I’m a bit puzzled by Rich Lowry’s degree of confidence that no one at NR agrees with what the Derb wrote. After all, the Derb himself is at NR. He was posting there as of two days ago. Does this mean he’s out at NR? Is Radio Derb going to cease broadcasting its message of freedom? Kremlin watchers want to know.
I’m curious to see how comments to Lowry’s post shape up. [UPDATE: no such luck. They’re closed.] What is wrong with Derb’s version of ‘the talk’, after all? He has the courage to speak Bell Curve truth to liberal power? He has the keen-eyed discernment to see race hucksterism and political correctness for what they really are? His remedy consists entirely of the rigorous practice of freedom of association? “Avoid concentrations of blacks not all known to you personally.” I’m not seeing the problem here.
The Derb is a veritable Gandhi of passive resistance to injustice – compared to George Zimmerman, just for example. In a season in which reasonable conservatives are debating whether Zimmerman was is the right, surely they can at least come together in agreeing that the whole sorry situation – and the President’s shameful if perhaps inevitable insertion of race into the mix – could have been avoided if only someone had taken Zimmerman aside, at an earlier point in his life, and given him the Derb’s version of the Talk.
Pressing the Gandhi analogy: suppose this sort of thing were to catch on and be practiced widely. Couldn’t it have a salutary effect, embarrassing the ruling liberal elite by highlighting their hypocrisy? It’s not as though the government is going to force people not to do as Derb advises. (What are they going to do? Send in the National Guard to carry protesting white people, who have gone all limp, into the midst of crowds of black people they don’t know? It’s absurd. Even liberals wouldn’t dream of it.) At worst, then, the Talk keeps a few Zimmermans from becoming victims. At best, it might clear the air – slowly, quietly – in thousands of homes. That won’t result in a clearing of the air in the much more polluted public sphere, of course. But a virtuous citizenry is no more built in a day than Rome was. Mightn’t The Talk – at the knee of father and mother – be the first, tremulous baby step on the way to what we all always say we want: a frank, adult national conversation about race – by which liberals, of course, mean yet another lecture to conservatives about race, as if they are all a bunch of disobedient children? Give the liberals what they say they want – some Talk – and see if they like it!
What, exactly, is Lowry’s problem with that? Perhaps comments to his post will enlighten me.
UPDATE: Seems Derb’s fate at NR is in some doubt. [ http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/04/06/460142/will-derbyshire-be-fired/ ] Ponnuru and Goldberg have tweeted against him. I would be curious to hear them explain why they think this is over the line, not just that it is. To me, it looks to me like an assemblage of points, all of which are, by general and specifically Derbish precedent, accepted as mainstream conservative discourse. Admittedly, put them together and they look bad. Yes, I can see that now. (Did they never notice that the Derb thinks these things before now?)
........yes, maybe it could start a long ignored national conversation ? .. the thing is that for me, talking to 'republicans' is an 'art' .. that I'm lacking in ...oh, what to do ? .........;)
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.
(2) American blacks are descended from West African populations[ http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2010/05/genetic-variation-among-african-americans/ ], 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[ http://quoteworld.org/quotes/4954 ]. 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[ http://mathworld.wolfram.com/FieldsMedal.html ] 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[ http://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/lawoflargenumbers.asp#axzz1qiEm8PDd ] 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[ http://lagriffedulion.f2s.com/fuzzy.htm ].
(9) A small cohort of blacks—in my experience, around five percent—is ferociously hostile[ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEqa90XpPw0&feature=related ] 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[ http://www.johnderbyshire.com/Opinions/HumanSciences/stereotypes.html ]:
(10a) Avoid concentrations of blacks not all known to you personally.
(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[ http://www.adversity.net/fed_stats/OPM2007/001_blacksFY2006.htm ]. 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[ http://www.behindthevoiceactors.com/_img/chars/char_50499.jpg ]“ 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[ http://www.whitehouse.gov/about/presidents/barackobama ] 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).
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