Needless To Say?

Lowry appears to have forgotten to enable comments on that post. I wonder why?

Is “dog vuvuzela” a term yet?

Reinder Dijkhuis, I’m not an expert on the Derb, but what he wrote seemed to me just the sort of thing a racist would say to his children. Can’t see what’s bothering Rich Lowry, unless hypocrisy is NR policy.

No one could have imagined that the man who wrote this, or this, might produce anything as gauche as a “screed.” Such a thing would be as unthinkable as bankers destroying the economy.

(This is a losing battle, but it’s Gandhi, not Ghandi.)

The interesting question to me is how the UK has managed to export so many gits into the US punditocracy. Sully, Derb and formerly Hitch: naturally as a Brit I’m happy for them not to be polluting the discourse here but I’m bemused that the US was so happy to take them on.

Lowry has used his powers of clairvoyance to foresee that the comments will, against all odds, not be unanimous agreement to condemn Derbyshire. To spare us the horror he has pre-emptively disabled them.

Wake me up if Lowry ever has an original thought.

Seriously- not to bag on the substance of the post, but I’m Rip Van Winkle here.

NRO readers to Rich Lowry: “We are all Derbyshire.”

#popcorn

Kevin Donoghue@3:

Are you entirely sure that “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” is exactly the sort of thing a racist would say to his children?

Or “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. In a population of forty million, you will find almost any human type.”

We may, of course, have different ideas of what it is to be racist.

Finally John Holbo writes something a) I finished reading and b) agree with.

Has anyone ever read Bartle Bull’s ruminations on foreign policy? (I encountered them in Prospect some years back.) Here are the first two sentences from one titled Mission Accomplished, from 2007, which appeared under the famous package picture of Bush on the aircraft carrier:

The question of what to do in Iraq today must be separated from the decision to topple Saddam Hussein four and a half years ago. That decision is a matter for historians. By any normal ethical standard, the coalition’s current project in Iraq is a just one. Britain, America and Iraq’s other allies are there as the guests of an elected government given a huge mandate by Iraqi voters under a legitimate constitution.

Seems as though not every pundit of questionable judgment from the UK winds up here in America. (Please, please tell me that the NYT hasn’t just hired him to replace Paul K.)

I’ve been sort of mystified about “The Talk” itself. The advice it gives is the advice that any parent would give their children about dealing with the police (especially) and other authority figures*. It is more or less what I told my children, and I’m white. What makes it particularly a “black thing”?

What do you (those who are in that position) say to your children? Does anyone advise their children to be impolite to the police, for example?

* To avoid providing quibble-bait, I don’t doubt that, as I did, many or even most parents would also say that the reason to follow the advice is not that police or authority figures are “better” than you, but that in most such encounters you are often in a “down” position with respect to them, and that there are circumstances where you legitimately ignore the advice.

Fortunately, the previous post still has open comments than enable some data collection:

http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2012/04/needless-to-say

At least with the tactless buffoon gone from the Corner, we won’t have to read more posts like

Attn: Superdome Residents August 29, 2005 10:05 A.M. I think it’s time to face facts. That place is going to be a Mad Max/thunderdome Waterworld/Lord of the Flies horror show within the next few hours. My advice is to prepare yourself now. Hoard weapons, grow gills and learn to communicate with serpents. While you’re working on that, find the biggest guy you can and when he’s not expecting it beat him senseless. Gather young fighters around you and tell the womenfolk you will feed and protect any female who agrees to participate without question in your plans to repopulate the earth with a race of gilled-supermen. It’s never too soon to be prepared.

Oh wait ….

“If so, produce evidence for these arguments, and I will happily write off Derbyshire as a deluded racist. But I wouldn’t do that just because he would advise his children to keep out of black areas.”

I’m not sure the burden of proof lies where you think it lies.

(Well now I see you’ve corrected it. Such a kidder. Ha ha.)

Stephen,

Why does Derbyshire confine this talk to being about blacks? Does he give separate talks to his kids about Asians and whites and people with British accents? If so, why not just make one that’s generic to all people. If not then he must believe only blacks have crime problems and should be avoided, which is pretty explicitly racist.

This thread has two optima, by my lights: (a) respondants to this thread will ignore Stephen; (b) after a long enough quibble-fight, he, in exquisite frustration, finally breaks down and makes an racist comment (no doubt his last here).

