Talk Elections

Yes, John Derbyshire finally let it all hang out.  His little essay (http://takimag.com/article/the_talk_nonblack_version_john_derbyshire#axzz1rJPlABLB) about Bayes meets blacks means whites should not meet blacks, got his ass fired on Saturday by National Review. The editor of National Review, Mr Lowry was concerned (http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/295514/parting-ways-rich-lowry) that Derbyshire's association with NRO was giving Derbyshire's attitudes about blacks far too much oxygen.

John, you should get out more. I just don't think you could hold those views if you met real people, and made an effort to interact with them on their own terms. You are really missing out.

()

Since Derbyshire actually wrote,

"You should consciously seek opportunities to make friends with IWSBs[intelligent and well-socialized blacks],"

we are safe in assuming your strawman about Derbyshire advocating Whites not meet Blacks is well-stuffed with straw.

Excerpted with permission, attribution below per publisher's request:

Interesting that National Review never got their panties all twisted over Buckley's far more racist writings in their own magazine.

It's interesting that some conservatives tend to be some of the most collectivistic people on the planet, while at the same time claiming that left-wingers are....

or over Derbyshire's equally racist (if not as blatantly so) writings on their own web site.

 

()

10a, I'll have to move

10b, I'll have to move

10d, I'll have to stop going to church.

10e, I can no longer ride the subway

10f, I'll have to move

10g, Well, in Philadelphia, no one could survive that level of scrutiny.

10h, Should have told me yesterday.

10i, That's how I found the executrix of my estate.

So following advice 10d might actually do you good! >:D

Bob. Bob, Bob. You don't need to defend all of the conservatives all of the time.

Take some time for yourself. Go for a hike. Spend time with family and friends. You've earned it.

If Torie has some objection to what Derbyshire did write then by all means he should make it. However, if Torie wants to assign a strawman to Derbyshire then we should all object, not as matter of defending Derbyshire, or defending "conservativism," but, rather as part of a general commitment to the Truth.

P.S. Nathan,

Derbyshire's children are Eurasian. So Torie should have wrote "Primer on how/why Eurasians should eschew Blacks." Derbyshire  told his children to get used to the fact that Blacks would consider them "White." Torie seems to have made the same mistake.

I'm familiar with John Derbyshire's family and professional connections to Asia.

It's a bit hard to use the 'IWSB' thing as a defense when a few paragraphs later he describes them as a 'luxury good'.

Eurasian? Really?

It's not an unheard-of or considered a necessarily offensive term for mixed-race white/Asian people, but I don't think it's particularly common or thought to be especially PC either.

Does the below resolve your beef?  Because if it does, you know what they say: a dime's worth of accuracy can cost a dollar in confusion. Plus the headline is less punchy. I suppose the second fix below is the punchiest of them all, but unfortunately then you would point out that blacks are part of the "everyone," and round and round we would go.

The most "racist" thing Derbyshire wrote was his suggestion that his children agressively seek out more Black friends than living a normal life would indicate. While I found his suggestion offense, I do not doubt in the least his sincerity. Like every other parent, he wants his children to have the right sort of friends. I would like to think that parents in underclass Black neighborhoods warn their children to stay away from gang members, drug dealers, pimps, taggers, dopers and other anti-social types. I would think every parent wants his kids to fraternize with "well socialized" children.

Since my "beef" is with the correctness of your claiming, "His little essay about Bayes meets blacks means whites should not meet blacks," is an accurate characterization of Derbyshire's position, obviously not. Derbyshire was very clear in advising his children to seek out friendship among Blacks that were both intelligent and well-socialized [I would assume his children are highly intelligent as is he.] Obviously, you grossly mischaracterized his position.

Obviously, Derbyshire made numerous statements that would be grist for the mill. For some reason, instead of criticizing Derbyshire for what he did write, you felt the need to distort Derbyshire's position to attack a strawman. In most cases, people resort to strawman arguments when they don't have a case. Surely, you were capable of writing a case against Derbyshire without attacking a strawman.

