"A crucial fact about white liberals must be kept in mind: They are not simply in favor of blacks in general. Their solicitude is poured out for blacks as victims [italics in original], blacks as welfare mothers, criminals, political activists against the larger society, as well as those blacks who serve as general counter-cultural symbols against the larger society."
And from Shelby Steele's excellent book "White Guilt":
"In the age of white guilt, whites support all manner of silly racial policies without seeing that their true motivation is simply to show themselves innocent of racism."
White Guilt has to be the most powerful and pervasive social phenomenon that is never discussed, except maybe by the Robin DiAngelo types who wield it as another tool in their cult-indoctrination techniques.
White liberals can't face, admit or try to solve this issue because for them it's not social or political, not a problem to be faced w facts and empiricism, but a moral and spiritual crusade based on their desperate need for atonement, and their need to feel more righteous and holy than white conservatives.
They treat black people (and other official victim groups) not as fallible mammals like the rest of us but as sacred cows or holy children, who must be worshipped, protected and adored.
White Saviorism (which is the beating heart of Social Justice) is impervious to facts or reality because it's not about saving people or communities, but about saving souls, particularly the souls of our secular clerisy, the White(d) Sepulchers of elite America.
“While I support policies that can make incremental improvements, actually solving our...[almost any] problem to any serious extent would take a revolution in our culture or system of government... If any part of you is uncomfortable with policies that have an extreme disparate impact, you don’t have the stomach for what it would take.”
Removing the references to crime, this applies to almost every issue in American society. People and groups differ in meaningful ways, everything will have some degree of disparate impact, and there is no feasible path towards meaningful solutions without acknowledging that (which will not happen).
For my life time crime has been a boom and bust cycle. Things get really bad so we do something effective, it gets called racist, then we stop doing the effective things, then it gets bad again. The cycle continues, and we even have a new Bernie Getz.
I’ll just say that I found this piece far more well-reasoned, nuanced, and ultimately correct than your previous howler about why we shouldn’t read great books. I appreciate your willingness to take risks as a contrarian, even if sometimes you miss the mark (by my lights at least). Great essay all around.
I grew up outside of Portland, Oregon, and it has been really difficult to watch the city descend into chaos, particularly within the last five years. The reasons aren't as closely tied to racial disparities within the city itself, but they are the direct result of leftist policies that prioritize offenders and criminals over law-abiding citizens and property owners. What just galls me is the number of residents of the city itself who support these policies. I'm amazed at the number of otherwise intelligent people who seem to really believe that we should defund the police, not prosecute criminals, decriminalize hard drugs (measure 110, which passed in 2020), and punish property owners and local businesses. All the while claiming we should just give the homeless housing, as if that's going to fix their problems.
What I don't understand is why we are so uncomfortable with disparate impacts on different racial or gender groups. I don't understand anyone who thinks that in the absence of equity interventions, we should have exact demographic representation across every domain in our culture. It just makes no sense. Furthermore leftists seem to focus their zealotry on certain domains, such as black criminality or women as CEOs. Just the other day I noted to someone that the demographics of veterinary medicine have made a virtual 180 degree shift from 90% male to 90% female in the last 30 years, and she didn't seem to have any problem with it. In addition most people have no problem with the idea of disparate representation in other domains, namely sports (not many people deny you need to be a minimum of 6'5" for it to even be possible to have an NBA career, and not taller than 5' to be a top female gymnast).
I hope we can have more truthful conversations about this topic. It is really hard to watch a city you used to love descend into chaos because people are fucking stupid and dishonest.
I think the issue in these debates is that everyone projects motives as to why people are raising the issue.
It's like tweeting: "Women who dress up in revealing clothing are more likely to get sexually assaulted by strangers at night." Ok, sure, that's probably true. But many people would impute the motive for saying it to be to somehow blame women for wearing revealing clothing.
What goes wrong in these conversations is that each side doesn't understand the motives that could cause someone on the other side to say what they do in good faith. For instance, those on the left don't feel the irritation that many on the right do about having a certain narrative pushed or facts highlighted so they don't appreciate that maybe the reason someone tweeted that wasn't because they want to denigrate or blame blacks but just because they are irritated that someone is pretending that fact isn't true.
Add some trolls and a few extremists to the meeting x and you've got a recipe for a fight.
