The Talk: Nonblack Version (Knock-Out precautions revisited)

“Sean O’Reilly was 16 when his mother gave him the talk that most black parents give their teenage sons,” Denisa R. Superville of the Hackensack (NJ) Record tells us. Meanwhile, down in Atlanta: “Her sons were 12 and 8 when Marlyn Tillman realized it was time for her to have the talk,” Gracie Bonds Staples writes in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

Leonard Greene talks about the talk in the New York Post. Someone bylined as KJ Dell’Antonia talks about the talk in The New York Times. Darryl Owens talks about the talk in the Orlando Sentinel.

There is a talk that nonblack Americans have with their kids, too. My own kids, now 19 and 16, have had it in bits and pieces as subtopics have arisen. If I were to assemble it into a single talk, it would look something like the following.

(1) Among your fellow citizens are forty million who identify as black, and whom I shall refer to as black. The cumbersome (and MLK-noncompliant) term “African-American” seems to be in decline, thank goodness. “Colored” and “Negro” are archaisms. What you must call “the ‘N’ word” is used freely among blacks but is taboo to nonblacks.

“There is a talk that nonblack Americans have with their kids, too.” (2) American blacks are descended from West African populations, with some white and aboriginal-American admixture. The overall average of non-African admixture is 20-25 percent. The admixture distribution is nonlinear, though: “It seems that around 10 percent of the African American population is more than half European in ancestry.” (Same link.)

(3) Your own ancestry is mixed north-European and northeast-Asian, but blacks will take you to be white.

(4) 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.

(5) 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.

(6) As you go through life, however, you will experience an ever larger number of encounters with black Americans. Assuming your encounters are random—for example, not restricted only to black convicted murderers or to black investment bankers—the Law of Large Numbers will inevitably kick in. You will observe that the means—the averages—of many traits are very different for black and white Americans, as has been confirmed by methodical inquiries in the human sciences.

(7) Of most importance to your personal safety are the very different means for antisocial behavior, which you will see reflected in, for instance, school disciplinary measures, political corruption, and criminal convictions.

(8) These differences are magnified by the hostility many blacks feel toward whites. Thus, while black-on-black behavior is more antisocial in the average than is white-on-white behavior, average black-on-white behavior is a degree more antisocial yet.

(9) A small cohort of blacks—in my experience, around five percent—is ferociously hostile to whites and will go to great lengths to inconvenience or harm us. A much larger cohort of blacks—around half—will go along passively if the five percent take leadership in some event. They will do this out of racial solidarity, the natural willingness of most human beings to be led, and a vague feeling that whites have it coming.

(10) Thus, while always attentive to the particular qualities of individuals, on the many occasions where you have nothing to guide you but knowledge of those mean differences, use statistical common sense:

(10c) If planning a trip to a beach or amusement park at some date, find out whether it is likely to be swamped with blacks on that date (neglect of that one got me the closest I have ever gotten to death by gunshot).

(10e) If you are at some public event at which the number of blacks suddenly swells, leave as quickly as possible.

(10g) Before voting for a black politician, scrutinize his/her character much more carefully than you would a white.

(10h) Do not act the Good Samaritan to blacks in apparent distress, e.g., on the highway.

(10i) If accosted by a strange black in the street, smile and say something polite but keep moving.

(11) 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. They are reflected in countless everyday situations. “Life is an IQ test.”

(12) There is a magnifying effect here, too, caused by affirmative action. In a pure meritocracy there would be very low proportions of blacks in cognitively demanding jobs. Because of affirmative action, the proportions are higher. In government work, they are very high. Thus, in those encounters with strangers that involve cognitive engagement, ceteris paribus the black stranger will be less intelligent than the white. In such encounters, therefore—for example, at a government office—you will, on average, be dealt with more competently by a white than by a black. If that hostility-based magnifying effect (paragraph 8) is also in play, you will be dealt with more politely, too. “The DMV lady“ is a statistical truth, not a myth.

(13) In that pool of forty million, there are nonetheless many intelligent and well-socialized blacks. (I’ll use IWSB as an ad hoc abbreviation.) You should consciously seek opportunities to make friends with IWSBs. In addition to the ordinary pleasures of friendship, you will gain an amulet against potentially career-destroying accusations of prejudice.

(14) Be aware, however, that there is an issue of supply and demand here. Demand comes from organizations and businesses keen to display racial propriety by employing IWSBs, especially in positions at the interface with the general public—corporate sales reps, TV news presenters, press officers for government agencies, etc.—with corresponding depletion in less visible positions. There is also strong private demand from middle- and upper-class whites for personal bonds with IWSBs, for reasons given in the previous paragraph and also (next paragraph) as status markers.

(15) Unfortunately the demand is greater than the supply, so IWSBs are something of a luxury good, like antique furniture or corporate jets: boasted of by upper-class whites and wealthy organizations, coveted by the less prosperous. To be an IWSB in present-day US society is a height of felicity rarely before attained by any group of human beings in history. Try to curb your envy: it will be taken as prejudice (see paragraph 13).

You don’t have to follow my version of the talk point for point; but if you are white or Asian and have kids, you owe it to them to give them some version of the talk. It will save them a lot of time and trouble spent figuring things out for themselves. It may save their lives.

Please share this article by using the link below. When you cut and paste an article, Taki's Magazine misses out on traffic, and our writers don't get paid for their work. Email editors@takimag.com to buy additional rights. http://takimag.com/article/the_talk_nonblack_version_john_derbyshire/print#ixzz2lTVWo7ma

We're dealing with averages here. We're also dealing with facts. Jews and East Asians have the highest recorded IQs of all ethnicities. Not by coincidence, they also have achieve the highest levels of education and financial success. Pointing out individual cases of people from certain ethnicities with high IQs does not change the fact that ethnicities differ ON AVERAGE!!! in intellectual and physical characteristics.

