Philly Mayor Wants Mag Punished over Race Relations Story

The Philadelphia Human Relations Commission has launched an investigation at the request of the mayor after a well-known magazine published an essay that explored perspectives of white citizens on the issue of race relations.

Mayor Michael Nutter called on the commission to consider rebuking both Philadelphia Magazine and writer Bob Huber noting that “the First Amendment, like other constitutional rights, is not an unfettered right.”

Nutter’s fury was directed at a cover story titled, “Being White in Philly.” The story included conversations with mostly anonymous white residents who detailed race relations in the City of Brotherly Love.

“In a city that is largely poor and segregated, white people have become afraid to say anything at all about race,” Huber wrote on the cover of the magazine. “Here’s what’s not being said.”

“This month Philadelphia Magazine has sunk to a new low even for a publication that has long pretended that its suburban readers were the only citizens civically engaged and socially active in the Philadelphia area,” Nutter wrote in a lengthy tirade to the city’s human relations commission.

He called the story “disgusting” and an “uninformed, ill-advised, ill-considered, uninspired, and thoroughly unimaginative.”

And the mayor also had some choice words for the anonymous individuals who were interviewed – some of whom had been victims of crimes perpetrated by blacks. He said they were “too cowardly” to provide their names.

Rue Landau, the Human Relations Committee’s executive director, agreed with the mayor’s concerns regarding what she called, “the racial insensitivity and perpetuation of harmful stereotypes portrayed in the Philadelphia Magazine piece.”

The commission will also conduct an inquiry into racial issues across the city at the request of the mayor.

Tom McGrath, the magazine’s editor, told me he is very concerned that the government is investigating his publication.

“I find it chilling that he now wants to use the government to censor a news outlet,” he said. “As a journalist – as someone who thinks free speech is really important – I find that really, really troubling.”

McGrath said he stands by the story and the author – and acknowledged it set off a firestorm.

“Any time you write about race you have to be prepared that it’s going to be controversial,” he said. “The point of the story was to get a conversation going about race. Certainly there are some ugly quotes in the story but those quotes in no way reflect the intentions of the author or the magazine.”

McGrath said the mayor “seriously overreacted to the story” and “mischaracterized the piece and what it’s trying to do.”

“White people do not always feel comfortable talking about race,” he said. “There are some white folks who don’t feel their views on certain issues are welcome in the conversation.”

And critics believe – ironically – that the mayor’s reaction to the story validates that point.

“In some places to simply talk about race is to be accused of being a racist and some of the reaction has sort of borne that out,” he said.

Nutter wants the commission to consider whether the magazine’s essay was the “reckless equivalent of shouting ‘fire!’ in a crowded theater.”

“Only by debunking myth with fact, and by holding accountable those who seek to confuse the two, can we insure that the prejudices reflected in the essay are accorded the weight they deserve: none at all,” the mayor wrote.

Ken Paulson, president of the First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University, called that comparison unfair.

“It is totally unsubstantiated,” Paulson told me. “This story may provoke ideas, but it doesn’t create panic.”

Paulson said he was especially disturbed by the government investigating a publication.

“That is a dangerous path,” he said. “The idea that government can somehow punish journalists with which it disagrees is contrary to everything the First Amendment stands for.”

McGrath did say he welcomed the mayor’s call for a city-wide discussion about race – but noted the announcement was rich with irony.

“I find it pretty bizarre,” he said. “At the same time he wants us rebuked, he’s saying we need to have a conversation about race in Philadelphia – which was our point in the first place.”

“His point seems to be that he’s allowed to talk about some of this stuff but that other people aren’t,” McGrath added.

Someone a whole lot wiser than me posted this comment in the Philadelphia paper concerning this article:

“The Great Separation, in which proto-Whites left Africans behind, was a turning point in the upward evolution of Man. Have we reached another, downward, turning point?

Only the most ambitious of the early humans in Africa possessed the curiosity to venture beyond their “comfort zone” and migrate out of the continent in search of new adventures and opportunities. It was this northward migration that exposed our progenitors to the new climates and environments that would guide their evolution. This was the historic moment that signaled the future birth of our race and all its advancements — and the relatively backward nature of those tribes who remained in the tropics.

Leaving their predecessors behind, the fledgling stock pushed onward. Changing selection pressures would favor those mutations that bestowed upon the new stock reasoning abilities, deductive thinking, and logic. These traits would be necessary in order for the new breed of man, the White man, to survive the colder climates to the north.

The winter season brings new challenges and obstacles to the stock. For months at a time the fertile soil becomes a frozen, barren land, incapable of cultivation — an inhospitable climate where even short exposures can quickly lead to frostbite and death. Gone were the days of endless warmth and pursuing only those behaviors that offered the reward of immediate gratification. The new breed needed to have the vision to see into the future and make plans ahead of time, if they were to survive.

