Sunday, December 31, 2006

Habeas what-us?

Oy.
At one end of a converted trailer in the U.S. military detention center at Guantánamo Bay, a graying Pakistani businessman sat shackled before a review board of uniformed officers, pleading for his freedom.

The prisoner had seen only a brief summary of what officials said was a thick dossier of intelligence linking him to al-Qaida. He had not seen his own legal papers since they were taken away in an unrelated investigation. He has lawyers working on his behalf in Washington, London and Pakistan, but at Guantánamo his only assistance came from an Army lieutenant colonel, who stumbled as he read the prisoner's handwritten statement.

As the hearing concluded, the detainee, who cannot be identified publicly under military rules, had one question. He is a citizen of Pakistan, he noted. He was arrested on a business trip to Thailand. On what authority or charges was he even being held?

"That question," a Marine colonel presiding over the panel answered, "is outside the limits of what this board is permitted to consider."

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Friday, December 29, 2006

Friday Dead Racist Blogging: Evolution Edition

No one ever saw a Negro, Mongol, or Indian, born from any but his own species. Has any one heard of an Indian child born from white or black parents in America, during more than two centuries that these races have been living here? Is not this brief and simple statement of the case sufficient to satisfy any one, that the diversity of species now seen on the earth, cannot be accounted for on the assumption of congenital or accidental origin?

--Josiah Clark Nott, Types of Mankind, p. 58.

As I remarked to my brother when I read this, it's exactly the same logic bandied about still by creationists who try to deny evolution: "You never see a dog give birth to a cat, or a cat to a kangaroo. Therefore evolution isn't true." I was just amused to see it applied to proving that the races of mankind were different species.

I should probably note that Nott wasn't a Biblical literalist; in fact, he railed against the Bible and people who used passages from it to defend monogenism. However, though he didn't accept Bishop Usher's chronology exactly, he didn't deviate from it much, and believed that humanity was only several thousand years old. Therefore, the fact that races were distinct several thousand years ago was proof that they were fixed and permanent, and couldn't have all evolved from common ancestors. After Darwin published, and the span of humanity went from thousands to millions of years, Nott found evolution and monogenism more palatable. As William Stanton says in The Leopard's Spots,
Nott himself recognized the damage done by the Darwinian time scale and told a friend that he "would not have published" Types of Mankind "if the pre-historic period of men had been so firmly established" then "as it is at the present day."

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Monday, December 25, 2006

I, um... I don't think so

Now we know the real threat to gays. It's not AIDS, or Christians, or Muslims--it's themselves.
The young man, in this interview, confirmed what many Jamaicans have known all along but which some human rights and gay rights groups have tried to convince the world was the opposite - that most of the murders of gay men in Jamaica are committed by their lovers.

"Let me tell you something, all the violence of the number of gay men who have been killed in the last two to three years has not taken place because of hate crime. It's passionate crime, a jealous situation," he says, pointing out that some of the cases, including the killing of gay rights activist Brian Williamson, were cold-blooded murder.

Why is this, you may ask? Because gay people are mentally damaged, of course!
"Our love is unusual. It's not normal, and the passion, it's a passion for somebody.we don't even want our partner to have a best friend, to even be close to somebody, the moment we realise we start assuming. We say, 'You a talk to dis one and you a cheat pon mi', so insecurity, lack of confidence and trust. In rational sense, I have acknowledged in this gay life, there is never somebody you must call a hundred per cent yours, never."

And their evidence for this blatant lie? Well, first they have the above testimony, given by some random 22 year-old gay man. Of course, they keep him anonymous and the only credentials he has that might give him any reason to be trusted on this is that he has gained a "foothold ... in the gay community." After quoting Gareth Williams, "programmes co-ordinator and co-chair of the local gay rights group, Jamaica Forum for Lesbians, All-sexuals and Gays (J-FLAG)", as saying that's a bunch of bull, they refute him with the following statistic: three gay men have allegedly been killed by lovers in Jamaica over the course of four years. They also cite a case from 1985 as evidence, but the men charged (and acquitted) of the crime were two men that the victim had picked up that night. They don't even say if the victim's lover was eventually found guilty of the crime, or even if he had a lover.
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Friday, December 22, 2006

Friday Dead Racist Blogging: Insane Edition

I had been planning on doing a post on a different topic entirely, but I came across this in my book today and couldn't resist writing about it.