Derb’s advice boils down to “don’t go where you might be outnumbered.” In order to avoid incidents like this.

http://current.com/community/93732595_the-viral-video-of-a-man-being-beaten-stripped-and-robbed-in-baltimore-have-pushed-police-to-act.htm?xid=RSSfeed

I’d forgotten, Taki is one of the forces behind The American Conservative.
So the turf wars of US bullshittery may be a factor also.

Derb’s advice boils down to “don’t go where you might be outnumbered.”

Outnumbered by whom? Choose one:

a) Accountants
b) Famous celebrities
c) Children
d) Black people

Slocum@39

If I have understood you correctly, your position is that

a) I have asked undesirable questions and should therefore be ignored
b) I must be a racist and will eventually reveal myself as such

a) is unworthy of an intelligent contributor to this thread
b) is contemptible, unless you have full confidence in your powers of telepathy.

To make it as plain as possible: “race” is in my opinion a rather ill-defined concept, but in as far as it can be used, I can see no reason whatever to believe that members of any one race are necessarily superior to members of any other.

Is that sufficiently non-racist for you, or could you suggest a stronger form?

Stephen@47

Ahh. . . here’s the problem: Derb’s general advice as I see it is this:

(10g) Before voting for a black politician, scrutinize his/her character much more carefully than you would a white.

(10i) If accosted by a strange black in the street, smile and say something polite but keep moving.

Which doesn’t sound like he would grant black people “the same courtesies he would extend to a non-black citizen.

I have no idea whether he thinks the police should act the way he expects his children to act.

Bill Murray@37

The reason Derbyshire’s “talk” was concerned with blacks is probably that the “talk” to which he was responding was addressed to blacks. I do agree with DaveL that the first “talk” could usefully have been addressed to many others.

Your conclusion that “he must believe only blacks have crime problems ” does not seem to me to follow from what he said. If he does believe that he is, of course, a racist idiot. But that is something to be demonstrated, not asserted.

The substance of Derbyshire’s post doesn’t really merit discussion imho – more interesting here is the contrast between JH’s perception of mainstream conservative discourse and Lowry’s (and others apparently) perception of mainstream conservative discourse.

To the extent that mainstream conservative discourse is defined by, or at least substantially influenced by, the standards of the National Review, I’d think Lowry’s and others’ condemnation of Derbyshire’s post is a point in Lowry’s favor.

The points raised above as to the likely content of comments posted on the National Review in response to Lowry’s post are plausible as well, however.

Perhaps the best we can say is that for Lowry, and others, conservatism is exemplified – and “truly about” – the standards and values held by the more reasonable of that crowd, while for JH, and others, conservatism is exemplified – and “truly about” – the standards and values held by the less reasonable of that crowd.

Let’s say for the sake of argument that the less reasonable are numerically superior to the more reasonable: does that settle the question of what conservatism is truly about? Does Lowry’s more prominent condemnation of Derbyshire’s post count for more than a few hundred anonymous comments supporting it?

Stephen, that dog don’t whistle here abouts

I agree Eli

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-essex-14467063

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/9004998/Muslims-posted-nasty-and-frightening-anti-gay-leaflets-demanding-homosexuals-turn-or-burn.html

Theodore Dalrymple is my favorite pundit who gets paid by Americans to make up stories about how Britain has gone to the dogs.

Ha, I was looking for that
Appears pretty conclusive, unless, Stephen….

Gee whodda thunk that the National Review would publish such garbage, other than the fact that they did for ziggtidy years and were quite overjoyed with the eyeballs and $$.

Eli’s point is the only point, honestly. In the context of the 50’s column we all know, the southern strategy, lee atwater’s niggerniggernigger speech, helms and thurmond and lott, all the racist Obama emails gop members keep circulating, and the myriad other examples of racist behavior, any conservative or republican statement on race can’t possibly be “given the benefit of the doubt”, or argued that “it takes place in response to something”, or some other caveat. if it disparages a specific race, it’s racist, and should be treated as such.

Apparently NR/NRO has severed its ties with him pera Rich Lowry post.

Derb is old colonial-minded racist Brit.

Yet people like him are welcome with opens arms by U.S. immigration.

Oh, and Stephen, more please. (Are you the same Stephen who was suggesting on the other thread that imperialism is, you know, sometimes better than non-imperialism? Maybe, also, sometimes, and within reason of course, a dash of racism—like you know, distrusting black people per se—is better than non-racism? Apologies, of course, if this is an entirely different Stephen.)

