Our Alice in Wonderland Immigration Debate

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales soft-peddles the fact that many street gangs are composed of illegal immigrants. At a Texas police academy, meanwhile, cadets are warned about the problematic aspects of Hispanic culture, amid dollops of political correctness that would please the attorney general.


By David Paulin

“Certain gangs, certain street crews are composed predominantly of people that are here unlawfully, but there are many people here unlawfully who have also made tremendous contributions to our country.” (Emphasis added.)
– Attorney General Alberto Gonzales speaks to a reporter following his May 15, 2007, speech on the Justice Department's anti-gang initiative – a speech that failed to acknowledge that many gangs are comprised of illegal Hispanic immigrants.

“No, no (illegal immigrants are) not more crime prone. In fact, when you look at the national statistics, it’s just amazing. There’s not a single scientific study that shows immigrants are more likely to commit crime than native-born, in fact, or U.S. born.”
–Pia Orrenius, an economist with the Federal Reserve Bank in Dallas, speaks to television channel “11 News” of Houston, October, 2006.


So there you have it. Two comments from two esteemed sources, yet they reach totally different conclusions! One admits there’s a problem but he does so reluctantly. The other says there’s no problem at all. Such is the schizophrenic nature of the national immigration debate being conducted by the nation’s policy makers and intellectual elite – people who share little if any of the consequences of massive levels of illegal immigration that ordinary Americans encounter every day.

Last week, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales outlined a nationwide anti-gang initiative being undertaken by the Justice Department, amid a spike in the rate of violent crime. Yet in his 3,582-word speech, not a single word even hinted at what Gonzales knew all too well – illegal immigrants comprise the ranks of many gangs. It took a reporter from the Austin American-Statesman to pry that admission from Gonzales after his speech at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. Careful not to cause offense to pro-illegal immigrant groups and his own administration, the politically correct attorney general was quick to note that “there are many people here unlawfully who have also made tremendous contributions to our country.” What kinds of contributions? Perhaps Gonzales was referring to the illegal immigrants in Austin who hang out on street corners and at a controversial city-sponsored “day labor site,” or who work in landscaping, construction, and in restaurants around town. I used to work these types of jobs in high school and college; now this is the work Americans won’t do.

Curiously, the politically liberal American-Statesman failed to call attention to Gonzales’s troubling comments. They merited only a few paragraphs in the reporter’s immigration blog, The Borderline. Speaking of Hispanic street gangs, here’s the latest from Texas: Houston’s oldest Latino gang, La Tercera Crips, is threatening to retaliate against the Houston Police Department after one of the city’s officers allegedly shot a gang member in the back, according to Houston’s local television channel, “11 News.” The station’s viewers must be confused. Seven months ago, “11 News” reported that illegal immigrants were actually more law-abiding than native-born Americans, citing statistics from Federal Reserve Bank economist Pia Orrenius. An estimated 400,000 illegal immigrants live in the Houston area.

The station’s no-need-to-worry report followed public outrage over an illegal Mexican immigrant who allegedly murdered a Houston police officer weeks earlier. That report failed to even mention “La Tercera Crips.”

How’s an ordinary American supposed to stay well informed amid such convoluted reporting and the reluctance of public officials to admit the truth? In all likelihood, ordinary Americans are keeping informed by looking at what’s going on around them. Consider what’s happened in Texas and, specifically, in my own neighborhood in Austin, the capital. Now, most of my neighbors are illegal Mexican immigrants.

Spanish only, please.

The transformation happened over the last six or seven years. My street used to be orderly and people were well mannered. Now, some young Hispanic men driving pick-ups regularly screech their tires as they pull into the street, while Mexican music pounds from their speakers. More than a few Hispanic motorists blast their horns when they pull into the parking lot to pick up friends.

A local grocery store puts out ice-cold buckets of beer at 7 a.m. to serve the new market of lower-class Mexican men. Now, grade-school age kids are everywhere, the offspring of illegal immigrants. Graffiti has started to pop up here and there. In the evening, a group of shabbily dressed Mexican men sometimes drinks beer by a nearby curb, leaving a pile of empties on the ground. This is not to say there are not hard-working families here, too. There are. But there also is a low-life element here that the open-borders folks never want to talk about.

A few years ago, illegal immigration and high Hispanic birthrates pushed white “Anglo” Texans into “minority” group status. Now “Anglos” account for 49.8 percent of 20 million Texas residents, with non-whites comprising what the Associated Press called the “majority-minority” population. As a consequence, bilingual signs and bilingual education are now the norm; and the courts and charities provide Spanish-speaking personnel. On Austin’s busy Lamar Boulevard, tiny Mexican flags even fly outside some car dealerships.

In early 2000, I returned to Austin after an absence of several years. Immediately, I was struck by the shabby and obviously uneducated Hispanic men arriving here. I used to visit Miami a lot, and the Hispanic immigrants there – legal and illegal – seemed much better educated and more likely to assimilate and move up the socio-economic ladder.

“What’s going on?” I said to a Venezuelan friend, a Miami investment banker.

He wryly observed, “The fact that the immigrants coming to Miami had to come up with 400 bucks for a plane ticket makes a big difference in the quality of people you get.”

And they keep coming.

Two years ago, I realized a tipping point had been reached when it became more common to have illegal Mexican immigrants jabbering at me (a 6’2’’ gringo) in Spanish: They expected to be spoken to in their own language.

Police Face Problems

What kind of affect has this had on crime? Getting solid answers is problematic. It’s politically incorrect to maintain such databases, and if they do exist, nobody wants to reveal what’s in them. The news media here throws little light on the issue: Race and ethnicity are only relevant when white police officers allegedly abuse their authority when dealing with Hispanics or African-Americans or other members of the “majority-minority.”

Police officials may not publicly admit it, and Attorney General Gonzales may only reluctantly admit it. But if the curriculum in at least one police academy is anything to go by then the reconquista has definitely posed special problems for law enforcement.

Consider a hefty spiral-bound training manual being used in one of the police academies in Austin. Not long ago, I paged through a manual that belongs to an acquaintance attending the academy. Simply put, an incongruous coupling of materials reflected a case of police academy schizophrenia.

Specifically, it seemed that two items did not belong together. One was obviously written by an academic: "Multiculturalism and Human Relations.” It introduced cadets to the ideology of political correctness, warning them against “racist” conduct such as negatively “judging” other cultures or even harboring thoughts to this effect.

Yet in the same manual, another hand-out offered blunt and unflattering real-world insights into some Hispanic cultures, touching on traits such as “machismo” and proclivities toward domestic abuse and clannish behavior. These tidbits were contained in a 67-plus page manual in survival Spanish, a Berlitz-style approach for police officers. It was loaded with quick-and-dirty grammar; cultural insights; Spanish swear words; and “survival phrases” such as "Policia No se Mueva! ("Police! Don't Move!").