In 1840, the sixth census of the United States included for the first time information about the "insane and idiots" of the country. After perusing the data, a remarkable trend was found:
[W]hile there was no appreciable difference between the incidence of insanity among the whites of the North and those of the South, the incidence among Negroes of the Free States was 1 in 162.4, whereas in the South it was only 1 in 1,558. In the North the ratio of insanity between Negroes and whites was 6 to 1. In the South it was 3 to 5.1

Nor was this all. The census showed that in the free state of Maine every fourteenth Negro was afflicted with mental disease or defect, in Michigan every twenty-seventh, in New Hampshire every twenty-eighth, in Massachusetts every forty-third. In contrast, in the deepest South, where slavery was most firmly entrenched, the rate of mental handicap among Negroes ranged from one to 2,117 in Georgia to only one in 4,310 in Louisiana. Finally, New Jersey, with the lowest Negro insanity rate among the free states of the North, had twice the rate of its neighbor Delaware, just below the Mason and Dixon line, which had the poorest showing of all the slave states!2

You can imagine what people did with this knowledge. John Calhoun, then ex-vice president and Senator, triumphantly declared:
Here is the proof of the necessity of slavery. The African is incapable of self-care and sinks into lunacy under the burden of freedom. It is a mercy to him to give him the guardianship and protection from mental death.3

Furthermore,
The census and other authentic documents, show that in all instances in which the states have changed the former relation between the two races the condition of the African, instead of being improved has become worse.4

And Edward Jarvis, who debunked the erroneous findings of the census, wrote in summary that
[t]hroughout the civilized world, the statement has gone forth that, according to the experience of the United States . . . slavery is more than ten-fold more favorable to mental health than freedom . . . The slaves are consoled with the assurance that although another man's will governs them, yet their minds are not bound with insane delusions, nor crushed in idiocy, as are those of their brethren who govern themselves . . .5

This is really just a variation of a common theme--blacks weren't ready for freedom, they were suited to slavery, they were happy as slaves, it was best for them to be kept as slaves. And people attempted to show that they were better off as slaves by showing that they were more prone to disease or criminality as free men. But I think this is the first time I'd heard of people putting forth that freedom would make them more prone to insanity.

1. William Stanton, The Leopard's Spots: Scientific Attitudes Toward Race in America, 1815-59, p. 58
2. Albert Deutsch, "The First U.S. Census of the Insane (1840) and Its Use as Pro-Slavery Propaganda", in Bulletin of the History of Medicine 15 (1944), p. 472
3. Ibid., p. 473
4. Ibid., pp. 477-78
5. Ibid., pp. 474-75

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Tuesday, December 19, 2006

Shocking, no?

James Dobson, of Focus on the Family,
is
a
liar.
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Sunday, December 17, 2006

No more Mr. Nice Prison Guard

Apparently, Guantanamo will soon no longer be the pleasure spa it's been up 'til now:
After two years in which the military sought to manage terrorism suspects at Guantánamo with incentives for good behavior, steady improvements in their living conditions and even dialogue with prison leaders, the authorities here have clamped down decisively in recent months.

Security procedures have been tightened. Group activities have been scaled back. With the retrofitting of Camp 6 and the near-emptying of another showcase camp for compliant prisoners, military officials said about three-fourths of the detainees would eventually be held in maximum-security cells. That is a stark departure from earlier plans to hold a similar number in medium-security units.

Why the change? Because the people imprisoned there are even more vicious than before--or so we must assume, as they'll never be charged with anything.
The commander of the Guantánamo task force, Rear Adm. Harry B. Harris Jr., said the tougher approach also reflected the changing nature of the prison population, and his conviction that all of those now held here are dangerous men. "They're all terrorists; they’re all enemy combatants," Admiral Harris said in an interview.

He added, "I don't think there is such a thing as a medium-security terrorist."

Admiral Harris, who took command on March 31, referred in part to the recent departure from Guantánamo of the last of 38 men whom the military had classified since early 2005 as "no longer enemy combatants." Still, about 100 others who had been cleared by the military for transfer or release remained here while the State Department tried to arrange their repatriation.

[Shortly after Admiral Harris's remarks, another 15 detainees were sent home to Saudi Arabia, where they were promptly returned to their families.]

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Friday, December 15, 2006

Friday Dead Racist Blogging: Quick Post Before My Last Final Edition

Now:
Marriage has nothing to do with race.


Then:
Marriage is clearly a matter in which race difference has a natural and specific operation....

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Thursday, December 14, 2006

*hyperventilates*

Aaaah!
In July 2006, Warner Bros. announced that the first DVD of the U.S. version of Whose Line? would be released on September 26, 2006. It is the first volume of the first season, and two versions have been released. One is a "family-friendly" DVD, which contains the episodes as they were broadcast on ABC, and an uncensored DVD, which holds material more suitable for mature viewers that did not reach the air. Both releases are made up of the first ten episodes of the first season, plus outtakes. Currently the DVD is selling rather well, with the uncensored DVD reaching as high as #22 on Amazon.com's Top Sellers in DVD sales.

Why was I not informed of this!?

Nnng. Russian final in two hours, and I'm thinking about homoerotic improv.
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I'm really not a liar, redux.

Two weeks ago I wrote about Charles Carroll, concluding
Perhaps worst of all is that this work was fairly well-received, from all accounts. I recall reading one contemporary account that called the book the Bible of the poor man, it was so common; unfortunately, I cannot seem to find this quote (and I have spent quite a while looking).

