Page 16 THE VILLADOM TIMES I • July 14, 2010 they saw Hitler do it to educated whites. Then they got the point. Before that, American racism was institutionalized. Many states had laws against marriages between people of different races. The Hollywood Production Code in 1930 banned movie plots that featured interracial romances and just about put Sessue Hayakawa out of business. Before that, Hayakawa had been a Hollywood moneymaker on the level of Douglas Fairbanks and Charlie Chaplin playing a sort of menacing romantic Japanese villain who pursued white women. Hayakawa and his wife, Tsuru Aoki, adopted three white children. When Aoki died, Hayakawa became a Buddhist monk. Somebody slipped a non-singing version of “Madame Butterfly” with Cary Grant and Sylvia Sydney through Hollywood just as the Production Code was taking effect. Sydney gave the most convincing impersonation of a Japanese girl I’ve ever seen from a white actress, but since it was still an interracial love story, it was the last of its kind. “Birth of a Nation” (1916) was so racist that the leading black characters were played by whites in blackface. The remote extras really were of African ancestry. In “So Red the Rose” (1935), the blacks who wanted to be free were dangerous fools and villains and the Union soldiers who wanted to free them were thieves and cowards – “one step above gorillas,” as a modern reviewer noted. The heroine, Margaret, justified slavery, and the blacks in the movie agreed with her. In “Gone with the Wind” (1939) all bases were covered. The black characters in that film included a villain, the wise Mammy, and a comprehensive collection of goodhearted, lovable people. Check out the dialogue in any World War II movie: “These little monkeys are ichi-ban jozo (number one skillful). They can climb trees better than monkeys. They’ve got all the best trees marked on their maps.” “Okay, Mr. Monkey, you’re gonna get it now.” That wasn’t the Germans or the Italians they were talking about. The one black man in “Bataan” (1943), played by Kenneth Spencer, spends most of the film singing the blues. When the Japanese kill him, he is the only one who screams. Southern states banned “Bataan” because the unit in the film was integrated – an anachronism, since the whole Army and Marine Corps were segregated until 1948. Once the “color bar” went down in sports, white supremacists received a shock: Blacks were demonstrably better at many sports than whites were. White supremacy is a fear trip as whites in the lower quadrant of the IQ sector, who can’t relate to much beyond sports and sex, realize they aren’t really superior. If life is really a “struggle for existence” instead of all people helping one another, these guys are losing. If you want to get rid of white supremacy, get rid of Charles Darwin. His science was bogus and was dismissed by genuine scientists like Louis Pasteur and Rudolf Virchow. Darwin was the grandfather of modern racism, supported by Americans like Charles Davenport and Madison Grant, and Austrians like Adolf Hitler and Adolf Eichmann, along with a lot of Germans and a surprising number of Brits. Empirically, those whites who are drawn to white supremacy are generally anything but supreme. They are scared, resentful people, especially in this economy, but they are still morally and intellectually in the wrong. Darwin, their conscious or covert touchstone, is a racist has-been and prime instigator of the Holocaust. Nazi racial theory was bluntly known as neo-Darwinism. But some people just can’t understand why it’s fake, and other people are afraid to lose their jobs and be lumped together with Fredric March playing Matthew Harrison Brady (William Jennings Bryan) in “Inherit the Wind.” The facts of science – the absence of any plausible case of spontaneous generation or the gaps in the fossil column as in the Grand Canyon – just don’t matter to Darwin’s defenders. What is important is job security. People who reject Darwin are just as unpopular as those who publicly support white supremacy, but they’re not the same people. An interesting thing happened during our aestivation. According to a piece in another newspaper, some residents took umbrage with the fact that the Glen Rock Borough Council and the Community Relations Advisory Board of Glen Rock and Ridgewood had been remiss in tackling the issue of white supremacist leaflets stuck under windshield wipers by the National Socialist Movement, which is based in Birmingham, Alabama. The leaflets denounced illegal immigration and supported “Putting Our Family Our Nation and Our Race First.” (The leaflets display a swastika in front of a U.S. flag.) Missing from the article – an editorial disguised as a news story – was what the Glen Rock Council and the Community Relations Board’s response should have been. What is the appropriate response for an irresponsible hate pamphlet from a bunch of neo-Nazi nutcakes? Should that response have been the unconstitutional suppression of free speech, however moronic and odious, or perhaps a personal visit from the Black Dragon Society, the only drastically active anti-racist group I know of that had any viable claws or any serious political support. The Black Panthers have long since been rendered extinct. The Jewish Brigade just after World War II was pretty good, and caught up with a lot of Nazi death camp murderers the Nuremburg prosecution missed, but they have long since gone out of business. The world would be a better place if white racism all came labeled with the swastika so Americans would recognize a palpable evil and shun it as they would a cancer. It’s not that easy. Once a year, the Americans celebrate “Doctor Seuss” – Theodore Geisel – a commie stooge who fronted for Ralph Ingersoll and Lillian Hellman while Ingersoll and Hellman fronted for Stalin. Once a year, the federal governmental tells us to dote over the ugly illustrations of this Stalinist dupe – a man who, having insulted blacks, Indians, and Jews earlier in his career, drew racist cartoons advocating Japanese-American relocation when even J. Edgar Hoover said it was illegal. Seuss once made a documentary called “Decision for Death,” which justified the incendiary and nuclear attacks on Japan, the leading anti-racist power before 1945. Bosley Crowther of The New York Times said “Decision for Death” – killing the Japanese so their survivors could get their act together and adopt U.S.