Derb takes a page from Sailer
The theory about average group intelligences is fine (no nice-white-guy posturing from me); the political solution its fans want (un-libertarian race-baiting) not. (Affirmative action, no; non-discrimination in this context, yes.) At least Sailer acknowledges there are smart people in Mexico; of course most of its all-stars are the ruling élite and don’t leave. (Who else smells on Derb here the Black Legend and its implied anti-Catholicism?) Individual liberty trumps both La Raza and what little’s left of the Klan.

There is even an extreme position — I don’t hold it myself, but you sometimes see it expressed on race-realist websites — that black Americans are too few in numbers and too helplessly dependent to matter at all, and that the race issue in the U.S.A. is entirely a status contest between different groups of whites, with blacks and Hispanics as passive tokens.

I don’t myself, as I said, believe this is the whole truth; but it is some of the truth. I am speaking here of “the narcissism of small differences.” It is my experience that among white Americans of all regions and classes, feelings about black people — much less Hispanic people — in the generality are never as strong as feelings about other white groups. The passion you can hear from a liberal college professor in Massachusetts when he is talking about, say, NASCAR fans, far exceeds anything he will exhibit in regards to black people, if he ever thinks about black people at all. And vice, to some degree, versa. This is the dark lie at the heart of all the babble about “racism.”

(Jared once told me that when he speaks to mixed audiences most of the angry vituperation comes from whites. Blacks more often listen to him with interested curiosity, and come up afterwards to ask thoughtful questions. I note that Ms. Hines, his Washington Examiner interviewer, is black.)

Divisions among whites matter, too.

America’s British culture

Labels: politics