Jared Taylor's book "Paved with good intentions" (subtitled: ‘The Failure of Race Relations in contemporary America’) defends the a thesis that benefits, beforehand at least, from its clarity – its main thrust: in the U.S. there first was slavery, followed by a period of white rule. The civil right laws of the 60’s lead to a colorblind, integrated society, but silently they rapidly transformed into a system of reversed racial preferences, which was regarded as ‘positive’. The injustice blacks had endured for so many years had to be compensated, so the theory went, by preferential treatment, for the sake of justice and/or because earlier repression had psychologically and socially dislocated them to such an extent that they wouldn't be able to make it without a helping hand. The strength of Taylor's book is the - typically American - well-documented, sober enumeration of the ever occurring examples of the present racist nature of American society. Racist? Yes - anti-white racism. Because this is at the core of the book, we will give a number of such examples. 

Juries, whose members mostly are blacks or Latin-Americans, very often find a defendant who belongs to their race not guilty. The validity of white police officers' testimony is systematically doubted. And - this is a theme that can be found throughout the book - the media hardly reacts to this! If a reverse case can be found ("White jury renounces testimony of a black police officer and finds the white defendant not guilty") then the whole country erupts. In the Bronx, New York, it is, in criminal legal cases, an advantage to be black. 

Mayor Barry of Washington D.C., a Black, lead one of the most corrupt municipalities of the last decades. For years, no one cared. Finally, he carried it too far even for the low contemporary moral standards, and was charged. His defense consisted of shouting ‘racism’ and comparing himself with other persecuted men in history; Jesus and Gandhi. Convicted in the end, he talked of "political lynching". And how did the entire Black establishment, including, among others, Jesse Jackson and Washington's three Black weekly papers react? With statements like: "He was too intelligent and too black” - “He was the victim of a nazi-style perseecution, of a vendetta against those in authority who dare to charge injustice" etc etc. 

If a random group of people is asked whether it thinks blacks are less intelligent than whites, only a minority of them will answer this question with a ‘yes’. But this minority is relatively larger among blacks than among whites. How can THAT be explained? A scientist at the University of California offers an explanation; it is because white people have created an all-enfolding ideology of black inferiority. Whites apparently succeeded in convincing blacks of something that whites do not even believe themselves. 

Generally known is the fact that Asian immigrants in the US have been subjected to a similar form of racism as blacks. However, in contradiction to blacks, Asians managed to improve their conditions. The reaction of many blacks was not to study how the Asians had managed to do this, and to take it as an example, but simply to regard Asians as racist exploiters too. In the occasional riots, Asians are also dealt with, their stores plundered and set afire. 

Ask an average European if he thinks if racism is still alive in the US and he will give you an affirmative answer, maybe referring to Rodney King, So it is enligthening to learn how Jared Taylor presents the case. What the media has shown the world is a 20 second video footage, in which Rodney King can be seen lying on the ground, while four white policemen beat him up. But here is how the events really really unfolded. Rodney King was a criminal with a huge criminal record. On the 3rd of May, 1991, free on bail, he drove while he was drunk, speeding through the better areas of L.A. A police officer noticed him and gave him a sign indicating him to stop. King refused to do so and took the police on a chase at a speed of almost 200 kilometers per hour, through stop signals and red traffic-lights. Finally he was forced into a kerb. The police officers cautiously approached his car. He reacted with outrageous behaviour - obscene gestures, spitting, and manical laughter. He ignored an order to lay down on the ground (so that the police would be able to hand-cuff him). The officers then decided to overpower him by force. First they used an electronic rifle, which usually causes the person to go down. But on King it didn't have any effect. A stranglehold might have been the best method, but it was forbidden by the L.A. city council in 1982 after drug abusers died as a result of its use. Well, then the old-fashioned baton. That got King on the ground, but he kept resisting and trying to get up. He was repeatedly beaten until he kept still. Of this whole incident, an 81 second video was shot. Typically just the last 20 seconds were shown again and again - the 20 seconds during which King was already lying more or less passive on the ground. The only conclusion one could draw was that maybe the police officers should have realised the following some seconds earlier (20 at most): “We've got him now and we don't have to beat him any further”. Please keep in mind that even this altercation didn't keep King from continuing with his obscenities and his hysterical laughter, while he was on his way to a hospital, and that paramedical examination showed he had only superficial injuries. And this is, in a nutshell, the case to which maybe millions of people all over the world will refer to, in order to show that white racism is still very much alive in the U.S. A bit thin, isn't it? 

