June 20, 2020

Typical shallow journalism: race, racism and riots

Below is the conclusion of a "Time" magazine article that purports to survey and explain America's current racial problems.  Race relations in some parts of America have degenerated into something like civil war so the problem is an acute one and is much in need of explanation.

The article below does not cut it, however.  It goes down the tired old route of saying how awful slavery was and asserts a link between slavery and the current troubles.  Slavery was indeed oppressive but the chain of events linking it to present-day riots is not given.  A link is just asserted with no reasoning or evidence given.

The actual cause is only incidentally linked to slavery.  Slavery certainly explains how America got an African population but it does not explain why that population is such a problem. 

The cause is asserted by the Left to be the fault of white society.  Whites are said to be unreasonably antagonistic to blacks and so "keep blacks down" by various forms of racial discrimination.  That is an explanation very destructive to racial harmony but it suits the Left in their quest to destroy American society as we know it.  So no evidence or argument will deflect them from that explanation.

And it is true that mainstream American society has always discriminated against outsiders:  The Irish, the Jews, the Chinese, the Japanese etc. 

But that shows that any effect of discrimination fades away  within a generation or two.  Being of Irish, Jewish, Chinese or Japanese origin is no handicap of any sort today.  Even recent arrivals from poor countries often do very well. Even people with poor or little English somehow soon have jobs and rapidly succeed economically. 

Most Indians in the USA today were not born there but they are in fact the highest-earning ethnic goup in America today.  They undoubtedly face some discrimination but it does not hold them back significantly.  They are roughly as brown as American "blacks" but neither their skin colour, their very different religions or their quaint English hold them back for long.

So "discrimination" is an explanation for black failure that only a reality-avoidant Leftist could love.  So what is the real explanation?  It has to be something in blacks themselves.

But the real explanation runs head on into Lefist mythology and so is fiercely resisted.  But it is not at all mysterious and is very well attested.  The difference is not my opinion or anyone else's opinion.  It is a fact that has been repeatedly demonstrated  for around 100 years and is supported by the American Psychological Association:  Blacks on average have very  low IQs. 

That many of them function at all shows that the power of routine and education can substitute to a degree for IQ.  Some people behave adaptively not because they have figured out how to behave adaptively but because almost from birth they have had before them examples of how to behave.  It is imitation learning.

There is of course a small minority of high IQ blacks but that leaves a large population of blacks who have much more difficulty coping with challenges than whites do.  Blacks cannot of course help it if they are one of the many low IQ blacks so they need more help than most whites do.  Low IQ is just as much a handicap as other more visible form of disability and is as deserving of help.

But such help is not given to struggling blacks for a very good reason: The need for it is denied.  As long as the idiotic "all men are equal" gospel is believed, the need for special treatment of blacks will not be acknowledged.  It will in fact be fiercely denied.

The result will be that blacks can clearly see their disadvantaged position in white society and will get angry about it.  After all the Leftist talk blaming their disadvantage on "whitey", they will not blame themselves for their various failures; they will blame it on others.  And the obvious "others" are whites, who do clearly have their hands on all the levers of power in society. 

So most blacks will have a racial explanation for their disadvantage.  Leftist propaganda tends powerfully to make blacks racist against whites.  It is a useful mask for Leftists to condemn racism but they are the principal authors of it.  They always have been.  Hitler was an old-fashioned socialist and both Marx and Engels were outspoken racists.  Amusingly, they both despised Russians, among others.

So the Left have brought about the near civil war we now see in parts of America so it is not surprise that they mostly seem to welcome it.  Leftist State governments have certainly sat on their hands while it happens


During Barack Obama’s first presidential campaign, many Americans were outraged when news broke that the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama’s pastor, had uttered the words “God damn America” for “killing innocent people,” “treating our citizens as less than human” and failing “the vast majority of her citizens of African descent.” Obama condemned the comments and reminded the public that, actually, the U.S. had made great progress, even while acknowledging far more was needed.

Today, The conversation is different, and one wonders whether such remarks, as salient now as they were then, would still be met with disavowal. The U.S. cannot deny what is plainly before its eyes. Shocking videos depict George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery murdered in broad daylight. Tens of thousands of black lives have been taken by the coronavirus. And, in the midst of all this, the President fans the flames of racial tensions with dog whistles so unsubtle that even the most skeptical can hear them.

In urban centers, black and white protesters have come forward together in defiance, joined by allies like GOP Senator Mitt Romney and longtime Koch Industries executive Mark Holden. In predominantly white cities across the country, white Americans have shown up by the thousands in solidarity. Even small towns in rural parts of the country have joined in the protests.

“Justice for George would be that the police officers who tortured him to death be held fully accountable to the full extent of the law,” Crump told Roye on June 7, at a Houston hotel, while waiting for Floyd’s extended family to arrive“Justice for George would be that the police officers who tortured him to death be held fully accountable to the full extent of the law,” Crump told Roye on June 7, at a Houston hotel, while waiting for Floyd’s extended family to arrive
A lot would need to change to address such deeply rooted bias. The first test may come this year as momentum grows in city halls, statehouses and Washington, D.C., for reforms to root out police brutality, perhaps the most flagrant and visible injustice. “Justice for George is something that many people who were killed through brutality of the police never get,” says Benjamin Crump, a civil rights lawyer representing Floyd’s family. “And that is a transformative justice, a systematic reform across the board.”

Whatever the progress transpires in the coming months, the U.S. still has a long way to go. Last year, I happened to find myself in both Berlin and Charleston, S.C. In Berlin, where Adolf Hitler planned and oversaw the extermination of millions of Jews, it felt as though I couldn’t walk a few blocks without a memorial atoning for that sin. In Charleston, I fell asleep on a picturesque beach, only to learn later that the site was a key node in the Atlantic slave trade, where traders imported 40% of enslaved Africans who came to North America. I spent the rest of the day feeling sick to my stomach, disgusted at the possibility that I had enjoyed a leisurely nap where, perhaps, one of my ancestors endured one of the most gruesome of human institutions.

Awakening can be painful. But in America, a reckoning is overdue.

More HERE 






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