John Derbyshire: Racial Heretic

I really don’t want to get into an argument with you, but I feel like you are not reading what I am posting.

I have not said that Derbyshire was wrong in any of his particulars. I have merely said that I felt the tone of his piece is counter-productive and I’ve also questioned some of the “instructions” he gives his kids. In particular the ones about not helping black people in distress and making friends for false reasons.

You read the part that I wrote about Mexico, so didn’t you see the part where I told my kid she was not to date any black guys until she was well into adulthood?

My kid actually never had any interest in non-white guys, so that turned out to be a moot point, but you never know.

Here’s another story - we lived in the NYC metro area in NJ. There is a bus that ran from our town into Jersey City, where you could get the PATH train to NYC. During rush hours this bus is OK, because it goes express and doesn’t stop in Jersey City until it gets to the train station (or very near the train station, I forget).

But during non-rush hours it goes through the worst of the black ghetto of Jersey City, stopping locally. (There’s a local at rush hour too, but that starts in JC.)

So the kid asked me once could she take the bus with her friends to get the PATH and go into the city. (Or for some reason, the details aren’t important.) And I thought about it and then I said NO. I had taken that bus after rush hour a few times and believe me all the passengers, blacks and spanish people too, had some tense moments at times. Nothing ever actually happened, but who knows?

I told her: I can’t really let you do something that made me nervous the few times I’ve done it. She took no for an answer and she understood why.

So yeah, Derb is right, we do tell our children these things. I have never said otherwise.

Why? I’m very proud I’m white, very proud I’m Irish and now when I say I’m very proud I’m German you’re really going to think I am a neo-nazi, but I’m not.

Everybody else is supposed to have Black pride, Hispanic pride, etc, etc. But white people are supposed to be ashamed of themselves.

Well I don’t buy it.

I think all people should be proud of their heritage. All groups have bad in their past, but they have good too.

And what good does it do to be self-hating?

You can’t change your racial/ethnic background, so try and be a good example of your group.

At least that’s what they used to say, now I’m sure that’s considered very judgmental.

But anyway, I never could find a group like that, so I’ll just have to be proud on my own.

“And I’m not offended when people say that women, on average aren’t good at math and science. Because it’s true.”

Actually it’s not true. “On average” women have as much ability as men. The math and science abilities of both men and women are distriubted along normal curves — just not the same curves. The distribution for men is wider than for women. That is, there are more men at the extreme ends of the distribution, than there are women. Both ends.

That was the point Larry Summers was trying (so badly) to express. The evidence shows that there are more men at the extreme ends. To be a Harvard science or math prof — you have to be at the extreme high end of ability. (Clearly, that rule doesn’t apply to their law school.) Significantly more men than women have that level of ability. Conversely, more men than women are at the extreme low end of ability.

More men than women qualify to be Harvard science profs. OTOH, the vast majority (over 99.9%) of men don’t qualify either.

In the range where most of us fall — women and men are almost equally matched. There are as many women as men, who are “good”, even “very very good” at math and science. There are just more males than females at the extreme “Harvard prof” end of the scale. (Just as there are more men that have to be kept in quite different institutions, because of their very low cognative abilities.)

(FWIW, I’m a male. Demonstrably well above average ability in math — but not Harvard science prof good.)

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