The More Things Change, The More They Stay The Same

THE MYTH OF DIVERSITY

by Jared Taylor American Renaissance (Part V of VI)

Other Races

Generally speaking whatever timid opposition to diversity that ever arises is characterized as the whining of resentful, ignorant whites. Non-whites are thought to have a better appreciation of the importance of inclusiveness. This is just so much more nonsense. Now that immigration has added Hispanics and Asians to the traditional black-white racial mix, fault lines are forming in all directions.

Though we are told over and over that it is ignorance and lack of contact that cause antipathy, it is groups that have the most contact that most dislike each other. This is why "outreach" and "bridge building" do not work, as even the New York Times unintentionally revealed in a June 18, 1990 headline: "Ethnic Feuding Divides Parade for Harmony."

The idea that hostility is cured through contact is now enshrined as part of the diversity myth. George Orwell touched on this in his essay, England Your England:

"During the war of 1914-1918 the English working class were in contact with foreigners to an extent that is rarely possible. The sole result was that they brought back a hatred of all Europeans, except the Germans, whose courage they admired."

In America one need not go overseas to have contact with foreigners. What has been the result? In Chicago, Los Angeles, Detroit, and New York City, blacks have tried to drive Korean merchants out of their neighborhoods. They firebomb stores, assault shop keepers, and mount boycotts against "people who don't look like us." In Los Angeles, relations were so bad that in 1986 a Black-Korean Alliance was formed to reduce tensions. It staggered on uselessly until late 1992, when it was dissolved in mutual recrimination and accusations. The more blacks and Koreans talked to each other the angrier they got.
There are now schools and school districts completely dominated by blacks and Hispanics, which have race wars involving no whites at all. Some examples? Locke High School in Los Angeles is almost exactly half-black and half-Hispanic. In February, 1996, 50 police officers had to be called in to break up a pitched battle involving hundreds of students. After order was finally restored and school dismissed, police in riot gear had to keep students from rejoining battle in the streets. What touched off the battle? Hispanics were annoyed--certainly not "enriched"--by the February observances of Black History Month.

A similar incident took place at Los Angeles' North Hollywood High School, when it took police in riot gear to calm a melee that started when an estimated 200 to 700 black and Hispanic students pitched into each other. The spark was reportedly a clash over what kind of music to play at the homecoming dance, neither side having felt particularly "inclusive."

Norman Thomas High School is located at Park Avenue and 33rd Street in Manhattan. In 1992, tension between blacks and Hispanics erupted into a free-for-all involving both boys and girls. "The only thing people cared about was skin color," explained one 16-year-old. The New York City Board of Education has "rapid mobilization guards" for just such emergencies.

Farragut High School in Chicago is two-thirds Hispanic and one third black. Recently, racial tension built up to what the principal called "total polarization," and it became dangerous to let students mix without police supervision. At the height of the tension, extracurricular activities were canceled for 30 days and the school's homecoming football game had to be played without a single student in the stands, for fear they would attack each other.

In Huntsville, Texas, Hispanic students say they need to arm themselves against violent blacks. In Dallas, Hispanic parents say their children are afraid to go to school for fear of attacks by blacks. Tensions of this kind are usually reported only in local newspapers, and are probably quite widespread.

There is the same racial animosity in jails. Guards keep some cell blocks in a near-constant state of lock-down because blacks and Hispanics kill each other if they are allowed to mingle. Life in prison is more intensely integrated than anywhere else in the country. If diversity is such a good thing why is racial segregation always one of the top demands when prisoners list their grievances?

Of course, high-school fistfights and jailhouse brawls are nothing compared to what can happen when diversity really goes wrong. In the summer of 1967, 83 people were killed and nearly 2,000 injured when blacks rioted all across the country. The national guard had to be called out to stop violence in Tampa, Cincinnati, Atlanta, Newark, northern New Jersey, and Detroit.

Nor are race riots a relic from the 1960s. The single worst outbreak in the nation's history was in Los Angeles in 1992, when rioters killed 58 people and injured more than 2,300. They also burned 5,300 buildings, causing nearly a billion dollars in damage. There was smaller-scale violence--all of it directed at whites--in Atlanta, Las Vegas, New York City, and Richmond and San Jose, California.

The Los Angeles riots showed that Hispanics can behave as badly as blacks. Although the grievance was ostensibly about a miscarriage of justice for the black criminal, Rodney King, more than half of the 15,000 people arrested for looting were Hispanic.

"Diversity" can pit one set of Hispanics against another. Puerto Ricans in Miami have rioted, claiming to have been excluded by the city's Cuban power structure. "Cubans get everything; we get nothing," explained one rioter. The greater the diversity, the more varied the possibilities for disaffection and violence.

There has been a Sahara of hot air about why blacks riot, with the official pronouncement on reasons dating back to the Kerner Commission Report of 1968: "[T]he most fundamental is the racial attitude and behavior of white Americans toward black Americans." Whatever one may think of this finding, there is one conclusion no one can deny: Race riots cannot happen without racial diversity.

An occasional glance at a newspaper is all it takes to learn that diversity of the kind that is supposed to benefit the United States is a problem wherever it is found. Every large-scale and intractable blood-letting, be it in the Middle East, Ireland, Burundi, or the former Yugoslavia is due to "diversity," that is to say, people who differ from each other trying to live in the same territory.

Most of the time, the reasons for discord are not even as salient as race. They can be religion, language, or ethnicity. From time to time, Americans have fought each other for these reasons, but race is the deepest, most constant source of antipathy. Unlike language or religion, race cannot change. Differences between men that are written deep into their bodies will always be a source of friction.