vdare--2020-08-16--NYT: 43% White San Mateo, CA Is Segregated

San Mateo is a lovely suburban city of 104,000 between San Francisco and Palo Alto , with a median household income of $ 115,000 .
From the New York Times opinion section : A new generation of activists is trying to figure out where to concentrate its efforts .
Residential desegregation is the final frontier .
By Richard Rothstein Mr. Rothstein is the author of “ The Color of Law : A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America.
” Black Lives Matter protests have laid a foundation for real change .
But in their aftermath , activists in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a continuing program to tackle the comprehensive racial inequality that allows abusive police practices to flourish .
… San Mateo is a segregated Silicon Valley city .
Ms. Heath observes that there are no Black families in her Hillsdale neighborhood .
San Mateo ’ s few remaining African-Americans mostly live in another neighborhood , where they have long been concentrated .
One percent of Hillsdale High School students are Black .
So that means it ’ s like … 99 percent white !
Well , actually , it ’ s more complicated than @ @ @ @ @ @ @ only mentions whites and blacks , there are other races in San Mateo .
According to the Census Bureau : It turns out that San Mateo is only 43.1 % non-Hispanic white .
That raises the question of : how did all those non-whites move to San Mateo despite restrictive covenants and redlining ?
Well , it turns out — crazy as it sounds — that there haven ’ t been restrictive covenants for over 70 years and redlining for over 50 years .
Moreover , if you read between the lines , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has changed over the last half century , even though you mostly just read in the newspapers about late-breaking Emmett Till news .
Ms. Heath says she would like to live in a more diverse neighborhood .
The way to do that , she says , is to insist that the City Council provide more affordable housing — subsidized units for low-income families — in her neighborhood .
That would be a step forward , but most African-Americans are not poor ; working- and middle-class Black families whose incomes are too high to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from neighborhoods like Hillside because of their race .
Effective strategies to redress segregation in all its forms would become clearer if activists in San Mateo and elsewhere did deep research into how their communities ’ racial boundaries were established .
In San Mateo , they would learn that builders constructed the residential Hillsdale neighborhood for whites only in the mid-20th century .
Public records reveal that the 1941 deed to Sophia Heath ’ s family home says , “ No persons other than members of the Caucasian or White race shall be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ property , other than as domestics in the employ of the occupants of the premises.
” The racial restriction was signed by officers of the American Trust Company , which financed its construction .
David D. Bohannon , a developer who built the largest share of homes in Hillsdale , signed similar deed requirements for racial exclusion .
Although the whites-only clauses are no longer enforceable And haven ’ t been since the late 1940s … These clauses are like the racist objects in the attic that haunt the nightmares of New York @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their emanations of evil .
… The Bohannon company , Fox & Carskadon and the American Trust Company could not have segregated Hillsdale without the support of government agencies .
In fact , in some cases , federal agencies required builders like Mr. Bohannon to insert the racial clause in deeds .
In our own time , the City of San Mateo continues to perpetuate the segregation of many of its white neighborhoods by prohibiting construction of anything but single-family homes — no townhouses , duplexes or apartments affordable to teachers , firefighters @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and others who serve the community but can not afford to live in it .
The American Trust Company and Wells Fargo merged in 1960 .
Coldwell Banker acquired Fox & Carskadon in 1995 .
Perhaps Sophia Heath ’ s fellow young activists and their adult compatriots might embark on a campaign to persuade the Bohannon company , Coldwell Banker and Wells Fargo to face up to their considerable responsibility for the racial segregation and lack of opportunity for Black families that characterize San Mateo .
A local civil rights movement can @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to a fund that subsidizes African-Americans to purchase Hillsdale homes that would have been affordable when these institutions excluded Black home buyers but no longer are .
Token contributions will do little .
The fund will have to be substantial .
Fox & Carskadon advertised its Hillside houses for $ 5,450 , about $ 100,000 in current dollars .
But today those homes sell for about $ 1.5 million , sometimes more .
Shouldn ’ t Bohannon , Coldwell Banker and Wells Fargo find the funds to enable African-Americans who qualify for a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ purchase Hillsdale houses worth $ 1.5 million ?
Right , Black people morally deserve to buy $ 1.5 million houses in San Mateo for only $ 100,000 .
You see , if there hadn ’ t been a restrictive covenant enforceable until the late 1940s , then lots and lots of of great-grandparents of today ’ s blacks would have bought houses in San Mateo , hung on to them for over 70 years , kept them in perfect condition , not caused any problems with the property value , and bequeathed them @ @ @ @ @ @ @ blacks .
That ’ s just how the world works .
Seriously , if you wonder why the Diversity Inclusion Equity ( DIE ) people switched their buzzword from equality to equity , it ’ s because they want to take your equity in your house .

San Mateo is a lovely suburban city of 104,000 between San Francisco and Palo Alto, with a median household income of $115,000. From the New York Times opinion section:
The Black Lives Next Door A new generation of activists is trying to figure out where to concentrate its efforts. Residential desegregation is the final frontier. By Richard Rothstein
Mr. Rothstein is the author of “The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America.” Aug. 14, 2020 Last year in San Mateo, Calif.,… Black Lives Matter protests have laid a foundation for real change. But in their aftermath, activists in San Mateo and similar communities mostly lack a continuing program to tackle the comprehensive racial inequality that allows abusive police practices to flourish. … San Mateo is a segregated Silicon Valley city. Ms. Heath observes that there are no Black families in her Hillsdale neighborhood. San Mateo’s few remaining African-Americans mostly live in another neighborhood, where they have long been concentrated. One percent of Hillsdale High School students are Black.
So that means it’s like … 99 percent white!
Well, actually, it’s more complicated than that. Even though this NYT essay only mentions whites and blacks, there are other races in San Mateo. According to the Census Bureau:
It turns out that San Mateo is only 43.1% non-Hispanic white.
That raises the question of: how did all those non-whites move to San Mateo despite restrictive covenants and redlining? Well, it turns out — crazy as it sounds — that there haven’t been restrictive covenants for over 70 years and redlining for over 50 years. Moreover, if you read between the lines, you’ll notice that a lot has changed over the last half century, even though you mostly just read in the newspapers about late-breaking Emmett Till news.
Ms. Heath says she would like to live in a more diverse neighborhood. The way to do that, she says, is to insist that the City Council provide more affordable housing — subsidized units for low-income families — in her neighborhood. That would be a step forward, but most African-Americans are not poor; working- and middle-class Black families whose incomes are too high to qualify for existing subsidies were also excluded from neighborhoods like Hillside because of their race. Effective strategies to redress segregation in all its forms would become clearer if activists in San Mateo and elsewhere did deep research into how their communities’ racial boundaries were established. In San Mateo, they would learn that builders constructed the residential Hillsdale neighborhood for whites only in the mid-20th century. Public records reveal that the 1941 deed to Sophia Heath’s family home says, “No persons other than members of the Caucasian or White race shall be permitted to occupy any portion of said property, other than as domestics in the employ of the occupants of the premises.” The racial restriction was signed by officers of the American Trust Company, which financed its construction. David D. Bohannon, a developer who built the largest share of homes in Hillsdale, signed similar deed requirements for racial exclusion. Although the whites-only clauses are no longer enforceable
And haven’t been since the late 1940s …
, they remain in the deeds of Hillsdale homeowners.
These clauses are like the racist objects in the attic that haunt the nightmares of New York Times subscribers. You can just sense their emanations of evil.
… The Bohannon company, Fox & Carskadon and the American Trust Company could not have segregated Hillsdale without the support of government agencies. In fact, in some cases, federal agencies required builders like Mr. Bohannon to insert the racial clause in deeds. In our own time, the City of San Mateo continues to perpetuate the segregation of many of its white neighborhoods by prohibiting construction of anything but single-family homes — no townhouses, duplexes or apartments affordable to teachers, firefighters, nurses, hotel and restaurant workers, and others who serve the community but cannot afford to live in it. The American Trust Company and Wells Fargo merged in 1960. Coldwell Banker acquired Fox & Carskadon in 1995. Perhaps Sophia Heath’s fellow young activists and their adult compatriots might embark on a campaign to persuade the Bohannon company, Coldwell Banker and Wells Fargo to face up to their considerable responsibility for the racial segregation and lack of opportunity for Black families that characterize San Mateo. A local civil rights movement can insist that these businesses make substantial contributions to a fund that subsidizes African-Americans to purchase Hillsdale homes that would have been affordable when these institutions excluded Black home buyers but no longer are. Token contributions will do little. The fund will have to be substantial. Fox & Carskadon advertised its Hillside houses for $5,450, about $100,000 in current dollars. But today those homes sell for about $1.5 million, sometimes more. Shouldn’t Bohannon, Coldwell Banker and Wells Fargo find the funds to enable African-Americans who qualify for a mortgage on a $100,000 property to purchase Hillsdale houses worth $1.5 million?
Right, Black people morally deserve to buy $1.5 million houses in San Mateo for only $100,000.
You see, if there hadn’t been a restrictive covenant enforceable until the late 1940s, then lots and lots of of great grandparents of today’s blacks would have bought houses in San Mateo, hung on to them for over 70 years, kept them in perfect condition, not caused any problems with the property value, and bequeathed them free and clear to today’s blacks.
That’s just how the world works.
Seriously, if you wonder why the Diversity Inclusion Equity (DIE) people switched their buzzword from equality to equity, it’s because they want to take your equity in your house.
[Comment at Unz.com]


vdare--2020-08-15--John Derbyshire: United States of Antifa Converging On Peoples Republic Of China?