I just found it ironic that you described his children as "White" just after reading Derbyshire's frustration about their being lumped into that category.



So, lying is okay if he is rhetorically more "punchy?"

There must be a competent racist who will make a better attempt to defend Derbyshire's screed that what BSB is doing. Seriously? Your takeaway is that he advises his son to befriend IWSB (or whatever?) Did you miss the part where he says to do it because it inoculates against accusations of racism?

I just want to know how this is going to affect the RNC's urban outreach:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIbNYNZj7u4

Ok, I'll bite. ;)

The best line of defense one can take is to say that Blacks here is not a racial group (as evidenced by his initial points) but a cultural one. So, the cause of these differences aren't racial but more complex. Social injustice historically can be part of it for example. The legacy of slavery. And so on.

Because crime rates ARE higher among blacks, aren't they? And there is a lot of racial hostility in the US. So, while we all agree that we should, as citizens in the political process, work to remedy historical injustices and promote more racial understanding, as parents we must accept the realities already there. And those include not venturing into areas where there a lots of criminal gangs with a good reason to hate you basedon your skin colour.

That should beat Bob, at least...

Derbyshire makes Charles Murray look intellectual... Seriously, guys, you who live on the other side of the Atlantic but still speak English, where do you find such people?

The weird part is not that they can be found, but that someone wants to find them. :P

Oh, In America, I assumed that they can always be found...

Apparently, you failed to read where I noted that statement by Derbyshire to be offensive. I just happen to believe that he was being sincere. Apparently, you, like Torie, feel the need to argue against a strawman rather than Derbyshire. Derbyshire simply did not state that his children should seek out "IWSBs" because it would inoculate them against charges of "racism." He merely listed that as one benefit. He listed the normal pleasures of friendship as another benefit. Presumably, there is the benefit of meeting people from different cultures/worldviews.  I'm neither "defending" or "attacking" Derbyshire. I am opposing lying about what he wrote.

Since I wasn't attempting to defend or oppose Derbyshire, you were unopposed. I was merely objecting to the gross distortion of what Derbyshire actually wrote.


I'm sure we have all read news stories like the one I read about how a German couple visiting Miami Beach were robbed and murdered when they entered a bad neighborhood. Everyone here knows there are no-go areas.

I would merely ask would it really be "racist" to suggest that children stay as far away as possible from towns in which the English National soccer team is going to visit?

Well, first of all, I agree that this is cultural, not racial.  I however live in a "bad neighborhood," supposedly, 90%+ African American, and my block has not had a single break-in in the 13 years I've lived here.  We had one shooting, a suicide, and he was visiting relatives. 

Judge the people by their merits, not the melanin in their skin, or lack thereof.  :)

I was about to say...it's the sort of phrasing someone like Derbyshire would use.  He was frozen in amber in 1860 and awakened a few months ago.

BTW, how does Derbyshire pronounce his name?  I was thinking "DAHR-bih-shur," but I was wondering if he Americanized it into something like "dehr-BEE-SHY-uhr"

Also, I'm aware that not all of you are familiar with Taki, the gentleman whose e-zine published Derbyshire's article. 

Please read this, as an example of Taki's unique viewpoint:

http://takimag.com/article/mussolinis_last_words#axzz1raapXQP9

Taki is a name that I have not seen for quite a while. I preferred it that way as well.


Hopefully Dar-bee-sheer. That would be the funniest.

I don't understand how people can take anything way from Derbyshire's writings besides his raging racism towards non-whites and non-whatever-race-his-wife-and-children-are.

I mean, it's completely obvious. He doesn't say "intelligent blacks" or "educated blacks" or "well-socialized (whatever that means) blacks". He just says "blacks". He is literally telling his kids to stay away from any situation or location where blacks have anything but a completely positive and servile reaction to whites. There is no other way you can take his article other than to find out that John Derbyshire is a racist.

