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The Spectacle Blog
John Derbyshire is a racist.
Says?
Says John Derbyshire.
For all the fuss over the John Derbyshire firing from NR on issues of race, perhaps it’s best to simply quote Derbyshire on Derbyshire in a 2003 interview mentioned here in Red State , with a link to the original here.
Says Mr. Derbyshire of himself:
“I am a homophobe, though a mild and tolerant one, and a racist, though an even more mild and tolerant one, and those things are going to be illegal pretty soon, the way we are going.”
Which explains his views as expressed in the now infamous Taki article that ended his relationship with National Review where, among other things, Derbyshire opined thusly:
“If you are at some public event at which the number of blacks suddenly swells, leave as quickly as possible.”
So now we know what would happen if Derbyshire were at an all-white cocktail party in the District of Columbia and “the number of blacks suddenly swells.” He would run.
Doubtless the just arrived — Justice Clarence Thomas, Congressman Allen West and Herman Cain — would be amused.
Enough said.
View all comments (160) | Leave a comment
More Blog Posts by Jeffrey Lord
http://spectator.org/blog/2012/04/09/derbyshire-on-derbyshire-i-am
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BTims| 4.9.12 @ 10:54AM
I tend to agree with Derb. I too dislike "black culture", Latino "culture", Muslim "culture", etc. I too dislike homosexual and their "life style". Homosexuals are immature misfits. I'm sick of hearing of about them and their trumped up concerns.
Race-reality is a real, growing movement. Necons, establishment types and of course, those "moderates" don't like it but it's reality. Race-reality of course is also concerned with mass 3rd world immigration, what has been coined "electing a new people" - what the pro mass immigration political elites are doing by drowning the historic American country and population with non-traditional immgirants.
Race-reality also includes the realization that people tend to prefer to live among their own "type". May not sound nice to say but it's true. Why do pseudo-cons deny it?
Thumbs up Derb! Go get 'em!
Ryan| 4.9.12 @ 11:32AM
Race isn't the issue. It's culture. We need to educate people to divorce the terms from each other.
Skin color has no bearing on whether a person is decent. Never has.
Race is simply a social construct erected by people in power used to control idiots.
Drek| 4.9.12 @ 12:14PM
BUT is it verboten to even now examine whether race may inform group characteristics, in addition to culture.
Of course culture informs, everybody can easily acknowledge as much.
But race has now become taboo, ------- which begs the question, is it conservative to declare certain subjects off limits, and off limits to statistical analysis, off limits to further scrutiny?
Lord seems to answer yes.
My question, since when have conservatives embraced the attitudes and approaches of the left, which has always been fond of declaring limits to human inquiry.
Ryan| 4.9.12 @ 1:17PM
It's not about using it as a criteria for research, it's using it as a criteria for judgment. It's not about refusing to ask questions, but it's about not using it as a dividing line.
Drek| 4.9.12 @ 1:30PM
What kind of "judgement?"
A legal conclusion? About tending towards a legal proof, admissible for evidentiary purposes, but not sufficient for a legal judgement on its own?
Recall, Derb was writing not in some legal regard, but couched his column as an advisory for his teenagers.
Drek| 4.9.12 @ 1:35PM
The other thing, are you open to allowing race to inform judgement, or are you ruling race out in any regard, either as premise or conclusion?
Derb is not some modern Phrenologist, he uses statistical analysis.
Or are we now to ban as well even the gathering of such statistics concerning the race of those involved in crime for instance, or illegitimate births?
Ryan| 4.9.12 @ 4:47PM
Race can be a factor in informing judgment, but to base judgment SOLELY on race alone is blatant racism.
Race is simply too broad a brush to paint individuals with; and its basis is purely illogical.
Ryan| 4.9.12 @ 4:45PM
Moral, rather than legal.
Drek| 4.9.12 @ 8:07PM
You're already qualifying, limiting, thus narrowing the stark and all-encompassing rule that Lord and others have proposed.
Which means you've already entered onto Derb's playing field, and the only issues remaining are the particulars.
BTims| 4.9.12 @ 1:36PM
That sounds nice but in reality, it's next to impossible to divorce race from culture. They are too closely tied. Race/ethnicity/nationality do carry culture with them.
Ryan| 4.9.12 @ 4:48PM
In a sense, yes; however, we should always refrain from making a cultural assumption based purely on knowledge of race.
Drek| 4.9.12 @ 8:09PM
Derb wouldn't concede that his conclusions are dictated solely by race.
Others are far more familiar with his writing, but he always said that race is but a factor, for him at some times perhaps the predominant factor to be sure. But I'm unaware that it was ever the factor that was always and everywhere dispositive.
IF he based his analysis simply on race, there would hardly have been the need for his tiresome statistical analysis.
Chuckie| 4.10.12 @ 2:35PM
Race is often a good first pass filter for identifying cultural values. It is useful for pointing you to a place to start thinking. It certainly does mislead from time to time.
Question: If you see a large string black may dressed like a gangster wearing dreadlocks or any other hair style that tends to keep you from getting a job, would you want to be near him without other people around? What if he were wearing a middle class suit and carrying a computer and had a conservative haircut?
As Derb points out, there are many good black men. Usually the difference is obvious to anyone who has lived in our culture for a while.
Our brains really do a good job of picking up visual clues to danger. If you feel fear, you might not consciously know why, but you are likely to be right.
Teaching our children that they are bad people if they follow their valuable instincts is child abuse.
BcdErick| 4.10.12 @ 11:00AM
"it's next to impossible to divorce race from culture"
That's the liberal line and it's completely false. Race, and to a lesser extent ethnicity, can be precisely defined by tracing the family tree of an individual. Culture is, as the liberals love to claim, a "social construct". Simply put it is all talk and posturing with very little substantive foundation. What makes me white? I know who my ancestors were. What is my culture? Well that depends on who you ask and in what context you ask.
And take our President (please). To me he speaks like a really dumb white guy except of course when he reads a teleprompter. Then he sounds like a smart white guy. But he claims he is black and most people of all races take him as black. That’s a cultural judgment and everyone has their own opinion Despite Herculean efforts his family tree is very hard to trace. Apparently this is because his handlers want it that way. That is Obama’s number one problem as far as I am concerned. It’s like we have a stranger for President.
My point is that race can be defined by family tree. Culture is in the eye of the beholder and the practitioner. Culture can only be defined in personal and idiosyncratic terms.
dj| 4.9.12 @ 7:32PM
well u are a little wrong because race is not skin color it is ancestry but u are right that ancestry has no bearing on whether a person is decent. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS TRAITS RUNNING IN FAMILIES OK?! SAME AS RACES
Seek| 4.10.12 @ 1:22PM
Spoken like a true egalitarian. Race is not only real, it is the primary factor in choice of mate, community and friendships. It is also the key reason for the formation of nations. And it's a lot more complicated than "skin color."
Mike| 4.9.12 @ 3:45PM
Louis Farrakhan, is that you?
Why don't you go to some other site, where you can hang out with fellow commies.
rightasrain| 4.9.12 @ 10:55AM
Derbyshire's advice was for his teenage children whom, I doubt, attend D.C. cocktail parties. For my own part, I don't allow my children to attend rap concerts because of safety concerns. If that makes me a racist, so be it.
Ryan| 4.9.12 @ 11:31AM
The left would like to make everyone believe that it is a racist stance, when it really isn't.
Drek| 4.9.12 @ 12:30PM
And for the left, since everybody is a racist, everybody is affected by residual racism, institutional racism, endemic racism, ------ this justifies every college having "ethnic studies" programs, this justifies propaganda during college orientation, this justifies thought crime, hate crime, this justifies sifting and sorting through every Republican's positions and words for evidence of that racism which they know MUST be there.
