Posted on 04/07/2012 6:46:31 AM PDT by Motherhood IS a career
John Derbyshire has set off a mini firestorm by responding to an article which details advice that black parents give their kids about coping with "White America", by giving advice to his own kids about coping with black America. And imagine White America's collective shock... he has been denounced for it as being racist. (actually I think it's ... "RACIST!!!")
Racism, as we know, is the ultimate liberal heresy. There are difference between black (ethno-African) Americans, and White (European) Americans which are obvious at a distance. And there are dramatic difference between the sub culture of Black America and the many Sub Cultures of white America. But secular liberalism, our religion of state, is based almost entirely on un-knowing things that are obvious. And noticing the differences between White and Black America is strictly off limits.
That something is obviously true is totally irrelevant to the discussion. If you call attention to one of these unutterable facts you will be shunned. And since John Derbyshire has done that very thing, there are already those out there demanding his head on a plate. But it seems to me that it isn't just what John said in his piece that's causing an uproar - it's his tone as well. He's too 'matter of fact' about it. He states facts as if they are ... well... facts. He doesn't kowtow to the liberal establishment by stating how sorry he is to call attention to the points he raises - he just raises them. This, I suspect, is what's really getting under people's skin.
I think it's probably pointless to say this, in that it won't change anyone's mind about anything, but since John is my friend I'll go ahead and do it anyway. Like most of us, there are a great many things John cares about. He cares about his family of course and his home life. He cares about the fate of America, and the future world that his children will inherit. He cares about his dog, and his friends, and all the small things that we all value. But what he does not care about - not a whit as far as I have ever been able to tell, is race.
And that's mainly because there is something else that John cares about. He cares about the objective truth. He wants his personal view of the universe to be as accurate and verifiable as is humanly possible given the limits on his intelligence and his time. He wants his understanding of the world to be correct, in the same way that any scientist wants it. This gives his writing what I have referred to many times in the past as a "logical irreducibility." He boils down society and politics to its principle components, the same way that a mathematician would when analyzing a data set. The same way I often do in my work when examining the markets.
And that's the thing that I believe has really rattled the liberal cages. John has said things about race, which are objectively verifiable and absolutely true - but it is part of the liberal religion to never admit them. I'm not going to slice and dice too much. I'm quite sure there is no secret code in John's words. But I do think it serves a useful purpose to provide a few examples from his piece in takimag.
For instance, when he said :
The default principle in everyday personal encounters is, that as a fellow citizen, with the same rights and obligations as yourself, any individual black is entitled to the same courtesies you would extend to a nonblack citizen. That is basic good manners and good citizenship. In some unusual circumstances, however—e.g., paragraph (10h) below—this default principle should be overridden by considerations of personal safety.
While the latter point about personal safety may leave a few more feeble liberals with the a sudden case of the vapors, (as will his reference to a "black" and not a "black American" or one of the more liberally appropriate monikers) I don't think anyone in the liberal intelligencia is too horrified by this obviously true statement. It's controversial, but not specifically heretical to the liberal religion. The very same can be said of his statement:
As with any population of such a size, there is great variation among blacks in every human trait (except, obviously, the trait of identifying oneself as black). They come fat, thin, tall, short, dumb, smart, introverted, extroverted, honest, crooked, athletic, sedentary, fastidious, sloppy, amiable, and obnoxious. There are black geniuses and black morons. There are black saints and black psychopaths. In a population of forty million, you will find almost any human type. Only at the far, far extremes of certain traits are there absences. There are, for example, no black Fields Medal winners. While this is civilizationally consequential, it will not likely ever be important to you personally. Most people live and die without ever meeting (or wishing to meet) a Fields Medal winner.
Every word of that is absolutely true in the strictest, most objectively verifiable sense of the word, especially the part about never wishing to meet a fields medal winner. And yet, there is something in the matter of fact tone that leaves your personal radar, finely honed after years of Al Sharpton being treated like a serious thinker, sending up a 'yellow alert'. You can almost see the liberal high priests stepping out from behind altar and calling the grand inquisitors over to listen to the rest.
Then John says a few things in public that every single white person in America already knows (including liberal America) but to my knowledge no one has ever said before in public. He basically tells his kids that if it can be reasonably avoided, they should stay out of black neighborhoods. Liberals will say "that's terrible" and then find a way to communicate the same idea to their children without specifically saying so (and will continue to avoid those neighborhoods themselves). But encouraging self segregation is definitely considered over the line to the liberal high priests. It's an open heresy.
But even so, given the tone of the day and the broader conversation currently ongoing about race relations with regard to the Trayvon Martin shooting, it might have been more or less forgiven but for what he comes right out and says next.