I just realized that John Derbyshire is the same person who once casually said that women are only very attractive between 15 and 20, and who has publicly fantasized about revoking women's suffrage.

There are plenty of such people in Sweden - I've met many. There is just no one who would ever publish them, which was basically my point.

JJ - I'm not actually defending Derbyshire, of course. I just thought it would be an interesting exercise to see if the defence could be constructed. I think it might be possible as long as not too much context is added. :P

Why would he have Americanized his name? He hasn't Americanized his speech.

I've read some racist things by Derbyshire before this, along the lines of emphasizing supposedly genetic differences. However, this is the first article of his I've seen where he explicitly advocated treating black people differently on this basis. Not that I'm surprised he wrote this, but I can see where this caused NR to cut ties with him here where they hadn't before.

There is, of course, a lot of truth in this article, but I would have presumed that no one would have been crazy enough to actually publish it.

Which I guess means that I am probably one of "those people" that Gustaf mentions.  Fine.  :) (though the Swedish problem invariably involves North African Muslims, and involves quite different concerns)

As one of the few people on this forum who has spent lots of time, and had many associations, within the black community (as I have within the Hispanic communities - or at I least I suspect I'm one of the few on this forum, since most of this forum's denizens tend to be locked into upper-middle class suburbia in the US), most of the things pointed out in this article are things that you just learn from experience (though he misses the most important one - try to get that one out of me). 

Furthermore, there is some statistical validity to this article, but I have long disagreed with Murray that statistics are correlated to behavior.  And this article is almost uniformly about behaviorial tendencies, which in my experience and study, are much more correlated to culture and cultural norms, above all else.  So it is fundamentally incorrect in my view to state that this is statistical common sense (after all, I have always been a follower of Kirkegaard)

It is plainly apparent that there is a huge difference between American slave black culture (the dominant black culture in the US), West Indian black culture and West African black culture (for example).  What the author writes here are attributes almost uniformly associated with American (formerly) slave blacks and their culture, and its self-destructive and violent tendencies.  I could really give a whole long essay on this subject - as it is woefully undeveloped, and has a lot more validity that statistical analysis, as in there are actual solutions to the problem.

To conclude this post, I will mention that one point that I disagree with wholeheartedly in the article, btw, the idea that having black friends innoculates you from charges of racism.  That's hogwash - never works.

Yeah, the people I've come across who would argue in ways similar to Derbyshire would not be talking about Blacks.

It's not true that it would be about North African Muslims either though. Unless you include Somalis in that group, we hardly have any (unlike France). The typical, derogatory shorthand for Muslim immigrants is Turks (among geographical or national ones - there are of course properly racial slurs as well).

Large immigrant groups in Sweden with high crime rates and/or unemployment rates are Turks, Kurds, Iraqis, Serbs, Somalis and Chileans. And Finns, of course. :P

The poor Somalis are hated by everyone though, even all those other immigrant groups. 

Sam Spade has clearly read the Unheavenly City (http://www.amazon.com/Unheavenly-City-Revisited-Edward-Banfield/dp/0881335290), which I notice Banfield subsequent to my reading it, has "revisited."  Anyway, one of Banfield's claims was that there had been very little upward mobility among blacks who were slaves until the Emancipation Proclamation. I suspect there was more truth to that claim then, than now. Murray I think picked up on the theme when he noted that the top students in some High School in black Miami, all had French names (they were from Haiti).  So as a codicil to Derb's do's and don'ts, if you happen by a "black beach" and you hear Caribbean accents, Derbyshire should be reassured. :P

One thing you have to get used to in Asia - that being racially different from nearly everyone around you is not a reason to be afraid.  That said I'm also afraid when around poor whites in the US.

You could easily play the same statistical game and just substitute men for black people. Or 15-30 year olds. Oh, and my city is blacker than yours, so all of you are sheltered and don't know what you're talking about. I could so say much more because the world is terribly in need of my brilliant insight ::)

I feel a very disheartening urge to agree with this.