I finally found the quote:
It is difficult to determine what, if any, influence Carroll's ideas enjoyed. In 1909 an observer suggested that The Negro A Beast had "become the Scriptures of tens of thousands of poor whites," who maintained its doctrines "with an appalling stubbornness and persistence." Another reported four years earlier that the book was "said to be securing a very wide circulation among the poor whites of the cotton states."

From Jim Crow's Defense: Anti-Negro Thought in America, 1900-1930 by I.A. Newby.

Newby continues, however,
These opinions, however, are mere surmises, and, since both observers found Carroll's views repulsive, they were inclined perhaps to overstatement. The suggestion that Negroes are beasts of the field was so totally at variance with popular interpretations of the Bible that it probably had little influence among any group, even in the deep South. Carroll was never cited by popular writers, and few racists seem to have read his works.

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Tee-hee.

In my on-going quest to find racist spiels so as to compare past arguments against miscegenation to current arguments against gay marriage, I picked up today from InterLibrary Loan a speech, "A Christian View on Segregation". This was a statement made by Reverend G. T. Gillespie, D.D. (what does that D.D. stand for anyways?) in 1954 (several months after Brown v. Board, incidentally). Later it was disseminated by the Citizens Council of Mississippi as a small, 16-page leaflet.

The copy I have is bound in some sturdier, cardboard cover with an interesting design. But I was very amused when I got to the end and found a stamp proclaiming "Gaylord: Gaylamount ® Pamphlet Binder".
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Wednesday, December 13, 2006

Veganism is destroying America's values!

The WorldNetDaily has discovered what causes homosexuality: soy!
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Monday, December 11, 2006

The American education system at work!

The people at Verizon don't know the difference between .002 dollars and .002 cents.

No, literally. I will quote, verbatim, from the clip, about 15 minutes in:
George: Do you recognize that there's a difference between 1 dollar and 1 cent?
Manager: Definitely.
George: Do you recognize that there's a difference between half a dollar and half a cent?
Manager: Definitely.
George: Then, do you therefore recognize that there's a difference between .002 dollars and .002 cents?
Manager: No.

Mind you, this is around the fifth person he has talked to with this problem, and the second in that sound clip. And at the end, she claims that their disagreement is a "difference of opinion". Frankly, that reeks of creationist ideas to me--where opinions are allowed to be substitutes for facts.

If you don't want to listen through a 25-minute recording, a transcript has been posted here.
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Saturday, December 9, 2006

Your Russian tidbit of the day

The Russian word for Saturday is суббота, from "Sabbath". But following European convention, it's still the sixth day of the week.

I think someone is confused.
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Friday, December 8, 2006

Friday Dead Racist Blogging: Bifurcation Edition

There are no free negroes in the Northern States, Canadas, the West Indies or Africa. They are all in the service of Satan when deprived of the guardianship of the white man.

...

It would not be scoffed abroad if the Christian world could be made to see clearly the momentous truth, that the negro must, from necessity, be the slave of man or the slave of Satan.

--Dr. Samuel Cartwright, "Negro Freedom: An Impossibility under Nature's Laws," DeBow's Review, XXX (May-June, 1861).
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Mindless drivel!

My statistics professor is Russian, so before class yesterday I wrote С Рождеством! (Merry Christmas!) on the board.

Apparently she found this amusing enough that she didn't want to erase it. So she spent the class writing around it--which got to be awkward at times because I'd wrote in fairly large letters.

...no moral to the story, except maybe don't write things on chalkboards.
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Thursday, December 7, 2006

...and the bad news.

Meanwhile, in Latvia, the human rights chairman defended his homophobia by saying that gays aren't a legitimate minority and don't deserve rights:
Janis Smits told a press conference this week that gay people are not a legitimate minority and should "recover normal sexual orientation."

The chairperson of Latvia’s Parliamentary Human Rights and Social Affairs Committee said: "The only thing I can do is call on these people to return from their sins, be healed by God and recover normal sexual orientation. I am consistent.

"I do not call for any activities against homosexual people. God loves all his creatures, also those who have sinned, and all the people need the grace and forgiveness of God," the Baltic News reports.

Sure, you don't call for any activities against gay people; you just don't believe they should be treated like real people.
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Got our foot in the door.

Conservative Judaism's Committee on Jewish Law and Standards held a vote yesterday that allows for same-sex "commitment ceremonies" and the ordination of gay rabbis. They passed three teshuvot, one gay-affirming (to a point) and two not (one apparently decidedly so); all of these are now considered halakhically acceptable, so basically anyone can choose which decision to follow.
The complicated decision by the Conservatives Movement's Committee on Jewish Law and Standards leaves it up to individual seminaries whether to ordain gay rabbis and gives individual rabbis the option of sanctioning same-sex unions. Reform Judaism, the largest branch of the faith in the United States, has ordained openly gay men and lesbians since 1990 and has allowed its rabbis to perform same-sex commitment ceremonies since 2000. Orthodox Judaism does not countenance same-sex relationships or the ordination of gay rabbis.

...