Through a long and rigorous process, subsistence hunting and food gathering, and building temporary structures from mud or straw were replaced by agriculture, domestication of livestock, and true architecture. These are among hallmarks of civilization achieved by early Whites. And it was only when the fundamental problems of day-to- day survival had been solved that the mind could be free to ponder the higher things in life — and the infinite possibilities of the future. A future with automobiles, refrigerators, television, radios, cell phones, satellites, and space travel. Look around you: the White man invented virtually everything you see.

The paucity of invention by sub-Saharan Africans — it is virtually nil — is evident. This lack of creative thinking is so because the Africans left behind did not follow the proto-Whites along their migration routes out of Africa — and hence did not evolve in the same way. It was the genetic response to the changing selection pressures generated by the exposure to the colder climates of the north that elicited the changes in the genome that made our race, civilization, and mighty technology possible.

To this day, the Blacks who remain in their cradle of comfort along the equatorial zones of the earth, as well as those transplanted around the world by slavery in recent centuries, remain several steps below the White men and women of the West in measured intelligence, self-restraint, civilized behavior, artistic and scientific accomplishments, and sexual morality.

Just as the transitions from ape-like creatures to pre-man and then to early African man were giant steps for mankind, so too was the transformation of early African man into the White European race during his aeons-long journey to the north. It was Whites who gave us the architecture of the Parthenon, the Pantheon and St. Basil’s cathedral, the music of Mozart and Beethoven, the artwork of Michelangelo and Monet, and the vision of Galileo. It was the vast collection of knowledge assimilated by the white European minds of scientists like Newton and Maxwell that gave us our vast understanding of chemistry and the laws of physics — and all the power that implies. Meanwhile, the tribes of sub-Saharan Africa, regardless of where they may have relocated in modern times, are still swatting flies and sacrificing chickens.

In some ways, slavery was the best thing that ever happened to the Blacks — who never could have found their way to America (and the gravy-train provided by guilt-ridden Whites) on their own. Even today, native Blacks have never shown the capability to build a boat capable of crossing the Atlantic. Enslavement, torture, rape, and murder were hardly unique to the Black slaves taken to America — such was the norm in Africa (most of the transported slaves were already slaves while there) and slavery remains an institution there to this day. In our world’s rich history of war, every race has suffered brutal treatment, attempted genocide, and forced emigration at the hands of rival races and nations. Even today in Africa, Blacks are hunted down, raped, tortured, enslaved, and killed by the millions — at the hands of their own “brothers.”

Here in America, Blacks enjoy ample food, clean water, and the opportunity for a good education, as well as the innumerable modern conveniences we all take for granted. Blacks get to be entertainment stars and athletes... but still, they complain about the White man. They riot in the streets and commit a disproportionately high amount of crime. Even very successful Blacks, who “have it all,” like O. J. Simpson, Kobe Bryant, and Michael Jackson find it difficult to rise above their genetic propensity for violence or disrespect toward others. The savage behavior of Black sports stars toward White women is so legendary that it’s become a part of folklore and taken almost for granted, as is the brutal deviant sexual behavior of Black men in prison, with young White males the usual victims.

Most alarming to decent Whites is the current push in America for White girls to misuse their wombs as cradles for primitive Congoid genes — instead of for the sacred purpose for which they were intended.

While such “mothers” are exalted by the Jewish media as shining beacons of light for a new, multiracial society, their children have been condemned to inherit genes hundreds of thousands of years behind those that built the West. They have been robbed of their genetic potential. The mother and her thousands of generations of ancestors’ contribution to the forward evolution of life have come to a screeching halt. The African DNA wraps itself like a parasitic vine around the White helix, chocking the life out of it. This is an act of genocide against our people, and should be prosecuted as such.

Schools, under the thumb of our enemies or in the thrall of the “equality” religion, have relaxed academic eligibility requirements. They must eliminate all evidence of racial inequality and “close the education gap” between Whites and non-Whites — or risk losing funding. If we can’t bring the minorities up to the achievement levels of the Whites, we’ll bring the Whites down to their level. If we can’t bring the bottom of the bell curve up, we’ll bring the top down. That way, they’ll all be equal — equally stupid.

And is that not what we are seeing — not just in the schools, but everywhere in our society?

When you look around, do you see evidence that Blacks have conformed to White standards of culture, civility, and grace? — or do you see Whites conforming to Black norms of disrespect, crudity, ugliness, and ignorance? Do you see Black kids walking down the street dressed in fine clothes, listening to Mozart, and carrying their physics books? — or are you more likely to see White children wearing baggy gang clothes, listening to “rap,” sporting multiple body piercings (an African custom), speaking Ebonics, with a concealed crack pipe in their pocket, and obsessed with empty, lower-than-animal sex?

On the whole, have the Whites influenced the Blacks in a positive direction, or have the Blacks influenced the Whites in a negative direction? Even if the answer is “some of both,” there is no way to argue that we of the West have gained in any way by the association.”

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

News reporting is not supposed to be "creative". It should simply report facts -- exactly as this article did.