The Myth of Equality
In 21st century America, institutional racism and sexism remain great twin evils to be eradicated on our long journey to the wonderful world where, at last, all are equal.
What are we to make, then, of a profession that rewards workers with fame and fortune, yet discriminates ruthlessly against women; an institution where Hispanics and Asians, 20 percent of the U.S. population, are neither sought after nor widely seen.
In this profession, white males, a third of the population, retain a third of the jobs. But black males, 6.5 percent of the U.S. population, have 67 percent of the coveted positions — 10 times their fair share.
We are talking of the NFL.
In figures reported by columnist Walter Williams, not only are black males 77 percent of the National Basketball Association, they are 67 percent of the players in the NFL.
Yet no one objects that women are not permitted to compete in the NFL. Nor do many object to the paucity of Asian and Mexicans, or the over-representation of blacks, even as white males dominate the National Hockey League and the PGA.
When it comes to sports — high school, collegiate or professional — Americans are intolerant of lectures about diversity and inclusiveness. They want the best — the best in the NFL, the best in the NBA, the best at Augusta, the best at Wimbledon, the best in the Olympics, the best in the All-Star Game, the World Series, the Super Bowl.
When it comes to artistic ability, musical ability, acting ability, athletic ability, Americans accept the reality of inequality. We are not all born equal, other than in our God-given and constitutional rights.
We are not all equally gifted. There are prodigies like pianist Van Cliburn, chess wizard Bobby Fischer, actress Shirley Temple. Every kid halfway through first grade knows who can spell and sing and who cannot, and who is bright and talented and athletic, and who is not.
What most Americans seek is a level playing field on which all compete equally, for what we ultimately seek is excellence, not equality.
Why, then, cannot our elites accept that, be it by nature, nurture, attitude or aptitude, we are not all equal in academic ability?
What raises this issue is the anguish evident in New York over the latest state test scores of public school students, which reveal that the ballyhooed progress in closing the racial achievement gap never happened.
That gap approached closure only by lowering the pass-fail score and by using similar tests, year-after-year, so teachers could prepare the kids to take them.
After a new, tougher state test was used in 2010, where 51 correct answers, not 37, meant achieving the desired grade, the old gaps between Hispanics, blacks, whites and Asians reappeared as wide as they were when Mayor Michael Bloomberg and city schools chief Joel Klein set out to close them.
“We are closing the shameful achievement gap faster than ever,” blared Bloomberg in 2009, in the euphoria of what The New York Times now calls “the test score bubble.”
“Among the students in the city’s third through eighth grades, 40 percent of black students and 46 percent of Hispanic students met state standards in math, compared with 75 percent of white students and 83 recent of Asian students. In English, 33 percent of black students and 34 percent of Hispanic students are now proficient, compared with 64 percent of whites and Asians.”
Appalling, when one considers New York City usually ranks first or second in the nation in per-pupil expenditures.
Nor has George W. Bush’s vaunted No Child Left Behind program fared better. Results of national tests conducted in 2009 make New York students look like the Whiz Kids.
“Forty-nine percent of white students and 17 percent of black students showed proficiency on the fourth-grade English test, up from 45 percent of white students and 14 percent of black students in 2003.”
One in six African-American fourth-grade kids is making the grade.
How many scores of billions did this pathetic gain cost us?
Since 1965, America has invested trillions in education with a primary goal of equalizing test scores among the races and genders. Measured by U.S. test scores, it has been a waste — an immense transfer of wealth from private citizens to an education industry that has grown bloated while failing us again and again.
Perhaps it is time to abandon the goal of educational equality as utopian — i.e., unattainable — and to focus, as we do in sports and art, on excellence.
Teach all kids to the limit of their ability, while recognizing that all are not equal in their ability to read, write, learn, compute or debate, any more than they are equally able to play in a band or excel on a ball field. For an indeterminate future, Mexican kids are not going to match Asian kids in math.
The beginning of wisdom is to recognize this world as it is, not as what we would wish it to be.
“Mexican kids are not going to match Asian kids in math.”
I’m all for rewarding excellence, but that penultimate line reveals this piece to be nothing more than yet another trip to the racial stereotyping well.
*sigh
It’s like my cranky dad at christmas time. time for a nap Pat.
Education is a racket. It’s time everyone faced this.
Thanks to Mr. B. for setting us all straight. Black people should be grateful for their role in the scandalous minor leagues of pro sports, aka colleges, with low graduation rates, nearly useless diplomas, corrupt officials, and a very long shot at going pro. They should further be grateful that if they do go pro, they will get the largest percentage of concussions, knee injuries, increased public scrutiny, and endorsements of useless consumer goods. Granted that spending on education does not produce results in the absence of parental involvement, does that mean we should do nothing… and either pay for the costs of that in terms of crime, incarceration, health care, and so on… or take some other humane, dare I say Christian approach?
Mr. B. should be restricted to writing about matters that do not apply within the borders of the USA. ‘Circenses sine panem’ is not an improvement on ancient Rome, it’s worse.
[...] Posted under Education & Political Correctness & Race “Since 1965, America has invested trillions in education with a primary goal of equalizing test scores among the races and genders. Measured by U.S. test scores, it has been a waste—an immense transfer of wealth from private citizens to an education industry that has grown bloated while failing us again and again. Perhaps it is time to abandon the goal of educational equality as utopian—i.e., unattainable—and to focus, as we do in sports and art, on excellence. Teach all kids to the limit of their ability, while recognizing that all are not equal in their ability to read, write, learn, compute or debate, any more than they are equally able to play in a band or excel on a ball field….. The beginning of wisdom is to recognize this world as it is, not as what we would wish it to be.” ~ Patrick J. Buchanan, Op-Ed, August 26, 2010 [...]
ian and Greg, what specifically in the article are you objecting to? That Buchanan is telling the truth I suspect.
Pat’s absolutely right, the very concept of “equality” is nonsense. As James Jackson Kilpatrick noted in his great 1962 book, The Southern Case For School Segregation,
Jefferson’s words were simply a rhetorical flourish (“all men are created”) that no one took seriously at the time or since except braindead egalitarians.
