Penned 20 years ago, this piece is more relevant now than ever before. — Ed.
In the fall of [1990], we wrote a modest, one-sentence advertisement for American Renaissance, which we called a “literate, undeceived journal of race, immigration, and the decline of civility.” A well-known conservative publication called the ad “controversial,” and refused to accept it. In so doing, that publication once more confirmed how thoroughly silenced are the voices that will speak through American Renaissance.
Merely to put the words “race, immigration, and the decline of civility” in the same sentence is to step across the line that separates what may be said publicly from what may not. Despite the American tradition of free speech and the fervor with which we claim to defend it, nearly every American takes the greatest care not to cross that line. There are subjects on which debate has ended, the book has been closed, and this is to be so no matter how much the reality of our daily lives clashes with conclusions that have been declared as final.
Today it is foreigners who have not learned the limits of what may be said in America who are most likely to step across that strongly defended line. In 1986, then-Prime Minister Nakasone of Japan provoked a torrent of outrage when he said that because large numbers of blacks and Hispanics live in the United States, it cannot compete as effectively with other nations as it might otherwise.
In fact, blacks and Hispanics are, compared to whites, far more likely to be poor, illiterate, on welfare, or in jail; they are far more likely to have illegitimate children, be addicted to drugs, or have AIDS. By no definition of international competitiveness can the presence of these populations be anything but a disadvantage. How many Americans must have thought to themselves, “Mr. Nakasone is right” — and said nothing? Americans of European heritage, the cultural heirs of the people who founded and built this nation, were silent.