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Internet Responds To Racist Article, Gets Author Fired
In the wake of the Trayvon Martin tragedy in February, many publications posted articles about "the talk" — a phrase denoting the conversation many black parents have at some point with their children to explain the realities of racism. Last Thursday, writer John Derbyshire penned an article titled "The Talk: Nonblack Version," which codified a similar set of lessons he had given to his children over the years. Unfortunately, those lessons turned out to be horribly racist themselves. "The remarkably long list of how to teach children to stay safe by avoiding black people goes on for two pages and Derbyshire contends is a true lifesaver. There is no irony or clarification that, perhaps, this is a joke, no matter how much you may want to find a disclaimer after you’re done reading." Reader concealment writes to point out that the internet and the media vocalized their disgust quickly and at length, and now Derbyshire has been fired from his position at the conservative National Review magazine (the offending article appeared in a different publication called Taki's Magazine).
Humans are as tribal as they want to be. In Ireland there has been a HUGE influx of immigrants from places like Eastern Europe and sub Saharan Africa, something like one in six people were born outside the country according to the most recent census. And this is just in the last ten or so years. Backlash? None. Rise of right wing groups? None. Race riots such as have graced the streets of most European countries and the UK? Zero. And if there's one thing guaranteed to bring out any latent xenophobia its a sudden massive influx of foreigners.
Its a very open and inclusive society. So much for the stereotypes.
... (and I suppose everyone has these kinds of stories) but when I was a teenager I used to live in this really dumpy run-down apartment block. We had befriended a black family that lived downstairs and I used to play basketball frequently with the two boys. They were quite a bit younger than me - I was 16-17 at the time and they were 10-12. Anyway, one day we're playing basketball at the elementary school playground across the street and I said, just joking around, "blah blah blah, my brother" and the youngest kid said to me, almost angrily, "you AIN'T my brother." That really threw me. Here was just a little black kid hanging around with this older white boy from the neighborhood and it was all fun and games up to a point but when I referred to him as "my brother" it was like everything hateful he'd been indoctrinated in - and, yes, it was clear he'd been carefully indoctrinated - about whites came up. I learned reverse-racism was alive and while and I must say it shocked me. One can think everything is hunky-dory and that one is being all culturally enlightened by regularly hanging out with black people, but there is a whole separate side to the culture that is never revealed to you and certainly nothing about how they really tend to feel about whites (which, admittedly, is often justified by narrow-minded and racist whites which an average white kid doesn't ever experience). The racial divide still has a very, very long way to go.
Among your fellow citizens are forty million who identify as black, and whom I shall refer to as black. The cumbersome (and MLK-noncompliant) term “African-American” seems to be in decline, thank goodness. “Colored” and “Negro” are archaisms. What you must call “the ‘N’ word” is used freely among blacks but is taboo to nonblacks.
While it's dangerous to make generalizations across an entire section of the population, especially one that is only defined by a superficial characteristic (I imagine that there are quite a few black people who are seriously offended by the use of the word "nigger" even if it is uttered by another black person), it seems to be largely the social norm that the word is OK to use if you're black, and offensive if you're not. That's a bullshit standard, and it bothers me. Either it's OK for everyone, or it's OK for no one.
Also, he's absolutely right about "African-American" being a stupid term that needs to die. Not only does it fail to recognize that many people feel no particular connection to their ancestry, African or otherwise, but it assumes that every person with dark skin is of African descent. I went to college with a (black) dude who was from Jamaica. Should he have been called "African-American", even though he was neither African, nor American? Stupid.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
What's 'G******d'? You've completely lost me there :)
You're doing your statistics wrong. You need to look at proportions of race in the criminal population verses the general popularion, or at the criminal rate per capita for different racial groups.
It's really more complicated than even that. If you just look at the stats alone, they paint a really unflattering picture of blacks - it's only when you control for socioeconomic factors that things get muddier. Black parents have black children, poor (financially) parents have poor children - even some time after the end of segregation, it continues to have lingering demographic effects.
by Frederick Douglass, a freed slave and prominent statesmen before, during, and after the War Between the States.
"What shall we do with the Negro?" I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us!
Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us. Do nothing with us!
If the apples will not remain on the tree of their own strength, if they are wormeaten at the core, if they are early ripe and disposed to fall, let them fall! I am not for tying or fastening them on the tree in any way, except by nature's plan, and if they will not stay there, let them fall.
And if the Negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall also. All I ask is, give him a chance to stand on his own legs! Let him alone!
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
And white men make up the vast, vast majority of serial killers and pedophiles. I guess we shouldn't let them be teachers, etc, right? It's just 'fact-based statistics', right?
Right about the serial killers but wrong about the paedophiles.
I think it's the content of the end of the list, 10f-h, and the specific calling-out of black people in events where any person should be considered a threat (10i).
I strongly agree with this. I felt the exact same way reading the list. It was like "Well, that's reasonable, and that..." followed by "WTF?! You have to be dangerously prejudiced for thinking that."
