Africans and African Americans

A Tale of Two Trials: What the George Zimmerman and O.J. Simpson Verdicts Reveal About Racial Denial

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One transparent outcome of the “not guilty” verdict in the George Zimmerman trial is the racial disconnect between the average American and the nation’s powerful elites (the mass media, politicians, and “civil rights” leaders). The ever-widening gulf between racial reality and racial fantasy—the daily repetition of Black violence in contrast with the media-driven narrative of nonstop injustices of an oppressed minority—seems more pronounced in the wake of the Zimmerman verdict.

We live in an era of extreme racial denial. The nation’s media and political elites—what Joseph Sobran termed the “hive”—live in a fantasy realm that dismisses latent racial differences, an existence defined by unrealistic egalitarianism and hyper-liberalism; racial disparities are merely symptomatic of the lingering impact of slavery, racism, and discrimination. The emphasis is always on some inanimate object—“mean” streets, “gun” violence, “epidemic of violence,” “crack” cocaine, “heat waves,” “underfunding” of Head Start, the lack of upward “middle class mobility”; or the fault of law enforcement—“police brutality,” “deficient” law enforcement strategies, “racial profiling,” or “Stand Your Ground” laws.

The crux of the Zimmerman case is fundamentally about holding Blacks accountable for their own actions. The jury of six females—five Whites and one Hispanic—reached a reasonable conclusion that the defendant acted in self-defense in the fatal shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin. The evidence presented at trial countered the prosecution’s claims that Zimmerman was the aggressor, stalked Martin, initiated the altercation, and as a “wannabe” cop shot Martin—an innocent “unarmed” 17-year-old bystander. Most of the media coverage in the wake of the verdict reinforces the unfounded assumption that Trayvon Martin was innocently preyed upon—nothing more than a victim of “profiling,” who was just an “unarmed” teenager, a kid, trying to get home. This is the fantasy that our elites are hyping and one the jury simply rejected outright.

The Zimmerman jury, after a careful assessment of the evidence, concluded that Martin was the aggressor. After an initial encounter, Martin forced Zimmerman to the ground after sucker-punching him, pounded Zimmerman’s head against the concrete sidewalk, and after 45-seconds of screaming and fearing for his life, Zimmerman shot Martin to save his own life.

The verdict has produced a predictable tsunami of racial demagoguery from beltway pundits. Chris Matthews, Al Sharpton, Tavis Smiley, and Jesse Jackson have exploited the jury decision to project their own warped views about the endless suffering of Blacks from White oppression. Read more

Race Relations 101 with Ann Coulter

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Mugged: Racial Demagoguery from the Seventies to Obama
Ann Coulter
Sentinel (a division of Penguin), 2012
$26.95, 326pp.

In more ways than one, Ann Coulter stands out among “conservative” commentators. Her feisty, tart, hard-edged prose and photogenic allure — coupled with her gusto to address issues most “conservatives” deliberately avoid — have generated a loyal following among grassroots activists on the Right.

As a bestselling conservative author, Coulter’s high-profile status makes her a walking target for liberal critics. Pushing the envelope is her trademark practice, especially on cultural and social issues, which infuriates the Left. Consider: her defense of Joseph McCarthy; her admiration for the writings of the late Joseph Sobran; her claim that The Bell Curve is one of her favorite books; and her quip that her “only regret with Timothy McVeigh is that he did not go to the New York Times Building.” Not to mention her defense of the Council of Conservative Citizens, which earned her the tag “Rabid far-right commentator” from the SPLC. All of this positions Coulter in the company of Pat Buchanan well to the right of the conservative establishment. Read more

Chris Matthews: Reality Check on Racial Fantasies

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If you ever had any doubts about how out of touch with reality MSNBC’s media pundits are on race then look no further than Schlock-Meister Chris Matthews and the Chutzpah-challenged crew at MSNBC during the recent coverage of the Republican National Convention in Tampa, which includes convicted slanderer and race hustler Al Sharpton. (For a good report on Sharpton, see here.)

What was once a suspected case of cerebral hypoxia seems more like cerebral anoxia — not merely a reduction but complete lack of oxygen flow to the brain of the ever-obnoxious Matthews. MSNBC producers should keep fully stocked oxygen tanks on the set of Hardball — not that, in the final analysis, it would make much of a difference to the brain-dead political hacks at the far-Left network.

For starters, Matthews claimed that any reference to Obama’s Chicago connection was racist because it’s a code word for poor Blacks. “They keep saying Chicago … have you noticed?  They keep saying Chicago.  That’s another thing that sends that message—this guy’s helping the poor people in the bad neighborhoods, screwing us in the ‘burbs.” His guest, John Hielemann of New York Magazine completed the thought by noting there are a lot of Black people in Chicago.

The mind-boggling dishonesty reached a new delusional realm on Tuesday evening when Matthews was wound tighter than a Joan Rivers’ facelift. In an unrestrained rant on welfare—viewed by liberals view as an unmentionable topic —— Matthews tied Mitt Romney to Ronald Reagan, George Wallace and David Duke because “they all talked about welfare.” (In reality, racially aware politicians simply connected with middle class Whites on an implicit level, which reflected the negative experience of many Whites. Ronald Reagan’s campaign stops in 1980, certainly his swing through Louisville, Kentucky, would have given Matthews cardiac arrest with his appeals to White voters with themes like “welfare queens, opposition to busing and big government.) Read more