After years of discussion and two days of intense debate behind closed doors at a synagogue on Park Avenue, the law committee accepted three teshuvot, or answers, to the question of whether Jewish law allows homosexual sex. Two answers uphold the status quo, forbidding homosexuality.

But a third answer allows same-sex ceremonies and ordination of gay men and lesbians, while maintaining a ban on anal sex. It argues that the verse in Leviticus saying "a man shall not lie with a man as with a woman" is unclear, but traditionally was understood to bar only one kind of sex between men. All other prohibitions were "added later on by the rabbis," Dorff told reporters.

Naturally, not everyone was pleased with the outcome:
Four of the law committee's 25 members resigned in protest of the decision.

These four included the two authors of the anti-gay positions:
In protest, four conservative rabbis resigned from the law committee, saying that the decision to allow gay ordination violated Jewish law, or halacha. Among them were the authors of the two legal opinions the committee adopted that opposed gay rabbis and same-sex unions.

One rabbi, Joel Roth, said he resigned because the measure allowing gay rabbis and unions was "outside the pale of halachic reasoning."

Roth was the author of one of the anti-gay positions.

Some apparently were just confused:
It takes the votes of just six panel members to declare an answer to be valid -- meaning that it is a well-founded interpretation of Jewish law, not that it is the only legitimate position. Thirteen members voted in favor of allowing gay ordination and same-sex ceremonies, and 13 voted against -- meaning that at least one rabbi voted for both positions.

This wasn't all well and good for gays, of course. The pro-gay position only barely passed, while the other two passed handily:
Levy’s paper passed with six votes - the minimum number required - while the other two garnered more widespread support, each passing handily with 13 votes.

And ones that were completely gay-affirming were flatly rejected, according to the NY Times:
The committee also rejected two measures that argued for a complete lifting of the prohibition on homosexuality, after deciding that both amounted to a "fix" of existing Jewish law, a higher level of change that requires 13 votes to pass, which they did not receive.

And the pro-gay law that did pass says that same-sex couples can be "recognized but not blessed", and gays ordained as rabbis, as long as they don't engage in male-male anal sex. Of course, as some pointed out, "in practice, it is a prohibition that will never be policed."

The very anti-gay position apparently holds that "gay men and lesbians are best advised to find 'restorative therapy' to change their sexual orientation."

So there's a modicum of progress there. I especially enjoyed co-author of the pro-gay position's rationale:
Though stopping short of endorsing same-sex marriage, the rabbis wanted to allow commitment ceremonies "because in Jewish sexual ethics, promiscuity is not acceptable either by heterosexuals or by homosexuals, and we do in fact have both a Jewish and a social and a medical need to try to confirm those unions," said Rabbi Elliot Dorff of Los Angeles, one of the authors of the change.

At least someone recognizes that there's an inconsistency between deriding same-sex relationships for being "promiscuous" while at the same time refusing to affirm monogamous relationships.

I don't believe the full positions have been released; hopefully they will be soon. In the meantime, let's all have a good laugh at this comment on the Washington Post article, in response to someone saying that there should be a "happy medium" between religions changing with the times and maintaining tradition:
The "happy medium" between heaven and hell is what, exactly? Hard to fathom how salvation ever could cease to be relevant.

Yes, because Heaven, Hell, and Salvation are so central to Judaism.
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Tuesday, December 5, 2006

He's no Preston Brooks, but it's a start.

Senator Pete Domenici has been reportedly walking around Congress in his pajamas.
He says they're "hunting pants", but that's no fun. Mayhaps he's afraid of admitting that he wears pajamas--I think somebody needs to be reminded about how awesome pajamas are:

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Monday, December 4, 2006

I believe the appropriate response would be, 'Duh'.

Digby talks about a New York Times article on Jose Padilla. There's talk about how he's suffered so much that psychiatrists deem him unsuitable to stand trial. Naturally, the government isn't going to admit to torturing him, so what do they say about such allegations?
"His basic needs were met in a conscientious manner, including Halal (Muslim acceptable) food, clothing, sleep and daily medical assessment and treatment when necessary," the government stated. "While in the brig, Padilla never reported any abusive treatment to the staff or medical personnel."

Really? He didn't complain about abuse to the people who were abusing him? Why might that be?

Maybe because that he's been broken to the point where he suspects his own lawyers are part of an interrogative plot?
Mr. Padilla’s lawyers say they have had a difficult time persuading him that they are on his side.

From the time Mr. Padilla was allowed access to counsel, Mr. Patel visited him repeatedly in the brig and in the Miami detention center, and Mr. Padilla has observed Mr. Patel arguing on his behalf in Miami federal court.

But, Mr. Patel said in his affidavit, his client is nonetheless mistrustful. "Mr. Padilla remains unsure if I and the other attorneys working on his case are actually his attorneys or another component of the government’s interrogation scheme," Mr. Patel said.

Maybe because he's afraid of reprisal because he might have to suffer through it all again?
Dr. Hegarty said Mr. Padilla refuses to review the video recordings of his interrogations, which have been released to his lawyers but remain classified.