The “multicultural” paper warned cadets against racist behavior such as “stereotyping.” On the other hand, the Berlitz-for-cops manual made it clear that officers could very well expect certain types of problematic behavior from some Hispanic cultures; and those were patriarchal cultures for the most part. It explained, for instance, that men from such cultures live by a code of "machismo" and "honor.” They put family and fellow Hispanics above the larger community – and even the rule of law. Presumably, such commentary referred to unassimilated Hispanic males; but perhaps not. In multicultural America, Hispanics are not really expected to assimilate, and that includes learning English.

Arresting a Hispanic male poses special problems, as the Spanish-language manual pointed out:

“When arrested, he may routinely protest verbally or fight back to 'save face' (quedar bien). To be embarrassed in front of others may be more painful than the arrest itself, for most Latinos have great difficulty with feelings of verguenza (shame). Sometimes, a macho attitude may cause a Latino to blame his wife or daughter in the event she is raped or beaten. Some, but by no means all or even a majority, may abuse women physically or verbally. If that is the case, many Latino women may not want to press charges, because the female ideal is to be delicate, sensitive, non aggressive and submissive to the man. The woman may consider it her duty to stand by her man, no matter what happens."

One thing about these Hispanic family values was startling clear: They’re like nothing Americans ever saw in TV sit-coms like “Leave It To Beaver” or “The Cosby Show.”

Interestingly, the multicultural paper’s intended audience appeared to be only white police officers and cadets. Why? Presumably, that’s because multicultural ideology pits “dominant” groups against “victimized” ones. Accordingly, white cadets are presumed to be the only group capable of racism; no matter that they’re now a minority in Texas. They’re expected to adapt to Hispanic values. And new Hispanic immigrants are not expected to assimilate.

Not surprisingly, the multiculturalism hand-out devotes much space to describing the traits of “prejudiced” people. One is ethnocentrism: "the act of regarding one's culture as the center of the universe and hence the basis for all comparisons with other cultures." Another is stereotyping: “a convenient grouping of people of whom one is ignorant.”

According to the multiculturalism hand-out, prejudiced people possess "a self-assured feeling,” believing “they are superior or better than others, which is frequently expressed in inappropriate jokes” and “disparaging remarks” about people they regard as "inferiors” and thus label as “lazy, too aggressive, stupid, tricky, deceitful, clannish, (and) pushy.”

Of course, the point of such lessons is to ensure that officers behave professionally and treat every member of the public with the same level of courtesy and respect. Yet the multicultural paper goes beyond this, stating that officers must not even “privately” judge other cultures in a negative light or even harbor “feelings of superiority.”

And what if the culture in question embraces values and notions of citizenship that are at odds with traditional American values, culture, and concepts of citizenship? The issue isn’t addressed; but it amounts to a white elephant in the room in light of the harsh spotlight the Spanish-language manual puts on some Hispanic cultures – namely (though not always) those with “patriarchal” traditions.

Despite the multicultural hand-out’s warnings about making generalizations about other cultures, the Berlitz-style manual states:

"Regardless of their specific cultural or national background, Latinos will most likely side with each other than an outsider. An individual will assist family members and friends regardless of the consequences, and expect the same in return. A sense of honor is so important in Latino culture, that it may keep an individual from cooperating with the police against a friend or family members, even though he or she may not condone any of the actions."

This can pose special problems for police investigations, as the language manual observed:

"Due to the profound importance of family and community in Hispanic culture, officers need to be aware of common group identification styles. Under questioning, for instance, a Hispanic family member may 'eye-check' family members before coming up with a question, and may follow this action with what seems to be an inappropriate use of the pronoun “we” when the officer expects to hear an “I.” This behavior may seem to be evasive or misleading to some officers, but it often simply reflects the fact that no individual in the family can separate his or her affairs from the family's larger concern."

Obviously police officers should avoid making disparaging remarks about members of the public, including those in their custody. They should treat all people with respect. Yet there is something a bit unsettling in the way the multicultural hand-out tells cadets to avoid regarding themselves as culturally superior to “macho” Hispanic males who immigrate to America illegally and then insist on maintaining their own values and cultures as opposed to assimilating – right down to refusing to learn English. The city of Austin encourages such conduct with its own polices.

In my neighborhood, I come across residents who have been here at least three years. Yet they appear to speak no English, except for a few broken phrases. One of them is “What’s your problem?”

The other day, a young Mexican male uttered that in a somewhat ominous tone when I complained to him about revving up his car’s engine outside my apartment window. No doubt about it. The days of “Leave It to Beaver” and “The Cosby Show” are over in parts of America where major demographic changes have occurred – changes that Congress is poised to make a permanent part of America’s cultural landscape.


UPDATE: VIOLENT CRIME INCREASING

"Crime kept climbing in 2006, a top FBI official said Wednesday (May 31), previewing a report detailing nationwide increases in murders, robberies and other felonies for a second straight year," according to an article by The Associated Press.

It added, "The crime hike marks the latest blow to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who has targeted neighborhood violence as a top priority. Gonzales took office in early 2005, when violent crime rose by 2.2 percent in the first annual increase since 2001.

"A Justice Department study released earlier this month of 18 cities and suburban regions indicates youth violence, gangs and gun crime largely are to blame for the increasing rates. Gonzales also has promised to help local police combat gangs and guns with $50 million this year and up to $200 million in 2008."

Jamaica to UK: Pay Us Slave Reparations!

Jamaica’s Leaders Urge A Regional Drive to Demand Slave Reparations from Britain

Jamaica’s cash-strapped political leaders see a cash bonanza in their future – an avalanche of slave reparations from Britain. They're beating the drum for a Caribbean-wide reparations effort; and they’re telling ordinary Jamaicans that slavery’s legacy is indeed the source of their troubles.

UPDATE: See Thomas Lifson's comments on this article at The American Thinker.

By David Paulin

The slave reparations movement has brought together a motley bunch over the years, from jive-talking hustlers to erudite professors of everything from black to postcolonial studies. Now, an entire country is angling to cash in on the reparations racket. In Jamaica, political leaders are beating the drum for a local and regional campaign to convince Britain to provide compensation for its role in the transatlantic slave trade. They’re telling Jamaicans that the legacy of slavery is indeed the source of their troubles. A hotbed of leftist politics, the former British colony has a population of 2.7 million that’s of overwhelmingly African descent.