Purple@68 sez: “Derb is old colonial-minded racist Brit. Yet people like him are welcome with opens arms by U.S. immigration.”

Actually, possibly the single most offensive thing about Derbyshire’s very existence is that he was, for a good long time, an illegal immigrant: he’s gone on record as saying that he overstayed his original visa. Apparently the rules on that work a little bit differently when you make a career of sucking up to the right people.

Matt @75:

What you say is true, but there’s this too: If you’re say one Muhammed Hussain from Karachi who’s overstayed his visa you’re not quite treated the same way as you are if you overstay your visa and your name is (or sounds like) an English county. Even if your reason for overstaying is exactly the same, whether you’re Muhammed or Hampshire (e.g.).

js. @72

Yes, same Stephen, no apology due for confusion.

Some apology due, though, for suggesting that if I suggest imperialism has not been always and at all times without benefits, I must therefore be in favour of “Maybe, also, sometimes, and within reason of course, a dash of racism”.

Compare this: I would say that the Soviet Union was not always and at all times without its merits. If some demented American conservative were to insinuate that I must therefore in some way favour the labour camps and Ukrainian starvation, I would treat him with open contempt.

Do you see the parallel with your own case?

Another interesting aspect of the clash of perceptions of conservative discourse, in addition to the question of whether a greater number of comments on NR should count for more than the words and actions of NR itself, is the extent to which conservatism seems to be a contested discourse. And – as funny as parts of the post and this thread are – I think any element on the right that seeks to undercut the “talk-radio” crowd from within the conservative sphere should be encouraged and supported.

“…is it really a good thing that opinion writers should lose their job because of what they wrote?”

Chefs get sacked for cooking horrible food, so it seems quite fair to me.

Stephen #80
“Do you see the parallel with your own case?”

No.

Derbyshire’s post at Takimag couldn’t be waved off as containing a sentence or two of possibly poorly worded sentences. It is a piece of work. If I were one of Derbyshire’s colleagues with black friends, I can’t imagine how I’d respond if I were asked whether I considered them an Intelligent Well Schooled Black (IWSB), and whether I thought they could be used as an amulet against accusations of bias. And that’s just one example of the noxious effluent flowing through the article.

So this put the editors of National Review in a nasty dilemma. One clear result of the media attention given to the killing of Trayvon Martin is that a large number of conservatives refuse to give up the idea that the only people affected by racism are steadfast whites unfairly targeted by the undeserving and by the virulent Left. So firing Derbyshire over an article which put into words what many of their readers thought would be very unpopular. Not firing Derbyshire would mean those views would continue to find a home at National Review. And Derbyshire wasn’t a peripheral player: he’s been a very regular contributor to The Corner since it started. Lots of close personal relationships at play, I should think.

I genuinely thought NR would pick door number 2: find reasons to state that although they didn’t endorse what Derbyshire had written (for another publication, mind), but his critics were much nastier people than him, and conservatives are the victims here. I was wrong. I thought Rich Lowry’s statement was strong and principled: NR took 24 hours to review matters and then took (in my view) the right action.

I did expect they’d come in for a lot of criticism by some of their readers if they did this, and they are. I don’t think Lowry and his colleagues had an easy call to make.

Leon Wolf at Red State also came out yesterday morning with a strong condemnation of Derbyshire’s article, and called for him to be let go. As of yesterday evening, I thought comments were split about 50:50 in support of Wolf. It’s crickets on most other right wing sites as far as I know.

she had the gumption to fire me soon after she took over.

Getting fired from “Taki”‘s magazine actually reflects quite well on you.

De-lurking for a moment to address the point, brought up both here and on the NR thread, that Derbyshire can’t be racist because he links to his evidence.

From a measurement and test-theory perspective, there are critical problems with almost every study that purports to compare mean intelligence between races. First, the observed differences generally become non-significant when you control for participants’ socio-economic status. (Incidentally, Derbyshire essentially gives away the game on this very point when he discusses “IWSBs”.) It’s an issue that’s about as well-known in social science as evolution is in biology; correspondingly, anyone who discusses research on the effects of “race” (as Derb does) but doesn’t even hang a lampshade on the issues of class and income is either ignorant or lying by omission.