This is sick stuff.
Lord has only validated their control of the narrative, of the issue, over the entire subject matter.
Moreover, what is Lord's take on the value of racial profiling at airports?
Are we supposed to ignore the link between airline terrorism and mideastern young men, and men who LOOK mideastern?
salamander| 4.9.12 @ 8:07PM
Ryan, this is not about the left. (and might the use of the word "Left" be sort of a one-size-fits-all construct that you are arguing against?) The left does not read or spend much time at NR or at TAS. And they have much larger bones to pick with one like Mr. Derbyshire. And, truth be told, most don't even know who he is.
This is about tossing a guy aside and doing it gleefully as those doing the "tossing" are patting themselves on the back.
Drek| 4.9.12 @ 8:12PM
The smug moralizing on the part of Podhoretz is thoroughly objectionable.
And it's no wonder that he's been a Romney lover from before this campaign season even began.
skedaddle| 4.10.12 @ 10:11AM
You are right to avoid rap concerts - not even black kids are safe at those concerts. I'm tired of the insulated and pampered Jeffrey Lord's of the world telling me I'm racist for trying to keeping my family safe.
Bill| 4.9.12 @ 10:59AM
Romney's VP list:
1. Pat Toomey
Pros: PA is a swing state, former Club for Growth leader.
2. Marco Rubio
Pros: FL is a swing state, the Latino votes.
3. Mitch Daniel
Pros: a great "fiscal conservative", helped passed the "Right-to-Work" law.
4. Kelly Ayotte
Pros: a Catholic, former AG, and the women votes.
5. Chris Christie
Pros: NJ will turn red, former litigator, a fiscal hawk governor.
6. Paul Ryan
Pros: WI will turn red,a fiscal hawk legislator.
7. Bob McDonald
Pros: a fiscal and social conservative, southern heritage.
8. Pam Bondi
Pros: "photogenic" AG of FL, the women and Italian-American votes, and chief litigator on the multi-state lawsuit against Obamacare.
Cons: 46, yet Single-lady
8. Ken Cuccinalli
Pros: southern heritage, another crusader against Obamacare
Cons: he's running for VA governor in 2013
9. Jeb Bush
Pros: FL will be red, the Latino votes
Cons: Bush clone
10. Ron Johnson
Pros: WI will turn red, private sector experience, Tea Partier
Cons: WI politics depends on this summer recall election orchestrated by the union thugs
My pick: Gov. Chris Christie
Obama will be forced to campaign in a "safe" blue state, NJ, while Gov. Christie will be favorite to deliver NJ for GOP. Gov. Christie will help fix the economy and never surrender to the big-labors or bureaucrats. He vetoed the same-sex marriage bill. Recently, he traveled Israel and vowed to thwart Iran's fascist regime and its nuclear threat.
President: Mitt Romney
VP: Chris Christie
Bob| 4.9.12 @ 11:08AM
Congratulations, you were COMPLETELY off-topic.
Nick| 4.9.12 @ 12:13PM
"That nigger lover President Clinton had the pen and vetoed so many good bills passed by the Gingrich-led Congress."
- Written by Bill the Bigot, in the Time for Newt to Do the Honorable Thing thread:
http://spectator.org/archives/.....ent_749403
Are you and Derbyshire related?
You're a moron and a racist, Bigot Bill.
GO AWAY!
Bill| 4.9.12 @ 12:41PM
NICK is a moron and racist, Bigot NICK. GO AWAY
Nick| 4.9.12 @ 12:43PM
Aren't you capable of telling the truth, Billy the Bigot? What a sad, little man you truly are.
If you can't live with your racist rants, GO AWAY!
Bob Grant| 4.9.12 @ 12:18PM
Wellll, that was a wonderful list and you posted it with such enthuuuusiasm!!!
Now, your thoughts on the topic at hand?
randyinrocklin| 4.9.12 @ 1:28PM
nice RINO list there
The American Hagiographer| 4.10.12 @ 12:22AM
who cares?
go away
Shafer Parker | 4.9.12 @ 11:00AM
I began to back away from John Derbyshire a couple of years ago after reading his comments on Intelligent Design. His urbane, reserved facade cracked wide open whenever he touched on this theme. Instead of reason and argument, he would be "screaming" on the page. What's missing, I think, is that he never embraced the Faith of his fathers. It is hard to be a true conservative without faith in God. Derbyshire may have proved that it is impossible.
Vern Crisler| 4.9.12 @ 11:25AM
I began to dislike Derbyshire myself a few years ago because of his simple-minded Darwinism. I can understand some Christians behaving like racists -- they're just afraid -- but when a Darwinist behaves like a racist, everyone should be afraid.
The idea of differential human evolution has been a part of Darwin's theory until the Fall of Carlton Coon during the 1960s. It is a deadly doctrine and when Darwinists like Derbyshire spout racism, one cannot help remembering how so-called "science" was once used to justify racial separatism and ethnic cleansing.
NR, despite it's drift into Romneyism, did the right thing in having nothing to do with Derbyshire. It should also put all Darwinists on its staff on notice: the mixture of Darwinism and racism is off-limits for anyone who writes for a conservative publication.
Interested Conservative| 4.9.12 @ 11:41AM
What is "Darwinism"?
BcdErick| 4.10.12 @ 11:09AM
That's a good question nd I bet you won't get an answer. But Darwinism is not the same as the theory of evolution though most people use the term interchangeably.
Drek| 4.9.12 @ 12:10PM
Derb derided Christians, yet rushed to the barricades for a Darwinism with more holes in it than can be mentioned in a blog thread.
He clung with a religious fanaticism to his Darwinism and determinism.
Which led inexorably to see people as migratory or static herds, with varying characteristics, which yielded their secrets to his statistical analysis.
Of course he was always going to follow his "logic" to the end terminus thereof.
NR knew, or should have known where his writing was heading.
Derb is in need of some serious prayer, but I think he's too much of a hammer-head to ever give up his intellectual pretensions and acknowledge the reality of the Almighty.
Mike| 4.9.12 @ 3:49PM
An atheist says something racist, and you use it to bash Christians. Nice.
Drek| 4.9.12 @ 8:14PM
Moi?
Seek| 4.10.12 @ 1:26PM
Science can be used to justify anything, including anti-science. Evolution remains the best explanation for species differentiation. If that makes it a "deadly doctrine," so be it. The natural selection process for millions of years has been pretty deadly, too, come to think of it.
Le Cracquere| 4.9.12 @ 12:15PM
This pretty much covers it. As I've said elsewhere: Derb isn't just an atheist; he's a thoroughgoing scientistic materialist. It’s not exaggerating to say he sees humans as essentially neuro-automata, some of whom are bluntly superior and some bluntly inferior. By and large, he feels the same way about certain races.
Derbyshire's always seemed like a decent fellow, and he’s said that he’s against culling the “inferiors” in any way, shape, or form. On the other hand, nothing in his philosophy really discourages it.
It would almost be one thing if Derb's views were held by a man who had solid reasons not to carry them to their logical conclusion. It's another thing when the man who holds them also believes that notions like "innate human dignity" are sentimental cant. If I were Rich Lowry, that'd be enough to make me sever ties as well.
Drek| 4.9.12 @ 12:32PM
Question:
Does Derb deny free will?
I think he tends to.
GW| 4.11.12 @ 2:20PM
But Lowry didn't sever ties because of Derb's atheistic materialism (which he's held to for years), he got rid of Derb because of Derb's "racism" (which just occurred).
