See, there's this writer, John Derbyshire (apparently not a pseudonym) who delights in pushing people's buttons and, in response to "The Talk" decided to come up with his own, paleface version for Taki's Magazine.
(Update: I've read it and I'm not impressed; most of his "avoid this..." situations are guidelines that should be applied universally without regard to race, and failure to do so results in greater personal risk; a few are either BS or unsupported assertion. Discussion at Eric S. Raymond's blog is instructive, though ESR and I come to differing conclusions.)
Yeah. Just about as uncouth as you might think, possibly more so. I still haven't found the whole thing but it doesn't look good. --Mr. Derbyshire also used to write for National Review and National Review Online. Used to. Not so much any more.
While I think it plain sucks that (allegedly) African-American parents have to give their kids a lecture on the hazards of white people (except it isn't -- it's about the hazards of the police and the importance of not giving them an excuse to mess you up. Cogent advice these days for everyone), or that several of Derbyshire's bullet points reflect the actual behavior of people (f'rinstance, I don't go downtown for Indiana
This is the world we've got, and some of the people in it will loath you for your pigmentation; you're living in a paranoid dreamworld if you think that is the only reason, or that there aren't folk who look just like you -- however you may look -- who will rob you, hurt you or worse. Me, I tend to give any group of young male humans a wide berth, at least until I see the Boy Scout uniforms and maybe even then.
...But that's not what I broached the subject to write about; plenty of people are looking to the article and writer in disgust and -- this being the Internet -- you will no doubt find defenders, too.
Nope, it's this taking down a whole website over one article. C'mon; stinkin' thinkin' reveals itself. You're better off pointing it out and making well-deserved mock. It doesn't need censors. Crashin' a website over words you don't like? How's that any different from any other kind of mob "justice?"
It isn't. Forget the tar and feathers, the hempen rope, the brickbats and torches, it's so last century -- these days, what you want is a botnet and some 1337 H4ck20R skills.
I suppose it's an improvement -- less death and property damage so far -- but it ain't much of one.
(Speaking of racism, I am irked by the flap over Mary J. Blige touting fried chicken for a fast-foot franchiser. Look, dammit, most Americans think properly fried chicken tastes good; watermelon has nearly as many fans and the extent to which outdated stereotypes make various groups of people unwilling to eat either, or at least be seen eating them in non-monochromatic company, is the extent to which they are ruled by foolishness. It's food, not some sociopolitical pose. Food! Shaddup and eat, or order a pizza.)
35 comments:
I just sent you Derbyshire's article, check your email.
Interesting reading. Yeah, I'm not favorably impressed with him.
In light of recent events, his answer to question #11 in this 2003 interview is interestingly prescient.
There were a couple of points that made sense in the context of situational awareness and recent events, but I think that overall he painted with an awfully broad brush.
I also think, it should be said, that the vast majority of people, including those up to two standard deviations below mean IQ, are capable of far better cognitive performance than they themselves realize (kind of follow John Taylor Gatto in that regard).
Here is another perspective on the article.
http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=4270
I think takimag servers can't handle the extra clicks to it. It took a while last night to get to even the main page. They don't look like the type that will spike the story due to controversy, tho.
And the article isn't out of character for Derbyshire. It's totally consistent with his body of work, and I've read his stuff for 10 years. I like crotchety folks, and he sure is crotchety. And he's not all white supremacist. He thinks most Asians are much 'better' than northern Europeans.
Another reason I liked reading him on National Review, he is the one of the only people in that metrocon rag that I know OWNS a pistol.
Chances are the cancer will kill him soon at any rate.
Me, I tend to give any group of young male humans a wide berth, at least until I see the Boy Scout uniforms and maybe even then.
Given my scout troop was running a casino at summer camp and only got shut down because we were too clever to let the counselors win enough to look the other way, I'd give the scouts a wider berth. I mean, after all they're young males in paramilitary uniforms being taught to tie knots and start fires.
Some of what Derbyshire had to say was pretty rough. It's worth remembering that his kids are half Chinese, and if they have any sort of Oriental cast to their features, it might be that they have to take special care in dealing with some black people, at least if Marion Barry and a host of other half-retarded thugs like Al Sharpton is anything to go by.