Greg, black folks should be grateful that their black ancestors in Africa sold them into slavery to the Arabs, Spanish, Portugese and English, so they are not living in the hell that is modern Africa. I can do a country by country analysis if you like or check out Haiti, Jamaica, Oakland, Detroit, DC,
Memphis, Richmond (CA & VA), Atlanta, Gary, Chicago, NYC, New Orleans, St. Louis, Birmingham, Baltimore,
ad nauseum. Honest policy should dictate Bills Due to Negro
Americans for their massive crime and sociopathology instead of “reparations.” As far as all the black college AND
high school dropouts, the many corrupt black politicians, the insane overemphasis on sports in Negro America, are you telling us that’s whitey’s fault ?
Public scrutiny would be greatly lessened if Negroes stopped committing so many crimes as Minister Farrakhan noted back in the mid-80s.
Gee Michael, tell us what you really think…no, really.
It may be true that our political institutions do not have the wherewithal to enact measures that would effectively remedy the dysfunction and socio-pathologic legacy of state sponsored racism. Many factors that are keeping African Americans in a self-reinforcing cycle of poverty and underachievement have taken on a life of their own even after the overt structural oppression originally responsible has largely been discontinued. Perhaps the only workable solutions are ones that emerge from within those communities themselves.
But to say that blacks “owe” whites a bill for all the externalities of their dysfunction is pretty disgusting, and historically autistic. Lets not pretend we live in boot-strap fantasy land where people’s education, behavior and self-awareness is non-contingent on their environment and upbringing. Lets also not pretend that the environmental framework which produce social dysfunction in impoverished black communities aren’t largely the remnants of abuse by outsiders–malicious racialists or know-nothing do-gooders alike.
One doesn’t need to collectively implicate all whites and hold the entirety of “white society” liable for the disadvantages of blacks and other minorities to acknowledge that at least, a self-proclaimed representative government has an obligation to give the man who’s legs it broke a pair of crutches, and not charge him for it! And subsequently, not put this crippled man in a race with an able bodied man and call this “fair”.
You can uphold personal responsibility as an implacable moral standard and still understand that people do not live in vacuums and personal choices are to be understood in the contexts in which they’re made. Do we have to morally exonerate the perpetrators of socially misanthropic behavior in order to understand the drivers that perpetuate them? Do detectives have to sympathize with murderers in order to uncover and understand a motive? Of course not.
Conservatives who resent leftist tendencies to downplay personal autonomy and collectivize individuals into grievance-based categories should examine the origins of such categorization. Would that we subscribed to an Individualist credo from the beginning, where such groups and identity markers were secondary to a pure evaluation of character, ability, and “excellence” on a personal basis. Instead we inherit the consequences of centuries of the privileged, protected classes themselves engaging in the most vicious collectivism when it was to their own perceived benefit (remember “No Irish” Pat?)
Curious that the same people who claim to oppose the collectivist viewpoint are the first to come to the defense of prejudice and discrimination on the basis of group identity, and the stratification of society based on loyalty and adherence to certain cultural (read: White Christian) standards.
So ultimately, what is Pat insinuating? It smells like social Darwinism. Which might be defensible, if Pat didn’t hypocritically yearn for the power of the state to privilege and subsidize his own favored cultural shibboleths.
Brunstein, the state sponsored racism has been anti-white since 1964 at the federal level and probably since 1945 at the state level in many non-southern states. There is no way to remedy this or slavery or Jim Crow laws except to stop the racism now. That’s all.
Blacks were sold into slavery by other blacks and if you look at Africa for the past 50 years they were the lucky ones. The unfortunate blacks are the ones who still live in Africa. That’s
my point and whatever problems you can try to blame on Jim
Crow fifty years ago pale in comparison with the problems caused by the blacks themselves as John McWhorter, Shelby Steele, Walter Williams, Bill Cosby, Thomas Sowell and other intelligent blacks have long pointed out.
What exists today is not prejudice, pre-judgment but postjudice, post-judgment. And no malarkey about the invented 1920s term of “racism” can cover that fact.
No government should be allowed to discriminate either way and that’s the best we can hope for. If you feel that you have some penance to do here, then do it on your own time and dime. The social dysfunction in black communities everywhere is caused by blacks with the help of white leftists.
No black’s legs have been broken by government policy though blacks themselves have very often committed horrendous crimes against themselves and others.
With the current victimology ideology dominant in black communities the chances for solutions coming from there are nil. But it is blacks who will have to correct the situation as they making more enemies in the white, asian and latin communities every day.
I agree with your last sentence and that is why I disagree with Pat on abortion which is badly needed in lumpen communities as well as being a woman’s fundamental right.
No not that he’s telling the truth just that it is an irrelevent rant.
Lets go back a generation or 2 shall we… Hmm black people ans education? voting? living in whatever part of town they wanted? gettting a job? a good deal of that money may be to rebalance some of those issues. In the land of the free Black Americans and indigenous Americans manage to be amongst the worlds most imprisoned in the current generation. Police officers patrol minority neighbourhoods stopping people and searching for drugs vehicle infringements and the like. When they start pulling over everyone in a white neighbourhood year after year and locking you away .. then complain about how hard done by you are.
Lets not forget who kept who as slaves and who resisted granting civil rights to other minorities ( and still does). Welcome muslim people to being todays/tommorows black people. Don’t even think about freedom of speech,association or religion. They’re white peoples to grant at their leisure. We’ll all pay taxes to support the status quo. It costs a lot to invade brown skinned peoples counties and occupy them while we wonder why they don’t become like us. What about those costs?
Ian, your rant is irrelevant because blacks are pulled over precisely because they are continually committing crimes way out of proportion to their numbers. The problem in Oakland and many other large US cities is that not nearly enough blacks are being pulled over and arrested for their crimes. Muslim countries don’t even recognize the most basic of human rights. Why don’t you try living in one of them before you recycle this stale anti-white agit-prop ?
Police only patrol black neighborhoods because they are cesspools of crime. By the way no one in the Black Caucus
or the Black Ministers groups has supported the efforts of white conservative libertarians to repeal all drug laws.
No, the dummies keep voting the straight DEMO Party Line
and they get three strikes laws & sixty new death penalties
from Billy Clinton in exchange for Midnight Basketball !!!!!
No, as a victim of black criminal warfare for many years here in Oakland I can complain loud and clear !
