I got wind of Derb's defenestration, and the concomitant crapstorm of Internet commentary, a little late, but I've been making up for lost time. I found this curious passage over at RedState, a self-professedly conservative website (emphasis added):
Derbyshire likes to pepper his racist rants with “facts” that generally consist of social studies that are subject to numerous interpretational biases. To me, the question as to whether these studies are accurate or correct is uninteresting and irrelevant – a central tenet of decency demands that every human being is entitled to be evaluated on his or her own merits regardless of what social science may say about any group (racial, cultural, religious or otherwise) to which he or she might belong. It is this very basis which Derbyshire rejects, and that is what makes him (and has always made him) a racist. He is not, as his defenders at the execrable Taki mag say, confronting the world with uncomfortable truths, he is proudly declaring himself to be a racist and arguing that it is correct to be racist. This, I submit, is something that all decent people should reject.
This is exceedingly curious because the author seems to be saying that Derb is a racist whether or not the facts he adduces in support of the advice he gives to his children are indeed facts. But surely there are no racist facts. A racial fact is not a racist fact. So if the facts Derb adduces are facts, then his adducing them cannot be racist. It therefore cannot be irrelevant whether what Derb calls facts are indeed facts: that is rather the nub of issue.
Here is one of the facts he adduces: Blacks are seven times more likely than people of other races to commit murder, and eight times more likely to commit robbery. Here is another: Blacks are an estimated 39 times more likely to commit a violent crime against a white than vice versa, and 136 times more likely to commit robbery.
Now suppose that these are indeed facts. Do they justify the advice he gives his kids? Part of the advice is:
(10) Thus, while always attentive to the particular qualities of individuals, on the many occasions where you have nothing to guide you but knowledge of those mean differences, use statistical common sense:
(10a) Avoid concentrations of blacks not all known to you personally.
It should be obvious that the facts do justify the advice. Derb is a father and he is talking to his children. Being children, they lack experience of the world and the degree of good judgment that comes from protracted encounter with the world and its ways. Caring about his children, he advises: If all you have to go on is knowledge of the mean differences, then avoid situations where there is a large number of blacks unknown to you.
There is nothing racist about this. It is excellent paternal advice. To be racist, the facts Derb adduces would have to be non-facts. It silly in excelsis to suppose that it is irrelevant whther the sociological facts Derb cites are indeed facts. (Please avoid the pleonastic 'true facts.')
The author above speaks of a "central tenet of decency" according to which every human being is entitled to be evaluated on his own merits regardless of group affiliation and regardless of what we know about the group. That too is silly. Consider the Hells [no apostrophe!] Angels. We know quite a lot about this motorcycle gang. If we were to follow the "central tenet of decency" we would have to leave out of consideration this knowledge in our encounters with members of the gang. But this would be very foolish indeed. For example, suppose all I know about Tiny is that he is a Hells Angel and what I can know by observing him at the end of the bar. (E.g., he is covered with tattoos, muscular, about 220 lbs, 6' 2" in height, and about 35 years of age.) Knowing just this, I know enough to avoid (eye or other) contact with him. For I know that if an altercation should ensue, his fellow Angels would join in the fight (that's part of their code) and I would be lucky to escape with my life.
Now unless you are a very stupid liberal you will not misunderstand what I am saying. I am not saying that blacks as a group are as criminally prone as Hells Angels as a group. I'm showing that the above decency principle is incoherent. One cannot abstract from group characteristics when all you have to go on are group characteristics and immediate sensory data.
Racism? What racism? And what do you mean by 'racist' anyway? Derb adduces some facts that bear upon race and you call him a racist? Then please tell us what you mean by the term.
Recent Comments