The Talk: Nonblack Version

Taki's Magazine ^ | April 5, 2012 | John Derbyshire

[reaganaut1]

...

There is a talk that nonblack Americans have with their kids, too. My own kids, now 19 and 16, have had it in bits and pieces as subtopics have arisen. If I were to assemble it into a single talk, it would look something like the following.

(1) 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.

(2) American blacks are descended from West African populations, with some white and aboriginal-American admixture. The overall average of non-African admixture is 20-25 percent. The admixture distribution is nonlinear, though: “It seems that around 10 percent of the African American population is more than half European in ancestry.” (Same link.)

(3) Your own ancestry is mixed north-European and northeast-Asian, but blacks will take you to be white.

(4) The default principle in everyday personal encounters is, that as a fellow citizen, with the same rights and obligations as yourself, any individual black is entitled to the same courtesies you would extend to a nonblack citizen. That is basic good manners and good citizenship. In some unusual circumstances, however—e.g., paragraph (10h) below—this default principle should be overridden by considerations of personal safety.

(5) As with any population of such a size, there is great variation among blacks in every human trait (except, obviously, the trait of identifying oneself as black). They come fat, thin, tall, short, dumb, smart, introverted, extroverted, honest, crooked, athletic, sedentary, fastidious, sloppy, amiable, and obnoxious. There are black geniuses and black morons. There are black saints and black psychopaths.

[Cubs Fan]

a small cohort of blacks—in my experience, around five percent—is ferociously hostile to whites and will go to great lengths to inconvenience or harm us. A much larger cohort of blacks—around half—will go along passively if the five percent take leadership in some event. They will do this out of racial solidarity, the natural willingness of most human beings to be led, and a vague feeling that whites have it coming.

raise that 5% to about 10 and IMO this is dead on and is quite similar to what I have already told my own two boys about race.

[jocon307]

Thanks for your reply. That’s really a hidden stat about the serial killers, nobody knows that, everybody thinks serial killers are almost always white males.

There is a very high tolerance for criminal behavior among blacks. Not only do they make up a wildly disproportionate amount of the criminals, they are also over-represented among victims. And of course, the vast, vast, vast majority of black crime victims are victimized by other blacks.

One thing I’ve noticed about black people (well, I suppose I’m dating myself here, I even remember life before ATM machines!) is that even very ordinary folks would have unlisted phone numbers, back in the day when you had to pay extra for that.

I never asked any black person why this was true, but my guess was they were avoiding their no-good relatives.

[TASMANIANRED]

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2012/04/why-john-derbyshire-hasnt-been-fired-yet/50803/

Why hasn’t John Derbyshire been fired yet.

FR gets a mention as being even more racist than him.

[PghBaldy]

I learned many of these things while a liberal, and living in a city. After describing my personal experiences of being assaulted by inner city youth, without any judgements, or considerations of causation, I was called a racist and a skinhead by so-called liberal friends. I am not a liberal anymore.

[GeronL]

National Review should be considered a liberal rag from now on.

[GeronL]

#54

This WAS the rejoinder to an article about a talk for black kids.

[the invisib1e hand]

I though it was the Indy and NASCAR.

[phillyfanatic]

And this clever commentary is what got John fired from NRO???

[GeronL]

There is nothing racist in the article

[Leep]

There is nothing racist in the article

Your not wearing your pc glasses. Its a black guy writing about black guys..in America of all places!
Nevermind the statistical facts..its a white guy writing about black guys!
Diss’n em, yo.
Probably a second cousin to that zimmerman. You know that “cracker” who unjustly killed that inocent god fearing young black man down in Forida.

[Chode]

absolutely right...

[Future Snake Eater]

I remember during the 2008 campaign there was all this chatter about how electing Obama would finally put our sins against blacks to rest, that race would no longer be an issue.

Rush Limbaugh scoffed at that and cited David Dinkins (former NYC mayor) as evidence—the same thing was said about his election, but race relations got much worse.