Well you heard Ian, some long dead black people were kept as slaves by some long dead white people, and 60 years ago blacks, most of whom are dead now, couldn’t eat at the same lunch counter or go to the same schools as some mostly dead whites.
Clearly the blood libel goes on then.
Thanks, Matt ! I get sick of these “intellectual” basket cases.
Pat, you’re sounding good these days. I heard you the other day on Hannity, and you sound more “with it”, than at any time in the last couple of years. I think you’ve got a pretty good grasp of the issues, and I think I agree with most of your positions. (I’d vote for you.)
In the 60′s, Dr Martin Luther King told the US that if it spent 50 billion, in 10 years, “on poor people”, that reparations to blacks would be considered to be paid. And the “Great Society” was born in response.
In the 90′s many prominant blacks loudly claimed that “the Great Society” had been a “white people’s plot” to exterminate them.
We watch, as Obama tries to do the the “rank and file american”, what the Great Society did for the blacks.
How soon will the “RECOVERY” arrive? That train has left the station, and it ain’t coming back.
Obama just needs a bunch of Republicans to jump in for 2 years to take the heat, until the 2012 election.
And during that time, unless these “temporary republicans” clean up their act, racism and classism will increase over the next 6 years, as the US begins it’s death throes…
The utter lack of any sense of objectivity around this on the part of Pat’s defenders is breathtaking. The fact is that no world empire so far has not had slavery in effect at its founding. The next will be the first. It is true that blacks were sold into slavery by other blacks. That is one of the prime reasons Christian Europeans believed that in their moral superiority they had the right to colonize and exploit Africa and define its boundaries, and fight both their world wars there. You cannot have it both ways.
The USA missed an opportunity to do the right thing after the Civil War… to grant blacks full citizenship, or to deport them. The USA took the easy way out and did neither, because it was cheaper. Reconstruction was rolled back in a political deal to solve a presidential election. You can look it up. That led to Jim Crow and another ninety years of what would be called apartheid if it happened elsewhere.
There is no free lunch. As population has increased, land become scarcer and more expensive, and sophisticated and technical knowledge become more critical for economic success, people without the cultural infrastructure to acquire land and sophisticated knowledge, without inherited wealth and connections and family support, inevitably fall behind in the race. This is common sense.
That there have been absurd and inexpensive ‘solutions’ attempted that do not work… forced school busing, some forms of affirmative action… does not mean that there is no problem. Society as a whole is somewhat responsible for this state of events, and suffers from it as well. It is therefore logical and reasonable that society make an effort to ameliorate same. What we need is better and more sophisticated efforts, and a debate about those is long overdue.
Citing gladiatorial entertainment businesses such as the NBA and the NFL is ludicrous. Those institutions are built upon corrupt minor league systems in the colleges that periodically erupt in scandal like clockwork, and on the professional level are a classic case of private enterprise working the rice bowl, with public subsidies of arenas, and corrupt interactions with politicians who approve those along with tax deductions for luxury boxes used to somehow conduct ‘business.’
Mr. B. is so far out of the ballpark on this one, he’s a hundred dollar cab ride from the parking lot.
Once again, to 90 percent who post to Pats posts, I have to say yet again. DO YOU KNOW WHAT BLOG YOUR ON!
I mean seriously, this site is the last vestiges of the traditional, white, conservative, Christian, isolationist republicanism. Pat Buchanan believes in a Christian God. Get over yourselves.
Now onto my specific post,
‘It may be true that our political institutions do not have the wherewithal to enact measures that would effectively remedy the dysfunction and socio-pathologic legacy of state sponsored racism.’
Its not the job of political institutions to solve the legacy of racism, whether it’s state sponsored or not. In fact they are incapable of such things. Every attempt to solve the problem has made the situation worse, and I defy anyone here to give me three examples of it working in the last 40 years.
Im not talking about changing some legislation, Im talking about bureaucratic institutions.
The job of schools is to educate students. The US once had the best education system in the world. Now that’s gone, and its because a bunch of well meaning fugheads, sought to impose a top down solution via bureaucracies in order to use the schools to remedy the dysfunction and socio-pathologic legacy of pretty much anything they disagreed with.
Until people get it through there heads that it is people and not government that can provide the solutions to the worlds problems, we will continue to have the problems we do have.
First of all, the US is not supposed to be a world empire.
Earlier empires actually killed the conquered subjects before they adopted slavery as a means of free labor.
Lincoln did want to deport all Negroes to Liberia or the Carribean, the Radical Republicans were the main obstacle here and may well have been behind his assassination.
Greg’s rant on sports is correct but a nonsequitur as far as
Pat’s premise is concerned. Darwin’s Athletes is a good book that demonstrates the harm sports obsession has contributed to the black community.
There is no such entity as “society” it is a myth as Rand demonstrated at length in The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged and as Thatcher noted. Society is only a term of convenience to designate a given number of people living in a given geographical area.
Many of us dissent from both the original five centuries Muslim
Arab slave conquests in Africa and the later four centuries European Christian conquests and objectively we owe the Negro nothing. Greg’s idea of objectivity is to recycle leftist
standard rants.
“If a species is divided into separate populations, and those populations are left in reproductive isolation from each other for many generations, they will diverge. If you return after several hundred generations have passed, you will observe that the various traits that characterize individuals of the species are now distributed at different frequencies in the various populations. After a few ten thousands of generations, the divergence of the populations will be so great they can no longer cross-breed; and that is the origin of species. This is Biology 101.
Our species separated into two parts 50, 60, or 70 thousand years ago, depending on which paleoanthropologist you ask. One part remained in Africa, the ancestral homeland. The other crossed into Southwest Asia, then split, and re-split, and re-split, until there were human populations living in near-total reproductive isolation from each other in all parts of the world. This went on for hundreds of generations, causing the divergences we see today. Different physical types, as well as differences in behavior, intelligence, and personality, are exactly what one would expect to observe when scrutinizing these divergent populations.”
http://www.johnderbyshire.com/Opinions/HumanSciences/upennlaw.html
Spot on Pat, spot on.
Does it really matter if differences in academic ability are rooted in genetics or in culture? The fact is, they are real, and enduring, and the public school system has been unable to correct the lower performance of certain races/cultures, and thus must be declared a failure. The left-liberals, who worship the state, scream “No, the state isn’t to blame, it’s White racism!” The Left will never declare the state a failure (mostly because the state is the Left’s bread and butter), even if it has to throw every White under the bus to declare “victory,” and even if it has to sacrifice the future of every Black caught in a failing schools system and/or a pathological culture.