I hold to intelligent design and am a Christian, but this doesn't mean I take an egalitarian stance toward the differences between the races. Microevolution can explain the differences in IQ, physical attributes, impulse-control, disease-contraction between people whose ancestry is from different parts of the globe.
Regardless of our origin, is there not an obvious difference between the races (particularly between whites and blacks)? Why do people of W. African decent always win the sprint races in the Olympics? Why are the socities which are the most innovative and developed those which were developed by Europeans?
C Bowen| 4.9.12 @ 11:02AM
Allen West who just sided with Sharpon on the Martin-Zimmercan, stirring up racial animosity?
Lord--should Charles Murray be purged from AEI?
Bob| 4.9.12 @ 11:08AM
Just when you thought West was a conservative you can support, he goes and shows his true racist colors.
Drek| 4.9.12 @ 12:33PM
Alan West didn't cover himself in glory during this Zimmerman affair, that's for damn sure.
Micah Haber| 4.9.12 @ 11:15AM
It's beyond time the odious Lord was fired. A rabid homophobe himself (something he has let slip at least once on AmSpec), he fails to mention the follow-up to the interview has Derb stating the following clarifications: 'All I mean there is that I believe that race is real, and important. Nowadays, that makes you a “racist.” I take individual people as they come.' Lord is literally blubbering paraphrased and deceitful leftist talking points, see The Atlantic and Coates.
Vern Crisler| 4.9.12 @ 11:28AM
How do you define a "rabid homophobe"? Anyone who opposes homosexual behavior and wants it outlawed (as it was until a few years ago)? Or anyone who wants homosexuals castrated (like Jefferson)? Or just anyone who opposes same-sex marriage?
Jeffrey Lord| 4.9.12 @ 11:34AM
Micah....
"A rabid homophobe himself (something he has let slip at least once on AmSpec), "
Cite please? Supporting marriage between a man and a woman makes one a "homophobe"? Wow.
Micah Haber| 4.9.12 @ 11:52AM
Can't immediately find the offending reference, provisionally withdraw. It had nothing to do with gay marriage.
This leaves open the questions of:
1) The strong similarities between this post and Coates' post at http://www.theatlantic.com/nat.....e/255576/.
2) Why Mr. Lord failed to notice or note Mr. Derbybshire's arguably absolving clarifications, being quite noticeably linked from the bottom of the offending paragraph.
Micah Haber| 4.9.12 @ 12:21PM
Invisible Gorillas in the Political Mist, http://spectator.org/archives/.....-the-poli. This appears to equate homosexuality with child molestation, in essence something very close to accusing all gays of being child molesters. Simply hateful and bizarre, especially considering heterosexuals are statistically more likely relative to their population to be pedophiles than homosexuals.
Nick| 4.9.12 @ 12:53PM
Micah Haber,
Who keeps lobbying to lower the age of consent?
Not straight, i.e., normal, people.
Who has an organization called the North American Man-Boy Love Association?
Again, not the straight, normal people.
I'll give you a hint: It's the perverts.
Occam's Tool| 4.9.12 @ 12:42PM
Gentlemen:
I am a pen pal of the Derb. I think he screwed up here, as I have stated. He also has lymphoma and is on chemotherapy and apparently is quite unwell. Can we leave the poor bastard alone now?
As a human being, he is quite gracious and helpful to complete strangers, as I have reason to know, personally. (He helped me select my kids' homeschool mathematics curriculum for me, knowing that my kids are Mayan Indians. His kids are also Asians, incidentally.) I think the pounding should stop. The man has advanced Cancer.
Occam's Tool| 4.9.12 @ 12:50PM
Jeff: Derb would not flee in that situation---there was the excepting---taking due note of individual characteristics...
All that being said, Derb did screw the pooch. I warned him that writing for that coke head and felon Taki would get him in trouble....
Nick| 4.9.12 @ 12:59PM
Disregard my comparison of Derbyshire to Bill the Bigot, Occam.
I was taking a shot at him at Derb's expense.
Not fair and I shouldn't have done it. Sorry.
Vern Crisler| 4.9.12 @ 1:02PM
So I suppose all the venom and bile he's spewed at creationists over the years can be forgiven now that he's about to meet his Creator?
Seek| 4.10.12 @ 1:28PM
Creationism is pseudo-science. And it isn't "venom" he's shown creationists, it's argumentation. And, yes, Derb is a real scientist.
GW| 4.11.12 @ 2:24PM
Then how much more of a pseudo-science is evolution? Macroevolution isn't empirical, it's a silly story. Unless you have a time machine, you cannot empirically demonstrate the development of DNA, the cell, vision, etc. thus evolution is nothing more than a creation myth itself--although one vigorously defended by naturalist anti-theists.
Drek| 4.9.12 @ 2:43PM
I don't know anything about Derb personally, and am fully ready to think that he's a decent person.
Podhoretz, Lowry, others, they're running him down, and whatever good he ever did isn't likely to inform their final judgement about him.
Podhoretz seems gleeful to be able to purge him from the ranks of acceptable public pundits on the affairs of the day.
Bob K.| 4.9.12 @ 5:08PM
I wonder if NR was contributing to his healthcare insurance?
Drek| 4.9.12 @ 8:15PM
Yea, that's a question to be sure!
GW| 4.11.12 @ 2:24PM
No. Derb was a freelance contributor, thus he wasn't even technically fired.
Ryan| 4.9.12 @ 11:34AM
Derbyshire is wrong, and Lord is right here. Race is NOT real. Race is a social construct, nothing more.
Vern Crisler| 4.9.12 @ 12:29PM
Nonsense, race is a real as gender. No need to adopt a politically correct denial of reality in order to avoid racist views.
Ryan| 4.9.12 @ 1:20PM
We can interbreed. Race is a stupid construct created by those in power to divide by various peoples since the dawn of history.
We are not different from others because of skin color. We are different because of cultures.
Drek| 4.9.12 @ 1:27PM
Is that position a dogma for you?
Race has no influence whatsoever?
None?
Nada?
And since we supposedly know that to a finality, we can now preclude any further inquiry on the role of race, and the influence that race might have on culture?
For that's effectively Lord's position, after you unwrapped the smug moralizing that he's surrounded it all with.
Lord has effectively declared off-limits an entire issue, an entire topic, and declared such discussion taboo within the wider national conversation.
These taboos have totalitarian overtones and fit in perfectly with the wider agenda of the politically correct.
Ryan| 4.9.12 @ 4:56PM
If we think that a person's skin color is the dominant feature in which determines what culture they belong to, we've partially denied what we are about - that someone can be individual and escape a culture which spawned them.
We need to re-think our ideas about culture as based on real issues of morality instead of biology. Derby made mention, for instance, about avoiding a "mass group of black people." What about a group who are all wearing business suits and acting peaceably? I'd just as soon avoid a group of white kids wearing hoodies and low pants, thank you very much.
Drek| 4.9.12 @ 8:24PM
"[P]artially denied" to be sure, the question remaining was to what extent such thinking dominated Derb's thinking and writing.
I don't think Derb himself knows how much that is the case with him, but the role that race and culture plays in the formation of individual character can oft be over and under-stated.
This is a pretty nebulous area we've entered here, where we're trying to determine the role that race plays and which is the role played by culture.
Morality for Derb was what though?
What is the common ground where we can meet a guy given over to determinism?
Who knows whether or not Derb even acknowledged the reality of free will, and if he denies that, what morality is left to discuss wherein the individual has not the power of choice.
Anecdotal evidence by the way of other groups acting oddly doesn't tend to weaken Derb's position.
Grant him that at least, that he would be able to perceive that others from various races and climes might be dangerous as well. Once started down that path of weighing risks, calculating exacerbating details, pondering imponderables, you've entered on to his pitch, where he starts crunching his statistics and his numbers, cranking out some chance percentage of risk, of bodily injury.