On page 2 of John's takimag piece, he performs the modern day equivalent of storming into the Vatican and declaring that the earth revolves around the sun. He calls direct attention to the following completely true, objectively verifiable and totally inescapable fact:
The mean intelligence of blacks is much lower than for whites. The least intelligent ten percent of whites have IQs below 81; forty percent of blacks have IQs that low. Only one black in six is more intelligent than the average white; five whites out of six are more intelligent than the average black. These differences show in every test of general cognitive ability that anyone, of any race or nationality, has yet been able to devise.
This is an unspeakable thing to liberals. It's a direct and public acknowledgement of the central fact that they insist on un-knowing in all their dealings with black America. It's like holding a globally televised black mass in the Sistine chapel, or using a burning Koran to fry bacon before forcibly feeding it to the high mullah of Mecca. It's such a grand heresy that they cannot even refer to it directly while demanding that John be publicly burned as a racist ("RACIST!!!") for saying it. Liberals regard this point with such overt hostility, that it's entirely possible that in spite of all my writing on the topic of race, I will very likely be called a racist ("RACIST!!!") simply for mentioning it.
Is it true? Obviously yes. But that's not the point. In order for liberal fantasies about the virtue of "equality of outcomes" to be valid, it must be treated as untrue. And John isn't doing that. Keep in mind, when a liberal reads that paragraph they don't read unassailable facts. They read it as John Derbyshire stating his "opinion" that black people are inherently inferior to white people. To anyone who can read this without jumping to their own conclusions, this is obviously not the case. All he's done is pointed out a statistical fact. But liberals won't be able to see that for what it is. They can't help imposing their own value judgments over John's empirical evidence.
National Review's Rich Lowry, political creature that he is, is distancing himself and his magazine from John's piece. I personally think that's a mistake. Didn't Eric Holder say that we should begin having "An honest conversation" on race? Doesn't National Review believe that objectively verifiable and totally inescapable facts should be a part of that conversation?
In truth they probably do yes. But they may be making the tactical political decision that you can't win the argument if you aren't invited to the table. That's conjecture of course, I have no inside data on the decision makers at NR. But it would make some sense to me if they felt that way. And while they may have publicly denounced him, I don't believe they'll take liberal demands for John's head very seriously. Respecting the people I know there as I do, I have to believe they are smart enough to understand the value of the heretic, even if they don't want to participate directly in the heresy itself.
They've done it before - but I think it's clear to any fair minded person that John is more interested in discussing the truth in a compelling and thought provoking way than he is about "diminishing black people" or whatever the liberal fantasy is about his piece. In real life John Derbyshire isn't a racist in the liberal definition of the word. And surely that matters to the editors at National Review - who have not been free of baseless racism accusations themselves.
On the topic of race, John has elected to be the ultimate Heretic. By stepping forward and saying things that are totally forbidden to utter in liberal America but are none the less objectively verifiable as true, John has shown precisely the kind of courage I've come to expect from him. Certainly more than most of us (including me) could ever demonstrate. And it's one of the many reasons I'm proud to call him my friend. Even if you don't agree with him you have to admit that it was a very brave thing to come right out and say.
The truth is very much on his side of course, as it often is with heretics - especially when a religion has become as stunted and misshapen as modern liberalism has become. But the fact that he's speaking the truth may not stop them from burning him (or at least his career). What he's said is very controversial both in tone and content. Less so I think than the Black Panther's who put a price on the head of an innocent man. But it's liberals who run our grand inquisitors office, and they will decide who starts the fires and who is tossed into them.
Wait, didn’t Derbyshire marry outside his race?
I guess just the fact that he’s white makes him racist though </sarcasm>
I COULDN’T get past “radio free new jersey”—what that all about?
BTW, the truth that no one is talking about is that there are three prescribed outcomes to every black male care of the liberal media: athlete, rapper, or drug dealer.
My brother-in-law is works in the car industry so, according to the media, he’s automatically an Uncle Tom.
Do a thought experiment. Transport 10,000 residents of Harlem, picked at random, to a remote island in the Pacific and leave them there, with the means to survive for about a year and allow them to take about 100 pound of personal effects, but they will be isolated from the outside world. Pick another 10,000 from North Dakota and place them on a similar but separate island.
Come back in a generation, 25 years, and note the demographics and economy. On one island, most of the original settlers will have died off, the population will be distributed towards the young, with lots of children, few of whom survive into adulthood. Literacy among the young will be non-existant, healthcare not even rudimentary, religion reduced to superstition, government will be run by one or more competing strongman tryrants.
On the other, population will be stable, schools, a clinic, elections and governance will have been established. At least two religious communities will exist in harmony, Catholics and Protestants. Religion will be smoothly integrated into education with few objections.