From collapsed Communism to collapsing socialist economics to the failed public school system, the Left is a failure at everything it touches, other than poisoning society, corrosive rhetoric, and epic swindle. That’s why the Left should simply be ignored, and people of good will should march on towards vouchers, ignoring the Left’s taunts, tantrums, screams of racism, and general arrested development.
The Left will never grow up, it’s leaders want to maintain a permanent underclass to manipulate, exploit, and feed upon, and use for votes, and so it keeps certain segments of society warehoused and indoctrinated in the failed public schooling system.
Thank you, Mr. Buchanan, for this post. I’ve been thinking for a long time about the fact that no one seems to be demanding a place for women in the NFL. In my view, it’s a bit sad that we don’t see women in the NFL but we do see them in the military. Isn’t national defense more important than a sport, no matter how much we love it? Military service has somehow gotten more politicized than sports, though there are still in every branch separate physical fitness standards for men and women. I’ve always wondered if enemy bullets would slow down female troops.
Anyways, back to the real point. Education is a racket. Do the educrats care about the ‘achievement gap’? Perhaps some of them do, but let’s be honest–it’s a huge moneymaker and that alone means that they will continue to shill for funds to try this or that experiment to eliminate it. Education spending has gone up and up and up, and results have remained constant, yet anytime some hapless politician suggests trimming the unnecessary education budgets the skies open up and rain hellfire. Let the cry go out: Less money for education! Cuts! Cuts! Cuts!
Welfare etc works in funny ways. I have 6 rental properties. the great majority of my tennants at any 1 time are on some form of assistance. Their greatest single expenditure the rent they pay to me out of the money the government gives them. the capital gains I have had in 15 years of ownership I get for free while they pay tax on their labour to pay for the wars started by my ethnic group to kll people sometimes of theirs. The worlds a complex place. My ethnic group controls all the resources, state bureacracy esp the police, makes and enforces all the laws. Hence tennantspay taxes on their wages and I dn’t on my capital gains and family trusts.
If the participants in this thread are representative, it ought to show pretty convincingly that many conservatives are not even concerned with the “equality of opportunity” standard. If a child grows up without meaningful access to a proper education, it does not matter where the fault lies; whether or not anything can be done about it has nothing to do with whether we ought to recognize it as a problem (as Pat’s piece would have us believe it is not). I would love to see statistics about how racial minorities adopted into wealthier homes do on the exams in question. I suspect that it’s a whole lot more complicated than the “blacks are stupid but they sure can run fast” narrative.
It’s growing harder and harder to believe that equality of opportunity is even possible.
Equality of opportunity is, has been and will always be a myth. We need to stop paying homage to myths. Equality of any kind is an impossible chimera. Studies have shown that even more well off blacks do poorly on exams when compared to whites.
Matt Two, it’s not complicated at all.
Any semi-intelligent man or woman who has reached adulthood, realizes that human history is replete with tales of the intelligent, the industrious and the inspired, as well as tales of the ignorant, the indifferent and the irresponsible.
Those who think that any ONE race has a monopoly on the former three camps, while everybody else falls somewhere in the latter three, are damn fools.
Apparently, there are still a lot of DAMN FOOLS in the world. One of the reasons that conservatives completely turn off many people of color, is the eagerness of so many to embrace this kind of tom foolery.
Many a black person questioned, reasonably, if someone who had barely been in the Senate long enough to figure out where the men’s room is, really the BEST qualified person to lead this country?
That skepticism was immediately rendered MOOT by Sarah Palin enthusiasts showing up at rallies with stuffed monkeys labeled “Obama”. Way to go; that’ll surely endear “conservatives” to us.
Sledge, western civilization is the product of the white man as Mises noted in Human Action. If this slights the tender sensibilities of the so-called colored folks, tough.
There are what DuBois called the Talented Tenth in the Negro
population and I’ll take those conservative blacks over leftist whites any day of the year. But doesn’t change the basic situation that the great bulk of your people are anti-white black racists and commit crimes WAY out of proportion to their numbers and we are not going to whitewash this (pun
intended) to get the elusive Negro vote. Capise ?
If the participants in this thread are representative, it ought to show pretty convincingly that many conservatives are not even concerned with the “equality of opportunity” standard
That standard is bogus. By definition, “equality of opportunity” equals equality of condition. Government-imposed equality of condition is the antithesis of meritocracy, or Jefferson’s “natural aristocracy”.
The historical American standard is equality before the law, and in the eyes of God. Beyond that there is no equality – this is an objective truth. No two men are equal. For government to impose equality where there is none is a perversion of the natural order.
“There are what DuBois called the Talented Tenth in the Negro population” …..
Actually there is the “talented tenth” in EVERY population, which is PRECISELY my point. There is as great a variation in intelligence WITHIN the black population, as there is WITHIN any other.
I’m always amused that white people who actually POSSES superior intelligence, are usually too busy doing what people with superior intellects DO (you know, subatomic physics, brain surgery, that kind of stuff) — to waste their time debating those whose intellects are so obviously INFERIOR to their own.
I’m also amused that those really superior intellects, seldom debase themselves by clinging to some alleged GROUP superiority — they don’t need to.
Only those right here under the hump in that bell curve, where the rest of us AVERAGE people are, try to claim superiority by consanguinity.
Ah, consanguinity — the last refuge of mediocre members of a “superior” race.
Amusing.
“Those who think that any ONE race has a monopoly on the former three camps, while everybody else falls somewhere in the latter three, are damn fools.”
Agreed.
“Let me emphasize here that the restrictionists of Congress do not claim that the “Nordic” race, or even the Anglo-Saxon race, is the best race in the world. Let us concede, in all fairness that the Czech is a more sturdy laborer … that the Jew is the best businessman in the world, and that the Italian has … a spiritual exaltation and an artistic creative sense which the Nordic rarely attains. Nordics need not be vain about their own qualifications. It well behooves them to be humble.
What we do claim is that the northern European and particularly Anglo-Saxons made this country. Oh, yes; the others helped. But … [t]hey came to this country because it was already made as an Anglo-Saxon commonwealth. They added to it, they often enriched it, but they did not make it, and they have not yet greatly changed it.
