Black savagery, white acceptance: the Biehl story

Kevin V. writes:

I’ve been following your latest series of posts on this topic with great interest, because, as with much of what you write about, this particular issue is one that transformed me from a leftist to a traditionalist who believes strongly that race does matter.

I remember when I was in college hearing of a Stanford student named Amy Biehl who had been killed by a black crowd in one of the townships in South Africa. She had gone there to help. Since my roommate at the time was a South African graduate student, I had been receiving a great education about current events there. Even though he was a liberal, he explained to me why Biehl’s activities were near suicidal in nature.

It was the television reports that got to me. I remember very clearly watching the ABC News reports on the trial of the men who had stoned and stabbed Biehl to death as she begged for her life. The courtroom was packed with the relatives and friends of the accused, who had to be admonished by the judge over and over to maintain order during the proceedings. The ABC newsman focused on one dramatic event during that day’s testimony. As a witness for the prosecution described in detail Biehl’s begging while a knife was being driven into her chest down to the hilt, the black women in the crowd began to laugh and perform a mocking ululating while a few performed mock begging motions. The black men yowled in glee and the entire courtroom broke out into hysterics as the black crowd mocked this white girl’s final moments.

Sitting in the courtroom, fresh from lily-white and very wealthy Newport Beach, California, were Biehl’s parents, Linda and Peter Biehl. The news report then cut to an interview of the parents after the day’s testimony, in which they declared that understood the anger of the crowd and that their fondest hope was that their daughter’s murder trial would lead to an opportunity for reconciliation and forgiveness. It was seeing this despicable reaction that made me realize that what I was seeing around me in Berkeley was, in fact, true: there is no black depravity against whites that white liberals will not excuse or forgive. We have it coming. Even our own daughters have it coming.

In case you think that this was an instance of shell-shocked parents not thinking clearly, I should note that the Biehls have gone on to form a charity, the Amy Biehl Foundation, which “continues Amy’s work in South Africa.” The website of Beyond Intractability, which describes itself as a site dedicated to finding “more constructive approaches to destructive conflict,” has this report on Linda Biehl from December, 2005:

Eventually, Peter and Linda quit their jobs in California and started a South African organization, running after-school programs and small businesses in the townships.

“We had already determined that Amy was killed during a very violent time, but there was still violence. It was mostly economic-based, there were no schools. We wanted to help make functional young people,” says Linda.

In 1997, Desmond Tutu created the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Created to deal with the horrors of apartheid, the TRC allowed perpetrators of racial crimes to receive amnesty for a full confession. Victims could also receive reparations for the pain they had suffered. The four men convicted of Amy’s murder applied.

The Biehls wanted to be respectful of the TRC process because they knew that Amy would have supported it. They granted all four men amnesty. At the hearing, Peter addressed the Commission saying, “The most important vehicle of reconciliation is open and honest dialogue … we are here to reconcile a human life which was taken without an opportunity for dialogue. When we are finished with this process we must move forward with linked arms.” However, despite what Peter had said at the hearing, probably nobody expected what happened next.

After they were released from prison, Easy Nofemela and Ntobeko Peni, two of the men convicted of Amy’s murder had come to much the same conclusion the Biehls had about the townships.

“They were shocked to see things hadn’t changed. Things were worse. Their friends were not in school. There was a lot of drinking and drugs,” Linda remembers. The two men started a youth group in their township and they wanted to show the Biehls what they had done. An anthropologist who had been interviewing them offered to contact the Biehls. They agreed.

The Biehls took Nofemela and Peni out to dinner. That night was the beginning of a strong friendship between the four. The Biehls hired the two men to help out with their organization.

[end of excerpt]

She helps the murderers obtain amnesty, she dines out with them, and she hires them, the savages who murdered her own daughter.

Simply put, this is monstrously inhuman. This is liberalism.

If we, as a movement, are waiting for whites to “wake up,” we will fail. The Biehl experience shows that even under such circumstances, liberalism remains a terminal disease.

- end of initial entry -

LA writes:

And do mainstream conservative publications ever have anything to say about this kind of thing? No. Or at least, no, beyond the briefest and most superficial mention. Because to discuss it seriously would lead to the racial realities that “conservatives” as much as liberals avoid like the plague.

RS writes:

To some, but not to me, the actions of the Biehl’s are the very height of lived liberal Christianity, showing the very best of the enlightened and privileged and in full conformity with what Jesus taught his disiciples.

Gintas writes:

If you browse through the Amy Biehl foundation site in SA, starting with “About Amy,” you’ll find it’s a superset of every liberal platitude ever thought.

Warning: make sure you have not recently eaten before reading.

Van Wijk writes:

The layperson who finds amybiehl.org might think that she died of natural causes or was killed in a car accident. Nowhere on the site is there mention of the fact that this young woman was butchered by black savages. There is only this under the About Us link:

“12 years ago, on August 25, 1993, Amy made her transition from her eventful life on earth to an even larger life of committed service to the under-served and to the hopeful. The Amy Biehl Foundation draws breath and inspiration from Amy and her example. It is a creation of family and friends who loved her in life, and is now extended by many hundreds of new friends—young and old—who want to make a constructive difference in their world and who enjoy doing this in Amy’s name.

“This website is dedicated to Amy and to her hundreds of unselfish friends throughout the world who carry on for her with zest, joy and friendship.”

The hair on my arms stood up as I read this. We live in a world of lies.

Bill Carpenter writes:

A fantasy: What if our President had ordered a punitive bombing of the township where Amy Biehl was killed? What if the Biehls had dedicated themselves to securing the execution of their daughter’s murderers? These could be Christian acts, if carried out in the proper spirit. The quest for justice does not exclude charity towards malefactors. It is a blessing to teach people the scope of their sinfulness and to hold them to the standards of the living God. Witness the thief on the cross next to Jesus. He accepts his just punishment at the same time as acknowledging the divinity of Christ and as a result receives the promise of Paradise. Witness the Sean Penn character in Dead Man Walking. Only as he approaches execution does he become a human being who understands what he has done to his victims.


Posted by Lawrence Auster at July 31, 2008 01:47 PM | Send
    

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