{"id":97226,"date":"2016-05-24T16:56:50","date_gmt":"2016-05-25T00:56:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=97226"},"modified":"2016-05-24T16:56:50","modified_gmt":"2016-05-25T00:56:50","slug":"derbyshire-hanson-national-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=97226","title":{"rendered":"Derbyshire, Hanson & National Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

John Derbyshire writes July 25, 2013<\/a>: Victor Davis Hanson\u2019s<\/a> Tuesday column \u201cFacing Facts About Race<\/a>,\u201d published at the National Review Online<\/em> website, continues to draw commentary<\/a>.  I passed some brief remarks<\/a> myself here at VDARE.com the day it appeared.<\/p>\n

Since most of the subsequent commentary points out the undeniable parallels between Prof. Hanson\u2019s NRO column and one that I published on TakiMag last April titled \u201cThe Talk, Nonblack Version<\/a>\u201d\u2014the piece that caused National Review<\/a><\/em> to drop me from their contributor lists\u2014I thought I\u2019d say something more substantive.<\/p>\n

The first thing I\u2019ll say\u2014I see no reason to strike a pose of false modesty\u2014is that Prof. Hanson\u2019s piece isn\u2019t half as good as mine.  As web opinion journalism, in fact, it isn\u2019t very good at all. <\/p>\n

For example:  My piece contained 37 hyperlinks<\/a>, most of them to sites supporting some statement of fact<\/a> I made.  Prof. Hanson\u2019s piece contains no links at all.  Nor did his NRO editors bother to add any.  (The weekly columns I send in to VDARE.com always contain lots of links; but the VDARE editors invariably add more, and sometimes upgrade the ones I\u2019ve included to better, more apt ones.  That\u2019s <\/em>editing.)<\/p>\n

And then, right there in Hanson\u2019s paragraph 2, we get some wobbliness with the facts.<\/p>\n

\n

Pace<\/em> the president, the Zimmerman case was not about Stand Your Ground laws.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Here\u2019s what the President said<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

I know that there\u2019s been commentary about the fact that the stand your ground laws in Florida were not used as a defense in the case.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Having said that<\/em>, of course, the President indeed went ahead and talked about SYG anyway (apparently oblivious<\/a> to the fact<\/a> that these laws disproportionately favor blacks<\/a>!). But he had at least conceded, albeit in passive-aggressive, self-referential Obamaese, that Florida\u2019s SYG laws not having been used in George Zimmerman\u2019s defense was a \u201cfact.\u201d  Which is not what you would gather from reading Prof. Hanson.<\/p>\n

There followed some Hanson speculations on the President\u2019s reasons for speaking, none of them one-tenth as penetrating\u2014let alone as witty<\/em>\u2014as Steve Sailer\u2019s riff on the speech<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Then\u2014The Talk! Prof. Hanson writes:<\/p>\n

\n

Attorney General Eric Holder earlier gave an address to the NAACP on the Zimmerman trial\u2026Holder noted in lamentation that he had to repeat to his own son the lecture that his father long ago gave him. The sermon was about the dangers of police stereotyping of young black males.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

That gives Prof. Hanson a segue into his version of \u201cThe Talk, Nonblack Version\u201d\u2014hence the comparisons with my April 2012 piece.<\/p>\n

His \u201clifelong Democrat\u201d father, says the Prof., after a mugging experience<\/a> in San Francisco, advised him: \u201cWhen you go to San Francisco, be careful if a group of black youths<\/a> approaches you.\u201d <\/p>\n

After suffering some similar experiences of his own, Prof. Hanson tells us, \u201cI offered a similar lecture to my own son.\u201d<\/p>\n

He hastens to assure us that the lecture contained \u201cconstant reminders to judge a man on his merits, not on his class or race.\u201d <\/p>\n

Yeah\u2014that and $2.50<\/a> will get you a ride on the subway<\/a>, pal.  My Talk had those reminders, too, as did my column:<\/p>\n

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Any individual black is entitled to the same courtesies you would extend to a nonblack citizen. That is basic good manners and good citizenship . . . While always attentive to the particular qualities of individuals\u2026<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

It does no good. You may as well not bother. I won\u2019t, in future.<\/p>\n

Prof. Hanson further assures us that: \u201cThe advice was born out of experience rather than subjective stereotyping.\u201d <\/p>\n

Actually, notions we infer from experience are closer to subjective stereotyping than to objective<\/em> stereotyping, which relies on rigorous statistics,<\/a> a branch of the mathematical sciences. <\/p>\n

A careful study of differential crime rates by race,<\/a> for instance, would lead one to objective<\/em> stereotyping, a perfectly sound and rational<\/a> foundation for action, one on which, in fact, quite large and important<\/a> zones of human activity\u2014industrial quality control, for example\u2014depend for their efficacy. <\/p>\n

