy rate has risen to nearly 70%, 42% of black children live in poverty, the majority of black households are headed by women and the majority of those women are on welfare. Blacks are disproportionately involved in crime and make up a disproportionate number of the homeless. Whites on the other hand have to pay taxes for the welfare, medical services and schools used by indolent blacks.

Not only do whites pay for black welfare but they are expected to feel guilty; in other words accept the blame for black problems. Blacks are told that white oppression is the cause of their problems, hence fueling their resentment. But, Levin explains:

"black poverty and educational failure are inequities only if the races do not differ. Should biological race differences exist, the arrangements complained of may be equitable after all."

Levin looks at the evidence for those differences. There has found to be a significant difference in the I.Q. scores of Caucasian children and those children of African (or Australian Aboriginal) descent. There has found to be a correlation between I.Q. and brain size. Brain and head size are hardly likely to affected by socialisation. Furthermore the scores of people of mixed African/Caucasian descent tend to be intermediate between the scores of Africans and Caucasians. Scores on I.Q. tests also correlate negatively with involvement in crimes of violence and robbery, which are disproportionately committed by blacks. Studies comparing the scores of identical twins adopted out to different families show a high correlation despite the differences in environment.

Sometimes racism has been used as an explanation for poor I.Q. scores among blacks. Studies of black children adopted into white families showed that in their early years at school they scored better than black children in black families. This would seem to refute the claim that whites are responsible for poor scores of blacks. Unfortunately as the black adoptees matured their scores tended to drop nearer to the black average. Other personality tests showed many of the black adoptees as being in the clinically deviant range, as were about the same proportion of the biological offspring. It could be that rearing in close proximity to black children adversely affects white children.

The evidence shows that the black/white difference in I.Q. is substantially inherited. There is even evidence that other personality traits such as impulsiveness, extraversion and tendency to follow rules are all partly inherited.

In another section Levin talks of group behaviour. Collective behaviour transcends and constrains individuals. People act differently when in a group than when they are not in a group. Yet while a groups existence is independent of any one of its members, it is not independent of all of them. A group cannot exist without the individuals who comprise that group. To quote Levin directly:

"Traits of a group are functions of the traits of its members.. It therefore makes perfect sense to seek to explain a group phenomenon via the characteristics of the groups constituent individuals, and equally good sense to suppose that some of those characteristics are genetically influenced. There can therefore be two-step genetic explanations of group phenomena: from genes to individual traits, and then from individual traits to group traits. This is the structure of genetic explanations of cultures, and cross-cultural differences in particular, differences between cultures composed of different races."

Levin looks at the term "racist" noting that simply calling something, such as an attitude, action or ideology, racist is enough to have it condemned. Logically the attitude or whatever should have first been shown to be racist but this is generally not bothered with. The term racist is not used to explain but rather to close down discussion.

"Calling claims of genetic race differences "racist", in particular, begs not one but four questions: (1) Are race differences in themselves bad? (2) Is believing in race differences bad? (3) Is saying there are race differences bad? (4) Is studying race differences bad? Once it is realized than an affirmative answer to each of these questions must be established before the charge of racism can be made to stick, the charge itself collapses."

In dealing with the question of justice, Levin points out that while there are thousands of blacks from the Third World entering the United States each year, legally or illegally, there is no great rush by American blacks to migrate to Haiti or Rwanda.

American blacks suffer disproportionately from crime, marital instability and illegitimacy but has this anything to do with racism or oppression by whites? During World War II the Germans lost hundreds of thousands of people due to Allied bombing, a quarter of their men were killed, hundreds of thousands of their women were raped by Russians and millions were ethnically cleansed. Yet 30 years later Germany was an economic super power and Germans had only a fraction of the problems American blacks suffered. Blacks in the US pay about 6% of total income tax collected by their government but receive over 40% of total welfare. Whites are paying excessive taxes to subsidise black living standards. Added to this is the cost of crime, disproportionately committed by blacks. Even without affirmative action blacks are getting the better of the deal.

Not only are blacks more likely to be criminals but they are more likely to be the aggressor in inter-racial crime. Levin quotes statistics to back up this assertion. Of all the aggravated assaults against blacks, 81.7% are committed by other blacks, only 13.1% are committed by whites. There seems to be a preference among blacks for white victims. Over 97% of crime by whites is committed against other whites. Half to two-thirds of black crime is committed against whites. In 1992 white Americans murdered 392 blacks in total, but blacks murdered 1,216 whites. The level of interracial rape is astonishing. Blacks commit about 40% of the rapes in the US; almost half the victims are white. Only 3% of the victims of white rapists are black. Its been estimated that 80-90% of all interracial crime is black-on-white. Is it any wonder that whites may try to avoid blacks or the areas where they live? Is it immoral for whites to shun blacks when it is obviously more dangerous to associate with blacks than whites? As Levin says:

"Nobody would care about race if blacks and whites were alike in every way except skin color. But they arent, and that is why race is noticed."

In other words: race matters.

How relevant are Levin,s arguments for Australians? We are often told that we owe our indigenous people a lot for "dispossession" and past discrimination, but what about all the positive discrimination and affirmative action that has occurred over the last 25 years or so? The low income levels of Aborigines (and a number of migrant minorities) mean they pay fewer taxes but are more likely to draw welfare benefits. Crime by minorities, indigenous or migrant, is a burden on the rest of the community. And is it wrong, or racist, to want to live in a white, Anglo neighbourhood if that means we are less likely to be a victim of crime?

Levin's book is demanding and complex. This short review can hardly give justice to it. It is also an expensive book and a copy would cost well over $AU100 at present. Hopefully a cheaper softcover edition will become available. In the meantime I recommend that you harass your local librarian for a copy.

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