"We owe reparations to ourselves and our ancestors,” Rupert Lewis, a lecturer in government at the University of the West Indies in Jamaica, told a gathering of school children in Kingston, the capital. The occasion was part of activities associated with Jamaica’s commemoration of Britain’s 200-year-old Abolition of the Slave Trade Act adopted March 25, 1807. The case for reparations is being made with lectures and the documentary film “The Empire Pays Back.”

In Jamaica and elsewhere, reparations advocates portray Britain and even Western civilization in the worst possible light. Awkward details that fail to advance their narratives are skipped over or ignored. Professor Lewis, for instance, apparently failed to make an important point to his audience of school kids: Their African ancestors may have owned slaves, and participated in the slave trade.

Jamaica’s call for reparations started making local headlines in early February, when reparations advocates called for a state-backed reparations initiative ahead of bicentennial commemorations over Britain’s abolition of the slave trade. Parliament subsequently took up the issue, holding lengthy discussions on reparations over three consecutive weekly sessions. “Pay Us For Slave Labor," trumpeted a front-page article in The Observer, a popular left-leaning daily in Kingston; it suggested that the reparations quest was morally equivalent to the struggle to end apartheid in South Africa. In the United Nations, Jamaica spearheaded a resolution commemorating the 200-year anniversary of the slave trade’s abolition. Now, a Parlimentary committee is studying the reparations issue, which Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller has backed. The issue has yet to attract media attention outside the Caribbean.

Jamaica promotes itself as a vacation paradise of sunshine and reggae, a place Jamaica-born music legend Bob Marley summed up with his hit song “One Love.” But the overwhelming majority of ordinary Jamaicans have faced a grittier reality over the years -- high unemployment, soaring national debt, and one of the world’s worst murder rates per capita. Many deaths are caused by “tribal” political violence that’s exploited by politicians in the two main political parties, and in particular by those in the People’s National Party, the more left-leaning of the two parties. The violence dates to Prime Minister Michael Manley's failed "democratic socialism" in the early 1970s, when politicians used gangs to rustle up votes. Over the years, Manley’s party has played the race card to win elections against the weaker and whiter Jamaica Labor Party.

What do ordinary middle-class Jamaicans of African origins think? Not surprisingly, many blame unaccountable and elitist political leaders for the country’s mess – not its legacy of slavery and colonialism. They point out that Jamaica’s decline started after it was granted independence in 1962. Part of the problem is a loss of values, many say. They also note that counties such as The Bahamas are doing well, despite legacies of slavery and colonialism under Britain.

While middle-class and pro-American Jamaicans line up at the U.S. Embassy to apply for visas, members of the anti-American elite look for scapegoats for Jamaica’s troubles; and of course the biggest scapegoat of them all is the malevolent United States. Some even claim that Jamaica’s raging HIV/AIDS epidemic was caused by a virus created in the United States by a government lab to control black populations worldwide.

"In the medium term, the goal is to mobilize all those who have been working in the (reparations) field for a long time, and to sensitize those who have dismissed the work of the movement for lack of knowledge," explained Jamaica’s minister of tourism, entertainment and culture, Aloun Assamba, a government spokesperson.

In Jamaica and elsewhere, the reparations movement was energized by the United Nation’s racism conference in Durban, South Africa, in 2001; that was the infamous UNESCO-sponsored event that equated Zionism with racism. It also offered tacit support to the idea of slave reparations.

Curiously, reparations advocates demand reparations only from rich Western nations. Yet they never mourn over the millions of black Africans who disappeared into the Muslim slave trade. Nor do they regularly condemn the slavery that persists in Africa. They’re silent as well about modern forms of slavery such as human trafficking, which even has been a serious problem in Jamaica.

Obviously, slavery does not seem to bother them as much as all their frothing would suggest. Why motivates them? Some are obviously racists. All are unreconstituted leftists: Slave reparations for them are simply a means through which they can achieve the Marxist redistribution of wealth they still dream about. In recent years, though, they’ve adopted a post-modern form of Marxism. Some call it “cultural Marxism.” In its lexicon, the villains are no longer capitalists and the bourgeoisie.

Now the villain is “white male privilege.”

“Africa underpins a modern experience of (white) British privilege,” asserted a positive review of “The Empire Pays Back” in The Guardian of London by Cambridge University senior lecturer Richard Drayton. The documentary was produced by Jamaica-born producer Robert Beckford, a lecturer in African Diaspora Religions and Cultures at England’s University of Birmingham.

Britain’s monstrous historical theft, of course, can be remedied by redistributing wealth from whites to the ancestors of black African slaves. “These (reparations) proposals are not intended to be divisive or confrontational, but rather form part of a process to heal the wounds of the past,” explained Jamaica’s Ambassador to the United Nations, Stafford Neil, during Durban’s racism conference.

No matter that few if any whites are around anymore who have any connection whatsoever to the slave trade; yet they’re cast as oppressors because of their skin color. Reparation advocates also distort the realities of the ancient slave trade, says Ohio State University Professor Robert Davis. “We cannot think of slavery as something that only white people did to black people,” observed the author of “Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003). The book recounts how Muslim slavers off North Africa’s Barbary Coast enslaved one million or more white Europeans between 1530 and 1780 – a number greater than Africans enslaved during the same period. Why is the enslavement of white Europeans ignored? It fails to fit into the scholarship favored today – that history is all about European conquest and colonization, Davis observed.

Accordingly, Britain gets no credit for leading international efforts to end the profitable transatlantic slave trade – and even using its worships to stop it. Britain is portrayed in the worst light possible. Whatever it did, it was too little, too late. And reparations advocates who claim Britain's prosperity is founded upon slave labor overlook the obvious reasons for that prosperity: Political and economic life are organized around a democracy and free-markets. Dedicated leftist, of course, can be expected to overlook such things. And this includes Jamaica’s leftist rulers who ambivalently embrace free-markets and look for their inspiration to Cuba and Venezuela – two places where you won’t find any of the 2.6 million members of the Jamaican Diaspora living or even receiving any of that high-quality Cuban medical care.

If Jamaica hits the reparations jackpot, it may face a knotty question in respect to individual payouts: Many Jamaicans of African ancestry who have light complexions discriminate against those with darker complexions. This raises the question of whether individuals with darker complexions should receive the biggest payouts. Unfortunately, Jamaica has never attempted to eliminate its version of “Jim Crow” with the kinds of anti-discrimination policies and laws implemented decades ago in the United States.

Interestingly, the newspaper cheering on the reparations campaign often has a poisonous anti-American tone; yet The Observer is published by Gordon "Butch" Stewart – a white Jamaican who heads the Caribbean’s iconic Sandals and Beaches resorts. They depend on American tourism.

How Big A Payment?