Second, any study that categorizes people based on race has a fatal problem with construct validity. Examples of why this doesn’t work are so commonplace in American history as to be trivial: where do you put Barack Obama in your classification scheme? What race do we assign to notorious octoroon Homer Plessy? There’s no objective standard for race (although I suppose you could simply use the brown-bag test!) The alternative of asking study participants to self-identify partially solves the construct problem, but introduces an unavoidable and substantial selection bias into your data.

Defending Derbyshire because he cites “evidence” is directly analogous to defending Bob Morris, the Indiana state representative who went on a crusade against the Girl Scouts, because he talked to “well-informed constituents” and did “web-based research”.

Reminds me of the one about a drunk lying in a gutter with a pig.
A woman walks past and says: “You can always tell a man by the company he keeps!”
With that the pig gets up and walks away.

” that some foolish ignorant racist bigots believe all blacks are stupid, violent criminals, and should be treated accordingly.”

It is pretty convenient of you to limit the definition of racism that way, but it’s much more than that, encompassing both Derb’s statements and the ideas you’ve admitted to holding here.

I’ve given up on the National Review years ago. But formulating the issue in the way you do strikes me as a bit of “heads I win, tails you lose”. If you can turn them firing one of their more popular writers as proof of NR’s current racism, you probably are just playing tricks with the argument.

Perhaps NR doesn’t want to be racist, so they fired the person who wrote a racist piece.

Just because you disagree with them about for example the proper policy to run an inner city black school (they are probably less rabidly pro-teacher’s union I suspect) doesn’t mean that they can’t be against absolutely clear examples of racism.

Sebastian: “Perhaps NR doesn’t want to be racist, so they fired the person who wrote a racist piece.”

Isn’t it a bit like sacking a porn star for promiscuity? The question John Holbo is asking is, why now?

@99

I’d agree that the short-term political climate and Trayvon Martin do a lot to explain the timing. But ALEC left me gibbering a bit; they’ve got nothing to do with Derbyshire’s ideas about race, and dragging them into the discussion reminds me uncomfortably of the way ACORN was used as wingnut punctuation lo these many years ago.

robotslave: Allow me to explain. ALEC effectively wrote the Stand your Ground law adopted in Florida; ALEC has come under scrutiny since Trayvon Martin’s killing, and has lost several prominent members/sponsors (Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Kraft, Intuit) whose membership appeared to be fine by them as long as it went unnoticed.

There’s been a (mild?) trend of conservative organizations losing sponsorship and/or advertisers when it came to the attention of the public at large that these organizations engaged in less than savory practices or beliefs of one sort or another. Rush Limbaugh, the Komen Foundation, now ALEC, albeit to a lesser extent so far. (Glenn Beck finally became too much as well, though it’s hard to tell just what was going on there.)

I wonder, then, whether conservative outfits in general are becoming skittish about generating too much publicity for themselves. That may go some way toward explaining why National Review would decide to ditch Derbyshire — not merely on principled grounds, but on pragmatic ones.

when he “lurched” into setting out his views clearly, that was too much

Isn’t that fascinating? I find it so.

I would actually like to see them (Rich Lowry, or heck, Jonah Goldberg can have a go at it) explain why Derbyshire’s column, published elsewhere after all, went too far.

parsimon @105 –

Indeed. Given that the Derb was not too shy to call himself a racist in the past, what did they think he meant? It was this! In fact, what I find amusing is that Derbyshire is kind of a poster boy for the kind of stuff that makes conservatives angry when you call it (not them, for the sake of argument, but it) racist, because it’s not lynching and crossburning, but he at least knows perfectly well what to call it, because he wasn’t socialized with the idea that he ought to be embarrassed by it.

Medrawt: He wasn’t socialized with the idea that he ought to be embarrassed by it … because he’s British? Or because he just wasn’t? In any case, certainly many people in the States aren’t socialized in such a way either.

I can’t manage to be amused by the phenomenon; I just keep twitching. I’m frankly glad that Derbyshire has done this, put it on the table.

Jerome@108–Yanno–some of us reading this might be people of color living in neighborhoods that are majority African American and may find you to be a bigoted idiot.
Of course you are a racist–I am sure that did not come as news to you!

That was a bit of a sidebar — sorry.

Right, it’s complicated. The Derb thinks he can avoid the complications because he thinks he is recognizing natural facts. It’s the genetics! Of course, it is not the genetics; it’s poverty (plus some other stuff, including racism) that explains why many black neighborhoods are dysfunctional and produce more dysfunctional individuals than elsewhere. The Derb doesn’t want to do anything about the things that blight other people’s lives. He’s not just saying what other people think and do; he’s advocating abandoning others to their fate.