He is especially reluctant to discuss what happened in the brig, fearful that he will be returned there some day, Mr. Patel said in his affidavit.

Maybe because he's been broken to the point where he simply doesn't react at all?
In his affidavit, Mr. Patel said, "I was told by members of the brig staff that Mr. Padilla's temperament was so docile and inactive that his behavior was like that of 'a piece of furniture.' "

No, I suppose it's because interrogators are known for treating prisoners like candy and sunshine.
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Sunday, December 3, 2006

*bites lips*

In reference to Condoleeza Rice, filkertom rhetorically asked:
Jayzus, what is it with these people? Are they literally a different species?

Must... refrain... from commenting.
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Saturday, December 2, 2006

Zombie racism redux

This article tells us that several activists are going to Washington D.C. to demonstrate outside the Supreme Court building when it hears arguments in a case involving affirmative action.

And from the comments on this article, I find this zombie racist quip:
Amen,fjord,I can see why they want forced mixing,can anyone name one country in history with black leadership that was more than a 3rd.world country?Just history,why?Can "Jesse"tell me?

I assume he means Jesse Jackson, whom the article mentions is expected to make an appearance at the demonstration.
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Won't somebody please think of the kittens?

Every time you have sex, God kills a kitten.

Unless you're married or over thirty years old.
The federal government's "no sex without marriage" message isn't just for kids anymore.

Now the government is targeting unmarried adults up to age 29 as part of its abstinence-only programs, which include millions of dollars in federal money that will be available to the states under revised federal grant guidelines for 2007.

...

Wade Horn, assistant secretary for children and families at the Department of Health and Human Services, said the revision is aimed at 19- to 29-year-olds because more unmarried women in that age group are having children.

Government data released last month show that 998,262 births in 2004 were to unmarried women 19-29, the ages with the most births to unmarried women.

Although I have to wonder--do these include people who do have a significant other in their life, but just haven't married them? And how large a percentage would that be?
"They've stepped over the line of common sense," said James Wagoner, president of Advocates for Youth, a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit that supports sex education. "To be preaching abstinence when 90% of people are having sex is in essence to lose touch with reality. It's an ideological campaign. It has nothing to do with public health."

What, they've only now stepped over the line of common sense?

'Cause funding abstinence training to tell kids things like this is still in touch with reality:
For condoms to be used correctly, over 10 specific difficult steps must be followed every time. This tends to minimize the romance and spontaneity of the sex act. (Choosing the Best, p. 25).

...

"Women need affection while men need sexual fulfillment; women need conversation while men need recreation companionship; women need honest and openness while men need physical attractiveness; women need financial support while men need admiration, and women need family commitment while men need domestic support" (WAIT Training, p. 199).

I like that the WAIT Training logo includes the rhetorical question "Why am I tempted?"

But please, think of the kittens:


[Edit] Oh, and no masturbating, either.
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Friday, December 1, 2006

Friday Dead Racist Blogging: Down the Rabbit Hole Edition

I do not mean by the title of this post to imply that Lewis Carroll was a racist. Instead I shall be talking about Charles Carroll, whose bizarre racist worldview is rivalled only by those members of the Christian Identity movement who believe that "Jews" are literally the spawn of Satan and biologically incapable of being good.

Last Friday, I made cursory mention of the tendency to view race problems as black and white, ignoring other peoples. In most cases, this is just a lamentable oversight--or sometimes even intentional, simply because in a particular region the only significant percentages of peoples are blacks and whites. In fact, this was the defense Virginia used when asked why their anti-miscegenation law only made illegal marriages between whites and blacks. From the oral arguments of Loving v. Virginia:
MR. MC ILWAINE: ... As I say, the statistics show that all other races combined, outside of white and Negro, constitute less than 1/100th of 1 percent of Virginia's population, according to the 1960 census. And those figures have not varied more than 1 or 2 percent from the 1950 population figures. So that the problem of other types of interracial marriages which caused interracial marriage statutes of western states to consider the Oriental problem, just simply doesn't exist in Virginia.

Where some simply overlook the existence of other races, this was not the case with Charles Carroll. He truly believed that there were only blacks and whites. That is just the start of his lunacy.

Carroll was very prolific--I have read two of Carroll's books about "the Negro", and I know that there were more. I even bought one of his works: "The Negro a Beast" or "In the Image of God" (which I just found out is available on-line). When I first got this book, I was truly afraid I would be unable to finish the thing--I didn't even get to the first page before its mind-boggling ideas forced me to put it down. The Table of Contents alone was too much for me, when I found that the eighth chapter of the book was titled "It was not God's original plan that His Son should be crucified, but amalgamation and disobedience of the human family made it imperative." Yes, Carroll believed that miscegenation was responsible for the death of Christ, along with a great deal else.

