Abusing the Race Card

You cannot call a scientist a racist. Scientific enquiry must be free of fear of political or religious oppression. The world is a complicated place. Data which appears to prove one thing when modeled in one way may very well turn out to prove the opposite thing when a more accurate model is developed. Models come and go, a good dataset lasts forever.

Scientists do research and build data sets and then they propose models about what the data means. No model is ever perfect. When Newton proposed the existence of gravity and his three laws of motion, he had to wait until a more accurate measurement of the earths size had been developed, and even then his model did not successfully explain some of the observable motions of Mercury. These were not explained until Einstein’s theory of relativity. Despite this, Newton’s work was a tremendous scientific advance. The poet Alexander Pope commemorated his work thus.

Dr. Flynn respects and uses the data compiled by men like Dr. Jensen. Scientific models are never perfect. There are always loose ends, unknowns. A model to endure must be the best fit to all the data available. It cannot be created by ignoring or suppressing facts for ideological reasons. The data is valid and within limits it demonstrates the genetic component of intelligence. Without such valid data, a model which dismisses the idea of a genetic basis for racial differences in IQ would not account for the data. It would be a false model. It would eventually be proven false, and this would provide ammunition for real racists.

The worst book written about “The Bell Curve” was probably “The Bell Curve Wars”. It was a collection of fanatic rhetoric without any apparent factual basis. It’s ill considered emotional and ad hominem attacks on the ideas and authors of “The Bell Curve” hardly provided a single useful point for arguing against TBC in a rational manner. I know, I read it while discussing TBC in a Hi IQ forum and it was almost totally useless. Many people presented with a book like “The Bell Curve Wars” which seems to partake more of the nature of a lynch mob rampaging through the streets than a reasoned consideration of the evidence will be driven away in disgust. “The Bell Curve” on the other hand, filled as it is with graphs and numbers and references to various studies appears rational and reasonable. It is a tactical error to allow the advocates of the genetic hypothesis to occupy the high ground of apparent reason. When the opponents of the genetic hypothesis assume the manners and attitude of a lynch mob, they drive those who wish to be reasonable or to appear reasonable to the other side.

TBC itself is an example of this. In an article printed in 1971 in “The Harvard Educational Review” long before TBC was written. Dr. Herrnstein made the statement that the overwhelming evidence was that Blacks suffered from environmental disadvantages. He also mentioned in passing that some of the data did support the genetic hypothesis. (This is normal in science, remember Mercury and Newton.) This minor and basically innocent statement called up the Lynch Mob from Hell. Immediately a firestorm of criticism and personal attacks were leveled against him. Dr. Herrnstein, being human doubtless resented this. It is likely that chapter 13 of TBC would never have been written or would have had a different slant if this assault on Dr. Herrnstein had not occurred. Chapter 13 is the only one of 24 chapters in TBC which mentions race. You cannot call scientists racists for just being honest about the data. When you do you drive them to attempt to prove the ideas that you are attacking them for.

Thomas Sowell in one of his columns described an incident in which Dr. Jensen retested the IQ’s of a couple of Black children after playing with them awhile so they would relax. Dr. Jensen did this because he felt sure that they were more intelligent than the tests had revealed. They did retest and they did do better. Mr. Sowell remarked that he wished his fellow Blacks would show the same faith in their children that Dr. Jensen had.

Blacks must have faith that the genetic hypothesis for explaining racial differences is false. If they have such faith they will know that honest scientific work will eventually prove it to be false. Attempting to suppress honest scientific work because it appears to support the other side, attempting to suppress data which appears to support the other side will build the idea of racial equality on lies and half truths. A structure built like that will collapse at least temporarily. This collapse will strengthen racism and the belief in the genetic inferiority of Blacks.

The facts will come out and prove that the genetic hypothesis is false. Honest science done by honest researchers will produce this result. This can only happen if men like Dr. Jensen and Dr. Flynn and Dr. Herrnstein are allowed freedom to do the work. I am entirely confident that this will happen. I have read several of the books on both sides and discussed Dr. Flynn’s current work with him by email. I am entirely confident that the cultural environmental hypothesis is the correct one.