Charles Pierce, as usual, gets to the point:

“The National Review has fired John Derbyshire for violating company policy regarding admitting what American conservatism has been all about since 1964…”

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/john-derbyshire-fired-7927485

@117 Of course, it is not the genetics; it’s poverty…

Yes. It’s interesting that he begins with “forty million who identify as black”, which still leaves a possibility of some sort of socioeconomic category, in which his IWSBs don’t count as ‘black’: they do ‘act white’ after all. And then immediately he eliminates this possibility by stating: “American blacks are descended from West African populations”.

Just one question I’d like to know the answer to: has Derbyshire tried to get Americans to pronounce his name as it would be in England?

In 2002 Jonah Goldberg said he was an admirer of the principle that…

Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business.

It’s odd that someone who’s promoted and never apologised for this opinion – or, come to that, someone who’s idly speculated about nuking Mecca and flattening Damascus and Tehran – is in the position of judging what is and isn’t legitimate to believe.

Channeling Walter Benn Michaels, I would like to suggest that “pro-black” means “pro- full employment, progressive taxation, and universal early childhood education.” The rest is commentary.

“At worst, then, the Talk keeps a few Zimmermans from becoming victims”
Zimmerman didn’t accidentally wander into the “wrong” neighborhood, he was patrolling his own and then either attacked or was attacked by Trayvon Martin.

Also, heaven forbid that VDARE would be named after the first EUROPEAN, as if the wogs didn’t begin at Calais. As they will tell you, little Virginia was not the first child of european descent born America. She was merely the first english child born there. They even sometimes quote Benjamin Franklin on the plague of “palatine boors” (Germans) arriving in the 18th century.

More Dogs, Less Crime:

Thanks. No,I’d not read that, but it does fit with much else: that the effect of Soviet rule on the westernmost parts of their empire (east Germany, Hungary, Czechoslovakia etc) impoverished them, the effect on the more eastern parts enriched them, oftn substantially. As I said: there were good aspects of Soviet imperialist rule as well as bad (and I would not seek to diminish the bad). Similarly with pre-Soviet Russian imperialism in Siberia and central Asia: by no means exclusively bad.

Actually, looking for a massively beneficial example of imperialist rule, you can’t do better than the USA, from the first English colonies to the westward expansion to Alaska and Hawaii. From the point of view of native Americans or southwest Hispanics or Polynesians, often not at all beneficial. For the world as a whole, enormously so.

Query: does that make me an advocate of racist imperialism? If so, how few US citizens, even Democrat voters, are not also racist imperialists?

None @87

“No”.

Congratulations on a fine, detailed, logical and well-argued answer.

@132 Me too, as a visitor to Chicago and other cities from 1971 until now. In the seventies, we went to a concert at a Nation of Islam site at about 7500 south, maybe where the shiny new mosque is now. Not even a rolled eye. (They made the men and women sit apart, which was weird and offensive to us white college kids. We were guests, so we saved the commentary for the El.)
My son went to a majority black/Latino elementary school and had not one racial incident the entire time. Not one. There was tension, especially as the cohort moved through middle and high school, but the kids tended to be a great deal smarter than some of the parents around here.
Anecdotal, to be sure, but I’ve found that generally people treat you as they expect you to treat them.

Steyn: “I didn’t agree with Derb on many things, from Ron Paul and talk radio to God and science”

The great tragedy of the whole affair is that Derb was probably the most sane out of the lot of them. The whole working class Brit Tory racist straight out of central casting shtick never seemed convincing to me, but I can understand the allure of becoming a caricature in such a morally deformed and emotionally stunted enviornment. Kind of funny though, all things considered

CJ, I used to wander around the Loisaida in the 80’s in a suit. 6th Street and Avenue E. Couldn’t afford to live anywhere else. Lots of crime, not much violence. When I got to know some of the locals, they told me that everyone thought I must be a cop.

From which you concluded what, exactly, that is germane to the Derb rules?

Avenue E? What city are we talking about here?

Unless there’s another “Loisaida” besides the one here in New York, which happens to have an Avenue E, he’s talking about Wingnutville. It’s an amazing, enchanted place where anything is possible…

Needless to say, Steyn’s piece rather lights the dynamite under Lowry’s earlier assertion. Although he hedges it weakly – “didn’t much care for it”, indeed! – it’s clear he’s firmly in Camp Derb on this one.