You seem able to allow race to inform judgement, but you're appalled at the spectacle whereby Derb's number crunching led him.
Welcome to the club, VERN commented on the "scary" aspects of the conclusions of Derbyshire.
Jennifer| 4.10.12 @ 12:58PM
Actually, you can tell ethnic origin from the skeleton....
Vern Crisler| 4.9.12 @ 2:14PM
Ryan, you are merely repeating modern politically correct Anthroplogy 101. No races, just clines. In other words, just change the word, and presto, reality changes.
It's species that cannot interbreed with fertile offspring, not races. Races are varieties within species and can certainly interbreed (actually for humans intermarry). Because Darwinists regard all such classifications as artificial given their view of the universal plasticity of human nature, they in the past held to differential evolution: one race evolving faster than another, thus leading to superior and inferior races.
That's what is ultimately scary about Derbyshire's views and why his belief that blacks are less intelligent than whites is just the old Darwinist paradigm reasserting itself, despite modern Darwinian attempts to move away from such vulgar Darwinism.
Drek| 4.9.12 @ 2:58PM
Yea, there was always going to be a scary end terminus in Derb's Darwinian fixation.
Red Phillips | 4.9.12 @ 3:12PM
Ryan, are physicians, who now have different guidlines for starting blood pressure medicine based on whether the patient is black or white, racists? Are the people who formulated the guildlines racists? Were all the people who participated in the studies racists and part of some grand conspiracy to perpetuate a myth?
Are forensic scientists who attempt to determine the race of a victim based on bone structure racists? Or who attempt to ascertain race based on DNA racists?
In zoology, subspecies can interbreed. Do you reject the validity of the concept of subspecies?
You are repeating an ideological dogma that you want to believe because you believe that by so doing it inoculates you from the charge of wrongthink.
The powers that be did not create race "at the dawn of history" to keep the people down and at each others throats. That is rank Cultural Marxism. In fact, that approaches plain ol' Marxism and is appallingly ignorant to boot. Since the "dawn of history" man has lived in tribal societies made up of their extended kin. As I said in the other thread, many people in the world had never laid eyes on a person of another race until the relatively recent, in human terms, advent of mass travel. Relatively close relatedness formed the basis of human social organization until relatively recently.
Ancients took ethnicity, which is genetic distance below the level of race, for granted. Clearly they would have taken the more obvious distinction of race, to the degree they had interactions with other races, for granted as well. It was ideological egalitarians who came along relatively recently who first started blabbering about social constructs and condemning people for wrongthink for believing what is readilly apparent to plain sight.
Race is a very real biological entity. To deny this is allowing ideology to make you stupid. The degree to which this real biological entity manifests itself is where the debate is. But denying the reality of race is ideological foolishness.
Ryan| 4.9.12 @ 4:52PM
It's not so much as denying it, it's just refusing to use it to judge individuals without other cultural evidence.
I just simply do my best to not let race be the measure in which I judge someone's character.
I'm not denying its necessity for scientific inquiry, just its use for instantaneous cultural judgments about an individual.
QA_NJ| 4.10.12 @ 11:17AM
The ancients believed all sorts of silly things. Seriously. Do I even need to give examples?
Paul Kotik| 4.9.12 @ 6:04PM
Yeah, man, that stupid natural selection thing is just plain nuts. Imagine! The idea that populations subjected to different selective pressures in different environments would exhibit different phenotypes. Ridiculous! It's obvious that God in his infinite wisdom caused the various human races to differ only - ONLY - in superficial ways..
What, are you completely out of your mind????
Vern Crisler | 4.10.12 @ 12:38AM
No one denies the role of natural selection in how species adapt to environmental changes. But there are limits to this change, something Darwinists don't want to admit.
Seek| 4.10.12 @ 1:30PM
Race isn't a "construct," mate. It is the stuff of families, communities and nations. Long before there were "racists," there was race.
c matt| 4.10.12 @ 7:27PM
Usually, interbreeding is a test of species, not race. Several different types of the same species can interbreed, e.g., a poodle and a shitzu. They are different breeds, but same species. Race is analogous to breed, not species.
The impact, if any, of race on ability, propensities and conduct is a different question, and one that is fairly complex. Many factors influence the individual, and then to extrapolate that influence to a group - thereby the culture, gets even more complicated. It is not as easy as simply saying race means nothing or race means everything or even something.
skedaddle| 4.10.12 @ 10:19AM
Who cares about race when the immediate problem is 2 people with dark skin attempting to light on fire 1 person with light skin, solely because of his light skin? And who cares when 100s of people with dark skin rampage through a mall beating and robbing people only because of their light skin?
Jim Woodward| 4.9.12 @ 11:32AM
I read Derbyshires article last week when first posted.
I have always enjoyed his articles and the range of subjects he has addressed over the years. I'm not always in agreement, but then there are many writers I occasionally disagree with and then, on another occasion, in total agreement.
To me, John has in many ways, struck me as a latter day Mencken. Agree or disagree, he speaks his mind and PC be damned!
Rich Lowry has every right to hire and fire who ever he wants writing for NR. I do not agree with his decision, however it's his decision to make. I shall continue to read NR.
As to Johns article. Having lived in urban environments, Baltimore and visited many, DC, Philly, NYC and others I find his observations accurate in many respects. My own experiances reinforce his observations.
The unvarnished truth is that there is a cultural blight within the black community, centered in the inner city and it has transended the individual and become a "group-think" mentality.
Does this "group-think" apply to all blacks? Of course not! Unfortunately, urban crime statistics paint a grim picture of a significant number of the black community sliding into the abys.
John has pointed out the concept of "situational awareness". I don't think that's such a bad thing. It certainly is'nt PC, but I don't think its a firing offense.
I believe Jesse Jackson made a comment several years ago about walking down the street and hearing footsteps behind him and turning to see if a black man was following him;-- or do I have this out of context?
Occam's Tool| 4.9.12 @ 12:45PM
Your comment about Jesse's comment is accurate and correctly sited.
The problem is Liberal social policies that are the most cruel and racist thing imaginable to Blacks. From killing their babies a la Planned Parenthood, to destroying the father position in Black families a la Welfare policies, Liberal Democrats are far, far crueller than Dixiecrats ever were.
Larry| 4.9.12 @ 12:01PM
John's views were indelicately stated to be sure ... rather like one might expect from a mathematician who clinically conveys a statistical analysis.
Though not tactfully written ... the truth they underscored is as obvious as it is inarguable. While it is a matter of culture rather than race ... it is mainstream black culture which most exhibits (with growing pride) the social pathologies he's implied.
The very same pathologies are now evidenced among the swelling ranks of an emerging white underclass. I've observed this phenomenon now (with growing alarm) for decades.
The phenomenon was predictable - at least Moynihan thought so. John has simply had the courage (or naivety) to state it forthrightly. Headline after headline, YouTube video after video simply confirm what too many retreat from acknowledging. Black America is in an out of control free fall ... carrying with it the civility which is the mark of a civilized society.
Black America is not only threatening its further marginalization by ignoring this ... but the prospects of a socially harmonious society at large.
Please explain, in particular and in detail what you find so untruthful about his observations. Simply joining in the chorus of those all too eager to distance themselves from Mr. Derbyshire is now the expected reflexive action of the timid and socially-conscious conservative. I'd prefer a reasoned argument please.
Drek| 4.9.12 @ 12:05PM
That's nothing new Jeff.
The thing is Derb admitted it, whereas the left, particularly the academic left, denies it.
