Why do the human sciences record pervasive behavioral differences among racial groups, such as in violent-crime rates?
One explanation is that these disparities originate in complex interactions between nature and nurture.
But, of course, only dangerous extremists hold that theory.
The much more respectable sentiment is that statistical differences among the races are the fault of bad white people, such as George Zimmerman and Minnesota policeman Jeronimo Yanez.
Last week, on his way to Warsaw on Air Force One, President Barack Obama was looking at social media. According to The New York Times, he alerted his press secretary that:
He had decided to make a statement himself as soon as they landed, and had told his aides to collect statistics demonstrating racial bias in the criminal justice system.
Now, you might think that’s putting the cart before the horse. Perhaps the administration should objectively evaluate the evidence first, rather than order its media flacks to dredge up some data justifying the president’s prejudices?
But that would be wrong. Everybody knows that culture or evolution can’t have anything to do with hereditary racial differences in performance. If you even consider those possibilities, you must be one of the bad white people you’ve been warned about.
Instead, we know that science has proved that statistical differences among the races are all due to a vast conspiracy to plunder blacks. Nothing makes 21st-century people who think they are white richer than having a lot of black bodies around. Just ask MacArthur genius Ta-Nehisi Coates. He’ll tell you.
And yet, here’s a statistic published in 2011 that doesn’t support the Coates-Obama orthodoxy:
While young black males have accounted for about 1% of the population from 1980 to 2008…(b)y 2008, young black males made up about a quarter of all homicide offenders (27%)…
In other words, young black males are about 27 times more likely to kill somebody than the average American.
Interestingly, that datum comes from the Obama administration’s Bureau of Justice Statistics, which published a report entitled Homicide Trends in the United States, 1980–2008.
One reason young black males are disproportionately homicidal is that they are young (homicide rates are highest among 18- to 24-year-olds). Another factor is that they are male (according to the BJS, “Males were 7 times more likely than females to commit murder in 2008”).
That the police keep a warier eye on men than women and the young than the old is never seen as offensive. It’s just common sense.
…Perhaps blacks get in trouble with the law more than do whites (much less East Asians) for reasons similar to why they do so well in sports and entertainment?
For instance, blacks tend more to live in the moment. Spontaneity and improvisation are great assets for jazz soloists and running backs, but they can be detriments in obeying the law. (Or, in the case of Cleveland Browns running back Isaiah Crowell, who recently tweeted an indiscreet illustration of a white cop getting his throat slashed, merely managing one’s social-media presence.)
Similarly, blacks do best in sports roles that put a premium on disruption and destruction. In football, for example, players on defense are actually more on the offensive, extemporizing search-and-destroy missions against the nominal offense, which attempts to defend its preconceived plans.
Whites in the NFL are concentrated at the positions that specialize in executing preplanned routines, such as placekicker, punter, quarterback, and offensive lineman, especially center.
Not surprisingly, while professional football overall is 68 percent black, defensive platoons are even blacker than that. The position of cornerback, the pass defenders who must react with instant violence to the planned routes run by receivers, is extraordinarily racially segregated. No white man has played regularly at any of the 64 cornerback positions in the NFL since Jason Sehorn retired more than a dozen years ago. Read on.