The Observer’s article “Pay Us For Slave Labor” quoted New York University sociology Professor Dalton Conley as saying reparations in America would involve “transferring about 13 per cent of white household wealth to blacks,” giving an average two-adult black family about US$35,000. In Parliament, on the other hand, an Opposition member proposed a one-time payout of US$77.4 million for the island’s decaying and poorly performing primary and secondary schools. Jamaica’s Rex Nettleford, the former long-time vice chancellor of the University of the West Indies, favors worldwide reparations along these lines.

During the United Nations General Assembly’s commemoration of the slave trade’s abolition on March 26, Nettleford said in his keynote address that reparations advocates weren't looking for a "handout." He nevertheless urged countries “enriched by the heinous crime of the slave trade” to make “serious investment” in the “countries that suffered, preferably through the education and preparation of their young to enable them to cope with the inheritance of a continuing unjust world.”

Nettleford is a darling of Jamaica’s ruling government and leftist intellectual class. However, popular radio show host Wilmut “Mutty” Perkins lampoons him as a pompous and verbose academic, completely out of touch with ordinary Jamaicans. Few are likely to have grasped his tortured and barely coherent speech in the General Assembly that was riddled with sentences like this:

“What we have learnt from history will have sharpened insights about ourselves in the process of cross-fertilization which is the great art of humankind’s ‘becoming’ out of the dynamism of the synthesizing of contradictions.”

During the nearly two years I lived in a middle-class neighborhood of Kingston, Nettleford was a familiar presence in the news media – ruminating on Washington’s malevolence and the Caribbean’s legacy of slavery and colonialism, which are among the most popular subjects at the University of the West Indies. What I best remember Nettleford for, however, is a comment he made to a well-regarded Jamaican journalist, who subsequently related Nettleford’s off-the-record remark to me: “It’s not that I hate white people, but I love black people.”

While Nettleford blames rich white nations for an “unjust” world, he overlooks the world created in Jamaica by his boosters in the ruling People’s National Party. Since Manley’s era, Jamaica’s political culture has been defined by politically aligned “garrison communities.” Gangland leaders or “dons” maintain Stalinist political conformity, deliver votes to local politicians, and serve as “community leaders.” They also oversee illegal activities such as the booming drug trade.

Six years ago, this Faustian arrangement was put in the public spotlight during the funeral of a “don” known as Willy Haggart. A big and gaudy event in the style of gangland funerals, it was held in the National Arena – traditionally a site for dignified state funerals. However, it was no ordinary gangland funeral: The orange colors of the People’s National Party were on display. And occupying front-row seats were three senior elected officials, the most prominent being Finance Minister Omar Davies and then Transport and Works Minister Peter Phillips, now minister of National Security. They were paying their respects because Haggart was an influential “community leader” in their districts. Davies remains finance minister in a country many outraged Jamaicans have begun to call a "failed state."

Declining Values

Apart from corrupt and irresponsible political leaders, there’s the issue of declining values over the years – what some Jamaicans describe as “downtown” values replacing “uptown” values. Conservatives, for instance, note that most births are now out-of-wedlock, with the rate having increased after Jamaica’s independence. Over the same period, Jamaica’s “dance hall” culture has become increasingly popular with its glorification of criminality, disrespect for women, and homophobia. Recently, a newspaper columnist observed that “the word ‘vulgar’ has all but disappeared from common parlance in Jamaica.” Clergymen complain of the low-life atmosphere at gangland funerals in which young women parade about in skimpy attire as politicians occupy front-row seats.

Most middle-class Jamaicans, who are a conservative bunch in respect to their values, are shocked and upset. But some members of the intellectual elite such as Carolyn Cooper, a lecturer and cultural expert at the University of the West Indies in Jamaica, resolutely defend dancehall’s violence and hate-language. It merely reflects, she wrote, “the struggle of the celebrants in the dance to reclaim their humanity in circumstances of grave economic hardship that force the animal out of its lair.”

The world of Carolyn Cooper and others in Jamaica’s alienated intellectual class is a world apart from ordinary middle-class Jamaicans. Members of the well-connected elite have secure jobs in government, politics, and maybe the private sector. Conversely, members of the middle-class worry about unemployment, violent crime, or whether their remittance checks will arrive on time. Remittances are Jamaica’s No. 2 source of income after tourism.

Most middle-class Jamaicans look to the West for inspiration and identity – not to Africa or Cuba or Venezuela. They prefer Western-style clothing and give their kids English names, while many members of the leftist elite – including Cooper and Nettleford – dress up in African-style garb. And while academics like Cooper and Nettleford regard themselves as former slaves and members of a persecuted racial group, most middle-class Jamaicans regard themselves as individuals.

The blame-it-on-slavery argument becomes even more absurd when Jamaica’s dysfunction is contrasted against the prosperity enjoyed in The Bahamas. A former British colony, it also has a legacy of slavery. Yet it has no crippling debt, no history of serious political violence, and no serious crime. It has one of the region's highest per capita incomes of $19,000 – nearly five times more than Jamaica's. Credit agencies like Standard & Poor’s give The Bahamas stellar marks. There is no Bahamian Diaspora.

Why is The Bahamas a success? Its political leaders and voters look forward, not backward. They unashamedly look to America as an example, and have embraced business-friendly policies and a low-tax free-market philosophy. Recently, the “darker” and more left-leaning ruling party suffered a stunning election defeat, despite having presided over an expanding economy and unprecedented development boom. Good management and honesty in government – not race – were the main issues in the election campaign.

In The Bahamas, the bicentennial of the slave trade's abolition got circumspect coverage in local papers, and it was consigned to the inside pages. In Jamaica, in contrast, The Observer ran a chest-thumping front-page article in which Prime Minister Simpson Miller paid lip service to reparations and told school children to honor their slave ancestors by respecting one another. "My request for honoring them is that for every child that is raped and is left to soak in the rapist's semen and her own blood, you are perpetuating, Mr. Rapist, the action of the slave master."

And so, then, Jamaica’s political leaders have a new scapegoat: Black people are poor because white people are rich. Slave reparations will remedy this. Ultimately, though, it’s an argument that’s likely to produce only more dysfunction in Jamaica, along with a new generation of angry Jamaicans. And this will be a problem for countries to which increasing numbers of Jamaicans will immigrate: Violent gangs with Jamaican origins have over the years established stakes in America, Canada and Britain.

Criminality aside, an odd fact has emerged in respect to Jamaica since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. In varying degrees, the overwhelmingly Christian nation has had ties to at least five of six terror plots and attacks with connections to the Caribbean. The deadliest was London’s suicide-bomb attacks nearly two years ago; they killed 52 commuters and wounded about 700. The deadliest bomber of was Jamaica-born Germaine Lindsay, a 19-year-old Muslim convert.