Now we’re seeing it on the national level and it’s getting worse pretty fast.

Once again, Rush was right.

[rogue yam]

Have any writers rejoined with a version for black kids? That might be amusing.

Are you sure that you are following the discussion here correctly.

Derb's article is a response to other writers who have discussed "the talk" that supposedly black parents give to their kids.

He says this explicitly and provides links right at the top of his piece.

[Carriage Hill]

We’re not raising the bar or letting the rising tide make all boats equal, anymore. Because of what’s been done to our once-great and prosperous American Society over the past 50 years, we’re now pumping out the bay and letting all boats settle in the mud, at the bottom. Sad commentary, isn’t it?

[jr.ewing.78]

The whole thing is extremely racist.

But that doesn’t mean It’s not spot on 100% true and accurate.

The word most people mean when they say “racist,” is “bigoted”, which implies falsity or unfairness. This article is not bigoted. It’s truth.

[narses]

+

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Please ping me to note-worthy Pro-Life or Catholic threads, or other threads of general interest.

[mrsmel]

Derbyshire has imstigated that infamous "honest conversation about race" that Holder claimed we (whites) don't have the courage to have. He was right, up until now (and I hope more people start speaking up, the truth has been suppressed long enough) we haven't had that honest talk.

Of course, any whites except the DWL knew that what Holder meant by "honesty" was yet another opportunity for whites to beat their breasts while decrying their sin of being white, the sin of being a member of a race which is the definitive success story in history. It's the sin of having standards of achievement and principles of morality which they have mostly lived up to even in adversity. (Never forget it was white blood which was overwhelmingly spilled to end slavery. Slavery continues in Africa).

The only conversation Holder et al wanted was the same old tired one where whites stand before the black tribunal and confess the sins of a small minority of our forefathers in order to reinforce black victimisation amd white oppression as the scapegoat for black failure in every nation or city in which they are the majority and/or the ruling government bar none.

He did not want the really honest conversation on race in which crime stats which black crime, whether against other blacks or whites, to be magnitudes higher than white crime. He didn't want the conversation which shows that black males from families in higher socioeconomic levels still have higher crime rates, higher drop-out rates, lower SAT scores than whites in comparable families or even white kids from lower SES backgrounds. So poverty can't be blamed, lack pf parental involvement can't be blamed-what does explain this? "Regression to the mean" gives a hint to the root of the overall problems.

[mrsmel]

I have seen that many people in the comments are saying things to the effect that “racist” has lost its sting, as it should. Because the current definition of “racist” means anyone who strays from the orthodoxy , even in something as objective as posting crime stats and letting the chips fall where they may. Even people who have no hate and wish no ill-will are now “racists” if they don’t toe the party line that black pathologies are the fault of their evil oppressors (after years of discrimarion towards whites/Asians to “level the playing field”). If being tired of the lies, the blame, the race card, the double standards, the hypocrisy, and the race to the lowest common denominator in almost every aspect of life is “rayciss”, then I must embrace the label.

[jocon307]

“Rush Limbaugh scoffed at that and cited David Dinkins (former NYC mayor) as evidence...”

I didn’t hear Rush invoke the esteemed Mayor Dinkins, but Obama could take a lesson from that re-election campaign.

It was Dinkins’ lack of response to the Crown Heights Riots that were started when an Orthodox Jewish guy accidently ran down and killed a little black kid that doomed his campaign.

I also remember a Wm. F. Buckley column recounting an appearance by then president Clinton during which he hectored his NYC audience that they must re-elected Dinkins to prove they weren’t racists. As Buckely put it, the NYC residents didn’t appreciate hearing this from a man whose home state needed Federal Troops sent in to de-segregate their schools.

Rudy Giuliani who had lost to Dinkins previously was elected.

And the rest, as they say, is history.

[GeronL]

Yes I am.

I wish I had a good excuse...