Attempting to suppress honest work reflects a lack of faith among Blacks in their own ability. It reflects an overcompensated sense of inferiority, not real confidence. By calling scientists racists, who occasionally discover data points that suggest the genetic hypothesis is true, Blacks cause such scientists who are human to then focus their efforts on proving that hypothesis.

There is a saying which goes at least back to Roman times. “A man’s faults are the faults of his time. A mans virtues are his own.” A kindred saying is that in our progress today we stand upon the backs of giants. Both of these sayings seem to have existed for almost as long as history has been written. In the US today there seems to be a virtually religious crusade to cut the giants of the past down to dwarfs because of the faults of their times. You cannot learn from history if you take this attitude. People do not build themselves up by putting other people down. Real pride in oneself does not require humiliating and attacking others.

Thomas Jefferson owned slaves and had a black mistress. He also tried three times to get laws passed in Virginia which would convert the slave system to an indentured servitude system and free all the slaves in a few years. He made some comments in his scientific works akin to those of Jensen and Herrnstein, but this is normal in science you have to report the facts. Would he have been more or less of a racist if he had not had a black mistress? Real racists are disgusted at the idea of interracial sex. I mean you can tell White folks that Jefferson knew a good thing when he saw it. He liked brown sugar. Some people will yell and scream that this shows a terrible insensitivity to the suffering of Blacks. They will insist that Jefferson’s relationship with Sally Hemmings is one more incident in the rape of Blacks by Whites. The rhetoric is emotional and overused. Jefferson’s relationship with Sally Hemmings is more of an omen of racial integration than an example of abuse. It is far more likely that Ms. Hemmings took pride in having the most powerful man in her world as her lover than that she felt abused by that fact. It is despicable that Jefferson’s White relatives do not recognize their Black kin, but that is a separate issue. Heinlein once said something about how lizards like to boast that their ancestors were dinosaurs because they had nothing else to be proud of. The behavior of the Jefferson’s in this instance suggest that they are lizards and dinosaurs no longer.

There is probably no document more important in the history of Black peoples quest for freedom in the US than the Declaration of Independence. When you read histories of Black resistance to Slavery and of the Abolition movement in the North one document stands above all others as the inspiration of these events. The Declaration of Independence with it’s words “All men are created equal” is that document. Without its being read and celebrated every year a powerful force which inspired Blacks with a sense of their own right to Liberty and inspired Whites in the North with a powerful sense of the wrongness of Slavery would not have existed. Cultures without such a document have held slaves for thousands of years.

Without those words, Blacks in the US might well still be held as slaves today. It is fair to say that Jefferson struggled to end Slavery while he was alive and that his words were instrumental in destroying it after he died. When you attack the man, you attack his works. When you destroy his works you destroy one of the cornerstones of Black Liberty. A man’s faults are the faults of his time. His virtue’s are his own.

George Washington owned slaves, but he was a better businessman than Jefferson and instead of dying bankrupt, he had enough money to free all his slaves at his death. In doing this he set an example for the future America. He successfully led a weak third world nation in a war against the greatest world power of his time. He refused the false glory of monarchy or becoming president for life. What good does it do to insult his memory because of the faults of his time? How does it make Black people bigger to put him down?

It is tempting to attack and insult everything and everyone that White people like to take pride in. It is especially tempting to do so when these people were involved in one way or another with what happened to Blacks in the US. The slave trade was an enormous international event. It was impossible for people living in the world at that time to not be involved in it.

This tendency to heap odium on any Old Dead White Man has reached ridiculous levels. Mark Twain who attacked slavery is vilified as a racist because his books use the language of his times. Lincoln who led the fight to abolish slavery is vilified as a racist. All of the people who lived in those times and opposed the evils of those times are attacked as though they had fully supported those evils.

When you attack these people without any recognition of their good qualities you violate a natural law by attacking Whites in a way which offends Natural Law. Not by breaking that law yourselves but by attempting to force Whites to violate that law.