The interpretation the author gives to all of this has already partly been mentioned. According to him, the end of segregation was founded on a silent agreement in the 60's, that all Americans would give up their racial consciousness. There would only be "American individuals". White people largely kept their part of the agreement, even in the South, where nobody thought that would have been possible. The blacks, on the other hand, judged that it was more useful not to give up their racial consciousness, but to do the opposite; they decided to use their status as a repressed race to enlarge their racial consciousness. Hence the statement, which seems to be a bad joke at first glance, but one which is defended mainly by blacks, but also by some whites, that "racism", as a definition, can only be a white phenomenon "black racism doesn't exist". 

Factually this a very sound book. It ought to be widely read within the US, and outside of it. Many of the charges levelled in it are, mutatis mutandis, even valid for our Western-European societies. The mentality behind all of this exists even among us and has, by the way, been portrayed for the Netherlands in a less scientific but very amusing and ironic manner by Bart Croughs in his book "In naam van de vrouw, de homo en de allochtoon" ("In name of the woman, the homosexual and the immigrant"). 

But what does Jared Taylor want to do about this? In what direction should America move? The solution he proposes in this book is simple... and somewhat disappointing. He pleads for the preservation and implementation of, let's call it, "The Martin Luther King compact". No racial consciousness anymore - not among whites, and not among blacks. Just colorless and colorblind individuals and their "pursuit of happiness". Where many right-wing commentors pay at least some lip service to the value of "black consciousness" - (if only to legitimate their own "white consciousness") - I was looking forward to such an addition, at least a rhetorical one, in this book - but it didn't come. Taylor sticks to the typical American individualist-conservative point of view. 

It is remarkable that Taylor (although there is no reference at all to this on the book cover) is the chief editor of "American Renaissance" which, not surprisingly, attaches much importance to racial factors, but from quite a different perspective. In AR racial consciousness is, all of a sudden, a normal and valuable thing, especially the racial consciousness of whites. In some places we could even label this as feelings of white superiority. It seems there are two Taylors; the former is the colorblind author of "Paved with good intentions" - the latter the very white conscious editor of AR... There is probably an easy explanation for this; with his book Taylor aims at a "middle of the road" audience, so he wants to avoid anything that might label him as a radical right-winger or a white racialist. In AR he addresses his own people, so he feels more free to speak his mind. I do not feel much sympathy for such a strategic split; people who just state their opinion, and only observe what others think of it afterwards, are more to my taste. But if I had to choose between Taylor, "the colorblind individualist", or Taylor "the white nationalist"? Well, I think I wouldn't choose either of them. 

My choice, not suprisingly to the regular readers of this column, is for the division of the giant monster societies into smaller entities, which would, quite naturally, be homogeneous. A certain degree of racial homogeneity would also be an integral part of these small societies - the smaller the social entity, the more racially homogeneous it will be. Colorblindness (both literal and figurative) is a defect and should certainly not be promoted. But looking down on other groups is just as indesirable. That blacks do not perform well in white American society simply indicates that maybe this society does not really fit them. And, who knows, maybe white Americans themselves could do themselves a favor by looking into some aspects of their society as well. 

"Blank en zwart in Amerika" translated into English by T. Jonsson

Jared Taylor : Paved with good Intentions - The failure of Race Relations in contemporary America
- New York, Carroll & Graf, 416 blz, $22.95,
ISBN 0-88184-866-