Jamaica’s links to these plots and attacks was first observed by The Big Carnival blog. Later, Diane Abbott, a long-time member of the British Labor Party’s radical fringe, echoed her concerns in a newspaper column that referred to an ongoing trend of young black men converting to Islam and taking up jihad. “These young men obviously need something to believe in. And radical Islam gives them this,” wrote the British-born daughter of Jamaican immigrants in The Observer.

Abbott never considered that these young men might have been primed by the anti-American and anti-Western worldview spewed by the intellectual elite in Jamaica and Britain. Perhaps it’s time that Jamaica's political leaders adopted a forward-looking worldview and lived up to their country’s motto: “Out of Many, One People.”

Toward A Socialist Paradise: Venezuela Governor To Seize Airport


After eight years of Hugo Chávez, kidnappers and thieves prowl Venezuela’s Simon Bolivar International Airport: I learned about that the hard way. Expect more of the same as the state expropriates a nearby privately owned airport (Photo: Simon Bolivar terminal)

See Thomas Lifson's comments on this article at The American Thinker.

By David Paulin

For years, airline passengers disembarking at Venezuela’s main airport faced an unsettling experience: Simon Bolivar International Airport is a model of inefficiency. It's what you could expect from most state-owned and Venezuelan managed enterprises. Passengers going to the taxi stand might get picked up by a pirate taxi – the driver having bribed or snuck his way past apathetic security personnel. Many travelers paid several times the going rate for the 30-minute trip to Caracas. Today, after eight years of Hugo Chávez’s “revolutionary” government, the airport is more disorganized than ever. And it’s dangerous. Four years ago, I found out just how dangerous.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Here’s the latest news from Venezuela’s emerging socialist paradise: A state governor allied with President Chávez has ordered the expropriation of a private airport in Charallave on the outskirts of Caracas. The reason, according to Miranda Gov. Diosdado Cabello, is to “substantially improve the use of the airport” by siphoning off air traffic from Simon Bolivar airport in nearby Maiquetia.

Some 500 shareholders were surprised by the announcement, airport manager Henry Vazquez told the Associated Press. And no wonder: The airport already was controlled by government officials and soldiers. Obviously, there are really only two reasons for the take-over: Power and control. Socialism has nothing to do with it.

The move comes as Chávez has vowed to nationalize “strategic sectors” – including private firms in which U.S. companies have stakes in telecommunications, electricity, and the oil industry.

The take-over announcement comes days after a remarkable news conference in Caracas given by Luis Miquilena, 87, who guided Chávez to his first landslide election win. A long-time leftist, Miquilena left Chávez’s cabinet five years ago, and at the news conference he savaged El Presidente. Miquilena thus joined a long list of former Chávez allies who parted company with the autocratic populist after seeing what he was all about. A similar pattern occurred in Cuba as Chávez mentor Fidel Castro showed his true colors, following his democratic “revolution” some 50 years ago.

"This is a government with a hypocritical authoritarianism that tries to sell the world certain democratic appearances," Miquilena said at a daily newspaper, El Nacional, which has been critical of Chávez’s government. "The government is not abiding by any rule. It has all the characteristics of a dictatorial government."

As Miquilena nears the end of his life, it is ironic and sad that he must now bear witness to Venezuela’s slide into what has all the appearances of a dictatorship, albeit for its democratic trappings. He had held his tongue until now. As a young man, Miquilena saw Venezuela emerge from the dictatorship of Gen. Marcos Perez Jimenez into a democracy. By some accounts, he was tortured by that dictator’s secret police.

Miquilena’s comments came days before Chávez was expected to be ruling by “decree.” And once that happens, don’t expect the nation’s airports to hum with efficiency.

Kidnapped

Four years ago, I learned just how bad things had gotten at Simon Bolivar International Airport when I disembarked from a KLM flight from Amsterdam. Having been through the airport many times before, when living in Venezuela, I figured I could differentiate between the good guys and bad guys.

I was wrong.

Getting into a taxi, my driver tossed my bag into the back seat, and I slide in right next to it. Suddenly, two other guys opened the doors on either side and got in. I heard the snap of automatic door locks.

Immediately, I knew what was happening. Frantically, I pulled at the door knobs.

“Calm down, calm down,” said the small wiry man who had pretended to be a taxi driver – right down to the official badge.

Helplessly, I looked out the window as we slowly drove off: The gringo traveler and his three Venezuelan companions in a taxi. Thirty feet away, two apathetic National Guardsmen were engaged in small talk.

The guy in the right-font seat opened the glove compartment. I heard the sickening sound of a semi-automatic being cocked. I knew enough about this sort of thing to know that your chances of survival go down significantly once you’re kidnapped.

I was calm, yet seized with dread. I wondered if the last thing I’d ever see was the guy in the right-front seat turning around and firing a bullet into my chest. The three of them were in their 40s and 50s and looked quite ordinary.

One flipped through my U.S. passport and, seeing a residency stamp for Jamaica, somehow confused me for a Canadian. Maybe it was my lucky day.

“Jamaica is a sovereign country, right?” one said.

“Yes, I have a wife and two kids there,” I replied. It was a lie, calculated to make me seem more human to them. They looked like family men.

They were disappointed I didn’t have more cash – so I overstated the value of the Jamaican dollars I was carrying. That made them happy.

“We’re poor. That’s why we’re doing this,” one of them said. He professed solidarity with Hugo Chávez.

Thirty minutes later, they let me out in a working-class section of Caracas. They'd picked me clean, taking a few hundred dollars, a camera, and a cell phone. They gave me cab fare to get to my destination.

Later, I spoke over the phone with a security officer at the U.S. Embassy.

“I used to live here," I said. "So can I assume it's like it was a few years ago; that it would be a waste of time to report this to the police?”

“Yes, you can assume that.”

He added, “This has been happening a lot. I shouldn’t say this, but a few days ago I got an irate call from the head of security for one of the U.S. airlines flying here.

“One of their captains was kidnapped. It happened exactly like you described.”

KLM, for its part, was wise to this. My flight’s steward told me that KLM no longer let its crews stay overnight in Venezuela: too dangerous. They flew the plane to Curacao and then returned the next day for passengers.

Violent crime has soared in Venezuela after eight years of Chávez. Typically, the sorts of folks who cheer on Chávez are the types who claim that poverty and crime are related. In other words, when poverty goes down, so does crime.

Yet Chávez claims to have reduced poverty – and still crime is soaring. The more likely factors that explain the crime explosion are the same ones found at the international airport – epic levels of inefficiency, corruption, and mismanagement. Travelers heading to Venezuela would be well-advised to look at the State Department's hair-raising report on security there.