It is a Natural Law that children should honor their parents and their ancestors. When you insist on attacking these Old Dead White Men, you create a situation in which Whites must either break the Natural Law which requires them to honor what was good in these men, or attack you in turn. It is fair to say that these men were sometimes wrong, that they occasionally did wrong things. It is fair to say that slavery was wrong. However, you cannot force people to piss on their parents or grandparents graves. It is human nature to honor your ancestors. It is human nature to violently resent those who insist that you desecrate their graves. Whites have as much right to honor their ancestors as Blacks do.

No Social Contract can endure when one element in that Contract insists that another element violate such a Natural Law. Free speech guarantees the right to say what you will, but no sane person could ever expect Whites to agree with much that is said, and decent Blacks will not approve of such useless and inflammatory rhetoric. There can be no peace between two sides in a disagreement if one side requires the conditions of peace to be the perpetual humiliation of the other side.

After the Crusades, Europe which was driven out of the Middle East by the Arabs suffered a sort of temporary inferiority complex. They doubted their religion because apparently the Muslim God had defeated the Christian God. They doubted their culture because of the advanced culture of the Arabs. They doubted their science because Arabic science was more advanced. They did not curl up in a hole and say that their science and culture was just as good as the Arabs in the name of Race Pride. Instead they read Arabic classics in philosophy, medicine, astronomy, geography, and all other areas of knowledge. Today English contains hundreds of loan words from Arabic; Alcohol, Algebra, Algorithm, etc. For two or three hundred years scientific works in Europe were peppered with quotations from Arabic scholars. European science might not have developed without this shock from a then superior civilization.

As the Europeans explored the globe, they encountered the Civilizations of India and China. The exposure to the ancient civilization of China caused them to question their systems of government and philosophy. They had a tremendous impact on contemporary European thought. Exposure to the philosophy/religion of India opened their minds to new ways of seeing the world. Some European philosophers said that the philosophy in the Upanishads of India was the most perfect and sublime in the world.

The books written by Old Dead White Men have roots in Sumeria, Babylonia, Egypt, Persia, Greece, Rome, India and China. They are not just White Peoples stuff. They are a part of the human inheritance of experience and wisdom. Cutting them down just to put the White Man down leads Blacks to ignore this body of knowledge. It denies Blacks their fair share in this common human inheritance. In order for Blacks to profit from this common inheritance of mankind they have to be as willing to learn from other races, including Whites as the Europeans were. If you don’t respect something, you consider it worthless, and you cannot appreciate the value of that which you consider worthless. To learn what is of value people must respect the value of these works and the men who wrote them.

Today Black Pride in Black Culture is used as an excuse to refuse to attempt to excel in academic pursuits. Football and basketball were invented by colleges at a time in the history of the US when only the sons of the wealthy and powerful could afford a college education. They are completely White in origin. More pure White culture American sports could not be imagined. When is the last time you saw a Black refuse to play basketball or football because of pride in his African Culture and inheritance? Blacks only use the Black Pride excuse to avoid doing things invented by White people when they are afraid. Real pride says “I Can Do This”. Pride used as an excuse to quit is not real pride.

For their own good Blacks need to have more respect for Old Dead White Men. Without that respect they will be unable to share in the common inheritance of human experience and wisdom that exists in the writing and works of these men. Without their share in that inheritance they will not be able to raise themselves up to an equal place with the other peoples of the world. They cannot allow a misplaced Race Pride to deny them their rightful share in the common human inheritance of experience and wisdom.

It is necessary at the start of this section to affirm that most Black people are good people. I worked with many Blacks in my 20 years in the US Military and by and large they were just as good as the Whites I worked with. Many Black Platoon Sergeants, Sergeants Major and Officers made a very positive impression on me when I served with them. This section is about daily interaction between regular Black people and regular White people.

The US Department of Justice has statistics compiled on hate crimes. A paper containing these statistics is located at http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/hcrn99.pdf. On page 1 in the Highlights box it states that 6 in 10 racially motivated hate crimes targeted Blacks, 3 in 10 targeted whites. On page 4 it states that 40% of all hate crime victims were white males, 25% were white females, 20% were black males and 12% were black females. Overall blacks represented 36% of violent crime victims and 22% of property crime victims. Whites represented 62% and 74% respectively. Twice as many hate crimes are being committed against Whites than are being committed against Blacks. Blacks make up 12.1% of the population Whites make up 69.2% of the population. There are 5.7 times as many Whites as Blacks in the US. Say six times as many to make it easy. If Blacks are suffering half as many hate crimes as Whites when they make up 1/6^th of the population, they are 3 times as likely to suffer hate crime as Whites are. Numbers cut both ways.