Looking back on it now, though, the insanity begins with the title, for "the Negro [is] a Beast" is the book's thesis. Many people said that blacks were sub-human, and bestial, but still believed that they were a part of the human race--just a "lower", less-developed portion of it. Not so Carroll; he was a polygenesist, and believed that blacks were created before whites. They were in fact the "beasts of the field" mentioned often in the Bible, created by God to be the servants of the whites. Since God commanded Adam to have dominion over the earth, but he did not toil until after his expulsion from Eden, Carroll figured that he must have had a servant to do physical labor for him--one with just enough intelligence to understand his masters. Who else but blacks?

Carroll was not alone in this belief--there were many other polygenesists, who insisted that "Negroes" were the "beasts of the field", and that they were created before the white race, which began with Adam and Eve, and that they were a separate species from the whites. However, many of them believed that the other races, such as the Chinese, were also specially created before Adam and Eve. Carroll insisted that there was no biblical support for this notion, and that God created only two types: whites and blacks.

Whence then came the other races that clearly exist? According to Carroll, all other "so-called races of men" were formed by interbreeding between blacks and whites; in fact, he titles chapter six "Red, Yellow and Brown Skin Denotes Amalgamation of the Human Family with the Beast, the Negro." His support for this idea? Anecdotes of mulattoes looking like Native Americans, from which he lept to the conclusion that this is how the entire race was, and is, formed (The Tempter of Eve, pg 450):
Thus we find that we are producing Indians here in the United States, by amalgamation between whites and negroes. But this is merely the fullfilment of the predictions of the most competent observers. Referring to the writings of Mr. Reclus, and l'Abbe Brasseur de Bonbourg, Quatrefages says: "Both these authors seem to admit that at the end of a given time, whatever be their origin, all the descendants of whites or of negroes who have emigrated to America will become red-skins." (The Human Species, p. 255).

Also he finds important the fact that people of the same race can vary in skin tone (The Negro a Beast, pgs 171-172):
The so-called "brown, red and yellow races" have no characters peculiar to them. No anthropologist will assert that the classification of the so-called "human species" into "five races of men" was based upon what the atheist would term "racial purity," but that it was based solely on geographical divisions. In Europe, the complexions range from pure white to brown; in Africa, we find the complexions to be nearly white, brown, red, yellow and pure black; in Asia, they range from light yellow to black; the same is true of Oceanica, the home of the so-called "Malay race;" in America, previous to its discovery by Columbus, the complexions were nearly pure white, brown, red, yellow and black. Fontaine says: "If a congregation of twelve representatives from Malacca, China, Japan, Mongolia, Sandwich Islands, Chili, Peru, Brazil, Chickasaws, Comanches, etc., were dressed alike, or undressed and unshaven, the most skillful anatomist could not, from their appearance, separate them." [How the World Was Peopled.]

Prof. Winchell says: "The ancient Indians of California, in the latitude of 42 degrees, were as black as the negroes of Guinea, while in Mexico were tribes of an olive or reddish complexion, relatively light. Among the black races of tropical regions we find, generally, some light-colored tribes interspersed. These sometimes have light hair and blue eyes. This is the case with the Tuareg of the Sahara, the Afghans of India, and the aborigines of the banks of the Orinoco and the Amazon." [Preadamites.] It will be observed that these characters are identical with those presented by the offspring resulting from amalgamation between whites and blacks in our midst. We have demonstrated here in the United States that the way to produce these so-called "brown, red or yellow races" is to mingle the blood of the white with that of the negro.

He also decided that whites were the only race capable of civilization, but since other races had primitive forms of civilization, it was somehow evident that they inherited them from white ancestors.

All well and good, but hardly very disturbing, is it? Well, this is merely the launching point for his tirades. In the beginning of The Negro a Beast he says that there were a total of three "creations", by which he meant "the introduction into the material universe of some element, that had no prior existence there." On pages 12-13 he approvingly quotes:
"In the first verse [of Genesis] we are taught that this universe had a beginning; that it was created--and that God was its Creator. The central idea is creation. The Hebrew word is bara, translated by create. It has been doubted whether the word meant a creation, in the sense that the world was not derived from any pre-existing material, nor from the substance of God Himself; but the manner in which it is here used does not seem to justify such a doubt. For whatever be the use of the word in other parts of the Bible, it is employed in this chapter in a discriminating way, which is very remarkable, and cannot but be intentional. Elsewhere, when only transformations are meant, as in the second and fourth days, or a continuation of the same kind of creation; as in the land animals of the fifth day, the word asah (make) is used. Again it is a significant fact that in the whole Bible where the simple form of bara is used it is always with reference to a work made by God, but never by man."

And what are these creations?
The Mosaic Record teaches that there is just three creations. The first of these is described in connecetion with "the heaven and the earth, in the beginning." The second creation is described in connection with the introduction of animal life on the fifth day; and the third creation is described in connection with the first appearance of Man on the sixth day.

He extrapolated that these creations were: matter, mind, and soul. Thus all things were made up of matter; animals were made up of matter and mind; and Man was comprised matter, mind, and soul. And since blacks were not Men but beasts, they did not have souls.