Incidentally, Steyn is a much more talented hack. His piece maintains crucial plausible deniability all the way through, and contains prodigious amounts of smoke-blowing but-whatabouttery that helpfully fog up his real opinions on the issue. Derb should take note.

“So, let’s review the bidding;
Phos @ 110 – RAAAAACIST”

You missed a few ‘As’. Seriously, you seem to think that I should be somehow ashamed of calling a racist a racist. Odd that.

Conservatives often argue. . . in fact you argued @108. . . in the form “If X makes me racist, then I’m a racist.”

Well for values of X = “thinks black people are violent/stupid/dangerous/should be avoided,” then yes, X makes you racist.

And so you are a racist. Modus ponens convicts you.

I have to push back against all the people saying that every non-black person avoids black neighborhoods all the time. I mean obviously, people who can (even black people! it’s true!) tend to avoid high-crime neighborhoods at night; and yes, black people are more likely to live in high-crime neighborhoods. But anyone who’s lived a significant amount of time in a city develops a reasonably good sense of what’s a dangerous neighborhood, and of course it’s not largely based on the race of the people around. You notice lack of activity on the streets at night, vacant lots, boarded-up buildings, frequent cop cars, etc, etc. There are obviously-safe black neighborhoods, and obviously-dangerous white (Hispanic, Asian, etc.) neighborhoods. I’m quite white, and have lived all my life in US cities, and the “don’t get off the subway at a stop full of black people” rule sounds hilariously silly to me; it’s certainly not a rule I’ve ever observed or thought of observing. Derbyshire’s warnings about not engaging with black strangers who “accost” you in the street (Jehovah’s witnesses? Kids selling candy bars for their basketball team? People asking the time?), or stopping to help black people in the street, are similarly dumb. Also racist, as people have pointed out. But at least equally dumb, and not, in fact, secretly shared by the entire non-black population of the US.

140: Non-amulet power-bearing black people have gills, which make them useful in water. They can’t help you at all against charges of racism, but are +10 in defending against Dire Toads. Clearly you want a real ISWB for a saving throw against racism–that amulet is like, natural 20, get out of racism free! But the gilled, Ave. E-type blacks are not useless. There are Apocalypse Frog Swarms out there too. Best to be ready.

@ 124: quite possibly. But pecunia not so much.

Neither Taki nor Buchanan are involved with The American Conservative anymore. It’s Ron Unz’s magazine these days.

Not knowing who Derbyshire was, I starting reading that in all innocence, thinking it wasn’t bad, for small children, maybe if they’ve heard something simplisticly racist from another adult and are parroting it back (as small children are wont to do), wondering if there were going to be some interesting pointers on how to approach a complicated subject in such a way as to make it understandable to small children. Would there be a nice in-a-nutshell explanation of race as a social construct that I can steal should the need arise?

Then woah! Suddenly I realised is was just a long winded “I’m not a racist but”. Dammit, I was really looking forward to a nice in-a nutshell explanation of race as a social construct to have in my back pocket. Can anyone oblige?

On second thought, some of those midwesterners were pretty dubious about New Yorkers of whatever shade, fwtw . . .

Not to sidetrack the thread.

Katherine, I think you misunderstood the piece: it is not “I am not racist, but”, it is “I am racist, and these are the reasons for it and the consequences of it”:
if anything, hypocrisy is not something Derby´s piece can be accused of.

The article linked by bert@154 is quite well-written (but it does not even mention the part about the “amulet” black friend…).

Jerome @108

…it seems pretty much what every non-black person in America knows already. If you are riding the subway in a strange city, and everyone at the stop is black, don’t get off there. If knowing that makes me a racist, fine, I’m a racist.

This is worth responding to because it really is an example of white American “common sense,” which I shared when I was a younger, stupider man whose main contact with black people came from TV and movies.

Then I moved to Baltimore, a city with a majority black population, and guess what? It turned out there were a lot of black neighborhoods that were dangerous. And a lot of black neighborhoods that were safe and pleasant. And some safe white neighborhoods, and a few white neighborhoods I didn’t like to walk through. It was almost like you couldn’t generalize about a neighborhood based on the race of its inhabitants. Not because it conflicted with your white liberal guilt, but because those generalizations were factually incorrect.

