White Supremacist group American Renaissance forced to move location of annual conference in Charlotte
Theresa El-Amin, a coordinator for the Southern Anti-Racism Network (SARN), confirmed to the North Carolina Independent News that American Renaissance’s annual conference is looking for another venue after their reservations at the Sheraton Charlotte Airport Hotel were canceled. The group had previously announced their annual meeting would be held in Charlotte on February 4-6, but would not disclose the location.
Sheraton Charlotte Airport Hotel would not confirm or deny that American Renaissance originally had planned to hold the conference at their hotel, but said that the conference will not be held at that location. Other groups working to prevent the conference from being held in Charlotte, who did not wish to be identified for fears of violence, confirmed that the group is now attempting to book venues near Charlotte to hold the conference.
El-Amin described American Renaissance as “the elite of the white supremacist movement.” American Renaissance has been classified as a “hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).
Speaking to NCIN on Tuesday, Rev. William J. Barber II, president of the North Carolina NAACP, said of the planned visit to Charlotte by American Renaissance, “Racial hatred, and those who promote racial animosity, has no place in our American society. Certainly people have a First Amendment right to have their views, but we think people should stand up. We stand opposed to any groups that promote white supremacy.”
The SPLC gives this background on the group, also known as the New Century Foundation:
“„“Founded by Jared Taylor in 1990, the New Century Foundation is a self-styled think tank that promotes pseudo-scientific studies and research that purport to show the inferiority of blacks to whites — although in hifalutin language that avoids open racial slurs and attempts to portray itself as serious scholarship.”
Taylor, in an article for American Renaissance magazine in 2005, wrote, “Blacks and whites are different. When blacks are left entirely to their own devices, Western civilization — any kind of civilization — disappears.”
On the group’s website, the conference schedule is introduced with this passage:
“„Ours is an era of fear and self-censorship. Virtually no whites are willing to break taboos about racial differences in IQ, the costs of “diversity,” or the challenges of non-white immigration. We are different. We believe these are vital questions.
“„At this conference you will hear some of the most courageous academics, journalists, and political figures of our time discuss the forces that will determine our future. This will be a remarkable group of speakers and guests—undeceived, outspoken, and committed to the defense of Western Civilization.
American Renaissance’s annual conference in 2010 was canceled when hotels in the Washington, D.C.-area nixed reservations after pressure from protesters.