Furthermore, he concocted a theory of reproduction. He posited that men's sperm held half each of their component parts: matter and mind in animals, and mind, matter, and soul in humans. Women's eggs held the complementary halves, and upon conception these halves would unite into a whole. But as blacks did not have souls, if a white bred with a black, the soul half from the white would not meet any other half to complete it, and so the child would also be soul-less. From The Tempter of Eve, pages 420-421:
The negro, like every other animal, being merely a combination of two creations--matter and mind--it follows that one side or part of the matter creation, and one side or part of the mind creation, exists in an imperfect state in the male negro; the corresponding sides or parts of these imprefect creations exists in the female negro. In the sexual act each side or part of these creations maintains its individuality, and acts as a magnet which attracts its corresponding side or part in the opposite sex; and when united and perfected in the female, conception and birth ensues, and the two creations--matter and mind--are reproduced in the young negro.

Thus, two creations--matter and mind--combine to perfect the negro. But it requires the combination of the three creations--matter, mind, and soul--to perfect man. Hence, while but two creations--matter and mind--exist in an imperfect state in the germs of the male and female negro, as mutually dependent sides or parts of the life system of the animal, the three creations--matter, mind, and soul exist in an imperfect state in the germs of the male and female man, as mutually dependent sides or parts of the life system of man; and so great is the attraction between the matter and mind creations as they exist in the imperfect state in the germs of man and the negro, that sexual intercourse between the two may unite and perfect these two creations. But the imperfect side or part of the soul creation as it exists in the germ of the man, finds no corresponding side or part in the negro; as a result the soul creation having no attraction, remains passive. Hence, if conception ensues from the union of the germs and the consequent perfecting of the matter and mind creations of man and the engro, this passive creation forms no part of the offspring of this unnatural union. Thus, neither the male nor the female side or part of man can transmit the three creations--matter, mind, and soul--to their offspring by the negro, in whom the matter and the mind creations alone exist. In other words, the male and the female can only transmit to their offspring such of these creations as are common to both parents.

This doesn't mean good things for those of mixed races. From The Negro a Beast, pg 129:
"But," says the enlightened Christian, "If a man is married to a negress, will not their offspring have a soul?" No; it is simply the product resulting from God's violated law, and inherits none of the Divine nature of the man, but, like its parent, the ape, it is merely a combination of matter and mind. "Then, if the half-breed marries a man, will not their offspring have a soul?" No! "Then if the three-quarter white marries a man will not their offspring have a soul?" No. "If the offspring of man and the Negro was mated with pure whites for generations, would not their ultimate offspring have a soul?" No!

He puts it more succinctly in The Tempter of Eve, where on page 423 he says "no mixed-blood has a soul." And given his very broad definition of "mixed-blood", there are an awful lot of soulless people out there.

You may have noticed his description of mulattoes as the product of "God's violated law". Yes; he, like so many, believed that God outlawed miscegenation. But again Carroll takes it a step further. From his assumption that God created only blacks and whites, he concluded that God's plan for creation did not include mixed-bloods:
The offspring of Man and the Negro is not upon the earth in deference to Divine will, but in violation of Divine law. Hence, it is not a part of God's creation.

He in fact had some rather harsh words for mixed-bloods. He interpreted Jeremiah 16:2-3 as saying "[t]hat, in the eyes of God, the offspring of Man and the Negro is only fit for dung on the face of the earth." And Ezekiel 29 he believed "shows that a country which is occupied solely by mixed-bloods is in the eyes of God 'waste and desolate' and not 'inhabited.'" And he concluded further, citing Leviticus 20:15-16 as support, that mulattoes have no rights--and he meant none. From The Negro a Beast pg 161:
Thus, the immediate offspring of man and the Negro--the mulatto--was doomed by Divine edict to instant death in the very moment of conception. Hence, neither the mulatto nor his ultimate offspring can acquire the right to live. This being true, it follows that these monstrosities have no rights social, financial, political or religious that man need respect; they have no rights that man dare respect--not even the right to live.

In Tempter of Eve, page 482, he repeats this charge and adds that there can never "be any peace between God and man as long as these monstrosities are allowed to defile the earth with their presence."

The fact that they do live continue to "defile the earth", and are granted rights, apparently makes God frumple.
Tempter of Eve, page 431:
Amalgamation is the sole charge recorded against the antediluvians, as shown by the following: "The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence. And God looked upon the earth and behold it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted His way on the earth. And God said to Noah: The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth." (Gen. vi, 11, 12, 13).

The Negro a Beast, page 159:
He specifically charges the Canaanites with lying with beasts, which, as shown in the case of the antediluvians, would result in corrupting the flesh of Canaan. In each case the penalty of death was visited upon this corrupted flesh and those who were instrumental in corrupting it. In the case of the antediluvians by a universal deluge; in that of the Canaanites by a war of extermination.

Page 287:
Our country, already laboring under the curse of God for its social and religious equality with the Negro, was further cursed for its amalgamation by being plunged in a civil war."