So yes, thinking that black residents equate with dangerous neighborhood is a racist conclusion — racist in the full sense of a negative judgment made about people based solely on their race.

(And just in terms of street smarts, it’s also dangerous — if you look around and think, “Everyone’s white, I’m safe,” you’re setting yourself up for some nasty surprises.)

js. @ 150

If you seriously believe that USA = Belgian Congo, then there is no point talking to you, since you are remarkably mistaken.

If you do not believe that, but are pretending to in order to produce what you believe to be an argument, then you are not mistaken but dishonest.

Farewell.

At a certain point, the explanation for why Derbyshire’s firing is nonetheless consistent with the thesis that the persons who fired him “really agree” with Derbyshire’s post begins to look a lot like an ancillary hypothesis cobbled together to save the original theory in light of inconvenient facts.

Derbyshire’s firing is inconvenient for the conventional (for here) narrative of conservatives as all motivated, deep down, by racism (among other unpleasant things). It could be that the story is that Derbyshire’s post is simply an uncomfortably sharp image of what conservatives really believe, and they handled the resulting dissonance by firing him. But that seems unnecessarily complex. The easier explanation, albeit the more dissonant one for liberals, is that some species of conservatism, at least, isn’t quite as racist at its core as believed.

Jesus, Stephen (163), it’s a fucking analogy. You’re not really that dense, are you? More to the point, how exactly is this supposed to convince anyone of the beneficent qualities of American imperialism:

From the point of view of native Americans or southwest Hispanics or Polynesians, often not at all beneficial. For the world as a whole, enormously so.

I mean, honestly, I’ll start taking you seriously when you manage to stop erasing “native Americans or southwest Hispanics or Polynesians” out of “the world as a whole”.

About John Holbo’s reply @116, I did not understand one point.
Is John claiming that, if Derby said more or less the same things (minus maybe the ones about the amulet black friend and not “being a good Samaritan”) but with the (sincere, not faked) tone of “this is the unfortunate state of things”, it would have been acceptable to John Holbo (by “acceptable” I mean not that John would have agreed, but that he would have taken the position seriously, and it would not have considered it a racist one)? And that acting on those premises, as long as it is done with compunction, is not racist?

Or does he mans that if only Derby had faked the “more in sorrow…” tone, he would have been acceptable to NR?

JH, what exactly is objectionable about pointing to the fact that violence in black neighborhoods has a deleterious effect on educational attainment and represents a major obstacle to those living in such neighborhoods? Goldberg is pointing out that seeing race relations as a white system oppressing the black man in a country run by a black man isn’t that easy. That’s a far cry from calling all blacks criminals and advising children to stay away from them.

“seeing race relations as a white system oppressing the black man in a country run by a black man isn’t that easy.”

It certainly isn’t that difficult. Give it a try!

Interesting to note that the NR author who wrote the most about Derb’s firing, Daniel Foster, can’t help but slip into the comfortable armchair of sexism by intentional omission:

Being racist is not a binary state, and the world is not neatly divisible into evil bigots and enlightened cosmopolitans. Any man, right or left, who is sufficiently honest with his reflection in the mirror will admit to as much. The decent men are just the ones who fight with their better angels against their baser prejudices–when it comes to race or anything else.

…those manly men eternally locked in mortal battle with their innner demons worse angels.

The whole article is worth a quick scan through, for anyone still poking at this trainwreck. Foster does say (presumably with management’s approval) that he believes Derb was fired for “counseling active bigotry,” and goes so far as to say that bigotry is a natural, if not rigidly logical, extension of conservative principles.

I think they fired Derb because (1) he apparently believes that “bbbut n of my best friends are black” is still a useful response to accusations of racism, which is far too hopelessly dated for such a forward-thinking organization, (2) he apparently believes that you actually have to cultivate black best friends in order to empower the “bbbut n of my best friends are black” deflection, which is far too hopelessly naive for such an uncompromisingly-incisive organization, and (2) he clearly has no clue what the fuck an ‘amulet’ literally is and must have cribbed it from a thesaurus, which is far too vexing a solecism for such an erudite conformation of scribes as do comprise the National Review (oh, how deeply do I wish his synonym source had led him to fetish instead).