Earlier : Charlottesville After Three Years : Dress Rehearsal For 2020 's Nation-Wide Communist Coup Last week marked the third anniversary of the ambushing of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville VA .
The organizers of that rally—a lawful , peaceful demonstration for which the organizers had obtained a permit—were attacked by the anarchist mob , who had no intention of being lawful or peaceful and no permit .
The city police , under political direction , abdicated their duty to keep order , and mayhem ensued .
VDARE.com , has run some illuminating articles by Unite the Right @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from those accounts that , in the eloquent words of that participant , August 12th 2017 was , The events of 2020 have made the accuracy of this analysis all too clear .
Quite large parts of the U.S.A. are effectively under the control of Antifa today .
I 'm not just talking about the streets of our big old cities , where Antifa rule is plain to see .
The takeover has been institutional .
The judiciary , the academy , the media and the social media , the big corporations—all are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ coronavirus pandemic has made things easier for the insurrectionists , at least on the judicial front .
`` We ca n't have proper court proceedings with social distancing ! ''
squeal the DAs and prosecutors , as they pocket the big fat envelopes full of cash from George Soros .
`` Case dismissed ! ''
And then : `` Jails are breeding grounds for the virus , '' they tell us .
`` Got ta let prisoners go free ! ''
Of course , if you have the impertinence to stand and fight @ @ @ @ @ @ @ windows , you 'll be cuffed , tried , convicted , sentenced , and jailed before you can say `` due process . ''
But wait : Do n't we have a National Conservative in the White House ?
Does n't he have authority over the Justice Department , to right some of these injustices ?
Does n't he have a Secretary of Education to address the totalitarian CultMarx dominance in our universities ?
A Commerce Secretary to rein in the power of the tech monopolies ?
If the Tsar only knew !
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ three years ago , my eye was caught by a segment in my December 22nd podcast of that year .
In that segment I mulled over the theories of convergence that had some currency in the early 1960s—convergence , that is , between American capitalism , as then was , and Soviet communism , as then was .
I said : Those ideas were n't new in the early 1960s , of course .
James Burnham had aired them twenty years before in his book The Managerial Revolution , which so fascinated George @ @ @ @ @ @ @ things was last week 's news items about the ChiCom crackdown on Hong Kong , particularly the arrest of newspaper publisher and democracy advocate Jimmy Lai .
[ Hong Kong Arrests Jimmy Lai , Media Mogul , Under National Security Law , by Austin Ramzy and Tiffany May , NY Times , August 10 , 2020 ] .
This was of course a deplorable business , cops taking Mr. Lai away in handcuffs and looting his offices .
Several other people were likewise arrested , including one of Jimmy Lai 's sons , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ business .
After forty hours in custody , though , Jimmy Lai was released on $ 65,000 bail .
He 's at home now , and has been giving interviews to the media .
[ Hong Kong media tycoon says 'the fight has to go on ' after 'symbolic ' arrest under new law , by Will Ripley and Jenni Marsh , CNN Business , August 14 , 2020 ] I was struck by the lightness of touch there .
In Mao Tse-tung 's China , Jimmy Lai would just have disappeared—been given @ @ @ @ @ @ @ just shot out of hand .
There are of course some restraining circumstances to be noted .
Hong Kong is still a key hub for China 's business with the rest of the world .
To keep up appearances , the ChiComs do n't want to thoroughly mainlandize the place , to go full totalitarian on it all at once .
They want to keep up a decent facade of legality while shutting down dissent one voice at a time .
Jimmy Lai could never have published his newspaper in the mainland , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ harshly than he has been .
Also acting as a restraint on the natural brutishness of ChiCom rule has been their preoccupation with other problems : the coronavirus pandemic ; the loss of international face arising therefrom , with consequent trade issues [ China ’ s Huawei , ZTE Set To Be Shut Out of India ’ s 5G Trials , Bloomberg Business , August 13 , 2020 ] ; the severe floods that have been afflicting their country ; possibly some insecurities at the top , with Xi Jinping trying to stay @ @ @ @ @ @ @ apparatus .
All things considered , though , today 's China is not your father 's totalitarianism .
Visiting China last year , I found the table-talk among ordinary citizens way more open and relaxed than it was in the early 1980s .
That 's where the theory of convergence came back to me .
China is heading into totalitarianism lite from one side ; perhaps we 're heading to the same destination from the other side .
The ChiComs have eased up on the pettier kinds of social control while continuing to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ quietly setting up a panopticon of data on what citizens are saying , doing , earning , and buying .
Meanwhile we are firming up on those lesser social controls—on what may be said and done in private exchanges , for example between bird-watchers and dog-walkers—while tightening the screws on open dissent .
We 're not as far along the road to a panopticon yet , but the trend is in that direction .
Not much happens in public nowadays that is n't recorded by security cameras or someone 's smartphone .
And @ @ @ @ @ @ @ world that work against hard totalitarianism .
A few days ago there came out those video clips of Chinese Uighurs handcuffed and blindfolded , being herded into cattle wagons .
Apparently they were leaked by someone with access to the drone footage .
I watched them with a friend .
He observed that if we 'd had that kind of footage of Stalin 's slave-labor camps eighty years ago , it would have been harder for Soviet sympathizers to deny the reality of communism .
The coronavirus pandemic has also been a setback @ @ @ @ @ @ @ heavily on facial recognition software .
What I hear from people working in this field is that—-amazingly , it seems to me—facial recognition can work with people wearing masks … but only in small populations .
So if you have , say , a company workforce of five thousand people , all wearing masks , the software can tell you which employee you 're looking at .
With populations bigger than a few thousand , though , a given image of one masked individual can return multiple matches .
Possibly technology will conquer @ @ @ @ @ @ @ state power , pulling us back to Nineteen Eighty-Four-style `` hard '' totalitarianism .
I think a convergence to `` soft '' totalitarianism—totalitarianism Lite—is more probable , though .
It used to be a standard classroom exercise for high-school seniors to read both Orwell 's Nineteen Eighty-Four and Huxley 's Brave New World , then write an essay on which was the more probable future .
The way things are now trending , both in China and the U.S.A. , we shall end up with something of both dystopias : the nihilistic all-wants-supplied @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 's managerial panopticon .
We could do worse , I guess ; but I shall mourn the loss of our old liberties .
email him ] writes an incredible amount on all sorts of subjects for all kinds of outlets .
( This no longer includes National Review , whose editors had some kind of tantrum and fired him . )
He is the author of We Are Doomed : Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism and several other books .
He has had two books published by VDARE.com com : FROM THE DISSIDENT RIGHT ( @ @ @ @ @ @ @ THE DISSIDENT RIGHT II : ESSAYS 2013 .
For years he ’ s been podcasting at Radio Derb , now available at VDARE.com for no charge .
His writings are archived at JohnDerbyshire.com .
Readers who wish to donate ( tax deductible ) funds specifically earmarked for John Derbyshire 's writings at VDARE.com can do so here .