Regarding the main airport, here’s an excerpt:

“Maiquetia Airport, the international airport serving Caracas, is dangerous and corruption is rampant. Concerns include personal property theft, muggings, and “express kidnappings” in which individuals are taken to make purchases or to withdraw as much money as possible from ATMs, often at gunpoint. The Embassy has received multiple, credible reports that individuals with what appear to be official uniforms or other credentials are involved in facilitating or perpetrating these crimes.”

Once Chávez’s goons get their hands on the Charallave airport, you can expect more of the same: That’s how authoritarian socialism works.

Telephones for the Classes – Socialism for the Masses

Need to phone Venezuela? Forget about it if Hugo Gets His Way

(A magazine article based on this post, "Chavez's New Statism" may be found at FrontPage Magazine. Click here -- DP.) 

  

By David Paulin

President Hugo Chavez has announced his intention to pursue an authoritarian socialist model for Venezuela, and to nationalize key companies. Predictably, the nation’s stock market and currency has gone into a nasty tail spin.

"We're heading toward socialism, and nothing and no one can prevent it,” Chavez declared on Monday, in a national television address. Today he will be sworn into a third term that runs until 2013.

Chavez's embrace of socialism should surprise nobody who has been paying attention to what he's been saying. He was announcing his radical intentions, loud and clear, as early as 1999 when he took office. Specifically, Chavez vowed on Monday to nationalize Venezuela’s telecommunications company, unspecified electrical firms, and to reduce the Central Bank’s autonomy. Among other things, he also called for additional powers for himself so that he could rule by decree.
In respect to the nationalizations, the biggest prize would be Venezuela’s publicly traded telecommunications company, Compania Anonima Nacional Telefones De Venezuela (known by the Spanish acronym CANTV, pronounced "Can-Tee-V”). “Let it be nationalized," he said. "The nation should recover its property of strategic sectors.”

Before 1991, to be sure, CANTV was a state-owned and managed phone company. It also was an international basket case: People calling across town had trouble getting a dial tone – much less a connection. Calling other cities was virtually impossible.

I lived in Caracas during these years, working as a Caracas-based foreign correspondent for several American daily newspapers. The story of what CANTV was – and what it became in the hands of can-do American managers – is a remarkable one. It’s also testimony to the power of markets to transform an economy – in terms of providing investment, transparency, and accountability.

Inept Management

Poorly managed as a state-owned company, CANTV was rife with do-nothing political patronage jobs and corrupt unions that got what they wanted. In short, it was what you’d expect in a nation with a statist economy that, according to corruption-watchdog Transparency International, was among the world’s most corrupt.
Venezuela had a population of about 20 million people at the time – yet only 1.6 million of them had telephones. It wasn’t for lack of money. Rather, the money-losing state phone company took years to hook up phone lines – unless you had political connections, bribed the right officials or purchased a stolen line. The state phone company, according to some accounts, took out advertisements asking its customers not to use the phones too much.



Like many Third World countries, Venezuela realized it needed a modern telecommunications system to develop its oil-producing economy. After a highly politicized congressional debate, it privatized CANTV. A GTE Corp.-led consortium won a bidding process and acquired 40 percent of CANTV for $1.9 billion. The government retained 49 percent, and workers kept the remaining 11 percent. (Dallas-based GTE Corp. merged in March 2000 with Bell Atlantic to form Verizon Communications.)

Consider some of what the privatized CANTV accomplished: From 1992 to 1994, it invested more than $1.1 billion to upgrade and expand Venezuela's phone system – more than was spent during the 20 years preceding privatization.



Led by American managers, CANTV's 22,000 employees installed more than 863,000 phone lines by 1994 – 4 1/2 times as many as were installed during the two years preceding privatization.

More than 460,000 customers were added, three times more than CANTV connected during the two years before privatization.



Bottom line: By 1994, callers almost always got a dial tone. And they usually got a connection.

“The telecommunications system here was very poorly designed and maintained, with 40-to 50-year-old technology,” CANTV's 40-year-old president Bruce Haddad, a 19-year GTE veteran, told me during an interview in July, 1994.



Haddad had his share of problems. He was spoofed on a Venezuela comedy program, had annual reports tossed at him during an annual meeting, and was called a “gringo” and “foreigner.”



At one point, an arrest warrant that seemed politically motivated was issued against him. He was charged with complicity in a natural gas pipeline explosion, caused by a CANTV sub-contractor, which incinerated more than 50 motorists on a major highway. After lying low for a while, Haddad eventually turned himself in and was exonerated.



He and fellow GTE Corp. managers kept the company moving ahead through two bloody coup attempts (one led by Lt. Col. Hugo Chavez); draconian currency exchange controls, a 100 percent currency devaluation, 70 percent interest rates, and annual inflation of up to 100 percent.
Haddad and fellow GTE Corp. senior executive Douglas Mullen shocked Venezuelan workers by mingling freely with them at functions designed to build esprit de corps – something most status-conscious Venezuelan managers would never do.

It will be interesting to see how CANTV fares once it’s controlled again by Venezuelan managers: state employees of a government that, by all accounts, is involved in record levels of corruption.

Haddad, incidentally, never made it back to the states to settle down with his wife, Dorothy. They died when their corporate jet smashed into the side of a volcano near Guatemala City, Guatemala at 3:30 a.m. on Feb. 19, 1997. They were racing the clock to get to Dallas, where the couple was supposed to catch an airliner to China. Haddad was going there as part of his new position, senior vice president of international operations. Both were 43 years old. They had been high school sweethearts.

Author’s note: This was derived in part from articles I wrote for The Dallas Morning News while based in Caracas. For additional analysis, visit The American Thinker and The Devil's Excrement.

Also see these earlier posts:

Hugo’s Broken Promises

In Perspective: Hugo’s Anti-Americanism

Hugo Strikes Out – for Now

Getting Along with Thugs: Why Hugo Chávez’s Apologists Think The Way They Do

CULTURE WARS

Visitors to a Texas Library Learn about Admirable ‘Traditional Values’ of Marriage and Community...IN AFRICA!

...An occasional report from the “People’s Republic of Austin” (Photo of Elizabeth Kahura)

UPDATE: See Thomas Lifson's comments on this article at The American Thinker.

By David Paulin

Ann Coulter delivered a speech in hip and liberal Austin, Texas last year and nearly provoked a riot. The catcalls and boos that left-wing University of Texas students hurled at her hit a pitch when one student posed a vulgar question, intended to attack the conservative columnist's concepts of marriage and traditional values.

“Let him go” chanted supportive students at LBJ Library Auditorium, after nearby campus police quickly arrested the 19-year-old man.

Curiously, no such protests erupted during an event on traditional values a little over one week ago at a city library. Why? Perhaps it’s because the values being discussed were not American – conservative or otherwise.