We are determined that they shall not … It is a good country. It suits us. And what we assert is that we are not going to surrender it to somebody else or allow other people, no matter what their merits, to make it something different. If there is any changing to be done, we will do it ourselves.”
— William N. Vaile, April 8, 1924
S.L. Toddard hits the nail on the head exactly.
My point, which T. Sledge keeps evading, is
that the white man created western civilization
including the western industrial civilization of
the past 300 years.
This does not mean that Negroes or all other
groups do not have their own special talents
which are adaptive to their native environments.
Obviously, they survived much better in the heat
of Africa than the white man BEFORE Africa
was brought into industrial civilization (to the extent
it has.)
DuBois was SPECIFICALLY referring to the talented
tenth in the Negro civilization as I recall from reading
him. Undoubtedly there are a very small number of exceptionally gifted people in all groups which still
doesn’t obviate the Bell Curve and all the tests done
here in the US since WW1. Read The Southern Case
For School Segregation by James Jackson Kilpatrick.
It is as relevant now as it was in 1962. Kilpatrick
opportunistically changed his tune to get in 400 syndicated
papers instead of only 80 in the south but his 1962 book
stll stands.
So if your so up on subatomic physics and brain surgery (!),
T. Sledge, why are you wasting your godly persona here ?
“Mediocre” seems to be one of your favorite tags.
Is there self-projection going on here ?
Prior to the 1800′s, racism, slavery and variations thereof were common the world over. Racism is still common the world over today, and slavery still exists in certain parts of Africa and other 3rd World societies.
But to hear the racist Lefties tell it, only the White, blue-eyed devil was ever guilty of racism and slavery, and even though America fought a civil war revolving around the issue, the White, blue-eyed devil is still guilty to this day.
Are there White racists and would be slavers? Yes, just as there are in any other race. But only the Left declares that all Whites are guilty of racism because a percentage of their race is racist, or because a percentage of their race engaged in slavery, and builds anti-White policies using affirmative action, racial set-asides, and racial quotas around the presumption that ALL Whites are racists.
This is racist itself. Indeed, the Left has been guilty of anti-White and anti-Christian racism going back to the days that the Stalinists and Jewish Bolsheviks murdered millions of Whites and Christians because of their ethnicity, which is a major component of what gave rise to Hitler and Nazism.
And don’t be fooled; if allowed to run wild, the Left will do the same again by employing hypocritical, double standard accusations of racism to demonize ALL non left-wing Whites until they are viewed as devils. In fact, the government-imposed policies to saddle them with guilt, and to hobble their ability to organize, are merely part of that process. Notice how the Tea Partiers are being framed by the Left as racists simply because they are White? This wouldn’t be possible without a government that poisons the environment by instigating racist, anti-White policy.
Also notice that no matter how much Whites give, the “racist” accusations never cease. This is because the accusation itself is a bad-will tactic by the Left to seize resources and power. Indeed, the racism accusations will NEVER cease until the last non-Left or anti-Left Whites have been sold into slavery.
And then the Left will start in on the Asians.
Amen, Chris Moore !
Moore: “But only the Left declares that all Whites are guilty of racism…”
The left doesn’t declare that all whites are guilty of racism, but that’s a convenient strawman argument.
The left argues that white people are the inheritors of privilege based on historic discrimination against blacks (slavery, Jim Crow, lynchings, terror), while blacks are the inheritors of disadvantages based on the same. It would be nice to wipe the slate clean and declare a new beginning, but the fact is that fundamental inequalities still remain (employment, education, crime perpetration and sentencing inequalities), many of which are the result of government-sanctioned and -enforced discrimination (separate but equal vs the sheriff being in the lynch mob). Perhaps government action partnered with private initiatives are not the best antidotes to government action partnered with private initiatives, in which case I am curious to hear your ideas as to how to remedy this situation, though I fear that they will boil down to little more than , “F— them, I got mine.”
The “left” is limited to a handful of white quacks, and a few opportunistic blacks.
The most ACQUISITIVE people in America today are BLACK RAPPERS (I don’t mean that facetiously). Black culture (unfortunately from my perspective), is the most PRO-hyper consumerist (it should focus more in saving and investment) in this country —every third black kid that I know is in his basement with sound equipment, trying to be the next Jay-Z, or Kanye West.
You are directing your ire in the WRONG direction. The banksters are more “socialistic” than ANY BLACK KID that I know of. And the banksters, the out-sourcers of high tech jobs, and the negotiators of trade agreements (who six months later sign on as agents of foreign manufacturers) are far more likely than “black leftists” to destroy this country.
For every NON-BLACK victims of black criminality, there are a DOZEN black victims (that actually get reported) of black on black crime. A black senior citizen is far more likely to be the victim of a “gansta” than any of you ever are.
What semi-intelligent black man or woman, is not outraged and shamed by THAT?
Have you ever seen Chris Rock’ routine on Black People versus (“Dr. Laura’s Rant here) ? Look it up on Youtube, it might be enlightening. IT’S REAL.
As for “exceptionalism” the truth of the matter is that I proudly claim my spot in the hump under the bell curve, which is were 95% of us ARE. You can’t and I can’t sit around waiting for some genius to come along to solve our problems —- we AVERAGE people are going to have to do that.
Guys, you’re fighting A GHOST.
Yet Another Matt, you are exactly promoting collective white guilt and licensing the rampant black racism that exists against BECAUSE of the white left. Blacks were the exclusive sellers of black slaves. Arabs ran slavery from the 9th through the 14 centuries and after that the Spanish, Dutch, Portugese and the Brits in that order along with a small number of Jews.
Blacks should be paying us whites for rescuing them from the horrors of tribal Africa. From Uganda to Rwanda to Ethiopia to the Sudan to Zimbabwe to Angola to the Congo to Kenya to Nigeria to Liberia to Zambia, the Dark Continent is a cesspool of mass murder, genocide, tribal rule, ethnic cleansing, superstitution, abject indolence, theft, robbery, filth and AIDS.
Check out any large US city with a major black population
and while it is much better than Africa it pales in comparison to non-Negro life. Blacks have been given every opportunity in the world and a few have taken advantage of it but way, way, way too many are shiftless, stupid, lazy and criminally inclined.
