Posted on 04/09/2012 1:11:54 PM PDT by reaganaut1
Edited on 04/09/2012 6:18:18 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
I didn
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...
” dyscalculia “
An aversion to integral calculus?
: )
According to the scientists, all humans originated in Africa and spread out. So if we all originated from common origins, how did we arrive at a world where there are large differences in mental ability among the various peoples? Remember, east Asians test higher than white Europeans on average in IQ tests. Does that make them superior to white Europeans? I don't feel inferior because the average IQ of east Asians is higher than people from my ethnic stock in Europe. And there are differences in IQ among people of the same so-called race. (incidentally, race is a concept I don't believe in.) Most likely there's a lot more intelligence we don't know about intelligence.
Mark Steyn is so lucid and sane it’s startling sometimes.
I didn’t think too highly of Derb’s piece- and I disagree with him on a regular basis- but he has brought up topics in ways that have made me THINK and question myself and I value that. I’ll miss him.
I don’t know exactly what the best course was for NR in this case- but the knee-jerk panic on display in the timing and tone of Derb’s firing is useful. I stopped respecting them over there several years ago- around the time they endorsed Romney..and it’s been downhill since then for me.
Maybe this would have been an opportunity for that “dialogue on race” we’re always being told we need.
If intelligence isn’t at least in part determined by genetics, then why can’t a turtle be raised to have as high an I.Q. as a human being?
We absolutely know beyond dispute that different ethnicities have different physical characteristics, which are easily observable, as well as different health risks and problems, which are less easily observable but have been proven statistically. The brain is a less understood physical organ, but it is a physical organ which gives human beings intellectual and emotional characteristics somewhat different from those of turtles.
It would be simply illogical and baseless to say that the ONLY possible different characteristics between different ethnicities are the easily observable ones which we already have clear proof of. If one is interested in truth, one should remain open-minded about any possibilities which have neither been proven nor disproven.
That being said, this Derbyshire article didn’t even seem to be arguing the case for biological vs. cultural differences. He was only discussing differences as he observed them in the population and didn’t discuss their possible origins. He may have done this in other articles.
“When sharp contrasts are called for, NR is a mosh pit of pastels.”
Nice
That point needs to be made often. Conversely, literacy is not a prerequisite to learning math or science. Dyslexic children can be taught math and science, without delaying to “fix” their literacy skill. That's something that most elementary school teachers (and most of the rest of the educational establishment, for that matter) do not understand. They (the teachers) have a bias toward literacy skills, because that is usually what they were good at.
Thx MrsMEl the ALTRIGHT Article is excellent, esp. last paragraph:
“Personally I have no wish to bang on about White “supremacy,” and I’m sure that John Derbyshire didn’t either, but when you have a frank, open, and honest discussion about race in America this is one of the inevitable by-products, and this is exactly why the National Review has stopped reviewing the nation, and fired the last writer on its books “capable of living up to the magazine’s title.
Has anyone been able to intelligently counter John Derbyshire’s statements? Or has he been burned at the stake because his “tone” was inappropriate?
p.s. Thank you, Mr Steyn.
“When sharp contrasts are called for, NR is a mosh pit of pastels.”
Agreed. NR has been irrelevant for a long time.
I’ve always gotten the impression that Derbyshire is sort of like my college-age daughter who believes that the world ought to be a fair place. I totally agree with Steyn - there should never be a penalty for speaking the truth, because the ability to have the conversation is the most basic freedom we have. In a free market of ideas, the truth will always prevail, but when the truth is suppressed then the lies win out. NR is suppressing truths that badly need to be part of the conversation on race - I for one will avoid NR like the plague from now on.
Our kids grew up in Africa. My son was the first white child our tribe had ever seen. When we returned to the USA, our kids were in a vastly majority black public school. Our 10 year old son was the only white boy in his class.
After an incident in which our 8 year old daughter was pushed down stairs (inadvertently) by two black girls shoving each other, my wife questioned our children about the environment.
Son, do they respect you?
No mam, they don’t respect me, they don’t respect the teacher and they don’t respect each other. Someone needs to put them on a plane back to Africa where they can learn manners. (All of his African friend were very well behaved)
Now, 25 years later, I read of an egg hunt which was cancelled in this very same town because these now grown up classmates of my children still do not respect each other or themselves.
Political correctness has done FAR more harm to the black community than segregation or the “n-word” ever did.
I had a good friend in college who had to take me aside to give me a talk. “Man, you are behaving like a conceited jerk!” I am so grateful that he was not politically correct and told me the truth.
Do we care enough about our black countrymen to openly tell them it is the culture & behaviors we object to, not the concentration of melanin in the epidermis?
Exactly right.
Without the words of those black authors firmly in mind, Derbyshire’s essay looks like a pointless rant.
Instead, as you point out, it is a carefully crafted and informative satire.
Derbyshire didn't anticipate the firestorm of criticism.
If he had, he would have posted a sound bite from each of those Hard Left Black essays before he began his critique.
I’m thinking of mathematics more in the sense of logic and the ability to conceptualize (although if they have to touch things to count them, they obviously can’t conceptualize even on a basic level). In the case of lower class blacks, their language is so reduced to the communication of basic needs and so unable to conceptualize that it probably does affect their ability to calculate. People whose language is so limited simply can’t form the logical concepts necessary for following even basic mathematical rules.
This probably is a remnant of slavery; Africans rarely received formal instruction in English or anything else, they didn’t all speak the same African languages among themselves, and the slaveowners certainly had no interest in letting them communicate with the larger world. By the early 20th century, however, there was a small but solid middle class of blacks who were overcoming their historic disadvantage and in fact suffered primarily from legal discrimination and not from the limitations of black culture. When the legal restrictions were ended, there was every reason to expect that blacks would assimilate into the larger culture and would eventually have the normal range of IQ found in any group.
Unfortunately, the Great Society struck at the same time, and suddenly it became advantageous not to integrate into the larger society. The entire focus of “black leaders” was directed at keeping their flock dumb and isolated and subject to these leaders, and I think much of the poisonous exaltation of the limitations of ghetto “culture” that has been such an afflication to the black community can be traced to these “leaders” and their desire for control, little different from that of the slaveowners.
I think you’d find this linguistic (and hence conceptual) deficit in any group that was isolated and whose life had sunk to nothing but an attempt to satisfy basic needs, particularly when the group in question doesn’t even have to interact with the larger society by working to earn a living. Naturally, it’s also true that this involves other physical factors (lousy maternal nutrition because they live on potato chips and soda throughout their pregnancies, for example) or social factors (non-existence of structured families and hence the inability to relate socially to others on any basis except fear, power or survival advantage, for example).
Years ago, I was on a jury in a case involving a young black woman who had assaulted another young black woman on her block (over a man, of course). The woman’s mother and grandmother appeared as witnesses.
The young woman had grown up in one of the worst ghettoes in San Francisco, her mother had been brought up there shortly after WWII when the ghetto was still new (formed during segregation by Southern black laborers who had come to work in the shipyards), and her grandmother was from Mississippi.
Each generation was more unintelligible than the preceding one. The grandmother had a heavy Southern accent but was basically intelligible and answered appropriately, the mother (who had worked briefly and then been on welfare with her numerous children for most of her life) was difficult to understand but it was still possible, and the young woman could have been speaking some entirely different, non-English language. In addition, she didn’t even appear to understand standard English and the questions to her had to be repeated and rephrased until she could “get it.” It was like watching reverse evolution in action - all thanks to black ghetto culture.
Thanks for the assist.
excellent analysis
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.