MikeN| 4.9.12 @ 12:06PM
Like PowerLine, you also misread John's post i order to criticize it. He said public events, and you cite a cocktail party? And of course you have to account for the meaning of swell. We know what Derb was saying, and you wish to confuse it with semantics.
PowerLine changed Republicans' winning with racist votes, to all voters vote Republican because of racism.
Drek| 4.9.12 @ 12:36PM
Yes, why the need to exaggerate Derb's conclusions?
Derb allowed himself the out that there are individual exceptions.
Thomas, West and Thomas Sowell would obviously fall under his exemption.
Derek Leaberry| 4.9.12 @ 12:26PM
I think it a bit silly for folks, especially conservatives, to go about arguing about what is racist or not. Race, like religion or ethnicity, does matter and everyone knows it. For instance, every demographer understands the concept of "white flight." Tens of millions of white Americans have engaged in "white flight". Most of these "white flighters" use covers whenever they explain why they have moved from a neighborhood, usually stating that the schools were sub-standard. I know the sort. I grew up in Prince George's County, MD during a time when it was transformed from 80 Percent white to 25 percent white in three decades.
Are white flighters "racist"? And if they are, then perhaps half the Republican Party is racist.
All American American| 4.9.12 @ 2:19PM
I'm not making excuses or covers---I'm moving to the great northwest because I want to be surrounded by like-minded and like-skinned peoples.
I'm moving there because I want to be surrounded by people who cherish individuality, freedom, and American values. I don't want to be near tribal ticking time-bombs that view me and mine as targets to be exploited or worse. I also don't want to live in a place where if one of these tribal ticking time-bombs were to try and exploit me and I perforate him with .45ACP hollowpoints, I'LL be the one looked at as a "criminal" for defending myself and my family.
If that makes me "racist" than so be it, but I'm probably less racist than these folks:
http://www.theblaze.com/storie.....-panthers/
Wonder when the sanctimonious panty-waste maricon Jeff Lord will write about THEM? I won't hold my breath.
Hiram Maxim| 4.9.12 @ 12:36PM
The OED's first attestation for the word "racist":
"1932 M. Eastman tr. Trotsky's Hist. Russ. Revol. i. 27 This brief comment completely finishes off not only the old philosophy of the Slavophiles, but also the latest revelations of the ‘Racists’."
Lord is now literally attempting to shame fellow conservatives with Trotskyist epithets. This is what has become of mainstream "conservatism."
Maybe we should show Lord some of the racial views of Thomas Jefferson. That bourgeois POS would have to go too, no doubt.
Ed| 4.9.12 @ 12:38PM
Derbyshire has never really been my cup of tea and his article pretty much would have to lead to firing at most journals. That being said, the substance of his article isn't anything new. I would tell my kids to stay away from large groups of blacks and avoid black neighborhoods. Anyone with sense would do so because of the reality of criminal behavior. Nature or nurture, something ain't right with them.
Seek| 4.10.12 @ 1:33PM
You got that one right. A white putting his or her child in an all-black school might as well be committing criminal child abuse. Any sane white knows, from a wealth of unpleasant experience, that blacks are murderous-tempered and lash out out at every perceived act of provocation ("disrespect"). What Derbyshire wrote is what any sane white learned long ago: Avoid groups of blacks wherever possible. It's a matter of safety. The real crime of the article was that it even had to written.
Sea Cucumber| 4.9.12 @ 12:47PM
Is anyone surprised to see Jeff Lord joining up with the PC left on this? Anyone?
Drek| 4.9.12 @ 1:10PM
And has LORD addressed the probs that many of us have with him embracing the politically correct view of the subject matter?
Ed| 4.9.12 @ 12:52PM
Perhaps someone could explain, in non-racial terms, the Baltimore video I have seen showing the beating and stripping of a white tourist by a black mob. There are similar incidents here in Chicago and, to get past race, one particularly vicious incident on a subway platform where a black homeless man was knocked out by another black to the cheers of all. The savages then post the videos on youtube. Please explain this conduct to me in a racially sensitive way.
Paul Kotik| 4.9.12 @ 6:06PM
Due to Republican cuts in aid to education, the youths in the video mistook the man for a pinata?
Drek| 4.9.12 @ 1:09PM
Take a look at J Podhoretz's piece over at Contentions about Derb.
Now it's no mystery which way those over there were going to come down on NR's actions, which J Pod applauded and extolled.
But it's of a piece with them, for they'll brand somebody anti-Semitic at the drop of a hat.
And increasingly, even those of us strongly supportive of Israel, have grown weary of keeping up with the ever growing list of writers deemed anti-Semitic by those at Commentary and elsewhere.
Now Podhoretz's piece was well written, and appeared to address those concerns voiced by those opposed to Lowry's actions.
But there are serious holes in Podhoretz's analysis.
Occam's Tool| 4.9.12 @ 3:58PM
Derb is no antisemite. Taki is, but not the Derb.
Drek| 4.9.12 @ 8:27PM
Doesn't take much for those over at Commentary/Contentions to finger someone as an anti-Semite.
Years ago they tried to finger Solzhenitsyn himself as one.
Seek| 4.10.12 @ 1:35PM
There are serious holes in John Podhoretz's head. Perhaps he can re-read his dad's article of nearly 50 years ago, "My Negro Problem -- and Ours."
james wilson| 4.9.12 @ 1:19PM
When words become the test of virtue, they also become the masks of vice. That is why sanctimony and ruthless self-interest are such powerful allies--
Theodore Dalrymple
You're a tool, Mr. Lord. A useful idiot.
A 17th century monk put our condition this way: flattery is even worse than hatred, because hatred will at least correct faults which flattery only disquises.
Drek| 4.9.12 @ 1:22PM
Do other people have problems with the graphics on comment threads when those threads start getting around 100 comments.
Once the number of comments gets around that number, all the comments start to blend and become illegible, at least for my graphics.
Am I the only one, or are there others that experience graphic probs with lengthy comment threads.
Vern Crisler| 4.9.12 @ 2:17PM
You need to upgrade.
All American American| 4.9.12 @ 2:21PM
Me too---using latest version of Firefox and yeah they get all mumbled and jumbled.
Drek| 4.9.12 @ 2:53PM
Yea, that's what happens to me.
Thanks to you and VERN for the feedback.
Tim the Enchanter| 4.11.12 @ 4:51PM
Same thing happens to me.
Red Phillips | 4.9.12 @ 3:20PM
Drek, are you using Firefox? That happens to me when I use Firefox, but doesn't when I use IE. Don't know about Chrome.
Drek| 4.9.12 @ 3:42PM
Yea, I use Firefox.
Drek| 4.9.12 @ 1:40PM
I would like for Lord, and Podhoretz too, to expand a bit more for all of us how this taboo is to be upheld in our lives and our society.
Derb used statistical analysis.
Since his conclusions seemed to flow from that statistical analysis, are we to ban the collating of any statistic that includes race?
Since the conclusions drawn were unpleasant, perhaps we can shield ourselves from that unpleasantness by ceasing all racial statistical aggregations.
Since race is now totally banned from any consideration, how does that inform criminal and terrorist profiling, particularly for Homeland Security personnel at airports?
Lesser Weevil| 4.9.12 @ 2:36PM
Down the memory hole...
Drek| 4.9.12 @ 2:52PM
Exactly.
How is turning away from experience, and the conclusions that experience offers "conservative?"
Statistical aggregations in this regard are but the numbers of anecdotal tale after anecdotal tale. Each number thrown into these criminal statistics represents a real life drama, a rape, a murder, a pistol whipping.
As people draw lessons from what they go through, so too they draw lessons from what their neighbors have gone through.
Is that wrong?
There is something anti-human in the attempt to banish race in this regard, because it flys in the face of reason.
