According to Instapundit John Derbyshire got fired from National Review for telling some uncomfortable truths. I was discussing those truths a few days back (before I saw this report) with a long time Black friend who is staying with us until he gets back on his feet. We were discussing how we used to visit friends in “the zone” in Chicago back when we both lived there. He tells me that these days the zone is way too dangerous even for him. Let alone bringing a white guy along.
I don’t read National Review as much as I used to. Now I will be reading it even less. I’m not interested in any magazine that is uncomfortable with the truth.
Update: 8 April 2012 1350z
I haven’t asked but my friend’s opinion may have been colored by this: Chicago Weekend Shootings: 10 Dead, At Least 40 Wounded.
Update: 8 April 2012 1726z
Since this is such a contentious issue I think I ought to make myself perfectly clear. I think Debyshire gets his facts right. I don’t agree with all his prescriptions.
Further – there is nothing wrong with black people. Nothing. What is wrong is the gangsta culture too many Blacks have embraced. A lot of the blame for that I place on Drug Prohibition. Thug rap in America and narcocorridos in Mexico are part of what happens in every prohibition regime. The sooner we end prohibition the sooner we will see the decline of gangsta culture. We had the same problem in America during alcohol prohibition. Then it was the Italians. And more than a few of my people – Jews. Mickey Cohen ring a bell? Meyer Lansky? How about a whole list of Jewish Gangsters? Are Jews naturally criminal? No. Neither are Blacks. But you put enough temptation in front of some men and they succumb. Prohibition provides an easy temptation. After all – your customers usually have an incentive not to rat you out. Unlike robbery or theft. Willing buyers are the criminal’s best friend. They reduce the risk. Which makes prohibitions a criminal’s best friend. High taxes are also useful – cigarette smuggling.
Comments
26 responses to “The Truth You Can’t Tell”
Years ago when I was 22, I was walking into “the zone” in New Orleans. A white cop stopped his patrol car and told me “Get in.” He said “This is no place for you,” and drove me to my destination.
Obviously, you haven’t traveled the world much. You might find this hard to comprehend – given your limited mental capacity – but there are dangerous places all over the world, many of which are not populated by black people! What you call “uncomfortable truths” is simply overtly racist ignorance.
a,
Well yes. I have been to a few places in the world. I have actually been in “the zone” in the Philippines and had my money stolen from me. Mexico for sure is worse than it was 40 years ago when I visited the interior.
The point is that conditions in “the zone” (my Black friend introduced me to the term) are deteriorating. Thug culture is not a good thing. It is making things worse.
I blame Drug Prohibition.
But yeah. I must be a racist since I have a Black friend living with me. And of course my marching for Civil Rights in the 60s is of no account either.
Yes, there are dangerous places all over the world. Boston has one such a place in front of a court house.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGZ97FVuYFY
Will,
Here is another better video of the incident:
http://youtu.be/YwoEh-ZwlCI
Accusing Simon of “limited mental capacity” is simply a personal insult which has no relevance to his argument.
Some of what Derbyshire says is true, some is his own opinion, and some is just old-fashioned racism. Example:
***QUOTE***
(10g) Before voting for a black politician, scrutinize his/her character much more carefully than you would a white.
(10h) Do not act the Good Samaritan to blacks in apparent distress, e.g., on the highway.
***END QUOTE***
I think Derb knows full well that saying stuff like that makes it impossible for the National Review to keep him on.
He also seems to see some sort of correlation between stupidity and violence. But doesn’t history shows that people with high IQs have done more killing than people with low IQs?
I don’t think group statistics are helpful when applied to individuals, who should be judged on their own merits. Whether statistics are true or not, I think applying them to an unknown individual is a bad idea, because it basically tells someone he is less intelligent or more violent because other people in his race statistically are. It’s analogous to assuming that a man has AIDS or enjoys anal sex simply because he is gay, and from a pragmatic standpoint, it only pisses people off who are in these groups, causes them to embrace identity politics, and creates a whole lot of trouble. Similar “statistical thinking” undergirds statist thinking: pit bulls are said to be statistically more dangerous than other breeds, and should therefore be banned. Such statistics are not truths when applied to Coco, and I resent the angry stares she gets.
So I hate applying statistics to individuals, whether they are “true” or not. They cause more harm than good.
He also seems to see some sort of correlation between stupidity and violence. But doesn’t history shows that people with high IQs have done more killing than people with low IQs?
I have actually looked at that question of crime rate vs IQ. The curve looks like this:
Below a certain IQ – no crime.
As IQ rises above that value crime rate goes way up declining as IQ rises further.
This recent article also touches on the question:
http://www.theroot.com/views/course-there-are-black-serial-killers
As to scrutiny of Black politicians. Not unwise. Harold Washington was elected Mayor of Chicago but he didn’t last due to incompetence. And then there is the Conyers family in Michigan. People can stand corrupt as long as it is allied with competence.
There are a lot of Black politicians I’d vote for. And a lot more that I wouldn’t. I judge by their competence since in my experience ALL OF THEM (politicians) are crooks.
I don’t apply statistics to people I know. But if I’m with strangers statistics are probably a better guide.
And funny enough Jesse Jackson uses the same standard. Young Black males he doesn’t know scare him.
“doesn’t history shows that people with high IQs have done more killing than people with low IQs.”
Intelligence does not equate to common sense, mental, or emotional stability, nor social skills. High IQ psychopaths as individuals can get away with more than mid to low IQ psychopaths. There are however significantly more with mid IQs and almost all overestimate themselves and underestimate others.