It was pointed out over at Protein Wisdom that Derbyshire was fired by Rich Lowry, a nancy-boy of wide renown. Not sure about the nancy-boy characterization, but I do think that we are seeing a preview of what will happen if Mitt Romney fights the election against Obama--the same Republicans touting Romney are tut-tutting over John Derbyshire, and are not up to the task of fighting Obama's Chicago machine. They're milquetoasts, whose impulse is to curl up in the face of an attack, and not fight back. I suppose there's no particular reason for anyone to care about any of this save that, sadly, the best hope to get rid of Obama is, gahd I hate saying this, Mitt Romney.
National Review had a chance to dive right in to the "honest discussion about race in America" that Eric Holder claimed that he wanted, and ran away crying at the first opportunity. Didn't expect anything else, from them. John Derbyshire, even if he was wrong, tried being honest. National Review jettisoned him, and they won't get any credit for doing so. The Left will still say beastly things about conservatives, and about NR. The Left sets the terms of debate, in the Unites States.
Mike James
Wow. He certainly predicted his own public demise.
I'm not particularly impressed with his ideas but they are his and he shouldn't be hung for them. Not when others express ideas like putting bounties on the heads of people and get away with it.
Yeah, 'cept... no one's threatened to hang him. He's just losing paying work as a professional pundit. "We're paying to publish your opinion, and if we find your opinions to be sufficiently far afield from what we're comfortable having our name on, we're going to stop doing that" strikes me as an entirely reasonable position.
"The left paints us as scared of black people, so we should embrace those among us who stand on the soapbox to enumerate why we should fear black people and whine that their race-baiters get a free pass" doesn't as much.
I liked what I read of Derbyshire's work in the regular National Review, he came down in favor of self-defense, and worked with psychotics in a prison hospital for a while (as a MD I think) and recognized that there were some things that just didn't EVER change.
As a kid I lived in an insular racist country with a history of racism and even slavery that goes back a good 3,000+ years and one that helps define the actual functioning social order. That's FAR longer than our brief flirtation with organized commercial racism and the slave trade - a trade that was operating long before we got there, organized and run by a well known group of people who still believe today in the validity of commercial ventures in "human capital."
As outsiders we were despised for our skin color (and among other things, our eating habits) and had rocks and firecrackers and un-ripe (hard) fruit and things thrown at us while we were called names like white-monkey and other much-less nice things, so I know exactly how it feels physically and emotionally to be on the wrong side of a negative bias.
The socio-political realities of *Food* are also quite great and go way-back to the first water-hole and "Oggs only eats nuts and berries while those spotted-skin folk eat nasty heffalump turds." One of the first recognizable distinctions after Friend-or-Foe is what you will eat and what you won't.
Taki is back up, with the article still there... And you could play this in many ways... I disagree with some of his points, but in the main, if you substitue your ethnicity of choice, some of his recommendations do make sense if one is not totally blind to what is going on in the world...
"The left paints us as scared of black people..."
They don't stop at "scared". They paint their opponents as evil, and beyond the pale. So much so, that I think that many people who aren't Leftists are unwilling to engage them on the old terms, set by the Left.
The race-baiters very much do get a free pass. It's whining to point that out? We're supposed to play this mug's game for all time to come?
Mike James
I'd like to see an example of "The Talk" given to young black kids, to compare with the Derb has written. To me Derbs article seems to be a piece written in outrage over the paranoid suggestion that the crackers are out to get them, or some such rot.
Did you ban Justthisguy, Roberta?
He's responding to this post over at Tam's blog ... heh.
He seems to have problems with the concept of IQ tests only reliably measuring the ability to take a given IQ test.
Derb's sin in today's political environment was bringing out hard statistical data that is terribly inconvenient to the modern multi-cultural mythology that has taken over American public discourse. It seems that no one wants to read the FBI UCR and other social datasets and draw statistically valid conclusions from the data therein, which mostly square with Derb's analysis.
The reason why NR/NRO fired him is (as other readers alluded), NR is now run by a bunch of effect, mincing, silk-pantywaist pecksniffs who style themselves as "intellectuals."
Labrat:
That is one thing I have never understood about Nazis and the KKK:
If Jews and blacks are all such incredibly dangerous masterminds, then wouldn't it make sense to marry one, and have a bunch of kids that will be members of this supposed master race?