It wasn’t until a second, less skimmy read of Derb’s talk that it became apparent I’d been conflating two articles’ acronyms, and misreading IWSB as ICBM (meaning, I dunno, intelligent conservative black male, or whatever); of course I’d been maliciously substituting in “intercontinental black missile” all throughout, and was laughing almost to the point of choking on tears; with the mix-up in mind, reconsider everything Derb was saying:

[ICBM]s are something of a luxury good, like antique furniture or corporate jets

Be aware, however, that there is an issue of supply and demand here.

One can only imagine how all this would relate to Derb’s perspective on concealed carry laws. It would be irresponsible not to speculate.

Wow, the magic PC amulet really has failed. The consternation in the comments thread is palpable.

… if you have the right genetics …

Trudeau should start a series of strips with the Derb as ambassador to China.

mattski, that’s a pretty unfortunate last line to use in a conversation about race. Despite the YMCA offering free swimming lessons, US blacks are less likely to swim then whites, contributing to an epidemic of drowning.

js. @169

Apologies for repeating your vulgar abuse which on some sites would get you deleted:

I would like to suppose that when you wrote “it’s a fucking analogy” you meant “it’s a fucking awful analogy”. Otherwise, you must detest all analogies: which would make comparison with one condition and another impossible for you, right?

If it is awful – and I started by saying it’s imperfect – I would be grateful, though a little surprised, if you could state what makes it awful.

I would be surprised because, when I wrote that American imperialism was “from the point of view of native Americans or southwest Hispanics or Polynesians, often not at all beneficial. For the world as a whole, enormously so” you replied “I’ll start taking you seriously when you manage to stop erasing “native Americans or southwest Hispanics or Polynesians” out of “the world as a whole”.

Let me point out to you a rather simple piece of logic. If I say “A is true, on the whole, of set B” that is perfectly compatible with “A is not true, specifically, of subset B’ of B”.

Think about that, take a long cool drink, and calm down.

And when you write my argument would not “convince anyone of the beneficent qualities of American imperialism” please consider the following statements:

The creation of the American colonies, and their westwards expansion, were acts of imperialism.

This expansion was often not at all beneficial from the point of view of native Americans or southwest Hispanics or Polynesians. Almost all states, including the USA, are the product of violence and theft, unacceptable to modern liberal democrats.

Nevertheless, the USA with all its faults has been usually – need I point out that does not mean always – a shining example to the rest of the world.

Please let me know, with whatever courtesy you can manage, where you disagree, and where you think most Americans, Democrat or Republican, would disagree.

“I would like to suppose that when you wrote “it’s a fucking analogy” you meant “it’s a fucking awful analogy”. Otherwise, you must detest all analogies: which would make comparison with one condition and another impossible for you, right?”

Stephen, “It’s a fucking analogy” doesn’t imply at all that he detests analogies. This isn’t what “fucking” means in this sentence. It means: “you are obtuse in your seemingly to realize that it is an analogy and thus that I don’t think that the US is the same as the Belgian Congo.” It was an expression of incredulity and frustration and your obtuseness. How you imagine that “It’s a fucking analogy” means that he detests all analogies, unless he writes “it’s a fucking awful analogy,” which changes the meaning to a great degree, is beyond me. Then again, reading over your posts, it is actually possible that your obtuseness is genuine and not willful. So there’s that.

Stephen, just a hint:

If you want to defend imperialism (or colonialism—you don’t seem to distinguish these very well), read Data T @190 carefully, and maybe start talking about the railways the Brits built in India. Or, you know, something like that.

But John, why would more “frank talk” about race “inevitably” include all the things that Derbyshire claims in his post? I don’t see any statements in Goldberg’s column that would support that conclusion. And I think Derbyshire’s termination is good evidence – while obviously not conclusive in itself – that a critical mass of conservatives at the NR think that at least some of Derbyshire’s assertions fall outside the realm of a desired discussion of race.

As to the GOP’s relationship to white racism generally, I agree that it is at the very least a complicated relationship. I’m not certain though, at this point, to what extent that is due to contemporary policy positions and ideological stances taken by the GOP and Democrats generally, and to what extent it is due simply to inertia and lack of options for such racism in the contemporary environment.

Simply from the vantage of political self-interest, it’s clearly not in the GOP’s longer term interests to maintain any type of endorsement of white racism – its struggle now is to disavow such beliefs as credibly as possible. So I would expect, all else being equal, actions such as Derbyshire’s firing to be not uncommon a conservative reaction to posts like his. At the least, I would say that non-racist variants of conservatism are ascendant, and that this action lends credence to that hypothesis.