Earlier: Charlottesville After Three Years: Dress Rehearsal For 2020's Nation-Wide Communist Coup
Last week marked the third anniversary of the ambushing of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville VA. The organizers of that rally—a lawful, peaceful demonstration for which the organizers had obtained a permit—were attacked by the anarchist mob, who had no intention of being lawful or peaceful and no permit. The city police, under political direction, abdicated their duty to keep order, and mayhem ensued.
VDARE.com, has run some illuminating articles by Unite the Right participants and organizers. It's clear from those accounts that, in the eloquent words of that participant, August 12th 2017 was,
… a dress rehearsal for the anarcho-tyrannical nation-wide insurrection now taking place: Antifa violence; official complicity; police paralysis (unless arresting anyone trying to resist); all protected by tightly controlled Narrative of Legacy Media lies … It looks like Charlottesville 2017 was the beginning of a successful Communist coup against America.
The events of 2020 have made the accuracy of this analysis all too clear. Quite large parts of the U.S.A. are effectively under the control of Antifa today. I'm not just talking about the streets of our big old cities, where Antifa rule is plain to see. The takeover has been institutional. The judiciary, the academy, the media and the social media, the big corporations—all are dancing to the Antifa tune.
The coronavirus pandemic has made things easier for the insurrectionists, at least on the judicial front. "We can't have proper court proceedings with social distancing!" squeal the DAs and prosecutors, as they pocket the big fat envelopes full of cash from George Soros. "Case dismissed!"
And then: "Jails are breeding grounds for the virus," they tell us. "Gotta let prisoners go free!"
Of course, if you have the impertinence to stand and fight when Antifa come round to break your windows, you'll be cuffed, tried, convicted, sentenced, and jailed before you can say "due process."
But wait: Don't we have a National Conservative in the White House? Doesn't he have authority over the Justice Department, to right some of these injustices? Doesn't he have a Secretary of Education to address the totalitarian CultMarx dominance in our universities? A Commerce Secretary to rein in the power of the tech monopolies?
If the Tsar only knew!
Looking back over my own commentaries of three years ago, my eye was caught by a segment in my December 22nd podcast of that year. In that segment I mulled over the theories of convergence that had some currency in the early 1960s—convergence, that is, between American capitalism, as it then was, and Soviet communism, as it then was. I said:
The rough idea was that the USSR would allow more and more private-sector activity while government power in the West would expand, leading eventually to a situation is which the two systems were indistinguishable. They'd have converged to a common political-economic mean.
Those ideas weren't new in the early 1960s, of course. James Burnham had aired them twenty years before in his book The Managerial Revolution, which so fascinated George Orwell.
What set me pondering these things was last week's news items about the ChiCom crackdown on Hong Kong, particularly the arrest of newspaper publisher and democracy advocate Jimmy Lai. [Hong Kong Arrests Jimmy Lai, Media Mogul, Under National Security Law, by Austin Ramzy and Tiffany May, NY Times, August 10, 2020].
This was of course a deplorable business, cops taking Mr. Lai away in handcuffs and looting his offices. Several other people were likewise arrested, including one of Jimmy Lai's sons, who has no connection with the newspaper business.
After forty hours in custody, though, Jimmy Lai was released on $65,000 bail. He's at home now, and has been giving interviews to the media [Hong Kong media tycoon says 'the fight has to go on' after 'symbolic' arrest under new law, by Will Ripley and Jenni Marsh, CNN Business, August 14, 2020].
I was struck by the lightness of touch there. In Mao Tse-tung's China, Jimmy Lai would just have disappeared—been given twenty-five years in a camp, or just shot out of hand.
There are of course some restraining circumstances to be noted. Hong Kong is still a key hub for China's business with the rest of the world. To keep up appearances, the ChiComs don't want to thoroughly mainlandize the place, to go full totalitarian on it all at once. They want to keep up a decent facade of legality while shutting down dissent one voice at a time.
Jimmy Lai could never have published his newspaper in the mainland, and mainland dissidents are treated way more harshly than he has been.
Also acting as a restraint on the natural brutishness of ChiCom rule has been their preoccupation with other problems: the coronavirus pandemic; the loss of international face arising therefrom, with consequent trade issues [China’s Huawei, ZTE Set To Be Shut Out of India’s 5G Trials, Bloomberg Business, August 13, 2020]; the severe floods that have been afflicting their country; possibly some insecurities at the top, with Xi Jinping trying to stay on his feet against rivals in the apparatus.
All things considered, though, today's China is not your father's totalitarianism. Visiting China last year, I found the table-talk among ordinary citizens way more open and relaxed than it was in the early 1980s.
That's where the theory of convergence came back to me. China is heading into totalitarianism lite from one side; perhaps we're heading to the same destination from the other side.
The ChiComs have eased up on the pettier kinds of social control while continuing to punish open dissent, and also while quietly setting up a panopticon of data on what citizens are saying, doing, earning, and buying.
Meanwhile we are firming up on those lesser social controls—on what may be said and done in private exchanges, for example between bird-watchers and dog-walkers—while tightening the screws on open dissent.
We're not as far along the road to a panopticon yet, but the trend is in that direction. Not much happens in public nowadays that isn't recorded by security cameras or someone's smartphone.
And there are some features of the modern world that work against hard totalitarianism. A few days ago there came out those video clips of Chinese Uighurs handcuffed and blindfolded, being herded into cattle wagons. Apparently they were leaked by someone with access to the drone footage.
I watched them with a friend. He observed that if we'd had that kind of footage of Stalin's slave-labor camps eighty years ago, it would have been harder for Soviet sympathizers to deny the reality of communism.
The coronavirus pandemic has also been a setback for the panopticon project, which relies heavily on facial recognition software.
What I hear from people working in this field is that—-amazingly, it seems to me—facial recognition can work with people wearing masks … but only in small populations. So if you have, say, a company workforce of five thousand people, all wearing masks, the software can tell you which employee you're looking at. With populations bigger than a few thousand, though, a given image of one masked individual can return multiple matches.
Possibly technology will conquer these issues and all others that limit state power, pulling us back to Nineteen Eighty-Four-style "hard" totalitarianism. I think a convergence to "soft" totalitarianism—totalitarianism Lite—is more probable, though.
It used to be a standard classroom exercise for high-school seniors to read both Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four and Huxley's Brave New World, then write an essay on which was the more probable future.
The way things are now trending, both in China and the U.S.A., we shall end up with something of both dystopias: the nihilistic all-wants-supplied hedonism of Huxley's joined to Orwell's managerial panopticon.
We could do worse, I guess; but I shall mourn the loss of our old liberties.
John Derbyshire [ email him] writes an incredible amount on all sorts of subjects for all kinds of outlets. (This no longer includes National Review, whose editors had some kind of tantrum and fired him.) He is the author of We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism and several other books. He has had two books published by VDARE.com com: FROM THE DISSIDENT RIGHT (also available in Kindle) and FROM THE DISSIDENT RIGHT II: ESSAYS 2013.
For years he’s been podcasting at Radio Derb, now available at VDARE.com for no charge. His writings are archived at JohnDerbyshire.com.
Readers who wish to donate (tax deductible) funds specifically earmarked for John Derbyshire's writings at VDARE.com can do so here.


vdare--2020-08-16--Sailer: Biden Passed Tough Delaware Bar Exam on His First Try (I Think)

It took Kamala Harris two tries to pass the relatively difficult California bar exam , but what about her boss Joe Biden ?
His home state of Delaware has been a heavy hitter in corporate law since the early 20th Century .
At that time , most corporations in the U.S. were incorporated in New Jersey , which was conveniently close to the business capital of New York City .
But then Gov .
Woodrow Wilson raised taxes on corporations , so Delaware swooped in and offered the same convenience as NJ , but with lower fees and taxes .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ doing to Delaware what it did to New Jersey ?
Delaware therefore invested in building an excellent court system for adjudicating questions of corporate law , with an emphasis on the smartest Delaware lawyers becoming judges .
America ’ s corporations expect that Delaware judges will offer solid , non-erratic judgments that are unlikely to be overturned by federal courts .
To be a corporate lawyer in Wilmington , Delaware is a nice gig : you play in the national big leagues , and get paid like it , but you don ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and stresses of New York .
What does all this have to do with Joe Biden ?
Not too much : Joe says that corporate law didn ’ t appeal to him ( although it ’ s also true to say that Biden , who graduated near the bottom of his class at middling Syracuse law school and had almost been expelled as a first-year student for plagiarizing five pages of a paper , didn ’ t appeal to the august corporate law firms of Delaware ) .
But one downstream effect of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ bar exam is usually one of the hardest to pass in the country .
At present , it requires the highest score to pass , with California second .
Did Joe pass the bar on his first try ?
The way to tell is by comparing when a celebrity graduated from law school and when he or she was “ called to the bar.
” For example , Barack Obama graduated from Harvard Law School in May or June 1991 and was admitted to the Illinois bar on December 17 , 1991 , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Illinois bar exam on his first crack at it in the summer of 1991 .
In contrast , Michelle Obama graduated from Harvard Law School in 1988 and was was admitted to the bar on May 12 , 1989 , suggesting she did not pass the Illinois bar exam at her first chance , but did at her second .
Biden graduated from Syracuse Law School in June 1968 .
Sources conflict on when he was admitted to the Delaware bar : 1969 in some , but the most authoritative says he was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” in Wilmington , DE .
At present , Delaware only offers the bar exam once per year , in late July .
Therefore , my bet would be that Joe passed the tough Delaware bar exam in July 1968 on his one and only try .
This is not a spectacular accomplishment : the majority of first-time takers pass Delaware ’ s test .
Still , it ’ s pretty good achievement .
Joe is perhaps the second most vain man in American politics , after only his opponent in this race @ @ @ @ @ @ @ feels pretty good about himself over this .
Here are some other famous politicians and their experiences with the bar exam : • None Hillary Clinton : passed Arkansas Bar Exam on her first attempt , flunked tough DC Bar Exam on her only try , which is probably why she moved to Arkansas and married Bill • None 4-term California governor Jerry Brown : passed tough California bar exam on second try • None Chicago mayor Richard M. Daley the Younger : passed easy Illinois test on third try .
• None @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to have passed Massachusetts on his first try .
• None , unsurprisingly , passed California on Richard Nixon , unsurprisingly , passed California on his first try .
• None appears to have passed Michigan ’ s bar exam Gerald Ford appears to have passed Michigan ’ s bar exam on his first try .
As befits an All-American football hero at the U. of Michigan , he appears to have been up and practicing law in Michigan even before his test was graded .
• None passed on his first try @ @ @ @ @ @ @ had been destroyed charging a German machine gun nest , he was allowed to have his first wife write down the answers he whispered to her .
Bob Dole passed on his first try in Kansas ; because his right arm had been destroyed charging a German machine gun nest , he was allowed to have his first wife write down the answers he whispered to her .
• None Kamala Harris : Failed tough California bar exam on first try , passed it on her second • None passed California Willie Brown @ @ @ @ @ @ @