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
I believe the quote from Juan Williams you're looking for is the following:
Look, Bill, I'm not a bigot. You know the kind of books I've written about the civil rights movement in this country. But when I get on the plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous.
It may be a bit pedantic, but that statement is definitely not racist. You can argue it's bigoted, but I wouldn't say it's racist at all. Muslim is not a race, and if you take his statement at face value, it's not even Muslims that make him nervous. Only Muslims that choose to wear Muslim garb on a plane. Not to mention that saying he gets worried and nervous doesn't seem to me as if it should be very controversial at all. Even the claim about identifying primarily as Muslims is still just presented as what's going through his mind when he sees them.
I'll admit to not having the whole context around the statement, but from what I see he never claimed any of those thoughts were fair to the person in question. It speaks of an instinctive response that could speak as much of the culture of country and the nature of what our mass media exposes us to that it would have become an instinctive reaction. Nor is such a statement without merit in discussion.
If that sort of reaction is normal, perhaps we need to rethink how the topic is presented in the media. Or maybe that information would actually be appreciated by Muslims who might not even have considered how their choice of clothing could influence people's first impression of them. They would still have the right to choose to wear that garb, but perhaps for some of them, it isn't important and they want to avoid it. Regardless, I think discussion of this level should be encouraged rather than squelched.
Having some sort of talk about the realities of racism is a sad necessity for many parts of the US, but that is a separate thing entirely from this guy's List. This is simply an example of a sheltered man who does not know enough to realize he is projecting his personal frustrations onto an entire race, and instead thinks they are somehow rational or justified. Some gems are:
(10g) Before voting for a black politician, scrutinize his/her character much more carefully than you would a white.
(11) The mean intelligence of blacks is much lower than for whites. The least intelligent ten percent of whites have IQs below 81; forty percent of blacks have IQs that low. Only one black in six is more intelligent than the average white; five whites out of six are more intelligent than the average black. These differences show in every test of general cognitive ability that anyone, of any race or nationality, has yet been able to devise. They are reflected in countless everyday situations. “Life is an IQ test.”
(13) In that pool of forty million, there are nonetheless many intelligent and well-socialized blacks. (I’ll use IWSB as an ad hoc abbreviation.) You 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.
(15) Unfortunately the demand is greater than the supply, so IWSBs 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. To be an IWSB in present-day US society is a height of felicity rarely before attained by any group of human beings in history. Try to curb your envy: it will be taken as prejudice (see paragraph 13).
Common Sense isn't as Common as people think...
I went to a 100% minority school (I'm white. Even while there, it was 100% minority, as a desegregation plan had me attending classes there while not enrolled there, since so many incorrectly point out the contradiction/inconsistency of a white person talking about their experiences at a 100% minority school). I walked home with a friend one day. Children (up to about age 14) in the neighborhood ran back into their homes and shouted loud enough for everyone to hear "there's a white person walking down the street." If anyone had wanted to do anything bad to me, I'm sure nobody would have seen a thing, despite the fact that almost everyone there at that time walked out of their homes or peeked out the window at me. For most, their school teachers, welfare workers, and the police are the only white people they see. There was no animosity. I'm sure most were just making sure I wasn't a government employee wanting to do them harm.
You are right that there is a difference between "should be" and "is" but that doesn't mean "is" should be taught as if it's somehow "right." The rules are the same everywhere. Blend in or stand out, and standing out can get you in trouble. Doesn't matter if you are in Israel, Texas, Iraq, California, or either of the two unnamed areas you reference in your story.
. I'm not sure, as I learned to avoid these situations altogether by keeping my dumb ass out of where I wasn't wanted.
You found the racism. It isn't "stay away from blacks". It's "stay aware of your surroundings." Racializing it by your dad was wrong. It's incorrect (though generally good enough), even if easier to express. I felt safer as the one unusual white person in a black neighborhood than in many of the hick white areas I've been.
Learn to love Alaska
When someone starts a statement with:
"I'm not a bigot." it means you are
It's just like "I don't want to offend, but.." to which the person goes to say something offensive, or when someone says "It's not about the money" when it's actually all about the money. People do this all the time and once you spot it, it's pretty difficult to ignore.
--
BMO
Lets be honest folks...how many here think that the average white person, just minding their own business, would walk through say Harlem or Watts or any other major big city all black neighborhood unscathed?
The bar I go to most often is a redneck bar smack in the middle of the blackest ghetto in town, I stagger home from there often. The worst that happens walking home is some black guy trying to sell me dope, or a bum begging for spare hope and change. Almost every shooting in the last year has been within six blocks of the place, but it's always either black on black or white on white.
Now what if it were the other way? in most places the worst that would happen to the black man would be a cop asking him what he was doing
Tell that to Travon Martin's mother. And had it been Martin who was a neighborhood watch guy and shot Zimmerman while Zimmerman was unarmed, you can bet your ass he'd have been in jail that very night, probably held without bail.
And it isn't just blacks who fear the police. All poor people fear the police.
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