Reason dictates caution on drawing too sweeping a conclusion from racial statistics, but it also dictates caution on the wisdom of banishing race from any role in informing whatever conclusion we finally form.
Purple Lips| 4.9.12 @ 4:55PM
Podoretz never forgave Taki for calling him a big fatso who constantly shoved pizza down his gullet. Taki, in recent decades, could be very cruel. He simply doesn't like semites.
Occam's Tool| 4.9.12 @ 7:58PM
Taki's cruelty comes from the constant cocaine use, I'm sure.
All American American| 4.10.12 @ 1:11AM
Terrorist profiling at the airports? They don't. They harass old White ladies in wheelchairs. Terrorize 3 year-old White kids, make new White mothers drink their own breast milk, and fondle attractive White females.
Besides, our Dept of Homeland Security (read it with an East German or Russian accent, it rolls much nicer) already released official guidelines for domestic terrorists. White military vets who hold "radical" ideas like limited govt or who are against killing babies in the womb. Come on, THEY'RE the REAL terrorists!!!
Jim Woodward| 4.9.12 @ 2:40PM
I've always enjoyed empirical (observation and expirence) research.
So here's a challenge (absurd, I know) but I'm throwing it out here.
Mr. Lord, fly me back to Baltimore. Invite Mr. Lowry. Rent a sedan, full size, V-8 please, put me up for 48 hours.
I will take you on a tour of downtown, both day and night. We will put some of Mr. Derbyshires observations to empirical analysis. You can even walk around if you like. I'll follow in the car.
Host a little cocktail party at the end of our experiment. Invite who you want. Co-write your conclusions comparing and contrasting your experience to Mr. Deryshires article.
Are we on?
Derek Leaberry| 4.9.12 @ 3:21PM
Baltimore was once a great city of ethnic neighborhoods. German. Polish. Greek. Lithuanian. Italian. Irish. They have largely abandoned the city. Now it is mile upon mile of urban decay. Baltimore is a slum that surrounds the greatest hospital in the universe, Johns Hopkins.
Jim Woodward| 4.9.12 @ 11:13PM
Dereck,
I'm sure you remember the ethnic festivals in and around the inner harbor back in the day. Darned demented ethnics, running rampant through the streets after every festival. Lithuanians blocking traffic on Light St. and dancing on cabs. Germans tossing beer at pedesdrians, Poles beating people with sausage, Irish being, well Irish, and we all know how that is!! Of course, need I mention the behavavior of the Greeks and Italians, absolute warfare over who sold the best pizza! What really used to scare me was when the Amish came down from PA on the weekends for a night on the town. Baltimore PD really had its hands full then! s/o
Guess it depends on whose culture you discuss these days.
QA_NJ| 4.10.12 @ 11:40AM
During the New York City Draft Riots during the Civil War, it was the Irish mob killing blacks, including torching an orphanage, because the Irish were considered the lowest and saw the blacks as unwelcome competition. The Irish wew considered unwelcome lowlifes.
During WW1, the US government gave IQ tests to draftees and the average Polish American IQ was in the 80s, right where Derbyshire would put blacks today. They were considered unwelcome idiots. Ever hear a Polish joke that assumes them idiots?
Italians were also considered swarthy lowlifes, as was just about any immigrant from the East or South of Germany and, of course, Catholics were not trusted. Of course plenty of Scots and Scots-Irish were also considered lowlifes, too, and many still are as hillbillies and rednecks.
Basically, you are entirely ignoring the culture of and discrimination against most white immigrant groups, which closely mirrors the complaints against blacks today, including the idea that they were genetically incapable of doing better.
I also find it humorous that many hold the Amish up as paragons of virtue that can do no wrong. For a real eye-opener, Google the words: Amish incest
WL| 4.9.12 @ 4:48PM
If Clarence Thomas and Herman Cain walked into a room...I would stand up and applaud.
However, Mr. Lord, can you not see the difference between that and a flash mob? If you cannot recognize a flash mob without being racist, then what good is it to be free? under the tyranny of people who refuse to live in peace? or people who don't seem to get it, like you seem not to in this article.
I usually like your writing, and don't really know much about this "Derbishire" guy...so his firing may very well be justified by NRO...
But your assertions based on those quotes are pretty thin Mr. Lord.
Drek| 4.9.12 @ 8:30PM
Who here thinks that if Thomas, Sowell or Cain walked into a room and everybody rose to applaud, Derb would remain seated?
Lord really warped Derb's piece, and used it to insinuate something not in evidence.
Seek| 4.10.12 @ 1:39PM
For every black conservative (some of whom, by the way, aren't nearly as conservative as they're made out to be), there are a thousand violent black "homies," making life miserable for all those around them. Check out some of those black flash mobs on YouTube -- unretouched mass crudity.
Purple Lips| 4.9.12 @ 4:51PM
NR fired many gifted columnists over the years. The founder William Buckley casted a wide net in the old days. Of course that net caught many eccentrics, oddballs, and occaisonal neo-fascists. It also caught a few anti-semites as well. But, in the old days you never knew what you going to get once your monthly edition arrived in your mailbox. Joe Sobran, Taki, as well as occaisonal pieces by PJ O'Rourke or the more highbrow George Will added to a very lively magazine. In recent years the outstanding essayist and infamous misogynist (and former lesbian pornographer) Florence King wrote monthly columns. If anything, NR was like Baskin Robbins 35 flavors -something for everyone.
But those days are gone. Derb, despite much of the drivel he wrote, was an outstanding mathmatician, world traveler, and iconclast. His athiesism was a bit tedious; but, if anything he was interesting. He had much more in common with Progressive intellectuals than conservative policy wonks. His social Darwinism was just a function of his vocation and worldview. And for it, he has been casted into the wilderness (to join Taki, the late Joe Sobran, Pat Buchanan, et als).
NRO has evolved into a gushy, wonkish, pile of pure bore. It's very middle-of-the-road; it is very inoffensive. And the few decent thinkers cum pundits (Steyn and McCarthy) are the only reason I visit that site. It could sure use a little tobasco (Coulter would be a welcome re-addition). Perhaps it could also use a few less effette, yuppie metrosexuals on the editorial staff.
Could one imagine someone day writing what Sobran wrote 25 years ago concerning gays and AIDs? He wanted to tatoo a warning on thier buttocks that read, "Abandon ye all hope who enter here".
Hillbilly| 4.10.12 @ 6:51AM
Purple Lips, I substantively agree with your assessment of the general content of National Review Online; but Michelle Malkin is often quite good there.
Derek Leaberry| 4.10.12 @ 11:26AM
John Derbyshire, Pat Buchanan, Joe Sobran and Sam Francis have or had more to say on their worst day than the insipid Rich Lowry has been able to combine in his 40something years on Earth.
Paul Kotik| 4.9.12 @ 4:56PM
Heavens, is this a stupid post.
brobro| 4.9.12 @ 5:00PM
throw in Jimmy Clyburn and E. Holder and Derbyshire is on to something.
Cloudbuster | 4.9.12 @ 5:09PM
I am a landlord and all but three of my tenants are black (one hispanic, one white family, and one tenant is my own daughter). I view the opinions of rich white people, both liberal and conservative, whose only experience with blacks is IWSBs, or helicopter charity work (swoop in, help the poor unfortunates, revel in your benevolence and soak up the multi-culti goodness) regarding racism with a high degree of scorn. You live and work down in the neighborhoods where my rental houses are located -- an area where I myself have lived -- and you get the real picture. I would not dare give my children any other advice. I forwarded my 22-year-old daughter the column and her response was, more or less, "Well, duh."