The reason why scenes like the two bostons clip resonate so much is because they are true. Black men who are decent, law-abiding citizens generally have to deal with that kind of negative stigma. It is also true that the suspicion from store owners and cops is rational. Nearly every single black person that a progressive spends time with is the former but also, for whatever reason, refuses to acknowledge the existence of the latter.
Regardless, it really doesn't matter what the cause is because the solution is the same. Criminals are gunna do crime and they must be put in jail. There are a finite number of would-be criminals at any given point in any society, and they must be either jailed or scared into submission.
In Iraq, we used Clear, Hold, Build to tamp down an insurgency and restore order. The same is required of our high-crime cities. Flood the streets with cops and stop crime. Only then can the relationships heal.
“Other than blacks themselves, no group would benefit more from solving our crime problem than wealthy urban whites.”
Come on. Non-rich whites, eg those who ride the subway and buy into areas that have just begun to gentrify, are at far greater risk than rich urban whites. Georgetown is safer than Northeast, and the Upper East Side is safer than the mixed areas of Queens.
"They now turn around and say, let’s not talk too much about murder, because blacks are the victims?"
I don't think that's it....it's because blacks are the perpetrators. And to see someone as perpetrator is to attribute agency to the group which deflates the concept of the "marginalized/victim": That they have no agency and therefore incapable of sin.
And it also dilutes the supposed evil of whites as exclusive agents or racism/supremacy. Which is why this whole business of multiracial white supremacy is so contrived (think of the recent mass shootings in Allen, Texas).
On the last paragraph, could it be that blacks currently vote for tough-on-crime mayors and police commissioners but also for progressive DAs? If so, it looks more like low-information voting than like an actual policy preference. Mayor elections are loud and visible, while DAs have rarely seen any spotlight until the most recent years. IMHO few people (of any ethnicity) understood the role of the latter until ca. 2020; let's hope the understanding percolates further.
On the other hand, I'm getting wary of the prospect of the Right winning on the "tough on crime" front while not making any inroads on personal freedom and pushing back the nanny state at least somewhat. I, for one, don't want more cops enforcing COVID lockdowns and making British-style thoughtcrime visits.
I've seen credible evidence that each black person in America costs society between $750k-$1.5M over their lifetime. Not criminals specifically, just average black people paying little in taxes and taking a lot in benefits. And this doesn't include a lot of those indirect costs, which may be higher still.
For the most part blacks support that, so I don't really have any sympathy left for them. Antipathy for blacks is probably the only way to end this cycle.
Charles Murray suggested that eventually the cognitive dissonance would get so great that there would be a kind of racist metamorphosis where all that pent up denial would just explode on blacks in an orgy of relief (he thought the odds were less the 50%, but possible, I think this is how he wanted to sell it to liberals). I really doubt that. I think the future just looks like waves of apathy where the checks keep flowing with periodic moral freakouts.
Blacks are allies of the regime. Conservative whites are its enemies. Policing blacks would help conservative whites, or at least be perceived as helping them, and would be an implicit admission that they are right and the regime is wrong.
This is why we have the situation that we have and also why it won't change any time soon. It would require regime change, and in a more serious sense than just Republicans winning an election.
Taking seriously America's Bantu problem has many more implications than you want to admit. For example, pro-immigration eLIGHTENDED cENTRISTS constantly cite statistic showing that immigrants are better than American citizens by various metrics, but these statistics are only true if you include Bantus. If you exclude Bantus, immigrants are worse, and so it is only rational to accept immigrants if you can get them to live in Bantu cities (which, tbf, has happened in LA and some other places).
When I think of BLM and trans-activist narratives, this Orwell quote always comes to mind: “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
The effect of these movements is to emotionally blackmail you into rejecting the evidence of your eyes and ears. Given the way these movements are bankrolled and supported at the highest echelons of power, I can’t help but think this is at least partially intentional.
There doesn’t seem to be much statistical evidence that gun ownership explains a lot . Only comparing the US to Europe means leaving out a huge amount of useful data. There are big differences in gun ownership within Europe. The US has 3 times more guns than Serbia, but Serbia has 15 times more guns than Romania or Poland . Still Romania and Poland have similar homicide rates to Serbia . Difficult to reconcile with the theory that guns are an important factor in determining homicide rates.