Page 234:
But in the course of ages they forgot God, descended to amalgamation, and this, in its turn, gave birth to idolatry. "Then was war in the gates." God in his wrath and disgust showered his curses upon them in the form of war, famine, pestilence and disease, and destroyed them from the earth, laid their civilizations in ruins, and transformed their once prosperous country into the abode of savages....

Pages 324-5:
This vain, criminal effort to elevate the Negro and mixed-bloods to the lofty plane of man and womanhood, in contempt of God's Plan of Creation and in violation of HIs law is what its modern advocates term an experiment. Experiment, indeed! This so-called experiment is very nearly as old as man. Its destructive results are demonstrated by continents shattered and torn from their foundations and hurled beneath the waves, under the curse of God; nations blotted from the face of the earth; civilizations laid in ruins; vast areas, once teeming with an intelligent, industrious, happy and prosperous population, transformed into barren wastes or made the abode of the barbarian or the savage.

Tempter of Eve, page 223:
These "beasts of the field" were servants of the Israelites; they owned tens of thousands of them. It was their criminal relations with these apes which led to the destruction of the Israelites as a nation, and their dispersion among the nations of the earth.

And finally in Tempter of Eve, pages 405-406, he simply says that treating blacks like people is responsible for all sin in the world:
We are taught by the modern theologians that Adam and Eve committed their first sin by eating the forbidden fruit; but to accept this theory we must disregard the narrative of creation, which teaches that the design of God in creating man, was that he should have dominion over the animals; and that when man was created he was assigned to this task. Inasmuch as the tempter of Eve was an animal, it follows that it was the duty of Adam and Eve to control it in common with the rest of the animals. But instead of controlling this negress, Eve accepted the negress as her counselor, and allowed the negress to control her, and induced Adam to do likewise; and she counseled them to their ruin. Thus, it is plain that when Adam and Eve accepted this creature as their counselor, they not only violated the laws given man in the creation to "have dominion" over the animals, but they outraged the very design of God in creating man. Their acting upon the advice of the negress by eating the forbidden fruit, was their second offense; when they accepted the negress as their counselor, they necessarily descended to social equality with her. This reveals the startling fact that it was man's social equality with the negro that brought sin into the world. This being true, it follows that man's social equality with the negro will keep sin into the world, and will bring upon man the just condemnation of God. Besides, man's social equality with the negro tends to political and religious equality; and these three, or any one of them, inevitably leads to amalgamation--itself the most infamous and destructive crime known to the law of God.

And on page 182 of The Negro a Beast, Carroll claims that amalgamation was responsible for every punishment God meted out:
This reveals the startling truth that, underlying all of God's arraignments, and punishments of Israel, and her surrounding nations, for their idolatry, was this loathsome crime, amalgamation.

He also concluded on page 476 of The Tempter of Eve that "strange as it may seem, amalgamation is not only the parent of atheism, which denies the existence of God, but is also the parent of idolatry with its worship of many gods."

Moreover, Carroll claimed that the entire Bible "is simply a history of the long conflict which has raged between God and man, as the result of man's criminal relations with the negro." Although two years later Carroll qualified this when he wrote "the Bible is largely a history of the long, destructive conflict which has raged between God and man, because of man's social, political, and religious equality with this beast, and the amalgamation to which these crimes inevitably lead" (emphasis mine).

Perhaps worst of all is that this work was fairly well-received, from all accounts. I recall reading one contemporary account that called the book the Bible of the poor man, it was so common; unfortunately, I cannot seem to find this quote (and I have spent quite a while looking). At any rate, this book was popular enough to warrant mention in the 1907 work, The Devil Between the White Man and the Negro, where it was lumped together with Thomas Dixon's infamous The Clansman. And even today, Carroll is cited approvingly (referred to as "Professor Carroll") by such racists as the Christian Party.


Page 185 of The Devil Between the White Man and the Negro

[Edit] I found the quote about the popularity of Carroll's works.

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Hadn't seen it that way.

Some analysis of the latest Veronica Mars story arc. As the poster writes:
After catching the latest episode of Veronica Mars this past Tuesday, I was sort-of left feeling empty about how things ended. It just seemed that there were some key elements I've been used to seeing in the previous big mysteries solved, something that made me think "ah ha!" when looking back at previous evidence. After reading comments last week from some observant commenters, it all becomes clear now ... and it's pretty damn cool.

Indeed it is.
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Congrats, Pakistan

Pakistan's rape law amended:
Pakistan has a new rape law that makes it easier to prosecute sexual assault cases.

President Pervez Musharraf signed the measure into law today, even though thousands of religious conservatives rallied against the changes.

A Pakistani official says the new law safeguards "the rights of women." The changes take effect immediately.

The new law allows judges to decide whether a rape case should be tried in criminal court or under the old Islamic law, which requires the testimony of four witnesses. It also drops the death penalty for sex outside of marriage.

This is a significant event, given the bill was previously blocked by the opposition party.

Text of the bill can be found here.
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