In Oakland they are 29% of the total but 80% of the crimes even though there are poorer Asians and Latins who commit nowhere the crimes that blacks do. And some of these blacks have government jobs. In San Francisco blacks are 6% of the population but 60% of the crime and the pattern is prevalent throughout the urban US. The white left apologists for black sociopathology are the WORST enemies of blacks as Bill Cosby, Clarence Thomas, John McWhorter, Shelby Steele, Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams have long documented. Since statism, collectivism, socialism, communism and warfare-welfare statism failed everywhere the Left has been reduced since 1975 to identity politics and it is the coffin the left will be buried in. Legal Jim Crow has been gone almost fifty years and that only existed in thirteen states at most. Slavery has been gone 150 years so get off those Let’s Blame Whitey For Everything nonsense.
Blacks are the cause of black backwardness and assuming the genetic factor isn’t too strong to overcome, blacks will have to be their solution.
T. Sledge, here in Oakland there is a great deal of black on white crime as is true in SF where there are few blacks.
Nationally there are far more black on white crimes than vice-versa and also far more black on Asian crimes. Blacks
are scared of Latins who will beat blacks every time there is a fight. Go Brown Power !
95% of us are NOT in the same place on the Bell Curve, why not read the book and the one I earlier recommended before spouting such left nonsense ?
The bankers are not mugging me on the street and terrorizing us in our homes and were the victims of Fed policy to make loans to unqualified blacks and Latinos and some whites.
The black crime plague is not a ghost, Sledge, so please don’t try to shovel that sludge our way.
Rap music is anti-white, anti-woman, pro-crime garbage and is atonal, based on race hate and only morons can listen to it.
I didn’t say these black kids were socialists, I said way too many are criminals.
“The left argues that white people are the inheritors of privilege based on historic discrimination against blacks (slavery, Jim Crow, lynchings, terror), while blacks are the inheritors of disadvantages based on the same.”
The vast majority of Whites would be surprised to learn they are the inheritors of privilege. Perhaps the super wealthy White elite who inherited their wealth are, but that’s well under 5% of all Whites. The rest either earned it, or are not wealthy or privileged at all.
Not only that, but the argument that Whites are “privileged” (ie spoiled, pampered, favored) merely because of their skin pigmentation is itself racist.
Most people in America who make racist, anti-White arguments and generalizations and who advocate anti-White government policy have something to gain economically by preserving the status quo. For example, “ian” above is basically a slum lord who lives the good life collecting government-backed rent vouchers from poor Blacks. These kinds of Whites essentially want to keep Blacks on the welfare plantation into perpetuity because it’s good for them economically. Other Whites who make their living at the taxpayer trough also want to keep Blacks voting for Big Government as well, because resource transfer from taxpayers to Big Government payrolls is how they line their own pockets.
These types really don’t care about the future peace, prosperity and solvency of the country, nor the public bankruptcy staring young Americans straight in the face; their attitude is “F— them, I got mine.”
Great comments, Chris ! Thanks.
Yet one more example of Pat B’s decline into his Sunset years is his amnesia of the fact that Catholic & Jewish schools show virtually NO achievement-gap between America’s ethnic groups. In fact, there was even a recent report in the New York Times (demonstrably an anti-catholic vehicle) that African-American youngsters outperform whites in NYC Catholic schools. And considering that catholic schools accomplish this routine “feat” consistently — and at a fraction of the cost of their union-controlled public counterparts — only raises fears about Mr. Buchanan’s declining cerebal once-prowess….That Pat would advocate social-Darwinism over the wonders of the market-based ‘competitor’ option, illustrates his kinship with the dubious Beck & Palin counterfeiters.
How many Negroes go to NY Catholic Schools ? How does their socio-economic background compare with most other blacks ? How many kids were involved in this study ?
How many Negroes and other non-Jews go to Jewish Schools ? I bet not many.
Why would you trust anything on race coming out of the NY Times ?
Pat’s not opposed to any market options, he’s just wise enough not to ignore genetics, which the market can’t fix.
Better read The Bell Curve, NY Teacher, and start facing the objective reality of racial group differences.
Your first sentence is pure projection.
Hardesty, You hardly had any lessons in Debate or Logic — bet you were a sorry graduate of a Public School: indeed, your learned peers in those real citadels of learning that evaded you, would advise you how lawyers or even every-day debaters must cite the opponents’ sources or argumental discrepancies to bolster your own point. The New York Times and CBS 60 Minutes (as most mainstream media) have editoralized AGAINST Vouchers or help for Catholic schools; ergo, when they concede miraculous reports about universal achievement in these alterntive-to-public-cesspools institutions, it is cause to celebrate. Hence my citing of the NYT (60 Mins also featured miracles at S. Bronx Catholic schools — that were more impoverished and sociologically handicapped than public bastions in the same zip code.)
But since you obviously don’t read much media, here is an article from the NeoCon Wall Street Journal, a medium that your hero Pat Buch assailed a year ago, and actually recommended the “grey lady” for more objectivity.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703957904575252700201162146.html
Note, that the WSJ’s report (barely a month old) documents that virtually ALL Catholic-school students are “minorty.” And 60% not even Catholic. In NYC’s Chinatown area, 99% of Catholic-school students are Buddhist.
The Bell Curve has long since been debunked, citing among other stattistics that Carribean “negroes” in the UK achieve higher academic scores than the mainstream, on average.
That I have to explain all of the above — common knowledge to even plebian readers, bespeaks volumes of your academic & cerebal deprivations, Hardesty. That your vernacular still reeks of archaic has-beens such as “Negro,” warrants all readers here to pray for your handicap-healings…In the interim, while we await your enlightenment, why not depart AmCon for some more unchallenging journals such as Teen mag, or TV Guide?
This may be one of the most senseless editorials I’ve ever read. Yes, I agree, report statistics accurately. If one race does better than the other, or worse than the other- this is valuable information. Should it shape our policy though? What use is there in saying “Mexicans don’t do as well as Asians in math”? Should we not allow Mexicans to teach math? Should we not approve Mexican college applicants in the sciences because they “could” receive a lower GPA than an Asian student? No. Of course not. Everyone needs to be evaluated on their merit alone. We teach. They learn. When you start worrying about teaching a certain way, to a certain group, you’re asking for trouble.