It took Kamala Harris two tries to pass the relatively difficult California bar exam, but what about her boss Joe Biden?
His home state of Delaware has been a heavy hitter in corporate law since the early 20th Century. At that time, most corporations in the U.S. were incorporated in New Jersey, which was conveniently close to the business capital of New York City. But then Gov. Woodrow Wilson raised taxes on corporations, so Delaware swooped in and offered the same convenience as NJ, but with lower fees and taxes.
But how to keep other states from doing to Delaware what it did to New Jersey? Delaware therefore invested in building an excellent court system for adjudicating questions of corporate law, with an emphasis on the smartest Delaware lawyers becoming judges. America’s corporations expect that Delaware judges will offer solid, non-erratic judgments that are unlikely to be overturned by federal courts.
To be a corporate lawyer in Wilmington, Delaware is a nice gig: You play in the national big leagues, and get paid like it, but you don’t have to deal with the expenses and stresses of New York.
What does all this have to do with Joe Biden? Not too much: Joe says that corporate law didn’t appeal to him (although it’s also true to say that Biden, who graduated near the bottom of his class at middling Syracuse law school and had almost been expelled as a first-year student for plagiarizing five pages of a paper, didn’t appeal to the august corporate law firms of Delaware).
But one downstream effect of Delaware taking law seriously is that its bar exam is usually one of the hardest to pass in the country. At present, it requires the highest score to pass, with California second.
Did Joe pass the bar on his first try?
The way to tell is by comparing when a celebrity graduated from law school and when he or she was “called to the bar.” For example, Barack Obama graduated from Harvard Law School in May or June 1991 and was admitted to the Illinois bar on December 17, 1991, suggesting he passed the not too tough Illinois bar exam on his first crack at it in the summer of 1991.
In contrast, Michelle Obama graduated from Harvard Law School in 1988 and was admitted to the bar on May 12, 1989, suggesting she did not pass the Illinois bar exam at her first chance, but did at her second.
Biden graduated from Syracuse Law School in June 1968. Sources conflict on when he was admitted to the Delaware bar: 1969 in some, but the most authoritative says he was “admitted to the bar December 1968” in Wilmington, DE.
At present, Delaware only offers the bar exam once per year, in late July.
Therefore, my bet would be that Joe passed the tough Delaware bar exam in July 1968 on his one and only try.
This is not a spectacular accomplishment: The majority of first-time takers pass Delaware’s test.
Still, it’s pretty good achievement. Joe is perhaps the second most vain man in American politics, after only his opponent in this race, so I’m sure he feels pretty good about himself over this.
Here are some other famous politicians and their experiences with the bar exam:
[Comment at Unz.com]


vdare--2020-08-16--An Australian Reader Describes His Non-Lockdown Experience In Whitopian Belarus

Re : Radio Derb : Kamala Controversies , United States Of Antifa , And Totalititarianism Lite , Etc .
[ John Derbyshire had a brief segment about Belarus in the August 14th Radio Derb , at 32m40s here .
It prompted the following letter from a listener . ]
From : An Australian Reader [ Email him ] Thanks to John Derbyshire for his piece on Belarus , where I recently spent four weeks .
I 'm Australian and found myself stuck in the US for several months longer than I intended .
I was given 60 days extension of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ESTA ) visa from early April , so I had to leave by June 10th .
Basically , I had to find a country that would let me sit out the virus for a month or so before others relaxed their immigration rules .
I could have returned to Australia but am very glad I didn ’ t .
I would now be under house arrest in my home town/prison of Melbourne .
[ Coronavirus : Melbourne lockdown to keep a million workers at home , BBC , August 3 , 2020 ] @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Swedish authorities politely explained to me that if I turned up at Stockholm Airport , I had only a 50-50 chance of being admitted , as I don ’ t have any business or family ties to the country .
So I booked a flight to Minsk and an apartment in the city centre .
There was effectively no quarantine .
Shops , bars , restaurants and hotels were all open and life was completely normal .
During the four weeks I was there , I did n't wear a mask once @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
And here are my five reasons to go .
1 .
The architecture is amazing .
The city was almost completely destroyed in WW2 , so when the Soviets took control again in 1945 , they decided to reconstruct it as a tribute to Soviet Realism , which meant ramrod straight , very wide avenues , huge buildings and lots of statues and bas-reliefs glorifying the workers and peasants .
You can still see a few examples of this in other Eastern European cities , such as Warsaw or Bratislava but Minsk @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Soviet grandeur it displays and I spent my whole stay there marvelling at it all .
2 .
It is now very easy to gain entry .
Westerners can stay visa-free for up to 30 days and during the coronavirus scare , you can extend this to up to 90 days .
Belarus is the least-visited country in Europe and they would love to have a viable tourist industry .
While I was there , I met or saw not a single foreigner .
If you like to discover places off the beaten @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a Russian phrase book with you ( or put iTranslate on your phone and download the Russian dictionary ) .
Hardly anyone speaks English .
3 .
It is clean and safe , in fact , the cleanest city I have ever visited .
On my walks through the city every day , I looked for but never found a single cigarette butt anywhere .
Reason why ?
Those babushkas you mentioned are armed to the teeth with buckets and mops and keep the streets looking pristine .
Yes , it 's rather @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and different from the filth and garbage I see on the streets of NYC anytime I 'm there .
4 .
It is fantastically inexpensive .
My luxury apartment was very well appointed and cost me around $ 30 a night .
I ate out most evenings and usually paid around $ 10 for a three-course meal with a glass of excellent Georgian wine .
The food is generally very good .
Service too .
Don ’ t worry about Chernobyl .
That happened a long time ago and the Belarusians carry out @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 5 .
It is 100 percent white .
For race realists like us , it is a nice place to be .
And you ’ re right about the women—not as glamorous as the Poles or Hungarians but well dressed , well presented , no purple hair , piercings or tattoos .
Fortunately , I left before the “ election ” and all the unrest started .
I sympathise with the Belarusian people , who are friendly and were willing to chat with me as I am obviously an unthreatening foreigner .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I love Belarus , I don ’ t like my government ” .
Lukashenko is a thug and a crook with little to say in his favour apart from maintaining stability ( until recently ) and handling the coronavirus problem in an exemplary fashion .
Even those who bitterly oppose him admit this .
However , I still think he should resign and retire to a dacha somewhere close to his mate Vladimir .
We shall see how things work out .
James Fulford writes : A search for Belarusian women , mentioned @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sites , and Belarusian women in the latest protests .
The latter look much nicer than the average white female antifa protesters : My report from the last few days in Minsk .
In 15 years of covering protests & revolutions in various former-Soviet countries I 've honestly never seen anything quite like it , both the sinister nature of the repression & the extraordinary public response .
https : //t.co/mUeoYNByEw — Shaun Walker ( @ shaunwalker7 ) August 14 , 2020

Re: Radio Derb: Kamala Controversies, United States Of Antifa, And Totalititarianism Lite, Etc.
[John Derbyshire had a brief segment about Belarus in the August 14th Radio Derb, at 32m40s here. It prompted the following letter from a listener.]
From: An Australian Reader [Email him]
Thanks to John Derbyshire for his piece on Belarus, where I recently spent four weeks.
I'm Australian and found myself stuck in the US for several months longer than I intended. I was given 60 days extension of my Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA) visa from early April, so I had to leave by June 10th. Basically, I had to find a country that would let me sit out the virus for a month or so before others relaxed their immigration rules. I could have returned to Australia but am very glad I didn’t. I would now be under house arrest in my home town/prison of Melbourne [Coronavirus: Melbourne lockdown to keep a million workers at home, BBC, August 3, 2020].
My other no-lockdown option was Sweden but the Swedish authorities politely explained to me that if I turned up at Stockholm Airport, I had only a 50-50 chance of being admitted, as I don’t have any business or family ties to the country.
So I booked a flight to Minsk and an apartment in the city center. There was effectively no quarantine. Shops, bars, restaurants and hotels were all open and life was completely normal. During the four weeks I was there, I didn't wear a mask once.
Minsk is a city worth visiting. And here are my five reasons to go.
1. The architecture is amazing. The city was almost completely destroyed in WW2, so when the Soviets took control again in 1945, they decided to reconstruct it as a tribute to Soviet Realism, which meant ramrod straight, very wide avenues, huge buildings and lots of statues and bas-reliefs glorifying the workers and peasants. You can still see a few examples of this in other Eastern European cities, such as Warsaw or Bratislava but, Minsk is absolutely monumental in the amount of Soviet grandeur it displays and I spent my whole stay there marvelling at it all.
2. It is now very easy to gain entry. Westerners can stay visa-free for up to 30 days and during the coronavirus scare, you can extend this to up to 90 days. Belarus is the least-visited country in Europe and they would love to have a viable tourist industry. While I was there, I met or saw not a single foreigner. If you like to discover places off the beaten track, Minsk is ideal. Bring a Russian phrase book with you (or put iTranslate on your phone and download the Russian dictionary). Hardly anyone speaks English.
3. It is clean and safe, in fact, the cleanest city I have ever visited. On my walks through the city every day, I looked for but never found a single cigarette butt anywhere. Reason why? Those babushkas you mentioned are armed to the teeth with buckets and mops and keep the streets looking pristine. Yes, it's rather regimented but the results are so welcome and different from the filth and garbage I see on the streets of NYC anytime I'm there.
4. It is fantastically inexpensive. My luxury apartment was very well appointed and cost me around $30 a night. I ate out most evenings and usually paid around $10 for a three-course meal with a glass of excellent Georgian wine. The food is generally very good. Service too. Don’t worry about Chernobyl. That happened a long time ago and the Belarusians carry out stringent tests on local food products.
5. It is 100 percent white. For race realists like us, it is a nice place to be. And you’re right about the women—not as glamorous as the Poles or Hungarians but well dressed, well presented, no purple hair, piercings or tattoos.
Fortunately, I left before the “election” and all the unrest started. I sympathize with the Belarusian people, who are friendly and were willing to chat with me as I am obviously an unthreatening foreigner. The phrase I heard very often was “I love Belarus, I don’t like my government.” Lukashenko is a thug and a crook with little to say in his favor apart from maintaining stability (until recently) and handling the coronavirus problem in an exemplary fashion. Even those who bitterly oppose him admit this. However, I still think he should resign and retire to a dacha somewhere close to his mate Vladimir. We shall see how things work out.
James Fulford writes: A search for Belarusian women, mentioned above, brings up equal parts dating sites, and Belarusian women in the latest protests. The latter look much nicer than the average white female antifa protesters:
Can't load tweet https://twitter.com/shaunwalker7/status/1294291060848566283: Sorry, that page does not exist


vdare--2020-08-17--NYT: Murder Rate Rose 31% More from May to June vs. Last Year, But Only Trump Thinks That Had Anythi