Here's some necessary wisdom from Thomas Sowell:
"A crucial fact about white liberals must be kept in mind: They are not simply in favor of blacks in general. Their solicitude is poured out for blacks as victims [italics in original], blacks as welfare mothers, criminals, political activists against the larger society, as well as those blacks who serve as general counter-cultural symbols against the larger society."
And from Shelby Steele's excellent book "White Guilt":
"In the age of white guilt, whites support all manner of silly racial policies without seeing that their true motivation is simply to show themselves innocent of racism."
White Guilt has to be the most powerful and pervasive social phenomenon that is never discussed, except maybe by the Robin DiAngelo types who wield it as another tool in their cult-indoctrination techniques.
White liberals can't face, admit or try to solve this issue because for them it's not social or political, not a problem to be faced w facts and empiricism, but a moral and spiritual crusade based on their desperate need for atonement, and their need to feel more righteous and holy than white conservatives.
They treat black people (and other official victim groups) not as fallible mammals like the rest of us but as sacred cows or holy children, who must be worshipped, protected and adored.
White Saviorism (which is the beating heart of Social Justice) is impervious to facts or reality because it's not about saving people or communities, but about saving souls, particularly the souls of our secular clerisy, the White(d) Sepulchers of elite America.
“While I support policies that can make incremental improvements, actually solving our...[almost any] problem to any serious extent would take a revolution in our culture or system of government... If any part of you is uncomfortable with policies that have an extreme disparate impact, you don’t have the stomach for what it would take.”
Removing the references to crime, this applies to almost every issue in American society. People and groups differ in meaningful ways, everything will have some degree of disparate impact, and there is no feasible path towards meaningful solutions without acknowledging that (which will not happen).
For my life time crime has been a boom and bust cycle. Things get really bad so we do something effective, it gets called racist, then we stop doing the effective things, then it gets bad again. The cycle continues, and we even have a new Bernie Getz.
I’ll just say that I found this piece far more well-reasoned, nuanced, and ultimately correct than your previous howler about why we shouldn’t read great books. I appreciate your willingness to take risks as a contrarian, even if sometimes you miss the mark (by my lights at least). Great essay all around.
I grew up outside of Portland, Oregon, and it has been really difficult to watch the city descend into chaos, particularly within the last five years. The reasons aren't as closely tied to racial disparities within the city itself, but they are the direct result of leftist policies that prioritize offenders and criminals over law-abiding citizens and property owners. What just galls me is the number of residents of the city itself who support these policies. I'm amazed at the number of otherwise intelligent people who seem to really believe that we should defund the police, not prosecute criminals, decriminalize hard drugs (measure 110, which passed in 2020), and punish property owners and local businesses. All the while claiming we should just give the homeless housing, as if that's going to fix their problems.
What I don't understand is why we are so uncomfortable with disparate impacts on different racial or gender groups. I don't understand anyone who thinks that in the absence of equity interventions, we should have exact demographic representation across every domain in our culture. It just makes no sense. Furthermore leftists seem to focus their zealotry on certain domains, such as black criminality or women as CEOs. Just the other day I noted to someone that the demographics of veterinary medicine have made a virtual 180 degree shift from 90% male to 90% female in the last 30 years, and she didn't seem to have any problem with it. In addition most people have no problem with the idea of disparate representation in other domains, namely sports (not many people deny you need to be a minimum of 6'5" for it to even be possible to have an NBA career, and not taller than 5' to be a top female gymnast).
I hope we can have more truthful conversations about this topic. It is really hard to watch a city you used to love descend into chaos because people are fucking stupid and dishonest.
I think the issue in these debates is that everyone projects motives as to why people are raising the issue.
It's like tweeting: "Women who dress up in revealing clothing are more likely to get sexually assaulted by strangers at night." Ok, sure, that's probably true. But many people would impute the motive for saying it to be to somehow blame women for wearing revealing clothing.
What goes wrong in these conversations is that each side doesn't understand the motives that could cause someone on the other side to say what they do in good faith. For instance, those on the left don't feel the irritation that many on the right do about having a certain narrative pushed or facts highlighted so they don't appreciate that maybe the reason someone tweeted that wasn't because they want to denigrate or blame blacks but just because they are irritated that someone is pretending that fact isn't true.
Add some trolls and a few extremists to the meeting x and you've got a recipe for a fight.
It's gamergate at a society wide level.