What we can do, and what we SHOULD do is this: ask ourselves WHY Asians do so well in math. What are they doing that we should be emulating?
It is also reported that Jews on average score higher on IQ tests than non-Jews. Take a look at the whole picture- their cultural philosophies, their value systems and family structures.
I think you’ll find in the end that it is much LESS about genetic “gift” and more about upbringing, family cohesion, community involvement, values and discipline; things that seem to be missing in many of today’s inner city minorities and suburban ‘broken homes’.
As a long-time teacher, researcher and sociologist, I have to concur with Jodie’s accurate assessments: The “genetic-predisposition” for intelligence has long been debunked (and advocates still clinging to such pseudo-science have sad skeletons in their psyche). Genetically identical twins separated at birth and one reared in advanced cultures while the other in primitive societies confirm the worlds-apart personalities and acumen.
True, the latin student population in America ranks last in test-achievement and graduation, as well as reaching scientist & mathematician eschelons. Ditto for their being among the largest cohort in our prison population. However, that such is “genetic,’ is scientifically bogus especially, among other things, virtually no hispanic or african-american from catholic schools are incarcerated (these academic-achievement & other demographic data are published every year by the DOJ’s Bureau of Justice Statistics)
Ditto for the Asian intellectual myth: not only are third-generation Asian Americans stagnating in narcissist Americana, but consider their root society: 75% have never seen a school-house, while it is barely 0.1% of thier total population that rival the Ivy League cohort. So much for humane equality, leave alone democracy. If Gandhi was a success why are his grandkids domiciled in Oregon and the Euro West that their ancestor lambasted? (Even the last Gandhi leader assasinated was reared in Italy. ) Sadly, more Indians realize this failure than Americans. BTW, most educated Indians have Catholic missionaries — not gandhi gurus, to thank for — which they even today do by literally torching churches and christian communities. But they do so to other groups as well — Muslims, Sikhs, and even “Lower-Caste” Hindus. So much for the Gandhi lovey-dovey pacifism.
Similarly, I feel a greater problem lies in the average American not realizing that catholic schools here graduate 99-100% of their students, and then send 100% of these well-prepared grads to college; the average public school graduates only 43% of its students, of which barely 40% enter college — unprepared and forced to take expensive “remedial” courses. this, while the 92% of American kids being effectively “de-educated” in public schools cost taxpayers an average of $11,000 a year — compared to their catholic school counterparts making the grade with only $3800.
Finally, let the above not be interpreted as an endorsement of everything catholic being virtuous: indeed, the second-most un-virtuous scandal today (after the 50-year public-school surreptitous raping of the tax-payer) is not the priest-pedophila — 100 times that of public-school pedophilia, but the fact that the current War-for-Oil, cloaked as a “crusade” was sanctioned and advanced by the anti-christ sitting on Peter’s throne, who adds pseudo legitimacy by claiming to convert-to-catholism the other Oil charlatan Tony Blair, and next week heads to the British isles to do more of this hog-wash.
Apologies for the tangent, but I fear I will now be excised from this blog…Moral of the above: Nothing happens in a vacuum.
NY Teacher, you know nothing. The Bell Curve book has never been refuted in any way nor has the other work of Jensen, Shockley, et al, or the documentation of Negro intellectual inferiority going back to the Army tests of WW1.
I was in parochial schools for many years before public schools, so your wrong there as usual. Your assertions here
are not grounded in fact and even leftists like Pinker and Chomsky recognize the vital importance of genetics. No one
claims it’s the only factor but it IS a major factor. The environmentalist thesis has been shredded many times, see Chomsky’s devastation of Skinner in NYRB in the early 70s.
Your unsourced comments on third generation Asian Americans is pure BS, they make up the majority here at
UC Berkeley and have for many years.
Plenty of Hispanic Catholic school graduates are housed in the prison system here in California. That public schools are worse, I agree but dismissing genetics is like creationists dismissing evolution. I’m embarrassed for you.
It’s scary that there are “teachers” like you !
Around Oakland-SF Bay Area the Catholic schools that remain still have many white students.
And those Caribbean Negroes have higher IQs than American Negroes as a class, not US whites. Again, READ The Bell Curve.
Jodie, you need to read the Bell Report, Michael Levin (Prof
at CCNY)’s book on race, Samuel Francis, Jared Taylor and some others who actually KNOW something about the genetic v. environmentalist debate. Your comments are just soggy, sentimental mental slop. Obviously you are not going to teach ghetto kids the same way you would more advanced groups. Sure judge every individual AND recognize that there mean group averages which you ignore at your peril. Jews are a perfect example of genetic superiority through thousands of years of inbreeding as my wife can tell you. And, YES, the great majority of Jews believe they are a race. Their have been
some recent dissenting views from revisionist Israeli historians
but the racial view is strongly predominant.
Since the following link alone demonstrates 24,900 REFUTATIONS to the absurd “flawed science” Bell Curve racist-narcotic, and since Michael Hardesty has mysteriously ignored Dept. of Ed, Dept of Justice, and a divergent spectrum of media coverage of tthis archaic pseudo-science, we are left with but with no other option other than to get down on our knees and ferently pray that at least a scintilla of wisdom be bestowed on our “negro-resentful” brother…
http://www.google.com/search?q=refuting+the+%22bell+curve%27&rls=com.microsoft:en-us&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&startIndex=&startPage=1&rlz=1I7RNTN_en
Naturally, no further academic discourse will be necessary when relating with our lost brother…
“NY Teacher” doesn’t know the difference between an
assertion and a refutation. I’d be surprised if there
weren’t 24 million attacks on The Bell Curve but there
have been only a couple of serious attempted book length
rebuttals of The Bell Curve and they have failed.
The “divergent” mainsream left-liberal media coverage
is most noticeable for its utter uniformity and total lack
of divergence from the standard Stalinist Political Correctness
line. And was our “NY Teacher” actually dimwitted to refer
us to the DOJ and Dept Of ED as authorities ??????????????
Why not just Al Sharpton and the Communist Party ?
It amounts to the same thing. I refer readers to the American Renaissance website for frank, UN-PC views on race.
The only thing I resent about Negroes is their amazing ability to get away with so much of the crime they commit.
Now that’s awesome !
