Parting Ways [National Review fires John Derbyshire!]

NRO ^ | 2012-04-07 | Rich Lowry

[cartan]

Anyone who has read Derb in our pages knows he’s a deeply literate, funny, and incisive writer. I direct anyone who doubts his talents to his delightful first novel, “Seeing Calvin Coolidge in a Dream, or any one of his “Straggler” columns in the books section of NR. Derb is also maddening, outrageous, cranky, and provocative. His latest provocation, in a webzine, lurches from the politically incorrect to the nasty and indefensible. We never would have published it, but the main reason that people noticed it is that it is by a National Review writer. Derb is effectively using our name to get more oxygen for views with which we’d never associate ourselves otherwise. So there has to be a parting of the ways. Derb has long danced around the line on these issues, but this column is so outlandish it constitutes a kind of letter of resignation. It’s a free country, and Derb can write whatever he wants, wherever he wants. Just not in the pages of NR or NRO, or as someone associated with NR any longer.

[Zhang Fei]

I gave a curtailed version of that talk to my daughter when she went off to college in Baltimore, focusing on recent crimes there, and the fact that a third of the young black men are under the supervision of the criminal justice system, and that young black women in that city had also committed race-based crime.

Weirdly enough, young black men would benefit more from Derbyshire's talk, given that the vast majority of black men are murdered by other black men, often under the precise conditions the Derb lists.

[achilles2000]

IQ tests aren’t scientific? On the contrary, there is a large body of sound research (twin studies,for example), and the research has proven quite predictive, at least when looking at large populations differing by a standard deviation.

What isn’t clear is what accounts for differences in IQ. The Flynn effect is one puzzle. Another is that genetic correlations come in at around .7 to .8. What accounts for these differences (Please note that a twenty to thirty percent variation for non-genetic factors is quite large when we assume a mean of 100)? We don’t know. I believe that there are also some studies that have shown a tendency toward regression toward the general population mean over two or three generations among Asians.

In addition, the development of the field of epigenetics makes the situation even more complicated because we can’t assume any more that there is a unique expression of one’s genetic inheritance.

Nevertheless, low IQ, whatever influences it, tends to correlate with certain anti-social traits. High IQ tends to correlate with certain socially desireable traits. I suspect that the “black culture” manufactured by the sociopathic elements of the black community elevated to leadership by the media and liberals has caused black IQ to deteriorate. This is only a conjecture, but it wouldn’t surprise me if this ultimately proved to be true. If it is true, then any other group adopting similar behaviors is suscepticle to intellectual regression. We may be seeing this among the YOBS in the UK.

[ash-housewares]

I’m a bit surprised actually. This is the type of disproportionate hissy fit you’d expect as routine from a leftist publication. In the past I remember their writers taking shots at each other but this kind of editorial squawking is just a tissue covering rank pusillanimity (as Buckley pere might have been able to say without even resorting to spellcheck)

[Revolting cat!]

Since I have to ‘splain, I think that the IQ stats are used in the same way that various euphemisms are used, to hide and to simultaneously express the truth.

[Sherman Logan]

The problem with the “unscientificness” of the IQ test is that IQ tests are extraordinarily successful at predicting a great many behaviors.

For instance, for most of the anti-social behaviors Derb discusses, differences between races largely disappear when one controls for IQ. Indicating IQ is much more important in determining the behavior than race.

Is IQ testing perfect? Of course not. And we’re not even sure it really measures intelligence, since there is no truly scientific definition of intelligence. But whatever IQ tests measure, it correlates very well with a great many important human behaviors.

[musicman]

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[Liberty Valance]

You’re welcome.

[wardaddy]

Lol

[Vanders9]

Yeah, its a free country. He can write whatever he likes. Just can’t find an outlet for it anymore. yeah, thats free all right.

[zeestephen]

I found this in Wikipedia:

“In April 2012, Derbyshire wrote an article for Taki’s Magazine titled “The Talk: Nonblack Version.” The article was a response to reports in the news media of ‘talks’ given by African American parents to their children warning them against white authority figures.”