If Whites are the victims of 3 in 10 hate crimes when they make up roughly 70% of the population, minorities at 30% of the population are committing 30% of the racially motivated hate crimes against Whites. Whites on the other hand are 70% of the population and only 60% of hate crimes target Blacks. Whites on a per capita basis are committing fewer hate crimes against Blacks than minorities are committing against Whites.

In the section on the general profile of offenders, 60% were White males, 21% were Black males, 10% White females and 6% Black females. Whites who make up roughly 70% of the population were 70% of the offenders. Blacks who make up 12% of the population were 27% of the offenders. On a per capita basis any given Black is more than twice as likely to commit a hate crime against a White person than any given White is likely to commit a hate crime against a Black. Blacks are two or three times as likely to hate White people enough to commit a hate crime than Whites are to commit a hate crime against Blacks.

By these statistics Blacks are two or three times as violently racist as Whites are. Most people think that hate crimes against Whites are underreported and hate crimes against Blacks are over reported. Even if they are not, these statistics show a real problem with violent racism in the Black community. Black women made up 22% of the Black hate crimes offenders. White women made up 14% of the White hate crimes offenders. Black women who are more likely to kill their husbands than White men are to kill their wives are also more violent on a per capita basis than White women. They are clearly more likely to use violence to express their feelings than the rest of the female population in general.

Racism and violence beget racism and violence. What these statistics show is that a minority of Whites are committing hate crimes against Blacks and that a larger minority, more than twice as large percentage wise, of Blacks are committing hate crimes against Whites. Statistically the White racist is a smaller segment of the White population than the Black racist is a segment of the Black population. Statistically the White victim of a hate crime is about twice as likely as the Black victim to be an innocent victim. Still the majority of victims on both sides are innocent of being racist in any meaningful sense of the word. Sadly, because of the disproportion in the populations a smaller minority of Whites in the White population manages to make it twice as likely that Blacks will suffer from hate crimes than a much larger minority of Blacks manages to inflict on Whites.

The question is, will the Black community allow this minority of racist Whites to provoke them into a program of race based hate crimes against Whites? The indications from these statistics is yes. This can only lead to increased interracial violence. For Blacks, being a minority, such an outcome can only lead to increased oppression as Whites react in self-defense. The majority of Whites are not committing race crimes or racist in any meaningful sense of the word.

Black people need to look at these things realistically. The average White person is not wealthy. He is not the head of a mega billion dollar multinational corporation. He goes to work, struggles to pay his debts, and is lucky if he can leave anything to his children. He is not living on inherited wealth.

Blacks in saying that discrimination has not ended say that there is a glass ceiling which keeps Blacks from rising to the highest levels of management in business. Average white people have no better chance of getting those jobs than average Black people. Focus on these super wealthy super powerful positions does not in any way address any real issues facing the Black community. The Black community needs to look at ways of addressing the behavioral and cultural issues which are keeping a disproportionate part of the Black population in poverty. Things like single parent families, illegitimate children, poor reading skills, refusal to learn ‘Whitey’s Culture”, etc.

Black people discriminating against Whites on a daily basis, Black people expressing their personal anger about these issues against the persons of regular everyday White people are attacking the wrong targets. Those poor White people who you see everyday are not a privileged class. Attacking them will only provoke hatred and violence in response and there are a lot more of them than there are of you.

The issues which face Blacks cannot be addressed by attacking regular White people. Blacks must reject racism as an answer to their problems and seek real solutions which address their real problems. Blacks as well as Whites must reject the racists in their midst and firmly pursue a course based on the fundamental reciprocity of all real human rights. Blacks as well as Whites must avoid advocating programs, attitudes, and beliefs which attack and discriminate against regular White people. Just as whites must reject such attitudes. Statistics show that a larger percentage of Whites are doing this than Blacks.