Now is the time at SDA when we juxtapose!
Rich Lowry, October 21, 2010 – The Shameful Firing of Juan Williams
Rich Lowry, April 7, 2012 – Derb is effectively using our name to get more oxygen for views with which we’d never associate ourselves otherwise. So there has to be a parting of the ways.
Jeff Goldstein:
Eric Holder famously noted that we’re afraid to talk about race in this country. Derbyshire proved he, at least, isn’t. And his comrades are crawling over themselves to gain distance.
And the reason is, Holder, the left, the “pragmatic” right — they don’t really want to talk about such things. They only want to talk about the need to talk about such things, while simultaneously demonizing any real attempts to do so. An easier way to bank some cheap grace you won’t find in a PC-soaked society.
Holmwood >
Very well said.
It’s great to hear heartfelt truth from a black perspective and not some rhetorical Liberal victimized BS on race.
Remember folks Derbyshire was responding to the self serving “black talk” rhetoric. Some of it went farther than the core “white talk” but I suspect it was all true. Any white parent who doesn’t tell his kids to stay out of black neighborhoods in big American cities is negligent. Any black parent who fails to tell his son not to beat up white people is negligent. They might be armed. With the Canada I grew up in, black people were novel enough that white people lined up to be their friends.
Holmwood – I’m not black but I had exactly the same take on his column.
I assume Derb has some black friends, but he will find that having taken his own advice here will be of no benefit to him now that he is under the gun. So that piece of advice was both useless and offensive.
But then it mirrors exactly the theory and practice of the entire diversity/affirmative action industry. What you found offensive about Derb’s advice is also the very essence of Harvard’s admission program, for example.
“I think Lowry is trying not to hand Obama a campaign issue.”
How did that work out for McCain?
“Mobs of black people can just as racist, ignorant, evil and vicious as any group of lynching klansmen.”
It isn’t the “mobs” that is the problem. And it isn’t necessarily that black people target white people or other races (but sometimes they do).
“the rate of incarceration for white Connecticut residents in 2005 was 211 per 100,000 people; for black residents it was 2,532 per 100,000.”
“According to Justice Department data, in 2006 black men were being incarcerated at a rate of 3,042 per 100,000. This data also indicated that
1. about one in every 33 black men was a sentenced prisoner and the rate for white men was about one in every 205, for Hispanic men about one in every 79; and
2. black men represented the largest proportion of sentenced male inmates at yearend 2006 (38%); white men made up 34%; and Hispanic men, 21%.”
http://www.cga.ct.gov/2008/rpt/2008-R-0008.htm
@Knight 99 thank you. You are 100% right on ‘victimized’. But… it is a Canadian perspective, not a black one. Indeed the idea of a “black perspective” is something I’m mostly against. Granted, I did kind of walk into it by writing about “my perspective” in the opening line. But I genuinely meant that individually.
Nonetheless, I did reference where my parents were from, so doh. FacePalm on self. I adopted the very trope I dislike. Meh.
I’m saying we shouldn’t buy into the liberal memes to describe race, to slice and dice us, at least in terms of conversation and direct friendship. (In terms of finding oneself alone in a black neighbourhood? Darn right one should be as racist as a liberal and scared. I know I am).
Martin Luther King Jr, for all his many failings (and his Dad was marvelously a Republican!) had one critically correct insight: Judge people by the content of their character not the colo[u]r of their skin.
Addressing your point, most any conservative is going to appreciate (and maybe even like) this hip-hop song. Even if you hate rap, click it and listen.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhPqmJynQPU
“damn it feels good to be a victim. Another liability of the state.”
Not.
@ Posted by: Lev at April 8, 2012 10:52 AM
Took me 4 tries to get through yesterday. Overloaded I would guess. Keep trying.
Rich Lowry strikes me as a David Frum kind of conservative. When his talking head / cocktail circuit status is threatened or challenged by controversy, he opts for the PC. Based on a number of my comments not being published, the NRO venue appears to be relatively censorious.
I tend to agree with Holmwood’s take on Derb’s article.
Identity politics is highly corrosive and will only become worse the more it is skirted around in PC obfuscation. Objective reality should trump sensitivity always. Steyn’s latest analogy of the nationalization of the family is at the root of this issue whether it be Blacks in the US or the ghettos of Canada called Indian Reserves. Racial wards of the state serve as a socially destructive example of statism in general.
Holmwood >
“Indeed the idea of a “black perspective” is something I’m mostly against”.
Right on.
My point was directed at you’re “perspective” namely a self professed black one, but that doesn’t mean I thought it was in anyway un-Canadian. Quite the opposite, it was a uniquely Canadian perspective and not coming from the “Black Community” that most of us are sick of hearing from.
Your clear understanding of Liberal soft bigotry with things like Affirmative Action was music to the ears.
So, what parts of Derbyshire’s column do -you- think he deserves to lose his job over?
The fictional numbers -5%, 50%. I want facts not fictions.
It should be noted that, in addition to the welfare state, the war on drugs has done an enormous amount of damage to black America. In DC and other cities the joke is you can get arrested for the crime of ‘walking while black’.
Holmwood, reading your comments makes me realize there is a linking paragraph missing in Derbyshire’s artilce. I can see why you and every other black who refuses to be a victim would be angry.
Derbyshire is missing a paragraph that describes political correctness (the restating of fact in a manner that supports a political objective) run amok and providing the “intellectual” underpinning of so many of our elite’s policy directives.
The paragraph would observe that much of this “intellectual” underpinning denies or diminishes the truths expresseed in para’s 1 to 11 and is used by those in positions authority to justify discrimination against the “white oppressor”. With that link, his exhortation to befriend those blacks who strive to make something of themselves is explained. The ugly behaviour of befreinding black people who are IWSB does protect you from the PC elite.