[MARKUSPRIME]

Quick test for you all. Name one place on earth in the US or otherwise that has a black dominate population with them controlling things and now tell me which of those nations or places are prosperous and not an absoulte third world shitbox. Oh right they arent any. The US started going down hill after all this welfare gibs me dat. I wont even bring up the brain size controversy and the lack of advancement of a certain race throughout history, because to speak truth and logic nowadays in the cultural marxist west is deemed racist. The truth in the end will solve all problems, but it will get very ugly if people continue to ignore it and let it fester.

[Sherman Logan]

I would much prefer to believe in the standard model of human intelligence, which is that there is no inherent difference between ethnic groups.

Unfortunately, this particular lovely model appears to have been murdered by a gang of brutal facts.

What we have here is many thousands of brilliant researchers trying desperately for at least five decades to find some way of measuring intelligence that will demonstrate the standard model to be true. I suspect whoever did so would win a Nobel Prize, or at minimum the plaudits of all his colleagues. Which they all know.

So either all these researchers are unable to find the appropriate metric. Or it doesn’t exist.

[zeestephen]

Re: IQ tests are notoriously unscientific

Most of Derbyshire’s statistics came from Charles Murray's book “The Bell Curve.”

That book has been favorably reviewed or referenced dozens of times by Rich Lowry’s magazine, National Review.

There have been several hundred comments and papers published about “The Bell Curve” in scientific and social science journals.

Many, of course, were critical.

But a majority support Murray's methods and conclusions.

One test might interest you.

Great Britain has given IQ tests to young children for more than a half a century, most of them white, until recent years.

There is an irrefutable correlation between high IQ and high income, good health, and long life.

[MadMax, the Grinning Reaper]

As one who was born and raised in Baltimore, until I left to go to college and then get married, I lived in a city that was very good for whites (there was prejudice against Jews, which I experienced first hand, but it was not pervasive).

When integration hit in the late 50’s, it was not handled properly and black groups created fear among whites, and we were often picked on as an individual by the group. Some blacks feared whites and there was some justification for that. I also feared some whites even in Junior High - white trash drapes/punks. I also feared a couple white Jewish guys who were just plain bullies but always worked as a pack.

In high school, with a demographic of 2/3rds white (50% of them Jewish; 50% Christians of all denominations), and 1/3rd blacks, there was very little racial trouble. Our school administrators/principal/advisors were firm and alert. Our black classmates and teammates gave everyone mutual respect, one of the most important concepts, to getting along with one another.

College, north Philadelphia right in the heart of the black ghetto. Some crime but not a lot against students. The black community valued the help that mainly white students gave them in tutoring their children, cleaning up the area, etc.

By the time I graduated Temple Un. in 1966, Baltimore had started to go to hell and in the riots of 1968, the white, Democratic, liberal administration of Nancy Pelosi’s brother, Mayor D’Alessandro Jr or III, abandoned the Jewish working class and many of the non-Jewish white areas (they were left to defend themselves and did, heavily armed and willing to use them).

The other failure was that of the black establishment to unite against black extremists such as H. Rap Brown and Stokely Carmichael, and this broke the once firm white/liberal/Democratic/and Jewish alliance that had been formed in the 1950’s and thru the work of Dr. King Jr.

Today, Mr. Derbyshire has to write a damning article (some statements with which I strongly disagree re IQ), warning his daughter about going to school in Baltimore. However, he is right about safety at the Un. of Maryland, downtown Johns Hopkins Hospital, etc. Even decent, hardworking blacks are are risk in these areas, as well as where they live.

This is unfair to all decent people, and the major blame lies in the cowardness and patronizing leadership of white,Democrats/liberals and the black machines who run a good part of that city and most other major cities with significant black populations (Detroit, Chicago, Cleveland, Houston, DC, Baltimore, Phila and NYC).

Your first goal in life is survival. After that, you can be a liberal or conservative as you want, but you do have to respect all decent people no matter what their skin color is, or religion, or ethnic background, etc.

It will only be when these decent people unite to help each other survive the onslaught of the criminal and political barbarians, will a Mr. Derbyshire NOT have to write the column that he did. Unfortunately, the way things are today, with the two top US government officials being as hardcore racists as they are (Obama and Holder), it will take another generation to repair the damage that they have done and allowed to be done in the name of “diversity”.

Reality is a bitch and it can be hard, to deadly, if you are not aware of the world around you.