Review of Beyond Human Nature, by Jesse J. Prinz

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Jesse J. Prinz is the Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the City University of New York and an Adjunct Professor of Philosophy at the University of North Carolina. His academic specialism is the philosophy of psychology, and he has produced books and articles on emotion, moral psychology, aesthetics and consciousness. His latest book, Beyond Human Nature: How Culture and Experience Shape Our Lives, was published earlier this year. Like much of his previous work, this new book is an attack on “psychological nativism.” Prinz (who is Jewish) claims that his latest book “concerns the cultural impact on human variation” and is part “of a critique of approaches that oversell the role of biology.”[i] The Jewish ethno-political agenda behind this critique soon becomes clear when the author acknowledges his “intellectual heroes who hover silently in the background. I mention here Franz Boas, whose pioneering work in anthropology has been an inspiration to many who try to establish universal human dignity through the study of diversity.”[ii]

In arguing for the primacy of nurture over nature, Prinz devotes a significant part of his book to attempting to explain why measured racial differences in IQ can be ascribed to environmental rather than genetic factors. He believes that “The IQ controversy is an extreme example of a more general tendency to explain human abilities by appeal to biology,” and regards it as “a particularly egregious case because it legitimates biases against many subjugated groups and mistakes social injustice for biological necessity.”[iii] For Prinz “one of the great tragedies of IQ testing is that researchers have used their results to argue fallaciously that certain groups of people differ in intelligence.”[iv] Introducing his case for an environmental explanation for racial differences in IQ, he notes that

everyone agrees that intelligence can be affected by the genes. The fact that humans are smarter than dogs is clearly a consequence of our biology. Everyone also agrees that differences in human intelligence can be genetic. Some people can be congenitally retarded, and extreme forms of genius are likely to be genetically based as well. But what about the vast majority of us who lie somewhere between Einstein and Tweedledumb [note the standard invocation of the Jewish Einstein as the quintessence of human genius]. Genius and retardation are rare conditions, which may result from genetic mutations. Are the differences between people who fall in the normal range distinguished by the genes? Is the run-of-the-mill dullard biologically different from a garden variety whiz-kid? And if so, are those biological differences fixed, or might they be altered by experience? These questions become even more heated when we turn from individual differences to differences between groups.

Do biological differences in brain power come pre-packaged with biological differences in pigmentation? These are touchy topics, and naturists have felt considerable heat for defending positions that are politically incorrect. I don’t think we should let politics arbitrate in this case, however. I think naturists simply get the science wrong. While some differences in intelligence may be linked to biology, most people have pretty comparable biological endowments. If we want to find an explanation for group-wide social inequity, then we would be better off studying the negative effects of poverty, and the positive effects of cultural practices that encourage learning.[v] Read more

Another Hate Industry Start-Up: The Omar Thornton Memorial Fund

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You remember Omar Thornton. He was that Black guy in Manchester, CT who two years ago was caught stealing beer from his employer. Why he was stealing it is a mystery. There had been no hurricane to spark a looting spree, and beer distributorships typically give excellent employee discounts. Perhaps he was just engaging in a little self-serve reparations. Who knows? Anyhow, his employer gave him a generous option – either resign, or be fired. Omar chose to resign. He signed the paperwork, and started to leave. On his way out, he opened his lunchbox, where he had stashed a brace of handguns. Why he felt the need to go to work with a lunchbox full of 9mm Rugers is, again, a mystery. He pulled out the pistols and opened fire on a group of about 40 people. A few seconds later, eight European-Americas lay dead, and two others were wounded. Omar then made two phone calls, one to his mother, and one to the police. To the police, he proudly declared, “I just shot me some racists.” By the time the police arrived, Omar had killed himself.

During the investigation and the news coverage, Omar’s family claimed that he frequently complained of workplace racial discrimination against him, and his White girlfriend said that he had taken cell phone pictures of a restroom wall upon which someone had drawn a noose and written a racial epithet. Well, as far as the MSM is concerned, if you can’t believe the word of a Black guy who had stolen a bunch of beer and murdered eight White people, then you can’t believe anyone. So, despite the absence of even the minutest particle of evidence to support the racism claims of Omar and his family, and despite the inexistence of the noose and n-word pictures, the MSM waved its collective hand like a Jedi and said, “Omar killed Racist White people. They deserved it.” To which millions of Blacks and a sickening number of White people responded by repeating, “Omar killed Racist White people. They deserved it.” Read more

Things sure have changed at National Review

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Does anyone remember James J. Kilpatrick? At one time, in the late 1970s to the mid 1980s he was apparently one of the most widely read columnists in the country. Do you know how he became famous? In the early 1950s he was an unknown editor/editorial writer for a newspaper in Richmond, Virginia. Then he began denouncing Brown vs. Board of Education, and championing states’ rights and segregation. He died in 2010. The following was printed in his obituary.

James J. Kilpatrick, a nationally syndicated columnist whose strongly conservative viewpoints on politics, law and language appeared in hundreds of newspapers over the last five decades and made him a popular, even parodied, television pundit, died Sunday at a Washington, D.C., hospital. He was 89.

The cause was congestive heart failure, said his son, Kevin.

Kilpatrick, who once described himself as “10 miles to the right of Ivan the Terrible,” was the editor of a Richmond, Va., newspaper in the 1950s. His anti-desegregation crusades gave him national prominence, eventually leading to a thrice-weekly syndicated political column called “A Conservative View. Read more

Race realism: Breaking into the mainstream

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A friend  and I were talking about Arthur Jensen–the psychologist who reignited the race and IQ debate with his 1969 paper “How Much Can We Boost IQ and Scholastic Achievement?” published in the Harvard Educational Review. My friend said that starting with that paper there had been a huge amount of supportive research published in reputable academic journals like Intelligence and Personality and Individual Differences. There have also been major works like The Bell Curve that provoked a national discussion in newspapers and intellectual media. And there have been major works by J. Philippe Rushton and Richard Lynn published by academic presses.

The thrust of my friend’s comments was that it was just a matter of time before it becomes standard wisdom, informing all respectable discussions of the issue, even among politicians and the mainstream media. Read more