No, this event focused on traditional African values – or as a library news release explained: the “traditional African values of family, community, responsibility, commerce, and self-improvement.” That, at least, is the virtuous picture of Africa that Elizabeth Kahura, a native of Kenya and professional “storyteller,” would have you believe. She spoke during an event associated with Kwanzaa week – the controversial African-American holiday which ended a little over one week ago.

In one sense, Kahura is the perfect cheerleader for the Africa-oriented Kwanzaa, which is taken very seriously in Austin.

Sixteen years after arriving in America, Kahura makes a career out of idealizing her native Africa – all while keeping both feet firmly planted in multicultural America. Her mission is to “enlighten the world on the true meaning of Africa,” as one Austin Public Library news release puts it.

Kahura, who settled in Texas, has spent ten-plus years playing up Africa’s virtues. At libraries, schools, and day care centers, she utilizes colorful presentations to show off African clothing, music, and dance. She was a big hit last year among grade-school kids in nearby Bastrop: They got to “dress up like an African King and Queen to demonstrate African Village life.”

In Austin, Kwanzaa gets plenty of serious coverage from the politically correct daily newspaper, the Austin American-Statesman. No matter that conservatives of all colors have long derided Kwanzaa as racial hucksterism with Marxist and racially charged overtones.

Nearly 40 years ago, Kwanzaa was dreamed up in California by Ronald Everett, an African-American who was an adherent of various black extremist groups and causes. In the early 70s, he served jail time for the false imprisonment and torture of two women who had been his followers. Completing his sentence, he reinvented himself. Today he’s Dr. Maulana Karenga, professor of black studies at California State University in Long Beach.

Over the years, Kwanzaa has been variously described as an African-American alternative to Christmas or a focal point for African-American pride and community. According to one survey, however, it's celebrated by a mere 1.6 percent of Americans – or 13 percent of African-Americans.

At Kwanzaa events you see few if any white faces, yet Kahura insists, “Kwanzaa is not just an African-American concept. It can help anyone."

She went on, “It’s about teamwork, unity, and people walking together. It celebrates culture and it can link African-Americans to their roots and their mother language.”

Oh really? Kahura obviously needs to learn more about her adopted country: American culture has always embraced the civic-engagement aspects she touts. Indeed, America’s remarkable levels of civic-engagement were highlighted in Alexis De Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America,” his seminal volume first published in 1835.

To be sure, a debate is underway about the status and possible decline of America’s levels of civic-engagement. Some experts say it remains healthy. Whatever the case, it’s doubtful Kwanzaa has contributed anything to America’s virtue of civic-engagement, as the holiday has morphed from its racist and militant origins into mainstream respectability. Today it’s utterly beyond criticism or probing questions by the mainstream media.

Multiculturalism Gone Berserk

How did this happen? Obviously, Kwanzaa’s ideologues rode the wave of multicultural and politically correct ideology that eventually infected the mainstream media. As a result, questions that ought to be asked are stifled. One example was a recent Kwanzaa puff piece from Cox News Service, owners of the American-Statesman, whose headline trumpeted: “Kwanzaa glows even brighter after 40 years.”

Completely missing was any mention of Dr. Maulana Karenga’s sleazy past; not a word about his criminal record and extremist associations, observed the NewsBusters blog. A provocative headline accompanied its incisive comments: “Cox News Honors Kwanzaa Creator, A Rapist and Torturer.”

As to Kahura, nobody has dared to publicly ask an obvious question about her: How can a Kenyan immigrant be so presumptuous as to settle in America and then make a veritable career out of lecturing Americans about traditional African values?

Let’s face it. The values she admires are mostly a product of her imagination. One reason Africa is a basket case, after all, is precisely because of its values.

Indeed, the idealized Africa Kahura extols would be unrecognizable even to the high-minded readers of America’s most liberal newspaper, The New York Times. Consider a Times article from May, 2005: “AIDS Now Compels Africa to Challenge Widows’ ‘Cleansing’.”

It focused on a bizarre yet common practice in rural areas of Zambia and Kenya and “a number of nearby nations.” After a husband’s funeral, a ritual takes place: “sex between the widow and one of her husband's relatives.”

Its purpose is “to break the bond” with the husband’s spirit, according to The Times. “Widows have long tolerated it, and traditional leaders have endorsed it, as an unchallenged tradition of rural African life."

Did the school kids whom Kahura dressed up as African kings and queens learn anything about this? I have yet to attend one of Kahura’s lectures, to be sure, having only had the pleasure of reading about them and seeing her on television. Even so, I doubt she’s ever waxed poetic about the joys of sex with bereaved widows – whether they want it or not.

Kahura caught my attention two years ago, not long after I moved to Austin. Reading a news item about one of her upcoming presentations, I was dumbfounded by what seemed to be a case of multiculturalism gone berserk. I dashed off a protest letter to the America-Statesman: It wasn’t published.

I complained to my public library which was hosting her presentation. A library official responded that Kahura was a well-respected “educator” and much in demand for events such as Kwanzaa, Black History Month, or for various educational purposes.

Conservatives, incidentally, have an epithet for this town: “People’s Republic of Austin.”

Child Sexual Abuse

Presumably, Kahura’s presentations about her idealized Africa also skip over the pesky issue of child sexual abuse in Africa. The problem is persistent in Kahura’s native Kenya – not to mention in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Uganda, Kenya, and Sierra Leone, according to an article in The New York Times last December, "Sex Abuse of Girls Is Stubborn Scourge in Africa." Dr. Rachel Jewkes, a specialist on sexual violence with South Africa’s Medical Research Council, was quoted as saying: “The prevalence of child rape in South Africa goes from really, really high to astronomically high.”

Some traditional values, huh?

Presumably, Kahura also skipped over another traditional African value: promiscuous sex. Once again, the venerable New York Times dealt with this in an article, “AIDS in Africa: Experts Study Role of Promiscuous Sex in the Epidemic." It was published way back in 1990, about the time Kahura first left her idyllic Kenya and came to America.

That article, believe it or not, actually stated that sexually promiscuous behavior may have something to do with Africa’s legacy of colonialism!

Presumably, Kahura’s lectures also have overlooked another ritual based on traditional African values – “female circumcisions.” Last June, The New York Times dealt with this in a delicately titled article, "Genital Cutting Raises by 50% Likelihood Mothers or Their Newborns Will Die, Study Finds.”

It stated, “In a number of African cultures, genital mutilation is part of a coming-of-age ceremony, and defenders have contended that it is a cultural practice, like male circumcision among Jews, with few, if any, proven long-term health consequences.”