PS: My sister, white and Jewish, was literally driven at gunpoint out of a downtown Baltimore area, Bolton Hill, and one of her neighbors was killed in his apartment right next to her.

Lessons learned. Lessons remembered. Kumbaya never stopped a bullet.

[Sherman Logan]

But a majority support Murray's methods and conclusions.

Not exactly. Little reasonable fault was found with his methods. But a great many dispute his conclusions. Generally for not much more reason than they don't like them.

I recently ran across the book at a garage sale for $1. Why not?

I'd never read the book, but remembered the fire storm over its racism.

Imagine my surprise that race wasn't even the main focus of the book, although the authors were too honest to dodge the racial issue.

The main focus was how we should deal with a society evolving that has less and less economic use for less-intelligent people. IOW, what are we going to do with these people?

As automation continues and accelerates, the lack of demand will move farther and farther to the right on the IQ scale. For instance, it is likely that within less than 10 or 15 years the task of vehicle driving will largely be done by computers. Fine, you might say, but what are all those presently driving going to do to make a living? I've seen people point out the growing market for development of apps. Does anybody seriously believe large numbers of laid-off truck drivers can be retrained to develop apps for a living?

Murray and his co-authors attempted to address this issue, which is at the core of the "inequality" issue behind Dem propaganda and the OWS people. AFAIK, nobody else has. This is the biggest issue of our time, by far, and absolutely nobody is paying any attention to it.

BTW, it has a tie-in with Derb's screed. If black intelligence is indeed so much lower than that of whites, they will become "obsolete" sooner than whites, on average.

What do we do when larger and larger numbers of our people are obsolete?

[aruanan]

His latest provocation, in a webzine, lurches from the politically incorrect to the nasty and indefensible.

Rich, baby, DEMONSTRATE that it was indefensible, that it was "nasty" (I guess "said with the intent to provoke trouble and to cause pain"). In this case you, like so many liberals, are merely asserting without doing the heavy lifting of demonstration and analysis. Oh, wait, I know, like so many liberals, you just know it's so, and because it's so obvious to every right-minded person, there is no need to actually demonstrate anything. I submit that the reasons you don't want to demonstrate anything are at least two:

1. you fear the crap storm that would come down on you if you had to come to the conclusion that what he posited and for which he offered evidence was actually true

2. you fear the crap storm that would come down on you if you even tried to verify it because others would say of you that it is "nasty and indefensible" to even dignify it by examining what everyone already knows to be otherwise.

So, in order to avoid the discomfort of the crap storm and in order avoid looking like you're "nasty and indefensible" you avoid looking hard at what he said and determining whether or not it is true. You, like so many loser Republicans in Congress choose "comity" over "conflict."

In doing this, Rich, you have moved your tent all the way into the territory of the unreflective that is ruled by whoever determines what the reigning sentiment is to be. Whoopie do, so you can say shibboleth, too. Who are those folks? What is their purpose in trying to push public opinion in this or that way? How will it benefit them? Oh, don't ask those questions or you'll be nasty and indefensible. Just go with the crowd and everything will be okay: Everyone else is wearing their pants down around their ass, so you will, too, or they'll laugh at you. Everyone else is getting a tattoo, so you will, too, or they'll laugh at you. Everyone else is wearing parachute pants, so you will, too, or they'll laugh at you. Everyone else is wearing big hair, so you will, too, or they'll laugh at you. Everyone else is wearing skinny jeans, so you will, too, or they'll laugh at you. Everyone else is jumping off the cliff, so you will, too. I mean, geez, you wouldn't want to be left all alone up there after everyone has disappeared below the surface, trailing a line of bubbles into the murky depths.

The newer generation at National Review needs to grow the hell up already. If we had had founding fathers like you, there would have been no founding.

[aruanan]

The IQ thing was uncalled for: IQ tests are notoriously unscientific. Do you really think Marilyn vos Savant is the smartest person who ever lived? She has the highest IQ recorded. The tests let people demonstrate their knowledge, not their inherent intelligence, whatever that is. Turns out that many poorly educated urban blacks have less academic knowledge than white suburbanites.

Your knowledge of the nature, purposes, and limitations of such tests is deficient.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

It was honest and provocative. What it was not, was delicate.

Both white and black liberals say much worse things about white people, which are neither delicate nor honest, and provoke only racial animosity or disgust.