NYT: Murder Rate Rose 31% More from May to June vs. Last Year, But Only Trump Thinks That Had Anything to Do with the Peaceful Protests

From the New York Times news section : In the Wake of Covid-19 Lockdowns , a Troubling Surge in Homicides … The onset of warm weather nearly always brings with it a spike in violent crime , but with much of the country emerging from weeks of lockdown from the coronavirus , the increase this year has been much steeper than usual .
Across 20 major cities , the murder rate at the end of June was on average 37 percent higher than it was at the end of May , according to Richard Rosenfeld , a criminologist at the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ over the same period a year ago was just 6 percent .
So , if the expected increase in June over May was 6 , but it turned out to be 37 % in 2020 , then then unexpected increase was 31 % .
Did anything happen in late May , such as , oh , say , the death in police custody of George Floyd on Memorial Day , setting off the celebrated Peaceful Protests ?
… Nationally , crime remains at or near a generational low , and experts caution against @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
But President Trump has used the rising homicide numbers to paint Democratic-led cities as out of control and to blame protests against police brutality that broke out after the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in late May .
… Criminologists dispute the president ’ s suggestion that the increase is tied to any pullback by the police in response to criticism or defunding efforts , and fluctuations in the crime rate are notoriously hard to explain .
In many cities , the murder rate was on the rise before the pandemic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ coincided with the start of social distancing , as measured by mobile phone records , according to a database compiled by David Abrams , an economist at the University of Pennsylvania law school .
Listen up , people : Crime is DOWN .
( Except for the most serious and best-counted crime , murder , which was up 31 % in June .
But criminologists dispute that that has anything whatsoever to do with the immense outpouring of anti-police and anti-white rhetoric in the mainstream press since Memorial Day .
Only Trump might @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ) … Much of the violence in Kansas City has had little rhyme or reason , often stemming from petty arguments that boil over .
The short fuses may indicate restlessness and anger , criminologists and law enforcement officials said .
… Spontaneous , one-on-one beefs have replaced gang feuds as a driver of shootings , said Maj. Greg Volker of the Kansas City Police Department .
“ If people could settle an argument without having to resort to shooting , violence would reduce , ” he said .
It ’ s almost @ @ @ @ @ @ @ about how they ought to feel angry increases black anger .

From the New York Times news section:
In the Wake of Covid-19 Lockdowns, a Troubling Surge in Homicides By John Eligon, Shaila Dewan and Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs
Published Aug. 11, 2020 … The onset of warm weather nearly always brings with it a spike in violent crime, but with much of the country emerging from weeks of lockdown from the coronavirus, the increase this year has been much steeper than usual. Across 20 major cities, the murder rate at the end of June was on average 37 percent higher than it was at the end of May, according to Richard Rosenfeld, a criminologist at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. The increase over the same period a year ago was just 6 percent.
So, if the expected increase in June over May was 6, but it turned out to be 37% in 2020, then the unexpected increase was 31%.
Did anything happen in late May, such as, oh, say, the death in police custody of George Floyd on Memorial Day, setting off the celebrated Peaceful Protests?
… Nationally, crime remains at or near a generational low, and experts caution against drawing conclusions from just a few months. But President Trump has used the rising homicide numbers to paint Democratic-led cities as out of control and to blame protests against police brutality that broke out after the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in late May. … Criminologists dispute the president’s suggestion that the increase is tied to any pullback by the police in response to criticism or defunding efforts, and fluctuations in the crime rate are notoriously hard to explain. In many cities, the murder rate was on the rise before the pandemic, and a steep decline in arrests coincided with the start of social distancing, as measured by mobile phone records, according to a database compiled by David Abrams, an economist at the University of Pennsylvania law school.
Listen up, people: Crime is DOWN. (Except for the most serious and best-counted crime, murder, which was up 31% in June. But criminologists dispute that that has anything whatsoever to do with the immense outpouring of anti-police and anti-white rhetoric in the mainstream press since Memorial Day. Only Trump might suspect there’s a connection.)
… Much of the violence in Kansas City has had little rhyme or reason, often stemming from petty arguments that boil over. The short fuses may indicate restlessness and anger, criminologists and law enforcement officials said.
… Spontaneous, one-on-one beefs have replaced gang feuds as a driver of shootings, said Maj. Greg Volker of the Kansas City Police Department. “If people could settle an argument without having to resort to shooting, violence would reduce,” he said.
It’s almost as if the media lecturing blacks relentlessly about how they ought to feel angry increases black anger.
[Comment at Unz.com]


vdare--2020-08-16--Kammer's LOSING CONTROL: The Bankruptcy Of Politically Correct Immigration Patriotism