Anon 10:20:
Watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWGCIm4GNQE
and get back to us. Black kids get that "talk" in order to save their lives. Lots of folks are still scared by mere skin color.
An evil monlithic "the Left" theoretically paints us as equally evil. In practice a lot of people who are to the left of us point out that we do stuff like defend guys that say we should fear blacks (with a mix of sensible precautions to take around potentially hostile outsiders of any color, depending on your place and context, plus hogwash) and call them brave truth-tellers. I've only met a tiny handful of those "the Left" that think we're all evil no matter what. I've met a whole bunch more reasonable people to the left of me who look at stuff like this and go "Uh..."
So yeah, I have a problem with handing reasonable people confirmation of their suspicions that maybe conservatives and shooters really are skittish racists.
And it IS whining whenever you defend bad behavior among your own tribe with the equivalent of "but Jimmy hit Rosie just last week and HE didn't get in trouble!"
If you call calling out your own for poor behavior a "mug's game", then I guess I'm a mug.
Kristopher: In re "Just," tsk. That's between him and me; he's a good boy for sticking to the deal.
I will point out that the original "The Talk" is a guide to dealing with the po-lice -- and the way things are going, we would all do well to heed it. "A soft answer turneth away wrath," and a rolling camera wouldn't hurt either -- most officers are a-okay, but don't think Officer Harless was a lone wolf.
Anon 10:45,
"Derb's sin in today's political environment was bringing out hard statistical data..."
Every time somebody with a degree ending in "...of the Arts" uses the word "race" in regard to humans, anybody who can tell a chromosome from a crock pot gets a chuckle.
His words make me yawn. The reaction makes me shake my head. So he wrote something and people agree/disagree. Again, he didn't do or say anything that isn't said by people of different races who get a pass.
I don't like him but I fail to see the big deal. Plus, Obama will fix everything. :)
Last I heard, there's about 7 Billion members of Homo Sapiens Sapiens running around on this planet. Each one carries unique Genetic Characteristics that comes from ancestors that each person had no control over choosing. But the Racists on all sides of the Political Spectrum seem to think that it's "Their" time to spew their Nonsense, and people are getting Hurt and Killed with this crap (Tulsa comes to mind).
But their also seems to be some "Tacit" support from certain "Political Elites" to keep the Pot stirred up, just so they can keep their "Bases" Happy and Voting.
I don't see this Insanity ending well.
Cool beans, Roberta. I'll mind my own freakin' business then, and I apologize to both you and JTG for intruding.
I happen to fall on the list of people who avoid groups of other people on the streets at night. I'm not sure who wouldn't that was paying any attention.
Groups of young men can be dangerous. Anyone on the street in certain areas, or times of day, can be dangerous. Water is wet, and if you eat too much you get fat. I don't walk down the street with my hand on a pistol, but I don't fan myself with 100's either.
I also am a member of the group of people that are wary of any interactions with the police. Again, not all cops are bad people, or even most of them, but all it takes is one time.
If I politely assume that I'm screwed I'm better off than putting on rose colored glasses.
BTW, I reported all of this to Attackwatch.com so Obama knows who to blame for the race war.
I happen to fall on the list of people who avoid groups of other people on the streets at night. I'm not sure who wouldn't that was paying any attention.
Groups of young men can be dangerous. Anyone on the street in certain areas, or times of day, can be dangerous. Water is wet, and if you eat too much you get fat. I don't walk down the street with my hand on a pistol, but I don't fan myself with 100's either.
I also am a member of the group of people that are wary of any interactions with the police. Again, not all cops are bad people, or even most of them, but all it takes is one time.
If I politely assume that I'm screwed I'm better off than putting on rose colored glasses.
BTW, I reported all of this to Attackwatch.com so Obama knows who to blame for the race war.
When I said that some of what Derbyshire had to say was rough, I had in mind some of the things like IWSB's--"Intelligent Well-Socialized Blacks" being very desirable to be friends with, for the purpose of establishing one's tolerance bona fides. That's making use of someone as a sort of social accessory; people have value which exists for reasons other than that grubby sort of consideration.
