April 10, 2012
John Derbyshire
Unlike Rich Lowry’s predictably PC response to John Derbyshire’s controversial article on what parents should tell their kids about race, I was less than “appalled” by it. John’s judgments are not entirely mine, and unlike my good friend I probably would stop (and I hope my grown-up children would stop) for a black person stranded on a highway who didn”t look quite like “one of the boyz from the hood.” But John’s article was a response to numerous rants by black celebrities in the wake of the Trayvon Martin shooting. These anti-white invectives, proudly featured in TIME, The New York Times, and other establishment fixtures, were also directed toward the young and emphasized the persistence of white “prejudices.” In one passage particularly lacking in self-awareness, someone named Touré explained:
Being black could turn an ordinary situation into a life-or-death moment even if you”re doing nothing wrong.
Given the glaringly disproportionate number of violent crimes black youth commit each year, most often against each other, Touré and his editors should be medically treated for being delusional. What do they think is the color of violent crime? I doubt that any of John’s accusers would dwell critically on black responsibility for black crime any more than the editors of NR would feel impelled to express indignation at the statements that occasioned John’s rejoinder. A recent column by Rich Lowry affirming his agreement with Sharpton about the Trayvon Martin shooting would fit snugly into the obligatory liberal responses to this event.
I wonder whether the counter-instruction that John would bestow on his offspring would be an ultimately quixotic gesture. Most college students I encounter have had their heads so stuffed with misrepresentations of reality that mommy and daddy would have to use blowtorches to get the embedded nonsense off their brains. But these brain-damaged youths” parents seem to have been socialized in the same counterfactual way. This week I learned that throngs of people in nearby Lancaster and Harrisburg had put on hoods to express solidarity with Trayvon Martin”or perhaps with Reverends Jackson and Sharpton. These esteemed clerics with their media buddies are busily reminding us of the horrendous crime committed against a black youth by a nonblack Latino they”re calling a “white Hispanic.” The same celebrities also consistently underplay the most widespread source of violent crime. Perhaps the black thugs who in January 2007 raped, mutilated, and murdered a white couple in Knoxville were also wearing hoods. The gruesome Knoxville murders and numerous other violent crimes blacks commit against whites remain underreported. If these crimes were treated in the same way as Martin’s shooting, The Atlantic, New York Daily News, Guardian, and all the other leftist publications denouncing my friend’s “disgusting rant on race” would eagerly print his dispassionately presented conclusions.