Sadly, America is progressing from the second island to the first.
The Fields Medal, officially known as International Medal for Outstanding Discoveries in Mathematics, is a prize awarded to two, three, or four mathematicians not over 40 years of age at each International Congress of the International Mathematical Union (IMU), a meeting that takes place every four years.
I learned something new this morning.
Question and, I hope, an honest one: Why does John Derbyshire feel that this issue has to be aired yet again? It's interesting but, why? And why now?
Funny how so many "racists" really only seem to have problems with one race in particular....
He really isn’t saying anything that Herrnstein and Murray haven’t already said. He’s being provocative by couching it as advice to his children in dealing with black America, in juxaposition to advice blacks give their children in dealing with white America.
There was a recent Fox News (business) article, March 27 about the 10 most MISERABLE states: NORTH Dakota was number seven and SOUTH Dakota was number two.
North Dakota got an "F" in eight of the 14 categories, including redistricting, ethics enforcement, lobbying disclosure and political financing. (Snip) Last year the State overwhelmingly voted against a bill to create an ethics commission.
I WON'T show this to a long-time friend FROM North Dakota because she REALLY believes that her home state is perfect and head-shoulders superior in every way to every other state--except winters. Winters drove her to California. She simply wouldn't believe this article and would point to media bias. :o) She IS known for being a TAD STUBBORN.
You've hit the nail on the head.
It's stated in the very first paragraph of the piece.
John Derbyshire has set off a mini firestorm by responding to an article which details advice that black parents give their kids about coping with "White America", by giving advice to his own kids about coping with black America. And imagine White America's collective shock... he has been denounced for it as being racist. (actually I think it's ... "RACIST!!!")
In other words, the people of North Dakota don't consider those issues to be serious problems but a writer in New York City does.
I read John’s piece when it came out. At the time I wondered if he was aware of what he was getting into. He’s an immigrant and has confessed before that he’s somewhat tone-deaf to the American obsession with race.
But I would like to challenge anyone to read his article and point out any fact that is untrue, or any inference drawn from those facts that is not a logical conclusion.
I note that John does not state that blacks are inferior. He merely describes various characteristics that others then assume add up to inferiority. Primarily with regard to measured intelligence.
This is quite interesting, I think. If liberals insist, as they do, that the difference between measured intelligence between the average white person and the average black person not be mentioned, isn’t because they think it has real world consequences? Aren’t they implicitly agreeing that a person of lower intelligence is inferior to a person of higher intelligence and should therefore be assigned to a lower position by law? That if the lower intelligence of black people was to be irrefutably proven, it would indeed be logical to reinstate Jim Crow, or possibly black slavery?
My point is what this unrecognized opinion of theirs says about their attitude towards all others who are “intellectually inferior.” By logical inference, they are proclaiming themselves to be superior beings, and those of lower measured intelligence to be truly inferior, and deserving of nothing but contempt and hatred.
This attitude has nothing to do with race, other than that they refuse to apply it to people with high melanin skin content. OTOH, they feel perfectly free to apply it to those who are melanin-challenged. Thus the great contempt shown towards bitter-clingers and the people of Walmart. IOW, the discrimination and prejudice towards blacks liberals are afraid will be justified if lower average black intelligence can be irrefutably demonstrated is exactly the prejudice they themselves feel towards those of “lower intelligence,” especially those with white skin. Or, more accurately, towards those they believe to be of lower intelligence.
Personally, I think intelligence, especially of the type liberals adore, which consists largely of verbal virtuosity, is greatly over-rated. All men are created equal, and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights. This is not because they are all equally intelligent or verbally adept. It is because God made them equal.
If that were more widely accepted in people’s hearts, I think we could all be a little more relaxed about the possibility that God distributed certain mental characteristics unevenly between ethnic groups.
So basically, you are saying you agree with my conclusions, you just don’t like the results?
I should have said they pretend, most especially to themselves, that they don't apply it to dark-complectioned people.
They do, of course, which is why so few white liberals choose to move into black neighborhoods, despite real estate being less expensive, and refuse to send their children to black schools.
All John did in his article is put down on paper what liberals actually believe, as demonstrated by how they live and raise their children. I suspect a lot of the denunciation he will receive from liberals is precisely because he had the temerity to put down in print what they believe in their hearts.
ha, ha, I’ll take my chances with faulty redistricting over violent crime any day.
VERY well said!
Well, with the Travon Martin case in the spotlight, we seem to have two popular pieces of advice that parents and teachers are giving to their kids:
“Kill Whitey!”
and on the other side:
“Stay out of the hood!”
Which of these two pieces of advice is the more racist and destructive?
Self destructive, I would add, as well as destructive of others, by encouraging the commission of violent crimes.
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