I tried to base my own advice to my kids on objective<\/em> stereotyping\u2014the good, rational kind.<\/p>\n

Prof. Hanson\u2019s column actually perks up a bit after that\u2014we\u2019re about halfway\u2014as he goes off into general observations about the racial situation in today\u2019s U.S.A.  Many of these observations are spot on:<\/p>\n

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There is no evidence in our increasingly self-segregated society that white liberals stand out as integrationists. [They] increasingly have the capital to school their children far from the inner city, to live largely apart from inner-city blacks, and in general to avoid the black underclass in the concrete as much as they profess liberal nostrums for it in the abstract.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

True, even if not original: Joe Sobran<\/a> said the same thing<\/a> thirty years ago.  Men more often need reminding than instructing, though. And I doubt any of the Young Republicans running NRO<\/a> ever heard of Joe Sobran.  \u201cOne of those old<\/em> conservative guys?  Eiuw!<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n

But there are still one or two nits I\u2019d pick in that second half of Hanson\u2019s column:<\/p>\n

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First, America is now a multiracial nation. The divide is not white versus black.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Wrong: So far as racial hostility is concerned, most of the divide is<\/em> white versus black.  The race issue in America is a tadpole, with black\/nonblack the mighty head<\/a> and everything else an inconsequential tail. <\/a> <\/p>\n

In per capita<\/em> intensity of feeling, black hatred of nonblacks is about an 8 out of 10, nonblack dislike of blacks about a 3 or 4, and any other antagonism you care to name\u2014Hispanic hostility<\/a> to East Asians, Hmong<\/a> feelings about Native Americans, whatever\u2014well down below 1.<\/p>\n

And in the sheer amount of sturm und drang<\/em> generated, the conflict is, as I keep telling you<\/a>, really just between two big blocs of white people who loathe each other, the liberal bloc recruiting nonwhites as not-much-trusted support troops\u2014a Cold Civil War<\/a>.  As Prof. Hanson said, the liberal bloc personally avoids<\/a><\/em> the great mass of blacks as much as they can\u2014except when a latrine trench needs digging.<\/p>\n

First out of the gate (I think) in responding to Prof. Hanson\u2019s piece was professional black person Ta-Nehisi Coates<\/a> at the Atlantic.  After a couple of shots at spelling Prof. Hanson\u2019s surname correctly (I wonder<\/a> if he can read cursive<\/a>?) Mr. Coates gets to his main point:  the advice offered in Prof. Hanson\u2019s Talk is \u201cstupid.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

If I were to tell you that I only employ Asian-Americans to do my taxes because \u201cAsian-Americans do better on the Math SAT,\u201d you would not simply question my sensitivity, but my mental faculties.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

No, I wouldn\u2019t.  I\u2019d think it was a bit extreme to only<\/em> employ As-Ams; but if I need to make a quick choice from half a dozen candidates to do my taxes, and the ceteris<\/em> are all paribus<\/em>, it would be logical and sensible to choose the candidate from a group exhibiting high average math skills.<\/p>\n

(My own tax accountant, for the record, is of British and German ancestry.  He\u2019s been doing a great job for me over a decade and more.  Thanks, guy!)  <\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

And people with intact mental faculties surely do<\/em> behave like that. This is from Tom Wolfe\u2019s eerily prescient 1987 novel Bonfire of the Vanities<\/a><\/em>, Chapter 18:<\/p>\n

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\u201cYou don\u2019t see too many black guys in Legal Aid.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s not true.  There\u2019s quite a few . . . But the big-time black wiseguys, the drug dealers, they don\u2019t want a black lawyer representing them.  The small-timers don\u2019t, either.  One time I was in the pens, and this black lawyer from the [assigned counsel pool] comes in looking for the client he\u2019s been assigned, and he starts yelling out his name.  You know the way they yell out the names in the pens.  Anyway, the guy he\u2019s been assigned is black, and he comes walking over to the bars, and he looks this guy in the eye and he says, \u2018Get lost, mother\u2014I want a Jew.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

All right, it\u2019s a novel.  Wolfe\u2019s a damn good journalist,<\/a> though, and I\u2019ll bet\u2014I speak as someone who\u2019s sat at dinner with the man several times\u2014that episode was taken from life.<\/p>\n

We then get some of what I think of privately as \u201cballistics tennis.\u201d <\/p>\n

One way to teach a person to play tennis would be to come at it through mathematical ballistics:  train the student to solve chains of simultaneous differential equations <\/a>in his head real fast so he\u2019d know where to be when the ball arrives.<\/p>\n

Another way is to supply a handful of general rules:  A lob doesn\u2019t have much spin\u2026Hit it where they ain\u2019t\u2026Low ball, low backswing\u2026Don\u2019t over-run the ball\u2026etc.<\/p>\n