Re.; “Jews are a perfect example of genetic superiority through thousands of years of inbreeding as my wife can tell you.”
I sincerely apologize: Anyone who believes in the superiority of a “race” due to “inbreeding” (you besmirch the Jewish people by suggesting that marrying one’s cousin — or sister — is admirable) cannot be addressed with logic, facts, stats, or sources. Kinda foolish of me to overlook this premise. Accordingly, this has to be the last dignification from this end; the floor is now yours Hardesty for your troubled Mishuggah rantings….
Shalom!
I didn’t say that Jews committed incest, I wrote that they married within their own race as Nathaniel Weyl and other
authors have documented. C.P. Snow documented their
higher IQ’s as a result of this longstanding practice until very
recent decades where there is now great intermarriage.
Most Jews like my wife do consider themselves a race,
not a religion as such because most Jews don’t practice Judaism. Apparently “NY Teacher” can’t tell the difference inbreeding within one’s group and inbreeding with one’s
sister. It’s a sorry comment on an alleged teacher.
Notice too that our teacher declines to defend his indefensible sources like the DOJ and the Dept of Education as well as the 24 million stray Google sources on The Bell Curve.
Dear Michael,
I waited for NY Teacher to respond, but apparently he/she has kept his/her word and abandoned any further comment.
I am a bit troubled though Michael by your here-there-and-nowhere ramblings. You have repeatedly indulged in and apparently felt comfortable using the “N” word to define a group not just in America but also in Israel (recall Operation Moses, Ethiopia). Your reliance on this decades-old term can easily convey to the reader that your other beliefs are also out-dated. Similarly, you also discard NYT’s citing of DOJ and DOE, etc. sources as unreliable, without explaing why. This again leads a reader to wonder if you are one of those primitive everything-is-conspiracy kooks. The Bell Curve is indeed fascinating, but again more so in its hey-day than since. Again, your out-datedness has harmed your perhaps well-meaning points.
I am all the more disappointed and saddened that you conclude that most Jews today are secular and thus inter-marry and have consequently dumbed-down their race. The dumbing-down is more likely a result of the public-school system that most secular Jews are enrolled in. Check with your local rabbi for this sad but true fact. This would thus explain at least NYTeacher’s critique of the public system.
I am sure you are a fine and decent gentleman Michael, but you need to reconsider your choice of words, and older opinions prior to posting. AIl the best. Shirley K.
Shirley, your comments puzzle me. Negro is an ok word.
I responded with specific arguments and at least two sources to NY Teacher’s totally inept nonarguments.
By the way, he’s promised before not to write, so I wouldn’t place too much stock in his promises.
I NEVER said that Jews dumbed down their race, I’m married to one and admire their superior intelligence AND the Gentiles
they marry tend to be high IQers like themselves.
How did The Bell Curve get outdated ? How does factual truth get outdated ? Both the DOJ and DOE have terrible general reputations and I can cite specifics for you such as the current
head of the Civil Wrongs Division of the DOJ going on a fanatical quota and censorship binge. The Washington Examiner documented this the other week and it was reprinted on the American Renaissance website.
The DOE should have been abolished long ago as Reagan promised in 1980. It’s a worthless NEA sponsored bureaucratic boondoggle.
Jews as a group have not been dumbed down by the public
schools, so why I check with the local Rabbi ? Most of them
are too busy making excuses for Israel and most oppose intermarriage.
Most US Negroes are not black but brown.
And who needs to follow Jesse Jackson’s 1984 dictum on using African-American. Most Africans don’t want US Negroes coming back “home.” The connection’s long been severed as a Washington Post reporter found after a year of “going home.”
King used Negro and so did everyone until 1969.
I don’t mindlessly follow fashions.
My choice of words is appropriate to the particular situation
and I don’t what you mean by “older opinions.”
You might want upbraid “NY Teacher” for his frequent ad hominems in place of reasoned argument.
Show me where and when The Bell Curve was allegedly refuted.
“24,000″ Google comments and citing the DOJ & DOE without specifics don’t cut it. That’s why I was getting impatient with the “teacher” (God save our kids !)
Thank you for writing.
Michael,
I also believe that the Dept. of Education is another public-funded honeypot that achieves mostly nothing. But NYTeacher’s citing of annual DOE data to demonstrate that catholic schools have exemplary acievement in the same impoverished districts where public schools are failing direly, and with a fraction of the cost (I checked to verify these stats michael) is a pretty solid point NYT makes. I am not catholic but I am a tax-payer who can appreciate public savings. The NEA should harbor the most hostility to NYT and not you Michael.
As for the “N” word: C’Mon michael, surely we both know that while we don’t have to cowtow to Jesse Jacko, or the whims of the era, no one can deny that for better or worse all black people view the continous use of your N word today as RACIST. And considering it is effortless to use the alternative contemporary term, without diminishing any of your points, I fail to see why you strangely adhere to older perceivably-offensive terminology.
I got to adjourn for afternoon tea now Michael, but I hope you can see my point. At least we all agree that our public schools are failing America for for three generations now (with the percentage of America black students being a smaller percentage of the school population today that 40 years ago); if there are alternatives, catholic, jewish or even muslim, that still maintain the American fabric, I’m all for it. As I believe was NYT’s original point. And yours as well. No?
NY Times is a longtime leftist rag that has promoted every Communist cause from Mao to Castro to M.L. King to you
name it. That they took a brief respite from their normal anti-Catholicism is too small a mercy to take note of in view of the
larger record.
The only N word that is racist is “nigger” and 99.99% of the time I hear that used in the SF Bay Area is by blacks. Negro
is an accurate for the reasons I already gave before in my first
response. Most Negroes think that opposition to forced integration in so-called “public accomodations,” “fair housing,”
EEOC laws is “racist” but as a libertarian conservative I oppose forced integration as much as Jim Crow Laws.
I could care less what most Negroes think as most Negroes
are “racist” themselves (though I doubt the whole invented 1920s concept of “racism” has any validity.)
And who are you to speak for “all black people” ????
The NAACP used the word “colored” in its title which predates Negro and at least sounds more patronizing.
I know blacks who prefer Negro. Only idiots would equate
it with the other “n” word.
I wanted to make larger points about the reality of race than merely the public schools which shouldn’t exist anyway.
Not sure what the American fabric was or is to be blunt.