Incidentally, the term “genital cutting” is the euphemism preferred by multicultural types who consider the more graphic “female circumcision" (the removal of the clitoris) to be too negative and judgmental of cultures that practice this procedure.

Modern-day Slavery

Some African-Americans and Kwanzaa diehards may idealize Africa – and Kahura may cater to their fantasies. However, they can count their blessings for having grown up in America, not Africa. Consider the plight of many African children – the subject of a New York Times article last October, "Africa’s World of Forced Labor, in a 6-Year-Old’s Eye."

African children sold into indentured servitude work up to 14 hours per day and “are part of a vast traffic in children that supports West and Central African fisheries, quarries, cocoa and rice plantations and street markets,” reported The Times.

“The girls are domestic servants, bread bakers, prostitutes. The boys are field workers, cart pushers, scavengers in abandoned gem and gold mines.”

Not very idyllic, huh?

Here’s a suggestion. The next time Kahura delivers a lecture on traditional African values, maybe the school or library or daycare center that’s hosting her can provide some counter-balance: Get a patriotic professor from the University of Texas to give a talk on American and Western values – with the aim of illustrating how those values have made us who we are.

Yeah, I know. In my dreams.

From the author:
….Readers that got this far may be interested in an Op-Ed piece I wrote in July, 2005 regarding the uproar over Mexico’s allegedly racist postage stamps. The piece, “All the Colors of the Rainbow,” ran in The Philadelphia Inquirer and Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

All the Colors of the Rainbow

Mexico’s ‘Racist' Stamp

By David Paulin

Revs. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton and White House spokesperson Scott McClellan all agree that a Mexican postal stamp plays upon racist stereotypes. Their unqualified agreement – from across our racial and political divide – is probably shared by most Americans. Our condemnation, though, may say a lot more about our culture than about Mexico's alleged racial insensitivity.

Don't get me wrong. I’m also put off by the stamp of a beloved Mexican comic-book character that, to me, also resembles a racist Jim Crow-era caricature: a goofy black male with exaggerated features such as thick lips. But Mexicans like the stamp, and President Vicente Fox has defended it.

So are Mexicans lining up to buy the stamp racists? I have my doubts, in part because I recall all too well how complicated racial politics can be in other countries, including in Venezuela and Jamaica where I have lived and worked.

Like in much of Latin America, for instance, Venezuela’s racial politics is complicated by the fact that it’s hard to tell just who is black -- and who isn’t. The reason is that 80 percent of Venezuelans are mixed race or mestizo. You find all sorts of gradations of colors and facial features. I first realized I was out of the loop when I asked a white upper-class Venezuelan friend why his country lacked any prominent black politicians.

“What about Claudio Fermin?” he asked with incredulity, referring to the dark-complexioned politician in the Democratic Action party.

"He's black?"

"He's as black as can be," he assured me.

He was right, of course. No doubt if I'd met Claudio Fermin on a street in Detroit or Atlanta, I would have figured that, yes, he was black. But in Venezuela, racial distinctions seemed harder to make.

It was an epiphany

How an American like me perceived somebody abroad, in terms of their race, often had more to do with culture and class than with skin color or features. It also had a lot to do with how people perceived and defined themselves.

Not all Venezuelans, to be sure, felt the same way. My Venezuelan girlfriend and I once visited one of the country’s venerable fortune tellers, called brujas. We were so impressed with Fanny – she provided correct numbers for a 4-digit Florida lotto, among other things – that my girlfriend referred a friend to her.

Fanny wasn't pleased.

"Why are you sending blacks to my house? I don't deal with that kind of clientele!"

I was shocked. I hadn't given it much thought until then. But Fanny was black. At least that's how she struck my girlfriend and me (who I guess, incidentally, would qualify as mestizo).

Perhaps Fanny was perhaps using one criterion that some in Venezuela used to determine race: kinky hair.

In overwhelmingly black Jamaica, racial politics and classifications were a lot more complicated. One strange thing I quickly realized: After a few days, I didn't regard Jamaicans I met as being "black.” The reason is that most ordinary Jamaicans, unlike many black Americans, didn’t define themselves by their skin color. Instead, they regarded themselves as Jamaicans – no matter what country they were in. It’s an attitude that upsets some black Americans.

For Jamaicans, however, that attitude affects how they perceive themselves – and how others perceive them. One Jamaican friend related how he was visiting Miami and was in a car with several white friends and acquaintances. Somebody blurted “nigger” in a casual conversation. An embarrassing silence ensued for a few seconds – for my Jamaican friend is black – until somebody in the group quickly clarified: "Of course, we're not talking about you. You’re a Jamaican!”

“It was like water rolling off a duck,” recalled my friend.

Interestingly, such an easy going attitude seemed common among Jamaicans, except for members of the left-leaning elite: newspaper columnists, university professors, and politicians. Many of them viewed the world through a racial prism – an obsession that gives them a lot in common with many black Americans, and with many left-leaning whites.

Ordinary Jamaicans, to be sure, also could be extraordinarily complicated about race.

"P-F-W” was one expression they applied to light-complexioned and upper class Jamaicans who, they complained, tried to “Pass for White.” They joked about whether those P-F-Ws could pass for white in America.

My Jamaican girlfriend, who looked something like the beautiful actress Angela Bassett, once referred to a fellow employee as “the woman with very African features.” I was a bit surprised, for my girlfriend had some African features of her own: sensuous lips that were far more beautiful than what any thin-lipped white women could get from a plastic surgeon. I never learned at what point sensuous lips morph into “African” lips, although it was one of many instances I encountered of blacks making seemingly harmless distinctions or judgments among themselves, based on racial features.

Interestingly, my girlfriend’s beauty opened doors throughout the Caribbean, though not in Cuba. There she was interrogated every time she tried to enter a Havana tourist hotel she was visiting

“Well, you look just like a nice Cuban girl!” the hotel manager of Spanish descent told her sympathetically, after she had vented her outrage. It’s a common complaint – one that left-leaning Jamaican and black American elites, curiously, never complain about.

When retelling her story of being wrongly “profiled,” incidentally, my girlfriend displayed none of the venom and insecurity one often finds among members of minority groups in America, when relating similar incidents.

For my part, I was surprised a Cuban doorman didn't find my Jamaican girlfriend as captivating as I did. But what constitutes beauty or “blackness” can be complicated, I realized. The same can be said for racism. You’d think decent people would know it when they see it. But I’m not quite so sure anymore – except to know that today in America it’s overused more often than not due to our hypersensitivity about race. There’s also no doubting that our ideals are simply much higher than in other countries – though we never get as much credit for those ideals as for our failure to consistently reach them.

As to Mexico, I’m withholding judgment on whether the country has a serious “race problem.” Despite that ambivalence I won’t be buying any of those postage stamps.