Coates wants his kids to play ballistics tennis:<\/p>\n

\n

When you start getting down to particular neighborhoods the advice gets even more specific\u2014don`t cut through the woods to get to school, stay away from Jermaine Wilks, don`t got to Mondawmin on the first hot day of the year, etc.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Yo, Ta-Nehisi:  Life\u2019s too short!  For much of it your kids just need a few easily-internalized rules, not AP calculus.  Like: stay well clear of crowds of unfamiliar blacks. <\/a><\/em> <\/p>\n

Might application of those rules leave someone with hurt feelings?  Probably.  So in this pan<\/a> we have some stranger\u2019s hurt feelings<\/a>. In the other pan<\/a>, we have our kids\u2019 safety. What\u2019s the beam doing, Ta-Nehisi?<\/p>\n

Coates wraps up with a swipe at National Review<\/em>.  He mentions their cashiering<\/a> of me and Bob Weissberg<\/a>. (For a transcript of Bob\u2019s \u201cnoxious\u201d talk, see here<\/a>.) Then:<\/p>\n

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I`m not quite sure why they bothered with the kabuki. You are what your record says you are and at some point one must conclude that these are not one-offs, that the magazine which once blamed the Birmingham bombing on \u201ca crazed Negro<\/a>,\u201d is dealing with something more systemic, something bone-deep.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

That had me, as the kids tweet, ROFLMAO.  That the staff at National Review<\/em> nurse \u201cbone-deep\u201d ill will towards blacks is about as probable as that a Stockbridge, Mass. ladies\u2019 quilting circle is secretly practicing cannibalism.<\/p>\n

It is true, of course, that NR folk personally avoid blacks as much as they can.<\/a><\/em> But since that is true of middle-class American<\/a> non-blacks in general, they are not thus remarkable in any way. <\/p>\n

It is also true that in my twelve years\u2019 of association with the place, NR<\/em> employed, to the best of my recollection,<\/a> just one black person\u2026in the mail room. <\/p>\n

I\u2019d cut them some slack there, too, though.  Any black intelligent and well-educated enough<\/a> to do useful work for NR<\/em> will be Affirmative-Actioned up<\/a> into far more interesting and remunerative<\/a> work at a bigger organization\u2014the Wall Street Journal,<\/a><\/em> perhaps, or one of the cable TV operations.  This also was foretold in my April 2012 column:<\/p>\n

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(15) Unfortunately the demand is greater than the supply, so IWSBs [i.e. intelligent and well-socialized blacks] are something of a luxury good, like antique furniture or corporate jets: boasted of by upper-class whites and wealthy organizations, coveted by the less prosperous.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

NR<\/em> falls into the \u201cless prosperous\u201d category. <\/p>\n

The practical choice for a small \u201cconservative\u201d outfit like NR<\/em> is to hire in substandard blacks for the sake of appearances,<\/a> or to resign itself to an all-white workforce.  It speaks well of the magazine\u2019s honesty that they choose the latter course.<\/p>\n

During my own spell there, National Review<\/em> was as race-shy as an NPR staff cafeteria.  <\/a> Around the editorial table, the subject of race rarely came up.<\/p>\n

That was the general tenor of the place, at least.  Across the years there were some minor variations worth recording.  They were driven from outside, though, not by editorial policy aforethought. <\/p>\n

Generally speaking, National Review<\/em> scurried along obediently, perhaps unconsciously, with the zeitgeist. <\/p>\n

Let me try to explain that. Under systems of strict ideological control there are always alternating spells of greater or lesser strictness.  Citizens of totalitarian countries develop exquisite sensitivity to these fluctuations. <\/p>\n

To keep your feet in a totalitarian system you need to sense the ideological temperature to a fraction of a degree.  Your career\u2014in the worst of times, your actual life<\/em>\u2014depends on being able to do so.<\/p>\n

\u201cShall there be a student dance this year?\u201d I asked the college students I was teaching in post-Mao China.<\/a>  \u201cNo, not this year,\u201d I was told.  \u201cFengr bu hao<\/em>.\u201d [The wind is not right.]<\/p>\n

So it is for the editors of a conservative magazine in Jim Snow America<\/a>.  Here you can apply our (mine<\/a> and Peter Brimelow\u2019s<\/a>) theory of an \u201cinterglacial\u201d period of comparatively frank talk about race, lasting from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s.<\/p>\n

Thus I was able, as late as 2005, to publish a piece in the print National Review<\/em><\/a> about Bruce Lahn\u2019s findings on the geographic distribution of gene variants affecting brain ontogeny.  I doubt the piece would have passed muster at any much later date.  (Lahn himself, feeling the cold wind rising, changed his field of research shortly afterwards.  So far as I can discover he has published nothing on brain evolution since 2008<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