There are also, of course, differences between the so-called races. I doubt Afghans, who are considered Caucasian, would score as high as Germans.

At some point in your life you're going to have to face reality. Humans are not born blank slates or with identical mental abilities. If you have the right mental make-up and attitude, you can be a success. But if you're IQ is under 90, you're going to have a tough time. That's the facts. My advice...face reality.

What is revolting is people like you who are content to have things go the way they're going. As things stand, there's no way to get the black underclass in step with the rest of the country. Low IQ dooms them to a life of failure. High crime rates and dependence on the government.

You have no answers yourself except the usual trite and worthless admonishments for them to improve themselves. Which, of course, will achieve nothing. Everything has been tried. Nothing works. And furthermore, the top half of the black population is held back by the lower half. My advice to you is to face facts. It's called reality.

The notion that people from the 1930’s with an average IQ would be borderline retarded today is a pile of bovine excrement. I knew plenty of people who were of age in the 1930s. They were all quite intelligent. By Flynn’s theory, the Founding Fathers would barely have been able to feed themselves. I saw an interview of Flynn, and he does not believe in any correlation of race and IQ. Which means he’s a brilliant idiot. The Flynn effect is a bogus pile of horse manure.

You totally ignored almost every point I made and pretty much repeated yourself. I don't know what supposed advantage my "facing reality" makes.

Humans are not born blank slates or with identical mental abilities. If you have the right mental make-up and attitude, you can be a success. But if you're IQ is under 90, you're going to have a tough time.

According to an earlier poster, a 1932 American (all races) had an average IQ of 80 under the current scale. I guess that must be why we had a recession. They mostly had a tough time.

Humans are not born blank slates or with identical mental abilities

Agreed. Nor are they burned CD-ROMs with no ability to move up or down in ability. There's plenty of both, with a few making great achievements despite humble beginnings, most doing ok when given tools, opportunity and fair judgement. Quite a few willing to degrade their own abilities through intemperate use of drink and narcotics. Since there is plenty of overlap at least in the middle of the range, there is not much use for making aggregate scores of races (except that's what technocrats and socialists do) when it means nothing about any individual white, black, American India or Eastern Indian I run into.

My fear is that sizing up black people, or American Indians (with huge differences in sophistication and civilization between tribes) or even Jews and eastern Asians in this manner in a general way never lets you get to know them as people, but only as aggregates, the way the Utopian socialist planners think. The temptation will be to write off whole segments of the population. At least one poster pretty much suggested that. I would rather the education of the black children of American to a Marva Collins than than to a Lothrop Stoddard.

I suppose you're one of those warm-hearted people who think if they, the black underclass, would just listen to wonderful conservative messages about self-reliance and go to non-government schools, they'll suddenly see the light. Unfortunately, a great percentage of the black underclass are illiterate and violence prone. They do not want to work for a living, they want the government to provide for them without them having to lift a finger. Time to face reality.

That's putting words in my mouth. After all, 40% of white people in this country voted for Obama, despite the fact that they have heard a conservative message or two well-presented in their lifetimes.

What you describe as the black underclass is quickly characterizing the white underclass, which explains out of wedlock rates among whites being at the same level as it was among blacks in the 1960s. Moreover, many of the enablers are people who would do very, very well on IQ tests. Whether they are cynics gaming the system for personal gain, to salve a bad conscience or lack of horse sense doesn't matter much as the result is the same.

The reality we have to face is that socialism spent a LOT of time preparing young Americans of all types for acceptance, and the same fate will await all of us even without an American style race problem. It may take hundreds of years, and only with the grace of God, not a well wrought speech by a gifted conservative, to turn this around, and there will probably have to be a western civilzation wide collapse before it will happen in earnest. I am not looking forward to it, but that is what I see reality to be.

The Stormfront and similar white supremacist groups want total eradication of all blacks and all other so-called non-whites. I don't believe in an all-white America....I don't care what color or ethnicity Americans are if they're good Americans. But I do see that the black underclass has absolutely no chance of ever joining other Americans in a civilized society.

In a since moderator-removed post you suggested mass sterilization of the black underclass. I no longer have the exact words, but if it were based on them being bad actors, why wouldn't this "solution" apply to the white underclass, or any violent criminal at all?

Sorry, dear, but you’re jumping to conclusions neither Flynn nor I propose.

The Flynn Effect addresses not intelligence (whatever that is) but rather IQ scores.

It is quite indisputable that the Flynn Effect is as described. What that means, precisely, and how it correlates to intelligence, as opposed to IQ, is another question entirely.

I understand DEAR. But my response is I sincerely doubt IQs have risen that much in eighty years if at all. The fact is people like Flynn refuse to conflate IQ with intelligence. When those sorts of people deny what is right in front of their faces, then I have to question whatever methods they use in their tests.

They profess to having no idea how to measure intelligence and are scornful of any suggestion that race might be related to intelligence. Does that sound like a person who'd conduct a fair test...DEAR? Jared Diamond is another of that ilk.

But the facts are DEAR, IQ is absolutely related to intelligence. There is no doubt. The people measured with the IQs tend to be on average far more successful than people with low or average IQs.

And you still haven't answered my question DEAR...if IQs have been rising for many decades or centuries, how intelligent do you think the Founding Fathers and their fellow Americans were? Do you think they were morons? Do you think IQs just started magically rising in the last 80-100 years? If you follow Flynn's theories, the Americans of 1776 must have been complete morons. His tests are balderdash.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.