Luke Ford

Comments to Steve Sailer:

* Politics: there is absolutely no “black dominance.” Aside from Hawaii/Indonesia raised, half white Obama, blacks have been pretty unsuccessful in politics outside of special majority-black districts.

Blacks are about 13% of the population and about 25% of Democratic voters, yet they are 0% of Democratic senators and 0% of Democratic governors. And if they have any dominance, it sure is hard to tell by the last 25 years: cuts to AFDC, open boarders for competing low-skill workers, gentrification of the choicest black neighborhoods, high rates of imprisonment, and a gradual decline in per capita civilian public employment, a very important source of jobs.

There is certainly black dominance, or at least over-representation, in some aspects of low-brow popular culture. But that has little to nothing to do with “the perception that black Americans have suffered uniquely among peoples.” Blacks are simply better at low-brow culture: sports, stand-up comedy, rapping, and dancing, than other groups.

Where blacks benefit from liberal guilt/affirmative action isn’t low culture, where they do fine on their own, but high culture. As Derb says, so much of black intellectual output is solipsistic black black blackety black, a never-ending “conversation about race.” Coates is typical of this.

* What is more interesting is that blacks lately haven’t been honoring their bargain with white liberals: behave reasonably well and turn out to vote, and we’ll keep the goodies from Uncle Sugar flowing.

Sure they came out in 2008 and 2012, but 2010 had possibly the longest impact of any election in the past 100 years. Republicans won so big at the state level that year, they extensively gerrymandered states swing states like Ohio, Michigan, Florida, and Pennsylvania to the extent they get 3/4 of the seats while losing the state-wide popular vote in the House. They did the same to the state legislative districts. The GOP will thus control the House the entire decade, and then will gerrymander again with their lock on the same state legislatures, and hold the house until at least 2032.

It was completely foreseeable that electing Obama would hurt the democrats with blue collar whites in these states, and the only way to make up for this was higher black turnout in off-year elections. But they just didn’t show up.

Now they are failing the second part of the bargain: keep up good appearances for the news. Instead, it is blacks, from the Talented Tenth to the Unemployable Three Tenths, who want to talk about black crime and especially how the horrible racist police* are trying way too hard to stop it, and also all of America is bad and racist too.

*(Middle Americans, in poll after poll, show they have extremely high opinions of police, near the very top along with nurses, doctors, and firemen).

If there is one issue that the Democrats don’t want in the news, it is black crime. Black crime isn’t just a bad issue for them, it is the issue that caused them to lose five elections in a row in New York City. It just caused them to lose elections for governor of Maryland and Massachusetts.

My analysis of this lack of political discipline is mostly about the extremely competitive new media environment. The New York Times, and even more the many papers that had no local competition at all, used to give little coverage to both black crime and the angry, anti-police views of many, perhaps most blacks. Now those gatekeepers lack this power. If the average black wants to talk about how the police are evil, that’s what will get talked about.

Comments to Steve Sailer:

* Ta-Nehisi Coates is the unwitting butt of an extended joke which makes his employers and colleagues snort coffee out their noses every day as they stifle their guffaws when he walks by.

Coates thinks he is a talented, respectable writer. After all, doesn’t he have a byline– and much more importantly, a salary– at a well-known magazine? Don’t his little books garner fawning reviews?

In truth Coates is a pitiable affirmative-action/token hire. He is an ignorant man, a poor writer, and a pompous fool. No one will pop his bubble because they enjoy exploiting him and laughing at him behind his back too much.

The reason Coates has been given a staff-writer gig when thousands of much better writers (including many American black writers) are available and eager is that his employers and the readership they wish to amuse enjoy forcing nearly all white and asian Americans to pretend to respect Coates lest they be denounced as racists. Coates’ manifest incompetence makes the situation more delicious for those who use him as political-correctness bait.

Coates’ best hope is that someone will clue him in and then, in a moment of unusual brilliance, he will parlay his puffed-up status as a magazine writer into a tenured professorship at some HBCU or third-tier state college before he gets laid off from commercial publishing and finds that no one will employ him as a writer because they already have other goads for the politically-incorrect.

* Coates is basically a bright Gen X comic book nerd who’s found himself anointed the new James Baldwin and is uncomfortably trying to fill the demand. Look at some recent videos of him where it’s striking how guarded and closed off he is, then go look at how happy and relaxed he is in this old video where he’s talking about the X-Men with Alyssa Rosenberg and a couple of nerdy white dudes (the convergence of Coates, Rosenberg, and an extended discussion of X-Men: First Class makes it particular Steve bait).

* The thing about Coates is his writing style conjures an image of a man sobbing as he types out his complaints. There’s a strange immaturity to it that I never have been able to describe. The pleading just brings to mind someone writing their own ransom note.

I’ve always suspected he struggles with dis-confirmation. He overdoes his upbringing quite a bit. He did not live in the hard thumping parts of the ghetto. He grew up in what was at the time the black middle-class area. Lots of crime and dysfunction, but not The Wire. He went to Poly, which is an exam school for families keeping their kids out of trouble.