Communism was founded by and has been endorsed and promoted by some very brilliant people. They were/are wrong in a manner bordering on insane. This has caused great suffering and tremendous loss of lives.
The best and brightest can have just as many blind spots and belief filters as any other group. All of which makes “Stay out of any ‘hood’ where you can’t blend into a crowd” no less true.
[…] I have said in a recent post, it is not Black people. It is the gangsta culture that is causing all the […]
[…] white/non-black person and cold cock him and sometimes her. I wanted to post a video I linked in this comment, but YouTube pulled it as being too violent. It showed perfectly what the game was all about. You […]
Well, at least Meyer Lansky had class, twisted though he was…
Lansky was quite a guy. At the end of his career he said he would have made more money if had gone legit.
Just FYI – IQ does NOT measure intelligence except as a proxy within the normal intelligence range. IQ actually measures abstract reasoning ability.
Someone with a low IQ and solid concrete reasoning can do quite well for themselves even in today’s world.
There’s a much longer discussion/rant here, but I don’t have time to go into this right now – I can give details at some later time.
Kate,
You ought to read this article:
http://lagriffedulion.f2s.com/sft.htm
And all the rest at the site. I do admit that IQ tests are only fair to good for an individual. But for groups they are excellent. It is why they were invented. To maximize the number of soldiers who completed training in various specialties.
Now the question I ask everyone who takes your tack is this:
Would you prefer to fly on an airplane with a pilot with an IQ of 70 or would you prefer to get on the plane with the IQ 130 pilot?
Now does that answer your implied question? “Are IQ tests a useful guide?”
Reality is hard. But if you don’t deal with it honestly it gets harder.
More links:
http://lagriffedulion.f2s.com/sft2.htm
and the general site link:
http://lagriffedulion.f2s.com/index.html
IQ is a pretty good indicator of future financial success or failure. An individual with a high IQ yet poor social skills may still be able to negotiate for a good salary or position based on marketable skills. An individual with a low IQ with similar poor social skills is much less likely to be to be able to achieve such an offset.
Simon,
You’re still working in the normal ranges where IQ has a pretty linear relationship to intelligence. Outside those ranges, it doesn’t – which is why people with 50-ish IQs can do well in professions that don’t require any abstract reasoning, and why people with 140+ IQs can be useless in anything requiring interacting with other people.
La Griffe du Lion has some interesting data, but fails to take the extra step in analyses of the data. The super-short version is that the combination of specialized social structures and literacy correlates very strongly with widespread development of abstract reasoning in a population. Abstract reasoning also appears to be a relatively late evolutionary development, and can be maladaptive in subsistence environments.
One key fact is that IQ tests are routinely re-normed to keep the defined average at 100 because it keeps creeping up. If abstract reasoning skills weren’t being improved across the board, the gaps between groups would be increasing. That this isn’t happening suggests that the gaps will eventually close once enough of the less abstract-reasoning-prone regional populations have a high enough proportion of abstract reasoners to kick off a change. It’s lightning fast in evolutionary time-frames, but a multi-generational thing from our perspective.
Kate,
Maladaptive in subsistence environments? Then the traits would not have arisen 50,000 years ago.
BTW lagriffe does take into account social structure. They say their method only works in capitalist societies. They particularly point out that socialism depresses output.
As to renorming. Or the Flynn effect. It appears to level off in countries with an abundance of calories. IQ is no longer rising much in the US. What does that tell us? That nutrition plays a function in brain power. And once that factor is maximized it will no longer have much effect. i.e. other limits (like social structure) will predominate.
From what I can tell – over a population – the Flynn effect can add about 20 points to average IQ. That is quite a lot. It is not enough to turn a moron into a genius. It is probably enough to turn a failed society (IQ avg 85) into a working one.
But if the society is avg 70 it will help. But probably not enough.
I’m going to check to see if in a country with adequate nutrition the gaps are increasing. I seem to recall that in the US they are. Not by a whole lot. A few points. But that can make a world of difference in relative group competitiveness.
Here is a Vdare article on the subject with a link to a panel Jim Flynn was on discussing the subject. Look up the following article (use the Google cache version as currently they are doing fundraising).
Debating The Unmentionable: The Black-White IQ Gap VDARE
I was mistaken. In the US the gap has decreased some. About 2 to 7 points.
Ah but that decrease was among children. Among adults the difference is relatively constant.
A good article. Lots of statistics and links.
Will,
My buddy and I were discussing my social skills the other day. They are terrible. I make up for that by being a superior performer.
Here is an interesting paper discussing the racial IQ differences and how methodology may be affecting the results.
http://psychology.uwo.ca/faculty/rushtonpdfs/2006%20PSnew.pdf
Simon, beyond a defensive structured courtesy, mine are nonexistent. Ergo, anonymous poster, physical hermit.
You belong to a well known, closely knit, ethnic group comprising approximately .2% of the population. Through culture and/or genetics but most likely a combination of both; this group has consistently produced 25% of the recorded movers and shakers in science, engineering, medicine, finance and law. The group’s average IQ is just slightly above that of others but its distribution curve appears fat tailed,(this is probably not as great a factor as the average Jewish mother).
Unfortunate for the group, Douglas Adams’ description of the unintended mental health consequences for over-achievement:
“after he was awarded the Galactic Institute’s Prize for Extreme Cleverness he got lynched by a rampaging mob of respectable physicists who had finally realized that the one thing they really couldn’t stand was a smartass.”
really do exist, and periodically (every 50 to 70 years) infect very large segments of the human population.
Of course there is a very large group of underachievers who seem permanently locked in this condition; as another individual lacking in the finer social skills describes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpXMe_R2BZk