Slacker| 4.9.12 @ 5:56PM
You are correct. It was inevitable that Derb would get blackballed by the elites. He grew up lower working class which enables him to grasp things that are simply undetectable to a Lowry or Lord. They categorically do not comprehend what Derb said.
Vern Crisler | 4.10.12 @ 12:43AM
There is a way to express one's race fears without treating blacks as if they were an inferior evolutionary class, which is what Derbyshire is implying in his less than subtle way.
All American American| 4.10.12 @ 1:21AM
Intellectually and culturally they ARE inferior. It literally sickens me to see stupid white kids embracing that inferior culture wit' dey flat beel hats and drawls by dey knees listening to gangsta rap and conversatin' in fake ebonic slang yo.
You can tell a society is dying when members of the superior culture embrace the dress, language, values and traditions of the inferior one.
Its genetic. When I was in the military I was deployed to Africa. It was damn near amazing to see the same traits in "African-Africans" who have never set foot in America as "African-Americans" have. The laziness, gaudiness, drug addiction, promiscuity, fatherless families--it was all there.
Its the culture.
Buck Bradley| 4.10.12 @ 11:41AM
"Stay away from blacks son."
"Why?"
"Oh I don't know. Just stay away, that's all."
You mean like that?
Slacker| 4.10.12 @ 12:45PM
Vern,
I don’t think there is an acceptable way to express the fears you speak of. You are not supposed to have race fears is in the first place.
Pilate| 4.9.12 @ 5:32PM
"Enough said"? Not really, you're disingenous in your characterisation of Derbyshire's statement. You've no intention of addressing any of the facts presented by the FBI or any other reliable source of information that makes you uncomfortable with your prejudice,
Slacker| 4.9.12 @ 6:06PM
I would love to see Lord refute Derb point by point.
Instead we get a hypothetical cocktail party with Clarence Thomas, Allen West and Herman Cain. Lord picks 3 guys that black culture dismisses as insufficiently black. What a thick slice of irony.
Drek| 4.9.12 @ 8:32PM
Nothing exposed the weakness of Lord's position than the smear he used to try to mask it's threadbare nature.
JRC| 4.9.12 @ 7:23PM
If West and Cain had any sense of integrity, they'd quit the GOP and rid themselves of any association with white conservatives. Black Americans can maintain personal responsibility and achievement (like Jamaicans or Nigerians, or anyone else) without having to accept the eugenecist nonsense American conservatives inveigh against them.
Larry| 4.9.12 @ 7:47PM
JRC ... your piece lacked relevance, accuracy, depth and intellectual integrity. Other than that ... fine response.
Drek| 4.9.12 @ 8:35PM
We're the party against the policies and agenda of Margaret Sanger!
It's the Democrts, most notably Justice Ruth Ginsburg herself, who spoke of ridding society of what she termed, in her own words, "undesirables."
Eugenics was and is a vice of self-styled "progressives," not for Christians.
Governor Sarah Palin didn't abort her child when she learned the child would be born unhealthy.
Take a look at modern Jewish America, you don't see too many children with Down's Syndrome and other such defects. And that's because they're aborting them.
Norman Podhoretz wrote in terms that Ann Coulter could have penned that for modern Jewish American women, abortion is seen as something of a sacrament of their personal liberty and control over their sexual pursuits.
Drek| 4.9.12 @ 8:36PM
And needless to say, those Jewish women vote Democrat.
JRC| 4.9.12 @ 8:49PM
Like Derbyshire said, Black conservatives are suffered in the GOP solely to provide protection against (substantiated) accusations of racism of the rest of the GOP. If West or Tim Scott can recognize the fact that they are merely being manipulated, which in the case of Col. West is especially obvious, then neither I nor anyone else can question their mental faculties. Being a conservative does not mean having to accept the company, or the rationale, of bigots and segregationists.
Drek| 4.9.12 @ 10:32PM
I don't concur with that at all.
And anybody who suggested as much is obviously unfamiliar with the writings of Thomas Sowell, whose contributions to the cause are significant and valued.
Seek| 4.10.12 @ 1:41PM
If West and Cain left, we conservatives -- real conservatives -- wouldn't miss 'em for a minute.
Extremist Defender of Liberty| 4.9.12 @ 7:43PM
Buckley was also adept at purging non-conformists from NR.
NR has been de-balled at least since the great Willmoore Kendall announced that he was putting a half a continent between himself and "the world of the Buckleys".
Oscalusa| 4.9.12 @ 8:16PM
A real cheap shot this -- J. Lord pulling out something from 2003 to cover his hind side because he knows he's exposed, exposed as a cheap opportunist.
I mean, doesn't Lord's initial post yesterday come across as something from a Hollywood gossip column? Oh, look who's fired over at MGM Studios!
And Lord's position on this (as with NR editor Lowry) is indefensible. All these guys are not so much in the news and journalism trade as in the pure-opinion-only trade.
So quickly doing this 2003 quote follow-up to the Lord TAS Online weekend blog, well, that tells us what we need to know about Lord and his treatment of a fellow writer. Also his use of Huff Post as a source link in the first Sunday "Derb is Dead!" glee piece from Lord.
Petty men all.
Longview| 4.9.12 @ 9:51PM
The sad thing, Jeff, is that:
1) He could write satisfactory English prose;
2) You, on the evidence stretching back several years at this site, can't;
So your pitiful displays of mau-mauing looks more like sour grapes than commanding op-ed leadership.
Ivan| 4.9.12 @ 10:09PM
I know that Jeffrey Lord is not exactly the smartest guy in the world, but this is really embarrassingly stupid: he quotes Derb's statement from 2003 as a justification for NR booting him in 2012!
So, if Derb is a racist, why then NR waited for so long to fire him, actually until the left started a campaign against him? How come that Lowry and the rest become so racism-sensitive only after pressured by the Left? And how come that the "racist" and "anti-Semite" Taki (who published Derb's article) is still listed as a contributor to the NRO? The left perhaps haven't discovered this yet, so for now the trash from the NR does not have to remove him. Too bad Derb created such publicity.
Mark J. Goluskin | 4.10.12 @ 12:27AM
OK, I read, reread, and did so again. When one starts out missing the days when one could refer to Blacks as "Colored" or "Negro", I am sorry, but it is starting off and ending up as nothing but racism. However, I DO agree that using the term "African American" is not nesesary. Most Black Americans have a more long-term American bloodline than I do. Mine only goes back to my grandparents.
Like anything else, there are kernals of truth in what Derbyshire wrote.
I find the problem is that he did NOT address the fundamental problem.
The Black community, Hispanic, a lot of Whites, and yes Asians, and all others in between have been victimized by the so-called "Great Society".
It alone has led to the decline of the American family unit faster than a bullet train.
The "Great Society" was very much aimed at Blacks. Eventually, way too many have taken full advantage of the government. Which I find does take some intelligence.
And I am sorry, I don't care to use an illness that Derbyshire has as some excuse to write something that makes real racists, most on the left, jump up and scream "We told you! This is how conservatives and Republicans REALLY feel".
That is why I wrote why this whole debacle sets BACK conservatism decades.
Lowry and Jeff are right.
We CAN and need to talk honestly about race in America.
But we do not start using Derbyshire's approach.
All American American| 4.10.12 @ 1:25AM
So we "CAN and need to talk honestly about race..."
Without being honest?
I don't know what's worse---black racists planning for a race war against us "crackers" or the guilty Whites who enable them.
Mark J. Goluskin | 4.10.12 @ 8:55PM
All American, I am far from an enabler on race matters. I just do not think that one should start off a supposed serious piece yearning for the days when people could call a group "Colored" or "Negro". Look, I live in Cali, ground zero for all matters race -related.
