Wap! Someone just punched me, going down the subway stairs from the elevated. Behind me, I hear girlish, teenaged laughter. No accident here. I turn to my assailant, a 12- or 13-year-old black girl and tell her she’d better keep her hands to herself. “You better keep on walkin’, I don’t talk to no white people,” she replies.

I want to slap some sense into her, but this is the South Bronx, and I’m the only “white” face for miles. Hitting back would be suicide, and she knows it. She needs only to start screaming and pointing at me, and thugs, er activists, will come out of the woodwork to beat me to a pulp, maybe even to death.

You may ask what on earth I, a white man, am doing in the South Bronx? Three years ago, when 16-year-old Yusuf Hawkins was murdered in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, white “liberals” emphasized that young Hawkins had a right to go anywhere he wanted; he didn’t need a reason. No such rights apply to a white man in the South Bronx in broad daylight. No liberal organizations will take up my cause. Not over a punch, not over a killing.

The ravings of a frustrated racist? A perhaps true but exceptional case? Believe either at your own peril. Despite a virtual news whiteout against publishing stories of black racial attacks, harassment, and discrimination against whites, the stories are increasingly leaking out.

A hypocritical practice shared by media and “civil rights” organizations means they rightly scream bloody murder when blacks are victimized by racist whites, but maintain silence or engage in shameless apologetics when blacks attack whites. Sometimes these apologists conjure up a casuistry that would make a Jesuit blush, showing how, in reality, it was the bruised, bloody white who assaulted the poor blacks.

In New York, the city’s Human Rights Commission (HRC) supposedly exists to protect all citizens against discrimination. Where blacks are the accused malefactors, the rules just don’t apply. A white man claiming racial harassment on his job as a senior public administrator filed a human rights grievance over five years ago. The HRC never investigated the charges, despite an agency policy (and claimed track record) of investigating all charges within three years. The man, since retired, recently initiated a lawsuit. Is it a mere coincidence that the HRC just agreed to investigate his case?

In a related case, several white former executives of New York State’s Off-Track Betting Corporation have initiated a multimillion-dollar civil suit against their past employer. The former executives charge that 0TB fired them merely for being white. During cross-examination last spring, a high-ranking current OTB officer acknowledged that the plaintiffs were white and, hence, “had to go.” In the next breath, the officer denied that this constituted racism.

In early 1991, I was attacked on the subway during rush hour by a gang of four young blacks. A transit detective acknowledged that the attack was obviously racially motivated, a “bias crime” as far as New York’s laws are concerned, but “there are some things you can’t say” due to the political climate. The detective also reported that such racially motivated attacks by blacks against whites occur every single day in New York City.

The routine harassment and humiliation of whites in the workplace and the physical attacks on them on public conveyances are pieces of the same shattered mosaic. The political climate the detective spoke of was produced by an alliance of groups—white “liberals,” black nationalists, and the media—and tolerated or granted victory through default (leaving town or boycotting public conveyances) by their supposed opponents.

The aforementioned alliance has succeeded in making any mention of black racism a virtual taboo and in grossly exaggerating urban white racism. Thus, every ugly racial incident instigated by urban whites against blacks is emblazoned on the front page of every big city newspaper. The mere claim by a black, without benefit of evidence, that he was discriminated against gets saturation coverage. On the other hand, stories about black crimes are constantly distorted, by printing that they were merely “assaults” or “robberies” while omitting that the victims were picked out for being white.

As a result of the toleration and encouragement of this racism, the attacks, the harassment, the prejudice have become brasher. In more and more of New York’s public sector and (publicly financed) nonprofit agencies, black workers may utter racial slurs and degrade and even assault white workers with impunity. The point is to run whites out of the work place.

The crux of a racist system is that, regardless of the feelings of the majority of (black) office colleagues, one alone or a small group may harass or assault someone merely because of his pigmentation. The majority of black workers may despise the few who discriminate, but they tolerate the bigots all the same.

The silent majority of black workers do nothing against black racism, due to the aggressive nature of the hatemongers and the latter’s insistence that opposition would amount to treason against the race—and be dealt with accordingly. Perhaps more importantly, the legitimacy enjoyed by black nationalism is due largely to white support. The agencies in which I saw the brashest, most aggressive black racism were run by whites. For the white working in such a setting, the white boss or colleague may at times be one’s worst enemy. Certain whites, from the entry-level positions to the program director’s office, even seek favor with their black colleagues, bosses, and subordinates by setting up white employees for abuse. The devious ones thus protect themselves against landing on the whitelist.

Current journalistic etiquette requires that I balance every example of black racism with ten of white malefactors. This unwritten rule is utterly at odds with my experience. I seem to be in too low a tax bracket to afford the sort of blinders that “liberals” wear. Then, too, unlike those whites who check under their beds every night for racists, I am used to actually living and working with black people, not idealized, abstract victims.

The only people whose opinions matter to me at the moment are the many blacks to whom I owe favors: for the hospitality of a home-cooked meal, counsel, a job, my life. Insisting that the charges don’t apply to them will not impress my benefactors and will not change their feelings of having been betrayed. Many of them truly were victims of white racism. Their displeasure is a bitter price I’m forced to pay in a world in which I find myself increasingly alienated from black people.

All my adult life I have stood for integration. As a 17-year-old token white in a black youth program, I wrote a paper on the need for integration. I remember it well. In the intervening 17 years, philosophically nothing has changed. In practice, everything has changed. I won’t tell you that “some of my best friends are black.” I have no black friends, and do not see any in my immediate future.

A social world in which black people do not exist, or exist only as trouble, may be normal for most white people. It’s not normal for me. Nevertheless, I am not bucking for martyrdom, and I am not in this world to be abused. Hence, I am ceding the playing field to the racists. You’ve won, guys. To the degree possible in New York, I’ll try to avoid work places and social situations where no white males or dogs are welcome.