Jerry Kammer is one of those self-identified liberal journalists who combine support for reducing the total number of immigrants with prim opposition to distinguishing between more and less desirable kinds of immigrants He has just written a book : Losing Control : How a Left-Right Coalition Blocked Immigration Reform And Provoked The Backlash The Elected Trump , published by the Center for Immigration Studies ( CIS ) , where he is now a “ senior research fellow , ” his Main Stream Media career having presumably fallen victim to the “ Curse of Stein ” .
It is a useful @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it also illustrates the utter bankruptcy of Kammer/ CIS ’ attempt to sell a Politically Correct immigration patriotism .
Kammer started out as a Mexico correspondent for the Arizona Republic in 1986 , where he reported on the lives of Mexican workers in the border factories known as maquiladoras .
In 2000 , the newspaper reassigned him to Washington , DC , where , he writes , “ my education in the nitty gritty of immigration politics at the national level began.
” Attending a National Immigration Forum dinner , he listened as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and business interests cheerfully agreed on the need to import and legalize as many foreign workers as possible , to the obvious detriment of Americans ’ wages .
He writes : So in 2002 , Kammer says he jumped at the opportunity to work the immigration and border beat for the Copley News service , a chain whose flagship paper was the San Diego Union-Tribune : Kammer was realistic enough to see that America could not absorb all the millions who might want to come .
He also saw that emigration served as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s corrupt ruling class , which might otherwise have to make concessions to popular discontent .
In 2009 , Kammer moved to the Center for Immigration Studies ( CIS ) , whose researchers he had often interviewed for stories : Kammer emphasizes that an excessive number of immigrants makes assimilation more difficult , threatens America ’ s natural environment , lowers the wages of our most economically vulnerable fellow-citizens , and places unfair and often unmanageable strains on hospitals , schools , courts .
He quotes a 1913 satirical sketch of the perfect @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s farmers : While such ideal beings are not to be found in our fallen world , the closest approach to them is probably the illegal immigrant from Mexico .
As Pres .
Truman pointed out seventy years ago , “ they live always under the threat of exposure of deportation ; they are unable , therefore , to protest or to protect themselves.
” [ Special Message to the Congress on the Employment of Agricultural Workers from Mexico July 13 , 1951 ] Yet in 1952 , when Congress approved a bill @ @ @ @ @ @ @ alien a felony , Texas congressman Lloyd M. Bentsen ( then representing Texas ’ s 15th District as a Yellow Dog Democrat ) was able to attach a proviso that hiring was not a form of harboring : the only guilty party in such a transaction was the worker !
An absence of effective employer sanctions has remained to this day the Achilles ’ Heel of all efforts to deter illegal entry .
The number of illegals arrested at the Southern border began increasing dramatically in the 1970s .
Shortly after Ronald Reagan @ @ @ @ @ @ @ combining a long-overdue legal prohibition on hiring illegals with an Amnesty for those who had been in the US long enough to become established .
This resulted in 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act ( IRCA ) .
IRCA ’ s central flaw was that employers were required to accept any document that “ reasonably appears on its face to be genuine ” as proof of the bearer ’ s right to work in the US .
All attempts to require a more reliable verification system were met with cries that this would @ @ @ @ @ @ @ state .
Indeed , employers who voluntarily insisted on more convincing documentation left themselves vulnerable to racial discrimination lawsuits .
The predictable consequence was a lucrative trade in phony documents .
Kammer quotes a 1988 LA Times investigative report : “ Many [ employers ] acknowledge that they knowingly accept questionable documents , while others are ignoring the law ’ s requirements altogether.
” Word quickly spread that workplace enforcement presented little risk , and America ’ s illegal immigrant population grew from 3.5 million to 12 million or more .
As Kammer @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that there can not ever be any downside to immigration : But he found only “ ritualistic invocations of the blessings of unrestricted immigration.
” Losing Control also features valuable chapters documenting organized labor ’ s abandonment of native American workers , the Sierra Club ’ s abandonment of the population issue , and the rift between hard-pressed black workers and their political leaders whose primary concern is to protect the rainbow coalition against Whitey .
But Kammer is totally unwilling to consider is that not all groups are equally likely , statistically @ @ @ @ @ @ @ can establish successful and productive lives here .
He describes the Immigration Act of 1924 , for example , as “ blatantly discriminatory ” for allowing more arrivals from Europe than from Timbuktu .
This is a common criticism , but it is wrong .
As a general rule , Americans have always favored the immigration of more people like themselves .
Most Lower Slobovian Americans , in other words , would support increased immigration from Lower Slobovia while remaining indifferent or hostile to increases involving other groups .
Such is human nature @ @ @ @ @ @ @ off ethnic conflict over immigration by basing the national quotas it instituted on the percentage of each group in the existing American population .
The legislation was neutral in regard to the country ’ s ethnic mix , without meaning to imply that there was anything perfect about that mix per se .
Congress ’ s aim was precisely to avoid favoritism —in other words , discrimination—between our country ’ s ethnic groups .
Of course , since the ethnic mix of America was different from that of the planet as a whole @ @ @ @ @ @ @ countries by taking more from Europe and fewer from New Guinea .
You can refuse to play favorites either among ethnic groups already present in the US or among sending countries .
But you can not logically practice non-discrimination in both areas .
But by disregarding the ethnic interests of America ’ s existing inhabitants , the 1965 Immigration Act has in effect perpetrated a demographic coup against our country ’ s historical ethnic core .
Today , any immigration proposal that left our country ’ s already much reduced European-American majority intact @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
But that is because the outrage mob wants to reduce the numbers and influence of legacy Americans .
If that is not “ racial discrimination , ” what is ?
And this raises the basic tactic that immigration enthusiasts have employed against their opponents .
Kammer actually came across one Arizona political consultant , a certain Alfredo Gutierrez , who happily spelled it out : Thus I did not expect Kammer to be able to teach me anything new about the Southern Poverty Law Center , but he has tracked down someone @ @ @ @ @ @ @ declare the notoriously anodyne Beltway herbivore Federation for American Immigration Reform ( FAIR ) a “ Hate Group.
” ( VDARE.com , being more effective , was named an $ PLC “ Hate Group ” three years earlier , in 2004 ) .
This turns out to have been a concerted campaign planned months in advance , with the $ PLC acting as both judge and prosecutor .
In October , 2007 , the Center for American Progress sponsored a meeting in Washington , DC between representatives of the National Council of La @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and Education Fund ( MALDEF ) , the National Immigration Forum , and the SPLC ’ s Mark Potok and Heidi Beirich : This is a central SPLC tactic : posing as disinterested “ experts ” or “ monitors ” of extremist groups gains them moral authority for what in reality is political thuggery against anyone they dislike .
As Mark Potok acknowledged in an unguarded moment : “ Our aim is to destroy these groups.
” [ A Look at `` Homegrown Terror '' CNN , January 21 , 2005 ] Of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for many years without applying the incendiary “ Hate Group ” label to them .
They needed some pretext , however flimsy , for doing so : Not a word about Potok ’ s own conspiring with the Center for American Progress .
The “ FAIR officials ” turned out to be just one man : Jack Martin , a communications officer who often conducted low-level meetings with visitors from abroad .
“ I ’ ve met with officials from Communist China , ” he explained to Kammer , “ and that doesn @ @ @ @ @ @ @ communist.
” The new “ Hate Group ” designation was announced in December , 2007 , under the headline FAIR : Crossing the Rubicon of Hate .
The National Council of La Raza quickly made it the centerpiece of a national “ We Can Stop the Hate ” advertising campaign .
It cited the SPLC as an independent authority , and only those who studied the fine print on their website discovered that the SPLC was itself allied with the campaign .
Among articles reporting the story , Kammer reports , Which is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ twice refers to VDARE.com in his book as “ white nationalist , ” completely ignoring VDARE.com ’ s careful debunking of the charge .
And he utterly fails to answer VDARE.com ’ s point that , for example , when he parricidally triangulated against CIS founder John Tanton in a 2010 presentation , he was simply validating the Left ’ s “ devil terms.
” Instead , Kammer harrumphs that VDARE.com accused him of Well , boo hoo !
Needless to say , this stupid and cowardly attempt to throw braver and more @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to the wolves has not prevented Kammer ’ s CIS from being designated an SPLC “ Hate Group , ” in 2017 .
But , hey , Kammer himself was recently allowed to publish an Op-Ed in the New York Times !
…although only because he conceded the case for Amnesty—and even triangulated against CIS , his own employer .
The plain fact is that the greatest electoral victory that immigration patriotism has ever had ( regardless of how effective its implementation has been ) was Donald J. Trump ’ s election in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ campaigned on American nationalism and implicit “ white identity ” .
Politically Correct restrictionists like Kammer , who even in this book refers to Trump ’ s “ ugly xenophobia , ” opposed him every step of the way and still haven ’ t got the message .
Kammer even attacked Ann Coulter ’ s anti-immigration best-seller Adios America as “ crude propaganda , ” although it provided Trump ’ s killer line about “ Mexican rapists , ” perhaps the most successful campaign kick-off in American political history .
And Coulter has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s 1992 National Review ( ! )
cover story Time To Rethink Immigration ?
opened her eyes to the issue .
Kammer ’ s book title suggests that liberals should worry about the backlash that elected Trump .
But it is obvious that they simply propose to repress it .
Ironically , Kammer ’ s cowardice is itself contributing to that repression .
Roger Devlin [ Email him ] is a contributing editor to The Occidental Quarterly and the author of Sexual Utopia in Power : The Feminist Revolt Against Civilization .

frogerdevlin@verizon.net (F. Roger Devlin)