By the beginning of this decade the glaciers had come rumbling back with a vengeance. <\/p>\n

For example: Since January 2002 I had been submitting a monthly diary<\/a> of random short comments to National Review Online<\/em>.  At the end of February 2011 I duly sent in my diary for that month.  It included a segment on the destruction of Jared Taylor\u2019s American Renaissance<\/em> conference<\/a> that month by the mayor of Charlotte, NC<\/a>\u2014an exceptionally nasty case of political bullying. <\/p>\n

You can read the segment in my archives here<\/a>.  I had some measured words to say about the shameful, cowardly silence on the incident among conservative outlets, without any particular reference to NR<\/em>.  In fact, of course, I was hoping to break that shameful silence on NR<\/em>\u2019s behalf. <\/p>\n

(There was silence among liberal outlets too, but that was to be expected.  The only news coverage I could find was local.  The Charlotte Observer<\/em>, for example, did a story; but the story has since disappeared from their archives.)<\/p>\n

When my diary was published on NRO, that entire segment was omitted.  This rather made my point about the pusillanimity of official conservatism. But of course it only made it to me<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The notion that National Review<\/em> is a hotbed of barely-disguised race realism is, therefore, beyond preposterous.  Jared Taylor is<\/a> more likely to be elected President of Equatorial Guinea<\/a> than he is to be invited to address a National Review<\/em> editorial dinner. <\/p>\n

More\u2019s the pity, say I. But the main point here: Ta-Nehisi Coates is a gibbering idiot. <\/p>\n

Hey, Ta-Nehisi\u2014we need that trench dug over here<\/em>.  Jump to it!<\/p>\n

Next up was Andrew Sullivan.  [It\u2019s Not Racist \u2026<\/a><\/em> , DailyDish, <\/strong>July 23 2013]<\/p>\n

He agreed with Coates that the Hanson piece was \u201cstupid\u201d\u2026but wanted to top Coates\u2019 judgment.  It was, Sullivan declared, \u201cspectacularly<\/em> stupid.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nyah nyah, he\u2019s stupid!<\/em>  No, he\u2019s real<\/em> stupid!<\/p>\n

While I\u2019ve been writing this and getting it posted, no doubt several other lefty bloggers have put their oar in.  What are we up to now, I wonder?  Sensationally<\/em> stupid?  World-shakingly<\/em> stupid?  Cosmically<\/em> stupid? <\/p>\n

Hey\u2014who wrote that on my locker?<\/p>\n

Sullivan<\/a> also took the ballistics tennis approach to the next level:<\/p>\n

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It puts the race\/gender\/age category before all other obvious contexts: neighborhood, street, school, college, inner city, distant suburb, daytime, night, crowded places, dark streets, and the actual observed behavior of the young black man.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

How about the young black man\u2019s horoscope sign<\/em>?  Sullivan\u2019s a Leo\u2014according to his famous self-advertisement<\/a> on a homosexuals\u2019 pick-up site. <\/a> <\/p>\n

That same page also listed \u201cblack guys\u201d among Sullivan\u2019s \u201cturn-ons.\u201d  Nothing race-prejudiced about ol\u2019 Andy!…although (judging by the \u201cturn-offs\u201d he lists on the pick-up site) the Fat Acceptance crowd<\/a> may have a beef with him.  As it were.<\/p>\n

Just how much objectivity about the race issue should we expect from a guy who sits at home evenings hoping for strange black men to come round and bugger him?<\/p>\n

Sullivan goes on to compare my April 2012 column unfavorably with Hanson\u2019s.  The comparison is weakened considerably by his opening with a lie.<\/p>\n

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The difference is that Derbyshire tells his children to avoid all<\/em> \u201cblacks,\u201d while Hanson focuses on advising his children solely about young black men. Any<\/em> young black men they don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Leaving aside the sarcasm quotes around \u201cblacks\u201d<\/a>\u2014unaccountably absent in the \u201cturn-ons\u201d section of that self-advertisement\u2014the thing first stated there is false.  Not only did I not<\/em> advise that, I advised the opposite<\/em>:<\/p>\n

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(13)\u2026You should consciously seek opportunities to make friends with IWSBs. In addition to the ordinary pleasures of friendship, you will gain an amulet against potentially career-destroying accusations of prejudice.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

There is not much point arguing with Sullivan, though.  Who reads him, anyway?  Other, I mean, than \u201cuncut guys with over 8 inches.\u201d  In the matter of Sullivan, at least, I agree with the late Larry Auster<\/a>: the man is mentally diseased.<\/p>\n

There is more commentary demanding counter-commentary, but my eyes are growing heavy.  I am weary\u2014after all these months, very<\/em> weary.  I am weary of:<\/p>\n