In other words, what he heard at home was and is nothing like what he experienced outside. Dad was always ranting about the blue-eyed devil, but at school the blue-eyed devil was his best friend. He’s a guy trying to keep it real, but living life as a white hipster in the suddenly white Harlem, working with other white hipsters.

* Screw Coates. The Eye of Sailer is upon him and his time, and those of his ilk, is about over. To me, he is nothing more than another black apologist for black dysfunction. And their time is running short. The evidence of black dysfunction being inherent in blacks is reaching a preponderance. Already you can corner liberals and have them responds, “Then what do you suggest? Genocide?” as evidence of their frustration and the dead end nature of the prior position.

I watched Brideshead Revisited (the old miniseries on Granada). And the Jeremy Irons character was narrating that it in 1923 Religion is dead and was it anymore than some quaint superstition or was it a moral code that still should guide society? He said “The answer to both was no.” So among the highest levels of English Society, Christianity was in 1923 a non-starter as an idea.

We are beginning the age of genetic determinism, and anyone that believes anything different will be thought to be an idiot by thinking people. The readership of the Sailer blog is one part of the advance party that will usher in this movement.

* …what Steve says about Jews: when you remove criticism of a group, people behave badly and selfishly. If you read black writing of the pre-civil rights era, there’s a huge emphasis on ‘uplifting the race’ and showing examples of black areas that behave well. There was an old guidebook for ‘Negro motorists’ someone put on Slate and it showed examples of black towns that were well-run, etc. (probably concentrations of the ‘talented tenth’ that now assimilates into white culture).

In the old days, Jews were terrified of being accused of ‘dual loyalty’ and hated guys like Pollard. Now, sadly…

* The anti-bullying school movement is just a way for sodomites to push their agenda in public schools without having to admit they want to reach – literally – young cute boys and convert them to their perversions

Comments to Steve Sailer:

* Glad someone has the stones to call out TNC’s overly celebrated one-note writing…although I did watch Glen Loury and John McWhorter discuss him on Blogginghead (and McWhorter basically put his thoughts down in print in the Daily Beast earlier this week) and basically trash his work. As McWhorter says, TNC is basically the high priest of a religion, not a serious intellectual. He has an almost childish belief in a racial boogeyman that explains literally everything – his words, not mine – that plagues black society, never mind that to accept this view one must consider whites to be unbelievably cunning and far-sighted and blacks to be uniquely incapable of surmounting the challenges posed by life in a first world country.

* Serena Williams’ black body is celebrated in the New Adam Sandler film, at least if you’re a dwarf.

In 1985, Tina Turner had a star turn in Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome. I remember my then-teenage self finding her black legs to be rather fetching. Rae Dawn Chong was in Commando with Arnold in the same year. Holly Robinson (then Holly Robinson Peete) was on 21 Jump Street in the late 80s, early 90s. I particularly liked the episode when she went undercover in Catholic school. There we have it, black bodies celebrated

Anyhow, my real question: do liberals actually believe this crap? Destroying Coates intellectually feels a bit unsporting, like beating up the aforementioned dwarf. The flaws in his reasoning, such as it is are so glaringly obvious that anybody should see them. When he doesn’t skip the whole “reasoning” thing altogether.

Are liberals just pretending to believe what he says, as a form of status display? A kind of weird peacocking, where they pretend to believe obvious nonsense? Or do they actually manage to brainwash themselves into believing his crap? If the latter, does it interfere with their cognitive functioning in other areas?

* Vanessa Williams won Miss America in 1984.

I remember the rush to get the next months issue of Penthouse , was hard to get due to the publicity of having Vanessa Williams spreading her legs for the camera, and having lesbian sex with her friend.

Suzette Charles, another Black body, was given the Miss America Crown when Williams was dethroned.

* I remember the late 80s-early 90s as a time when black achievement was celebrated in the culture. Steve mentions Michael Jordan (I want to be like Mike was a major advertising slogan); but I would add Cosby, Oprah, and Gen. Powell as public figures for whom the general public had admiration and trust–power of attorney levels of trust in some cases. In many ways, this period laid the groundwork for Pres. Bush’s appointments of Powell and Rice, and the election of Obama to the senate and presidency.

* What could the mean IQ of the Whites and Asians who opine for the NYT, the WaPo, the Atlantic, etc. be? Let’s say it’s 130 to 140. That would be roughly 2 to 2.5 SDs above the mean. The US Black distribution has a mean of 85 and an SD of 12, so perhaps we should expect 110 to 115 for people like Coates.

* There are a lot of rumors about Jordan and his supposedly less-than-wholesome true character, some of which venture off into conspiracy theory land. Like that his gambling problem got his father murdered by organized crime. Or that his two-year baseball sojourn was actually a suspension he served for betting on NBA games, which the league kept secret so as not to damage its reputation.