-style democracy, which still prevented black citizens from voting in most Southern states, bluntly banned interracial marriages, and condoned lynching – was the worst documentary he had ever seen. Why was Japan, whose hard-working immigrants were virtually banned from the United States, and whose leaders wanted to send troops to help the Ethiopians against Mussolini, so obtuse as not to see how much better we were? Bluntly, the United States before the late 1940s was an officially racist society. Opponents of 4,000 lynchings could not get an anti-lynching law through Congress. Public health programs in many states sterilized blacks and Indians to keep their populations down if not to eradicate them. Educated hard-working Jewish refugees from Hitler were denied passports. Nobody saw this stuff as bad until White supremacists v. the emerging reality Letters to the Editor Dear Editor: A meeting with the Franklin Lakes Mayor and Council and the trustees of the library was held in March to ensure that the funding and expenses of the library are clearly communicated, and now we wish to inform the public. While the state economy is down, our community is using the library in record numbers. Circulation and library visits increased more than 20 percent in 2009; 11,204 residents attended programs, and 66 percent of our residents have a library card. Our 2010 budget reflects 60 percent for personnel, 22 percent for operation, and 18 percent for materials. Because funding is based on a percentage of assessed value, our budget was reduced by $36,656 in 2010. All costs associated with the library, including electric, gas, water, repairs, landscaping, capital, and supplies come from the budget. The library reimburses the borough for all personnel costs. We voluntarily began reimbursing the borough for PERS costs ($84,829) for 2009 and 2010. Our resolve to contain personnel costs has been demonstrated by eliminating longevity and overtime pay. While 2010 raises are 2.5 percent, full-time employees are contributing 1.5 percent of their salaries for health costs. Our participation in the Bergen County Cooperative Library System as well as New Jersey Open Borrowing offers patrons additional borrowing capabilities. Friends of the Library, our primary fundraising arm, provides direct funding for family specials, museum passes, Tutor.com, the Peek-a-Book kiosk, and the BEAT downloadables. Striving for excellence, while maintaining fiscal responsibility, we are considered a premier library in Bergen County and an essential core service to our schools. We are proud to play an integral part in making our community a great place to live. Twinkie F. Polizzi, Board President Franklin Lakes Public Library Dear Editor: The day after the June 21 Republican Club meeting at the ambulance corps building, I put an incident report on file with the police. The night of the FLRC meeting, I was waiting around to speak to Pete Swist, but he was talking to a couple. After 15 minutes, I decide not to wait any longer. By then, many people had already left. I walked out into the pitch black parking lot and got into my car. I pulled out onto Bender Court, and another car pulled out behind me. I thought nothing of it, although it didn’t seem like anyone was around when I left the building. I turned right, and the other car did the same. I still thought nothing of it. When I Keeping all informed turned again and the same car also turned, but hung back a little, I started to become concerned. After the sharp curve on that street, I pulled over to the first area off the road and waited for that car to pass, but it didn’t pass. It stopped in the middle of the road about three to four car lengths behind, and just sat there, like it was waiting to see what I was going to do. After a minute or two, I decided that I would turn around on the edge of the side street I was facing so that I could face that car and shine my lights on it. The minute I started to turn around, the other car caught on to what I was doing, and suddenly shot by at high speed. By the time I was back on the road, that car was already at the end of the road. The driver escaped, but not before giving me a glimpse of the car. I don’t know what this means, but I do hope that it was not an attempt to scare me away from these meetings. I don’t know any of the candidates running, and if I put something political in the papers, it has to do with something I disagree with at that moment, not who’s running for office. Lucille Joyner Franklin Lakes Dear Editor: On behalf of the 2010 Wyckoff Memorial Day Parade Committee and Midland Park/Wyckoff VFW Post 7086, I would like to thank all who participated and attended this year’s Memorial Day Service and Parade. This year’s service and parade could not have been such a success without the participation of all the organizations that make our township such a great place to live. I would like to specifically thank the organizations that donated financial resources that enable the Parade Committee to continue to provide such a great event: Vander Plaat Funeral Home, Wyckoff Stop & Shop, Wyckoff Lukoil, Wyckoff Getty, Dr. Louis J. Spizziri Trust, Wyckoff Lions Club, Walgreens (Clinton Avenue), Atlantic Stewardship Bank, Wine & Spirit World, Horizon Landscaping, and Gartner Realty Management. Please continue to honor those service men and women who have given their lives for our country and continue to support our troops deployed today in combat zones throughout the world. Nick Ciampo, Chairman Wyckoff Memorial Day Parade Committee Chairman extends thanks Resident expresses concerns