The other thing is that I wished Mr. Derbyshire did not spend all of that pointing out many obvious correct facts, where are the solutions? He tells his children a lot of negatives yet sees nothing redeeming about Blacks. THAT is racist, like it or not.
How about addressing the whole failure of the so-called "Great Society" as I pointed out? That has done more to change a culture that was once very hard working, family centered and yes, Republican.
Johnny D| 4.10.12 @ 1:00AM
@Jeff Lord -- Derbyshire is a realist, he spoke the truth, and like sissies everywhere, you deride him for it. Come live in my neighborhood during the 'dog days of August' when the riff-raff are congregating on street corners and around apartment entrance ways all hours of the day and night. Let's see how quickly you curl into a fetal position calling for your Mom. Come on, Jeff, it's an open invitation which we both know you don't have the guts to accept. Call it 'research' for your next article entitled, How I Came To Grips With My Inner Liberalism, by Jeff Lord.
Marc Jeric| 4.10.12 @ 3:52AM
I don't get it - Derbishire fired? I read the NR only for the pleasure of reading his musings.
Russell| 4.10.12 @ 5:17AM
Could Mr. Lord please explain how Georgetown's cocktail parties have managed to remain so segregated as to be 'all white' while becoming so democratic as to be public events?
dnha14| 4.10.12 @ 9:28AM
Mr. Lord,
That is spin worthy of the Lame Stream Media. You know darn well he was not writing about Thomas, West and Cain, and he pretty much said that in his article. Maybe you should get a job at the New York Times. You certainly have the skills needed.
Tom Riehl| 4.10.12 @ 9:47AM
Yeah, take a quote out of context and it certainly is enough said. How incisive! You have Google at hand. What a hero.
BuckBradley| 4.10.12 @ 11:22AM
Black "culture" is a cancer that is destroying America from within. Jeffry Lord, you and people like you are a big big part of the problem. It is way past time we started calling a spade a spade in this country.
Ralph Woods| 4.10.12 @ 11:28AM
I think Mr. Derbyshire was refering to public events such as the state fair in Wisconsin where "youths" of a certain color randomly attacked people of another color or flash mobs in Philly and other places where "youths" of a certain color swarm and randomly loot and assault whoever is in their path. I too steered away from certain areas of several larger metropolitan areas using common sense as my guide. DC cocktail parties are not public gatherings. I seriously doubt I would be allowed through the door even though I admire all of the men mentioned in the article.
العاب | 4.10.12 @ 11:35AM
And needless to say, those Jewish women vote Democrat.
thank you
eager| 4.10.12 @ 11:36AM
I haven't seen one writer touting a real strength that John Derbyshire possessed: His insights into China. He's not only lived and worked there he went back to claim his wife.
Let's face it, when John looks at the world, sees the biggest new global power, who better to talk to us and inform us? Don't we need those who know China and who have it in their personal DNA to just tell the truth? He has a dog in that fight. Relatives. In-laws. A part of his own life story.
If you ever want to hear a good story, listen to John describe the travails he went through to actually marry his bride. The man is a great storyteller! How about that for insights into China that you won't hear anywhere else.
Let's pray for John's health and wish him many more years. Thankfully the journalism world has never been bigger. NR is fading as new media supplant it (and TAS? Whither TAS?)
I think John D. deserves a lot of applause for his truth telling on China alone. I don't think the ChiComs appreciate that -- from anyone. I am sure that there was backlash for John on this.
And that is more courage than most writers ever display in entire lifetimes. The kind of courage and honesty he displays when he openly offers the "talk" that all good, loving parents have with their children.
John, don't worry about the Rich Lowrys, the Antles, the Jeffrey Lords. They'll be living off breadcrumbs within six or seven years. Two years prior they'll be dumped from wherever they're writing at the time.
Seek| 4.10.12 @ 1:43PM
You're right. Derb is a genuine Sinologist. I've heard him speak in person. He knows China well -- the good, the bad and the ugly.
Rufus T. Washington| 4.10.12 @ 11:48AM
Just maybe Derbyshire receives inspiration from the following: Per the official US Department of Justice website, blacks who are only 12.3% of the population (2000 U.S. Census) committed 52.2% of all homicides in the US during the 30 years ending December, 2005. EVERYBODY ELSE (87.7% of the population: Hispanics, American Indians, Asian-European-Arab Americans, and South Pacific Islanders) only committed 47.8% of homicides. Therefore, on a per-capita basis, blacks commit homicide at a rate 7.8 times that of all other people in the United States. Per Professor Emeritus of History at Haverford College Roger Lane in his books on murder in America, this relative ratio of per-capita figures for blacks committing homicide to that of the general population goes back at least to the 1830's when accurate criminal statistics began to be maintained. This was before the advent of heroin or crack or the ready availability of handguns in the black population.
And a new update from the DOJ: HOMICIDE TRENDS IN THE UNITED STATES, 1980-2008, pub. November, 2011 indicates that the blacks committed 52.5% of all homicides for the years 1980 through 2008. Even with the 2010 Census indicating 12.5% of the population is black, up from 12.3%, this still results in a rate that is 7.7 times that of non-blacks in the U.S.
According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, only 3.2 percent of black victims were murdered by whites in 2005, the last year for which data are available. The percentage of whites killed by blacks was much higher, more than double -- 8.8 percent -- despite blacks being only 12.5% of the population. FBI and U.S. Justice Dept. statistics confirm that blacks are 39 times more likely to commit a violent crime against whites than whites are to commit violence against blacks. Ninety percent of the victims of race crimes are white.
Courtesy of Patrick Buchanan’s “Suicide of a Superpower” come the FBI’s crime figures for 2007: “Blacks committed 433,934 violent crimes against whites, eight times as many as the 55,685 that whites committed against blacks. Interracial rape is almost exclusively black-on-white, with 14,000 assaults on white women by African-American males in 2007. Not one case of white sexual assault on a black female was found in the FBI study.” (Page 243)
--Note: 433,934/(55,685 + 433,934) = 88.6%. This results in an ASTOUNDING 89% of these violent crimes having blacks as the perpetrator and whites as the victim.
bruce| 4.10.12 @ 7:17PM
"the number of blacks suddenly swells"
By not including a reference to the actual event/s that phrase was describing, linked in the same sentence, then going on about some 'cocktail party' you have acted in bad faith.
But hey pretty normal for American journalism now it seems. Invent scapegoats and cover up the facts with rhetorical tricks, what could go wrong?
Alex of Belconnen| 4.11.12 @ 12:08AM
What if the sudden increase in the number of blacks appearing wasn't messrs Thomas, West and Cain, but a flash-mob of New Black Panthers?
Enough said?
Tom Ladd| 4.15.12 @ 3:30AM
Mr. Lord:
I have just finished reading in the current TAS your review of Michael Levin’s Ameritopia and cannot understand how the writer of such a well written, thoughtful piece could possibly pen the egregious reductionist absurdities you expressed in your blog concerning Rich Lowry's firing of John Derbyshire at National Review. Your blog exhibits an astounding, seemingly willful ignorance of myriad readily available interracial psychometric studies such as The Bell Curve and of such data as FBI crime statistics which irrefutably demonstrate the much higher prevalence of sociopathic behavior in the black race than in the white, thereby validating the opinions expressed by Derbyshire in his article.
As I stated, I am absolutely astounded at how someone could demonstrate such thoughtful, logical commentary in one case and could commit such arrant logical fallacies and display such seemingly willful ignorance in the other. It would appear to be an almost pathological case of cognitive dissonance. Do your logical faculties, which seem quite adept at times, go dormant when dealing with racial facts with which you are uncomfortable?