Jerry Kammer is one of those self-identified liberal journalists who combine support for reducing the total number of immigrants with prim opposition to distinguishing between more and less desirable kinds of immigrants He has just written a book: Losing Control: How a Left-Right Coalition Blocked Immigration Reform And Provoked The Backlash That Elected Trump, published by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), where he is now a “senior research fellow,” his Main Stream Media career having presumably fallen victim to the “Curse of Stein”. It is a useful history and contains original material. But it also illustrates the utter bankruptcy of Kammer/CIS’ attempt to sell a Politically Correct immigration patriotism.
Kammer started out as a Mexico correspondent for the Arizona Republic in 1986, where he reported on the lives of Mexican workers in the border factories known as maquiladoras. In 2000, the newspaper reassigned him to Washington, DC, where, he writes, “my education in the nitty gritty of immigration politics at the national level began.” Attending a National Immigration Forum dinner, he listened as an odd combination of immigrant rights activists and business interests cheerfully agreed on the need to import and legalize as many foreign workers as possible, to the obvious detriment of Americans’ wages. He writes:
Who, I wondered, was lobbying for the American workers competing with the new arrivals? The answer, I learned, was no one. As the former labor secretary Robert Reich once put it, “There’s no National Association of the Working Poor. There’s no special interest lobbying group working on behalf of people trying desperately to find and keep jobs.”
So in 2002, Kammer says he jumped at the opportunity to work the immigration and border beat for the Copley News service, a chain whose flagship paper was the San Diego Union-Tribune:
From the Copley office in Washington’s National Press Building, I traveled widely in the Southwest and across Mexico. Nearly everyone I met had relatives in the US, and most of the young men talked of joining them.
Kammer was realistic enough to see that America could not absorb all the millions who might want to come. He also saw that emigration served as a safety valve for Latin America’s corrupt ruling class, which might otherwise have to make concessions to popular discontent.
In 2009, Kammer moved to the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), whose researchers he had often interviewed for stories:
While I thought some of CIS’s positions were too hard line, I respected its work, which featured reports from a wide range of experts, including several who identified as liberal restrictionists. I believed that CIS played a valuable role as immigration skeptic [and] provided a valuable counterweight to the enormously bigger expansionist lobby.
Kammer emphasizes that an excessive number of immigrants makes assimilation more difficult, threatens America’s natural environment, lowers the wages of our most economically vulnerable fellow-citizens, and places unfair and often unmanageable strains on hospitals, schools, courts. He quotes a 1913 satirical sketch of the perfect field as seen by California’s farmers:
The supreme qualities of the laborer are that he shall work cheap and hard, eat little and drink nothing, belong to no union, have no ambitions and present no human problems. Particularly, he should appear from nowhere when we need him, put up with what accommodations he finds, and then disappear . . . until we need him again.
While such ideal beings are not to be found in our fallen world, the closest approach to them is probably the illegal immigrant from Mexico. As Pres. Truman pointed out seventy years ago, “they live always under the threat of exposure of deportation; they are unable, therefore, to protest or to protect themselves” [Special Message to the Congress on the Employment of Agricultural Workers from Mexico July 13, 1951].
Yet in 1952, when Congress approved a bill to make the harboring of any illegal alien a felony, Texas congressman Lloyd M. Bentsen (then representing Texas’s 15th District as a Yellow Dog Democrat) was able to attach a proviso that hiring was not a form of harboring: the only guilty party in such a transaction was the worker! An absence of effective employer sanctions has remained to this day the Achilles’ Heel of all efforts to deter illegal entry.
The number of illegals arrested at the Southern border began increasing dramatically in the 1970s. Shortly after Ronald Reagan became president, a congressional committee recommended combining a long-overdue legal prohibition on hiring illegals with an Amnesty for those who had been in the US long enough to become established. This resulted in 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA).
IRCA’s central flaw was that employers were required to accept any document that “reasonably appears on its face to be genuine” as proof of the bearer’s right to work in the US. All attempts to require a more reliable verification system were met with cries that this would lead to racial discrimination and/or a police state. Indeed, employers who voluntarily insisted on more convincing documentation left themselves vulnerable to racial discrimination lawsuits. The predictable consequence was a lucrative trade in phony documents. Kammer quotes a 1988 LA Times investigative report: “Many [employers] acknowledge that they knowingly accept questionable documents, while others are ignoring the law’s requirements altogether.”
Word quickly spread that workplace enforcement presented little risk, and America’s illegal immigrant population grew from 3.5 million to 12 million or more.
As Kammer points out, many liberals simply assume that there cannot ever be any downside to immigration:
I searched in vain through [the Carnegie Foundation’s] grants’ databases, reports, and public pronouncements, for some recognition that mass immigration has created both winners and losers…
But he found only “ritualistic invocations of the blessings of unrestricted immigration.”
Losing Control also features valuable chapters documenting organized labor’s abandonment of native American workers, the Sierra Club’s abandonment of the population issue, and the rift between hard-pressed black workers and their political leaders whose primary concern is to protect the rainbow coalition against Whitey.
But Kammer is totally unwilling to consider is that not all groups are equally likely, statistically speaking, to send America immigrants who can establish successful and productive lives here. He describes the Immigration Act of 1924, for example, as “blatantly discriminatory” for allowing more arrivals from Europe than from Timbuktu.
This is a common criticism, but it is wrong. As a general rule, Americans have always favored the immigration of more people like themselves. Most Lower Slobovian Americans, in other words, would support increased immigration from Lower Slobovia while remaining indifferent or hostile to increases involving other groups. Such is human nature. The 1924 Act sought to head off ethnic conflict over immigration by basing the national quotas it instituted on the percentage of each group in the existing American population.
The legislation was neutral in regard to the country’s ethnic mix, without meaning to imply that there was anything perfect about that mix per se Congress’s aim was precisely to avoid favoritism—in other words, discrimination—between our country’s ethnic groups.
Of course, since the ethnic mix of America was different from that of the planet as a whole, this necessarily involved discriminating between sending countries by taking more from Europe and fewer from New Guinea. You can refuse to play favorites either among ethnic groups already present in the US or among sending countries. But you cannot logically practice non-discrimination in both areas.
But by disregarding the ethnic interests of America’s existing inhabitants, the 1965 Immigration Act has in effect perpetrated a demographic coup against our country’s historical ethnic core. Today, any immigration proposal that left our country’s already much reduced European-American majority intact would be met with howls of outrage. But that is because the outrage mob wants to reduce the numbers and influence of legacy Americans. If that is not “racial discrimination,” what is?
And this raises the basic tactic that immigration enthusiasts have employed against their opponents. Kammer actually came across one Arizona political consultant, a certain Alfredo Gutierrez, who happily spelled it out:
We call things racism just to get attention. We reduce complicated problems to racism, not because it is racism, but because it works.
Thus I did not expect Kammer to be able to teach me anything new about the Southern Poverty Law Center, but he has tracked down someone with inside information about its decision to declare the notoriously anodyne Beltway herbivore Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) a “Hate Group.” (VDARE.com, being more effective, was named an $PLC “Hate Group” three years earlier, in 2004.) This turns out to have been a concerted campaign planned months in advance, with the $PLC acting as both judge and prosecutor.
In October, 2007, the Center for American Progress sponsored a meeting in Washington, DC between representatives of the National Council of La Raza, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF), the National Immigration Forum, and the SPLC’s Mark Potok and Heidi Beirich:
Potok and Beirich proposed a strategy to target [FAIR]. By labeling [them] a hate group and mounting a campaign to spread the word, they said, they could badly damage FAIR. “We’ll take them out,” they promised. They were received like heroes.
This is a central SPLC tactic: Posing as disinterested “experts” or “monitors” of extremist groups gains them moral authority for what in reality is political thuggery against anyone they dislike. As Mark Potok acknowledged in an unguarded moment: “Our aim is to destroy these groups” [ A Look at "Homegrown Terror" CNN, January 21, 2005].
Of course, the SPLC had criticized FAIR for many years without applying the incendiary “Hate Group” label to them. They needed some pretext, however flimsy, for doing so:
Not a word about Potok’s own conspiring with the Center for American Progress. The “FAIR officials” turned out to be just one man: Jack Martin, a communications officer who often conducted low-level meetings with visitors from abroad. “I’ve met with officials from Communist China,” he explained to Kammer, “and that doesn’t mean I’m a communist.”
The new “Hate Group” designation was announced in December, 2007, under the headline FAIR: Crossing the Rubicon of Hate. The National Council of La Raza quickly made it the centerpiece of a national “We Can Stop the Hate” advertising campaign. It cited the SPLC as an independent authority, and only those who studied the fine print on their website discovered that the SPLC was itself allied with the campaign. Among articles reporting the story, Kammer reports,
…not one examined Potok’s justification for the designation. Not one identified the SPLC as an ally of the campaign to attack FAIR. Most of the reporting added no context beyond a denial from FAIR, which found itself in the awkward position of the man who is asked if he has stopped beating his wife.
Which is all very well, but Kammer himself twice refers to VDARE.com in his book as “white nationalist,” completely ignoring VDARE.com’s careful debunking of the charge. And he utterly fails to answer VDARE.com’s point that, for example, when he parricidally triangulated against CIS founder John Tanton in a 2010 presentation, he was simply validating the Left’s “devil terms.”
Instead, Kammer harrumphs that VDARE.com accused him of
“undermining the patriotic struggle.” This perverse notion of patriotism is a big problem at the fringes of contemporary restrictionism. It has been the material for more broad-brush smears of those of us whose efforts to restrict immigration have nothing to do with repugnant notions of white identity and everything to do with our conviction that for immigration to be successful it must be limited.
Well, boo hoo! Needless to say, this stupid and cowardly attempt to throw braver and more incisive immigration patriots off the sled and to the wolves has not prevented Kammer’s CIS from being designated an SPLC “Hate Group,” in 2017.
But, hey, Kammer himself was recently allowed to publish an Op-Ed in the New York Times!…although only because he conceded the case for Amnesty—and even triangulated against CIS, his own employer.
The plain fact is that the greatest electoral victory that immigration patriotism has ever had (regardless of how effective its implementation has been) was Donald J. Trump’s election in 2016, which occurred precisely because he campaigned on American nationalism and implicit “white identity”. Politically Correct restrictionists like Kammer, who even in this book refers to Trump’s “ugly xenophobia,” opposed him every step of the way and still haven’t got the message. Kammer even attacked Ann Coulter’s anti-immigration best-seller Adios America as “crude propaganda,” although it provided Trump’s killer line about “Mexican rapists,” perhaps the most successful campaign kick-off in American political history. And Coulter has gracefully acknowledged that VDARE.com Editor Peter Brimelow’s 1992 National Review (!) cover story Time To Rethink Immigration? opened her eyes to the issue.
Kammer’s book title suggests that liberals should worry about the backlash that elected Trump. But it is obvious that they simply propose to repress it. Ironically, Kammer’s cowardice is itself contributing to that repression.
Roger Devlin [Email him] is a contributing editor to The Occidental Quarterly and the author of Sexual Utopia in Power: The Feminist Revolt Against Civilization.


vdare--2020-08-17--The Effects of 50+ Years of Systemic Anti-Whiteism

It ’ s almost as if American society ’ s 50+ years of Systemic Anti-Whiteism since the 1960s , by @ @ @ @ @ deserve to be angry , tends to make them angrier than they really , truly @ @ @ @ @ see the suggestion that this was filmed in a Tim Horton ’ s in Canada @ @ @

Tweet deleted.
It’s almost as if American society’s 50+ years of Systemic Anti-Whiteism since the 1960s, by constantly telling blacks that they deserve to be angry, tends to make them angrier than they really, truly ought to be.
I see the suggestion that this was filmed in a Tim Horton’s in Canada, so …
[Comment at Unz.com]