The reason why scenes like the two bostons clip resonate so much is because they are true. Black men who are decent, law-abiding citizens generally have to deal with that kind of negative stigma. It is also true that the suspicion from store owners and cops is rational. Nearly every single black person that a progressive spends time with is the former but also, for whatever reason, refuses to acknowledge the existence of the latter.
Regardless, it really doesn't matter what the cause is because the solution is the same. Criminals are gunna do crime and they must be put in jail. There are a finite number of would-be criminals at any given point in any society, and they must be either jailed or scared into submission.
In Iraq, we used Clear, Hold, Build to tamp down an insurgency and restore order. The same is required of our high-crime cities. Flood the streets with cops and stop crime. Only then can the relationships heal.
Why is this “truth” so uncomfortable?
Because the “discomfited” can’t handle facts. They can barely handle their emotions.
“Other than blacks themselves, no group would benefit more from solving our crime problem than wealthy urban whites.”
Come on. Non-rich whites, eg those who ride the subway and buy into areas that have just begun to gentrify, are at far greater risk than rich urban whites. Georgetown is safer than Northeast, and the Upper East Side is safer than the mixed areas of Queens.
"They now turn around and say, let’s not talk too much about murder, because blacks are the victims?"
I don't think that's it....it's because blacks are the perpetrators. And to see someone as perpetrator is to attribute agency to the group which deflates the concept of the "marginalized/victim": That they have no agency and therefore incapable of sin.
And it also dilutes the supposed evil of whites as exclusive agents or racism/supremacy. Which is why this whole business of multiracial white supremacy is so contrived (think of the recent mass shootings in Allen, Texas).
On the last paragraph, could it be that blacks currently vote for tough-on-crime mayors and police commissioners but also for progressive DAs? If so, it looks more like low-information voting than like an actual policy preference. Mayor elections are loud and visible, while DAs have rarely seen any spotlight until the most recent years. IMHO few people (of any ethnicity) understood the role of the latter until ca. 2020; let's hope the understanding percolates further.
On the other hand, I'm getting wary of the prospect of the Right winning on the "tough on crime" front while not making any inroads on personal freedom and pushing back the nanny state at least somewhat. I, for one, don't want more cops enforcing COVID lockdowns and making British-style thoughtcrime visits.
I've seen credible evidence that each black person in America costs society between $750k-$1.5M over their lifetime. Not criminals specifically, just average black people paying little in taxes and taking a lot in benefits. And this doesn't include a lot of those indirect costs, which may be higher still.
For the most part blacks support that, so I don't really have any sympathy left for them. Antipathy for blacks is probably the only way to end this cycle.
Charles Murray suggested that eventually the cognitive dissonance would get so great that there would be a kind of racist metamorphosis where all that pent up denial would just explode on blacks in an orgy of relief (he thought the odds were less the 50%, but possible, I think this is how he wanted to sell it to liberals). I really doubt that. I think the future just looks like waves of apathy where the checks keep flowing with periodic moral freakouts.
Blacks are allies of the regime. Conservative whites are its enemies. Policing blacks would help conservative whites, or at least be perceived as helping them, and would be an implicit admission that they are right and the regime is wrong.
This is why we have the situation that we have and also why it won't change any time soon. It would require regime change, and in a more serious sense than just Republicans winning an election.
Taking seriously America's Bantu problem has many more implications than you want to admit. For example, pro-immigration eLIGHTENDED cENTRISTS constantly cite statistic showing that immigrants are better than American citizens by various metrics, but these statistics are only true if you include Bantus. If you exclude Bantus, immigrants are worse, and so it is only rational to accept immigrants if you can get them to live in Bantu cities (which, tbf, has happened in LA and some other places).
When I think of BLM and trans-activist narratives, this Orwell quote always comes to mind: “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
The effect of these movements is to emotionally blackmail you into rejecting the evidence of your eyes and ears. Given the way these movements are bankrolled and supported at the highest echelons of power, I can’t help but think this is at least partially intentional.
There doesn’t seem to be much statistical evidence that gun ownership explains a lot . Only comparing the US to Europe means leaving out a huge amount of useful data. There are big differences in gun ownership within Europe. The US has 3 times more guns than Serbia, but Serbia has 15 times more guns than Romania or Poland . Still Romania and Poland have similar homicide rates to Serbia . Difficult to reconcile with the theory that guns are an important factor in determining homicide rates.