The New York Times and the white supremacist group Storm Front share a belief that there are significant and fundamental "racial" differences between color and linguistic groups based upon and residing in their genetic heritage. If you consult the Storm Front white supremacist group's website, you will discover that, in spite of the findings to the contrary of the Human Genome Project, Storm Front still believes in the theory of "race" -- that you can discern meaningful and fundamental genetic differences between people with white skin, brown and Black skin by making reference to their skin color, facial characteristics and the languages they speak.
Evidently, David Duke's "awakening" is based on the premise that "races" exist in the first place, and that is a premise that is, every day of the week, supported by the New York Times, even though the premise has been conclusively disproved by 20th and 21st century empirical science.
One would have hoped that the relatively new empirical science of the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science, Office of Biological and Environmental Research, Human Genome Program, which shows that people are more likely to have genetic similarities across color groups than among them, was information that the New York Times would have absorbed and integrated into their articles about disputes over skin color, language and national origin. The fact that "race" does not exist is not something that the Government has hidden from the American people. The Human Genome Project says:
One writer at Storm Front, reviewing the white supremacist David Duke's "My Awakening", says, for example:
It’s the question to which Carleton Putnam’s Race and Reason led David Duke. “I asked myself,” writes David Duke, “What if the things [Carleton Putnam] writes are true? What if the distinctions, quality and composition of races are the primary factors in the vitality of civilizations (My Awakening, 37) …”It alarmed me to think of the implications of race having a cardinal role in the creation and maintenance of culture and civilization. If true, then replacement of the White race through immigration and race-mixing could conceivably destroy Western Civilization itself.” (43)
In a paper David Duke wrote early in his career, he summarized Putnam’s thesis: “It is his belief that a civilization is the product of the particular racial group that created it and that demographic replacement of the founding race, through race-mixing, immigration, and differential birthrates, will diminish and ultimately destroy the vitality of the culture and civilization.” (43)
( . . . )
Genetics may enable some people to become great athletes or entertainers or to be shrewd at bargaining and splitting hairs. But it is the very special type of intelligence of our own race that has founded Western Civilization. And it is thatspecial type of intelligence that will someday lead us to the star. http://www.davidduke.com/race-information-library/racial-differences/intelligence-heredity-vs-environment/the-question-of-civilization_477.html
Today, for example, Ian Urbana of the Times publishes an article entitled, "After Trial, Tensions Simmer Over Race" (emphasis added). In the article, Urbina says:
And while many white residents said there were no racial tensions locally except those being sparked by news coverage and claims from out-of-town civil rights groups, Latinos offered a different view.( . . . )“I was skeptical of the claim that there were racial tensions in town,” he said, “but then the details started coming out and people started speaking up. I was shocked by what they were saying.”
In the context of the article, it is clear that the writer, by the use of the word "racial", is subscribing to the very beliefs about skin color that are fundamental to David Duke's and Storm Front's white supremacist ideation. That is, both the New York Times and Storm Front believe that you can look at someone's skin color, national origin and language and thereby distinguish what "race" they belong to. For so long as the New York Times promotes this theory of "race", it will be significantly harder to isolate those at Storm Front who share the same theory.
One would have hoped that the relatively new empirical science of the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science, Office of Biological and Environmental Research, Human Genome Program, which shows that people are more likely to have genetic similarities across color groups than among them, was information that the New York Times would have absorbed and integrated into their articles about disputes over skin color, language and national origin. The fact that "race" does not exist is not something that the Government has hidden from the American people. The Human Genome Project says:
DNA studies do not indicate that separate classifiable subspecies (races) exist within modern humans. While different genes for physical traits such as skin and hair color can be identified between individuals, no consistent patterns of genes across the human genome exist to distinguish one race from another. There also is no genetic basis for divisions of human ethnicity. People who have lived in the same geographic region for many generations may have some alleles in common, but no allele will be found in all members of one population and in no members of any other. U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science, Office of Biological and Environmental Research, Human Genome Program.In other words, the Human Genome Project has proven that, as a matter of scientific fact, that which we call "race" does not exist as a matter of biology, and so all references to "race" are references to a fallacy. And yet the above New York Times article makes TWO references to that "racial" theory fallacy as if the fallacy were an undisputed fact.
For so long as writers such as Ian Urbana and newspapers like the New York Times continue insisting that the science of Storm Front exists and the Human Genome Project does not, it will be difficult if not impossible to make significant strides against the hate and fear aroused violence of groups like Storm Front and individuals who share their ideology without formally joining the group.
The New York Times story, that focuses on the killing of a Latino man because of his heritage may have been intended to highlight "racial" difference. And that's precisely what it does. It highlights differences in sociology that scientific study has shown not to exist in biology. The article, therefore, perpetuates "racial" beliefs that serve as the ideological basis of those who victimize others based on their skin color.