But--"And it IS whining whenever you defend bad behavior among your own tribe with the equivalent of "but Jimmy hit Rosie just last week and HE didn't get in trouble!" Is it still whining if I laugh helplessly while pointing out the double standard?
Well, whining though it be, in that schoolyard characterization, the intent of doing away with a double standard is to have a common set of rules for both sides of a dispute. And the "bad behavior" which ought to be opposed consists of an online column which counsels passivity, even though one might think it silly, embarrassing, or hurtful to someone's feelings.
Trying to convince Leftists, even the reasonable ones (even the Obama voters?), that not all shooters or conservatives are skittish racists, that some of them really are good people, concedes too much, I think. One is always in the position of waiting to see what the Left defines as the next outré position to be attacked.
I concede, in advance, my possible unconscious bias in this. I see a lot more threat to shooters and conservatives from the Left, than threats to the Left from shooters and conservatives. At least if gun-control organizations are anything to go by.
Mike James
If you want to do away with the double standard, point at it relentlessly when you see it in the other guy, don't whip it out to argue why your guy should get a pass because we should be allowed just as much race-baiting/misogyny/overall boorishness as they should.
The article doesn't get better for being "passive" fear-the-stupid-black-folk, or being good advice once you remove the racial framing. It's not some innocent intellectual thought exercise, either- Derbyshire has danced around this issue for years, sometimes with a poor-politically-incorrect-me stance, sometimes by saying flat out that The Republican Party depends on people like him who "seriously dislike black people".
You see this as a team sport, or an outright war between Right and Left in which the other team is born on that team and dies on that team and will forever seek to destroy your team.
I see a country with a lot of people with different political outlooks, most of whom don't see themselves as being on a team or in a war. The gun issue is actually a picture perfect example of how much public political opinion can change over time. As Tam is wont to point out, many of the victories and normalcies we enjoy now would have been unthinkable in 1994.
We do not need to embrace or defend Derbyshire because he's "on our team". We need to kick him the hell off the roster.
Every time somebody with a degree ending in "...of the Arts" uses the word "race" in regard to humans, anybody who can tell a chromosome from a crock pot gets a chuckle.
Hah Ha. You funny person Tam. You miss last census where half the question ask what race or ethnicity you are?
- The Crock Pot
Just because congress lards the census with irrelevant questions does not make those questions intelligent, "the crock pot".
If you can have kids with a group of people, and those kids are not sterile or deformed, then they are the same species you are, and any skin, hair, or eye color differences are not very important to a trained biologist.
Too little time to waste reading every comment here, but felt moved to post something you may have already seen:
"There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery. Then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved." -- Jesse Jackson
Derbyshire was on the money. I hold no animosity toward anyone due to their skin color or ethnicity, but portions of black culture do its own an injustice, and there simply is no escaping that fact. How anyone can read about Trayvon Martin and believe otherwise is a mystery.
Derbyshire was off the money and in two ways, one of which your own comments admuts, "RegT:" you wrote "...portions of...," which immediately gives the lie to his (and by declaration, your) sweeping condemnation of Americans by skin color. Those "portions" are not the whole -- or should we judge you based on the actions of skinheads and thugs?
Conversely, his comments endorse by omission a false sense of safety around non-black citizens.
"Statistically," most of the people you meet won't harm you; a few will, though, and you do yourself no favors by deciding some subset of them is "safe." Better to be wary of everyone.
As for the Zimmerman/Martin mess, while it might be legal to go following "suspicious strangers," it's not especially clever, as events have proven. Pretty hard to blame that on "black culture" -- unless you're already predisposed to do so.
Just because congress lards the census with irrelevant questions does not make those questions intelligent, "the crock pot".
NEVER SAID OR SUGGESTED THEY WERE INTELLIGENT.
If you can have kids with a group of people, and those kids are not sterile or deformed, then they are the same species you are, and any skin, hair, or eye color differences are not very important to a trained biologist.
WHAT TRAINED BIOLOGIST USES THE TERM 'RACE' AS SYNONYMOUS WITH 'SPECIES'?
Some folks are too clever - just because they don't believe in 'race' does not mean that the society they live in doesn't - in fact here in the good ol USA, race is the law.
- The Crock Pot
So -- if The Government jumped off a cliff, you'd feel justified in doing so as well?
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