vdare--2020-08-17--SALON: Why Donald Trump and Sam Harris Are So Alike

Sam Harris and Donald Trump : They ’ re completely different … yet very much alike Harris claims to be a defender of intellectual freedom — but has become a super-spreader of racist disinformation … He opted not to submit articles to media outlets that imposed some editorial control over what they publish .
Instead , he created a small media empire that enabled him to say whatever he wants , whether or not the message is misleading , the claims are factually erroneous , the reasoning is fallacious and so on .
In other words , he figured out @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to opine as much as he wants about topics he doesn ’ t understand without peer-review , editorial oversight or other quality-control measures .
Indeed , so far as I can tell , Harris has become one of the greatest sources of misinformation on social justice issues in the United States today .
His contribution to scientific racism — his boosting the visibility of claims like Black people are almost certainly dumber than white people for genetic reasons — will no doubt be one of his greatest , and darkest , legacies .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ ago .
I was in Sweden for a two-month-long workshop .
During lunch one day I was speaking to a professor at the local university and the uncomfortable topic of race and IQ came up .
He told me that he has come to embrace ( in his words ) the “ racist view , ” according to which white people are intellectually superior to Black people because of evolution .
He further told me that it is only once one accepts this view that white folks can be genuinely empathetic toward Black @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that “ they can ’ t help it , ” we can take on the burden of helping them out .
Over the course of an excruciating two hours ( in every moment of which I wanted to defenestrate myself ) , I explained the problems with “ IQ ” as a metric of intelligence and went over some of the data about how horrifically widespread heavy-metal poisoning and malnutrition is in poorer regions of the world .
Malnutrition and heavy-metal poisoning is why African-Americans , such as LeBron James and Zion Williamson @ @ @ @ @ @ @ scrawny .
The point here is this : Literally the first thing I asked when he explained his `` racist view '' was , `` Why do you think that ? ''
And his response was : `` Well , I mean , listen to Sam Harris .
Listen to his interview with Charles Murray .
Listen to the points that he made in his podcast interview with Josh Zepps . ''
Indeed , so far as I know , the Zepps podcast was Harris 's most explicit statement that affirmed his racist @ @ @ @ @ @ @ : And as bad luck would have it , but as you absolutely predict on the basis of just sheer biology , different populations of people , different racial groups , different ethnicities , different groups of people who have been historically isolated from one another geographically , test differently in terms of their average on this measure of cognitive function .
So if you ’ re gon na give the Japanese and the Ashkenazi Jews and African Americans and Hawaiians … you ’ re gon na take populations who differ genetically — @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that ’ s not debatable — and you give them IQ tests , it would be a miracle if every single population had the exact same mean IQ .
And African Americans come out about a standard deviation lower than white Americans .
A standard deviation for IQ is about 15 points .
So , if it ’ s normed to the general population , predominantly white population for an average of 100 , the average in the African American community has been around 85 .
There is simply no other interpretation of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dumber.
” What ’ s worse is that Harris presents this as if it ’ s the unavoidable , obviously true inference from the indisputable facts .
This is where the Trumpian strategy of avoiding peer-review , editorial oversight , and quality control comes into the picture with force : There are profoundly strong reasons for rejecting all of this .
Yet Harris ’ adoring audience of mostly white men ( including a lot of Trump supporters ) would never know this listening to him .
He ’ s done everything possible not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ — to cancel , if you will — dissenting voices .
In contrasters , the dissenters who push much more scientific explanations , like that the universe is pervaded by an unseeable , unmeasurable , unfalsifiable substance known as Systemic Racism must hold out from their lonely islands of refuge from combined might of Sam Harris and Charles Murray at their major media , academic , and NGO sinecures .
Seriously … Briefly , the scientific evidence is overwhelming that at present , African-Americans on average are not as intelligent as non-black Americans @ @ @ @ @ @ @ standard as sense as the traits that can be measured with pencil and paper cognitive problems that correlate with school and job performance .
So far , no good theoretical reasons have been put forward for why this noticeable but not immense gap in cognitive abilities could not possible be genetic in sizable measure .
On the other hand , final proof that genes do play a role in The Gap hasn ’ t arrived yet .
The discovery of the existence of the Flynn Effect several decades ago shows that these can @ @ @ @ @ @ @ But the infrastructure that might be able to deliver that proof is being assembled for other purposes .
I would suggest that public intellectuals who are ill-equipped to engage in the actual scientific research should be thinking about two questions : First , is there a more persuasive theory for explaining African-American cognitive underachievement in 2020 than merely shouting ever-louder about the events of the ever-receding past such as Emmett Till and redlining ?
In reality , of course , progressives have dominated all aspects of our culture when it comes to race @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the failure of blacks to catch up with , say , Mexican-Americans in 2020 have less to do with 1619 and more to do with the conventional wisdom that emerged in , say , 1969 and has only grown more dogmatic since then .
Perhaps blacks in America do mediocre in 2020 less because they were oppressed in 1619 than because they were coddled in 2019 ?
What could we change in 21st Century American culture to improve the behavior of African-Americans so that they don ’ t commit so many murders and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Secondly , public intellectuals should be pondering how best to prepare the public for the likely deluge of scientific discoveries that will completely undermine most of the propaganda of recent decades .
Rather than doubling down on their old favorite — “ The Bell Curve couldn ’ t possibly be scientifically true because that would mean … HITLER WAS RIGHT !
” —platformed public intellectuals should be thinking about how to prepare for their graceful retreats .
For example , admitting that even if Charles Murray turned out to be right , that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Poland .

From Salon:
Sam Harris and Donald Trump: They’re completely different … yet very much alike Harris claims to be a defender of intellectual freedom — but has become a super-spreader of racist disinformation PHIL TORRES
AUGUST 16, 2020 10:00AM (UTC) Sam Harris is a lot like Donald Trump. … He opted not to submit articles to media outlets that imposed some editorial control over what they publish. Instead, he created a small media empire that enabled him to say whatever he wants, whether or not the message is misleading, the claims are factually erroneous, the reasoning is fallacious and so on. In other words, he figured out a way to bypass intellectual accountability — to opine as much as he wants about topics he doesn’t understand without peer-review, editorial oversight or other quality-control measures. … Indeed, so far as I can tell, Harris has become one of the greatest sources of misinformation on social justice issues in the United States today. His contribution to scientific racism — his boosting the visibility of claims like Black people are almost certainly dumber than white people for genetic reasons — will no doubt be one of his greatest, and darkest, legacies. Consider this anecdote from a few years ago. I was in Sweden for a two-month-long workshop. During lunch one day I was speaking to a professor at the local university and the uncomfortable topic of race and IQ came up. He told me that he has come to embrace (in his words) the “racist view,” according to which white people are intellectually superior to Black people because of evolution. He further told me that it is only once one accepts this view that white folks can be genuinely empathetic toward Black people. That is, by recognizing that “they can’t help it,” we can take on the burden of helping them out. Over the course of an excruciating two hours (in every moment of which I wanted to defenestrate myself), I explained the problems with “IQ” as a metric of intelligence and went over some of the data about how horrifically widespread heavy-metal poisoning and malnutrition is in poorer regions of the world.
Malnutrition and heavy-metal poisoning is why African-Americans, such as LeBron James and Zion Williamson, tend to be so short and scrawny.
By the very end, he told me that I had nearly talked him out of the “racist view.”
So there!
The point here is this: Literally the first thing I asked when he explained his "racist view" was, "Why do you think that?" And his response was: "Well, I mean, listen to Sam Harris. Listen to his interview with Charles Murray. Listen to the points that he made in his podcast interview with Josh Zepps." Indeed, so far as I know, the Zepps podcast was Harris's most explicit statement that affirmed his racist convictions. To quote him in full: And as bad luck would have it, but as you absolutely predict on the basis of just sheer biology, different populations of people, different racial groups, different ethnicities, different groups of people who have been historically isolated from one another geographically, test differently in terms of their average on this measure of cognitive function. So if you’re gonna give the Japanese and the Ashkenazi Jews and African Americans and Hawaiians … you’re gonna take populations who differ genetically — and we know they differ genetically, that’s not debatable — and you give them IQ tests, it would be a miracle if every single population had the exact same mean IQ. And African Americans come out about a standard deviation lower than white Americans. A standard deviation for IQ is about 15 points. So, if it’s normed to the general population, predominantly white population for an average of 100, the average in the African American community has been around 85.
There is simply no other interpretation of this than “Black people are genetically dumber.” What’s worse is that Harris presents this as if it’s the unavoidable, obviously true inference from the indisputable facts. This is where the Trumpian strategy of avoiding peer-review, editorial oversight, and quality control comes into the picture with force: There are profoundly strong reasons for rejecting all of this. Yet Harris’ adoring audience of mostly white men (including a lot of Trump supporters) would never know this listening to him. He’s done everything possible not to foster debate but to edit out — to cancel, if you will — dissenting voices.
In contrast, the dissenters who push much more scientific explanations, like that the universe is pervaded by an unseeable, unmeasurable, unfalsifiable substance known as Systemic Racism, must hold out from their lonely islands of refuge from combined might of Sam Harris and Charles Murray at their major media, academic, and NGO sinecures.
… I worry greatly about the current zeitgeist of anti-intellectualism in our society, and for this reason I worry greatly about Harris’ influence.
Seriously … Briefly, the scientific evidence is overwhelming that at present, African-Americans on average are not as intelligent as non-black Americans, with intelligence being defined in the standard as sense as the traits that can be measured with pencil and paper cognitive problems that correlate with school and job performance.
So far, no good theoretical reasons have been put forward for why this noticeable but not immense gap in cognitive abilities could not possibly be genetic in sizable measure.
On the other hand, final proof that genes do play a role in The Gap hasn’t arrived yet. The discovery of the existence of the Flynn Effect several decades ago shows that these can be complex questions with unexpected answers.
But the infrastructure that might be able to deliver that proof is being assembled for other purposes. I would suggest that public intellectuals who are ill-equipped to engage in the actual scientific research should be thinking about two questions:
First, is there a more persuasive theory for explaining African-American cognitive underachievement in 2020 than merely shouting ever-louder about the events of the ever-receding past such as Emmett Till and redlining? In reality, of course, progressives have dominated all aspects of our culture when it comes to race for about three score years. Perhaps the failure of blacks to catch up with, say, Mexican-Americans in 2020 has less to do with 1619 and more to do with the conventional wisdom that emerged in, say, 1969 and has only grown more dogmatic since then. Perhaps blacks' performance in America is mediocre in 2020 less because they were oppressed in 1619 than because they were coddled in 2019?
What could we change in 21st Century American culture to improve the behavior of African-Americans so that they don’t commit so many murders and so they try harder in school?
Secondly, public intellectuals should be pondering how best to prepare the public for the likely deluge of scientific discoveries that will completely undermine most of the propaganda of recent decades. Rather than doubling down on their old favorite — “The Bell Curve couldn’t possibly be scientifically true because that would mean … HITLER WAS RIGHT!”—platformed public intellectuals should be thinking about how to prepare for their graceful retreats. For example, admitting that even if Charles Murray turned out to be right, that doesn’t mean we should invade Poland.