But even with that kind of linking paragraph he should also tell his child that besides providing protection from the idiocy of the PC elite, being friendly with IWSB’s is the right thing to do, just like being friendly with OTHERS like you.
Let’s back off a moment. This isn’t about me, or my magical “black perspective”. Or you, or even Kate.
Let’s focus on what this should be about, namely, a shameless nominally conservative choice to “fire” a decent, intelligent and honorable man.
Someone post Rich Lowry’s email address, and let’s politely remonstrate with him. Politely and respectfully.
Ditto John Derbyshire’s address. CC him. Let him know you are on his side even if Holmwood thinks he’s a jerk!
(I jest).
What NR is doing is fundamentally wrong. It is even indecent. We, as conservatives (and I’m more a libertarian than a conservative) should not put up with it.
Send a polite email to Rich, CC’ing Derbyshire.
That is what we need to do rather than chatter amongst ourselves.
Holmwood
Bruce,
Liberals will simply ignore or reject any facts and numbers we have.
Just as it is impossible to force a person with Alzheimer to remember what he said 10 minutes ago , it is impossible to make liberals see facts no matter how hard we try.
One can only conclude liberalism is a mental disease.
In the sick mind of the average liberal our discussing facts on blacks in a comment section in a blog is just one more thing that makes blacks frustrated to the point they become violent criminals; it is the fault of the white man ALWAYS.
Liberals use the same sick logic with muslims; if we would stop saying muslims resort to violence at the drop of a hat; muslims would stop resorting to violence at the drop of a hat.
It is the fault of the white man ALWAYS.
Liberals are pushing us further into their insane world everyday, but the pressure is mounting, something somewhere is going to blow.
Note to liberals reading this; This is not a threat, it is simply an observation; everywhere a whole people has been treated unjustly, something eventually blew.
I have followed up. Here is my email to Rich Lowry:
I wrote to comments dot lowry atsign nationalreview dot com.
Rich,
I think you were utterly wrong to dump John Derbyshire. Here is the post I made on SmallDeadAnimals, a conservative Canadian website. http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/archives/019825.html#c710738
As an African-Canadian (as you Americans like to hyphenate) Canadian dude, I thought he was offensive (only in the final segments of his column) but logical and reasonable. I didn’t for a nanosecond confuse his Taki column with National Review. Seriously, you dudes are asserting that people would confuse National Review, in 2012, with a publication that would say something of importance? Please.
You assert he is trading on his National Review column? Please. Wake up. You are working hard to marginalize yourself.
I recognize I’m on thin ground given that I don’t subscribe to NR. That said, I did seek out NR in the university archives back in the day, so I’m at least a sincere reader.
Best,
Holmwood
—————————-
Write away.
@Holmwood
Lowry deserves our scorn, not a “polite email”.
“The fictional numbers -5%, 50%. I want facts not fictions.”
LAS, that is a mischaracterization, and it doesn’t answer the question about why you think a man should lose his livelyhood over an opinion. You have not bothered, yourself, to provide any figures in contradiction. The figures he provided were an estimation, and thus an opinion.
First-rate remarks, Holmwood. I hope you will consider commenting hear more often.
Cheers
And if not, perhaps you’ll consider commenting here more often.
Read in a recent Spectator, (British) that Delingpole has a new book out called “Watermelons”, green on the outside, red inside. It is of course about climategate, a word he popularized and the Club of Rome, whose membership includes the likes of the Dalai Lama, Bill Clinton, Peter Gabriel,and of course, Maurice Strong, who he claims headed for China when his involvement in the Oil for Food scandal in Iraq was revealed. He should extradited from China and charged. Could be a good read.
LAS said: “In DC and other cities the joke is you can get arrested for the crime of ‘walking while black’.”
You can get shot for standing on the wrong street corner waiting for a bus, for sure. I hadn’t heard the DC cops were too gung ho about arresting guys for nothing, they never get out of their cars.
Incidentally “driving while black” is an urban legend and has been debunked.
And you still haven’t answered the question of why Derbyshire deserves to be fired for an -opinion-. 5% to 50% of -what-? Did you even read the piece or are you just making it up as you go along?
LAS: “It should be noted that, in addition to the welfare state, the war on drugs has done an enormous amount of damage to black America.”
Well, don’t forget white meth traffickers are jailed at a really high rate as well.
“But consider that in 2006, only 5,619 crack sellers were tried federally, 4,495 of them black.
In 2006, the 5,391 sentenced federal meth defendants were 54% white, 39% Hispanic and 2% black.
No one calls the federal meth laws anti-Hispanic or anti-white.”
http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/miarticle.htm?id=4582
Bruce – “In 2006, the 5,391 sentenced federal meth defendants were 54% white, 39% Hispanic and 2% black.” Well das raciss. Affirmative Action for the meth industry!
“(In terms of finding oneself alone in a black neighbourhood? Darn right one should be as racist as a liberal and scared. I know I am).
Judge people by the content of their character not the colo[u]r of their skin.”
You don’t see the contradiction?
The “black people in a group are dangerous”? [my paraphrase, not Derb’s exact words] This is sadly and shamefully true. Mobs of black people can just as racist, ignorant, evil and vicious as any group of lynching klansmen.”
Chicken or the egg?
I grew up in New York City and was born there. Our home was three blocks from Harlem. I was told point blank not to go three blocks north. My Dad was the president of the most famous boys club in NYC for underpriveleged kids in the city. He was no racist. He knew where not to go in the city. That is all Derbyshire is saying and it’s the only advice to give your son. End of story.