(Updates at end of post.)
The Guardian has a nice piece on the flap over John Derbyshire’s recommendation in Takimag that white and asian parents educated their children to avoid african americans on the streets. I found the comments typical of populist high minded British/Canadian public commentary and unrelated to the facts.
Dirbyshire is a satirist. The right relies upon satire, the way the left relies upon ridicule. Given the severity and pervasiveness of the racial problem in the states and satire is as good a tool as any to draw attention to it.
1) Derbyshire is playing off the news story in which a hispanic neighborhood watch volunteer with a ‘white’ name in a gated neighborhood shot and killed a black man after calling the police to alert them to his presence, and then being confronted and punched in the face, then beaten by the black man. Without this context, it is impossible to for the UK reader to understand what Derbyshire is saying, and why: avoiding them is a better strategy than confrontation.
2) African americans are FACTUALLY responsible for an absurdly disproportionate percentage of violent crime in the states, and three quarters of their crimes involve white victims. African Americans FACTUALLY demonstrate African American distributions of IQ are FACTUALLY almost a full standard deviation lower than that of their white counterparts, just as asians and ashkenazim five points higher than whites – a problem for the job market in an advanced economy. The research is still out on the cause of these factors, but it is an active area of inquiry. And no, there is no disagreement in the literature over the accuracy or meaning of the tests — that is left to the popular press to spread as a misconception in order to sell advertisements.
3) If we eliminate African American crime from US statistics, the remaining population has approximately the same level of violent crime as do northern European countries. And the USA has even less petty crime than those countries, and Canada. These facts seem to surprise Europeans, and it is almost impossible to convince Canadians of it — until we show them the data from Canadian government sources that proves it.
5) Derbysire’s point, and it is a reasonable one, is that sweeping these facts under the rug and blaming the circumstances on oppression, rather than dealing with the practical reality of the problem, does not help us develop a mutually beneficial society devoid of racial conflict.
5) UK residents have no concept of the severity of racial tensions in the states, nor the degree to which they play into social and arenas. There are two reasons for the difference in tensions between the US and UK: a) institutions that apply pressure for the purpose of achieving conformity, and b) possessing a critical mass of the population, and the distribution or density of those communities within the population – dispersed being irrelevant and concentrated being very relevant.
Conformity
a) The US does not have a coherent consistent means of applying social pressure in order to achieve conformity to norms that is so ever present in UK society, and absolutely pervasive in France. It is not socially acceptable to treat aberrant behavior among minorities as unacceptable. It must be tolerated under the principle of diversity and freedom of self expression. This is one of the many reasons why religiosity remains so hight in the USA: it is the only means of applying normative pressures. The UK has both a less flexible concept of society, and a pervasive class system, a somewhat elitist identity, and a majority with which to reinforce all of them. In the states the women’s movement allied with the anti-slavery movement, the the rapid immigration movement, then the labor movement, then the civil rights movement and the culmination of these processes has been anti-christian, anti-white-male, and resulted in the complete loss of identity. The problem is not so relevant in the UK yet, because this problem of racial conflict has been theoretical not material.
As Charles Murray writes in his recent work Coming Apart, the lower classes in the States are no longer adhering to the middle class norms — or ‘virtues’ — that compensate for differences in impulsivity and intelligence between the social classes. But moreover, by failing to adopt those norms, US society is fragmenting into different castes. The recent massive immigration by hispanics has caused additional tension — not the least of which is caused by the La Raza movement to reconquer the southwest. And the presence of muslims, while small, is exaggerated by their failure to integrate into the economy, society, and its norms — just as we see with muslims in the UK — and their association with harboring and funding terrorism.
Density
b) British popular hand-wringing and moral outrage to the contrary, racial conflicts happen because of frictions between sets of dense populations; and because of material differences in economic productivity between those groups, as well as differences in the value of status signals between those groups. The USA has numerous areas of density-differences between the races. The black and white populations have never integrated. And there is no evidence that they will, or even desire to. We know that at about 10% diversity, neighborhoods radically flip (create white flight), and become poorer. We know many sets of statistics that demonstrate that people tend to sort geographically by race. We know that intermarriage is up, but it is largely up to about 15% between whites, asians and hispanics, not blacks. And while the USA was 75% white not that long ago, it will approach less than half white fairly shortly.
The UK was still approximately 85% white in 2001, and no minority had a 10% presence overall, and so it hasn’t been possible to have significant friction except in certain very small neighborhoods. But in those areas where racial density allows the formation of a cultural identity, that identity is eventually expressed as political power, and when expressed as political power we see racial frictions. Because politics controls access to money and opportunity, law writing and customs. These tensions, since 2001, have expressed themselves in the development of the British National Party, the English Defense League, other groups in the UK. Once a minority population has 10% of the vote, and can motivate higher voter participation because of their minority status, which can be concentrated behind a narrow number of issues, political conflict, and racial conflict will ensue. There is nothing special about the USA. It’s all just demographics, politics and money. The USA is just ahead of the cuve for europe, because we have dealt with the racial problem for 150 years now.
The Problem of and Importance Of Norms
Without the power to ostracize people for anti-social behavior, and to force adoption of norms, a population must develop frictions, if for no other reason than difference status signaling, and its expression in the pursuit of political power — signals are how we select mates, and gain access to more advantageous social groups, and are therefore inseparable from human nature. A society can rely on religion, education, rigid class nor caste norms, geographic ostracization, and commercial ostracization, in order to achieve that normative equality, from which all other forms of equality are made possible. Ostracization, religion, education are sticks and economic participation and status signals are the carrots by which we encourage adoption of the norms needed to create a cooperative polity. That said, however much races mingle in an economy, people consistently demonstrate a preference for being surrounded by those with morphological, cultural, class, and economic similarities. And despite our best efforts, we will not change that bit of human nature. It is against the interests of those who can more successfully achieve positive status within group than across group.
Norms must be homogenous in order for politics to be cooperative. The United States do not have a means of pressuring blacks into norms the way the UK has — mostly we assume, because of differences in density. There are just too many in high concentration that are too culturally unified to break communal bonds. Differences in the distribution of intellectual ability mean that there is a permanent density of underclass blacks that have no possible means of class rotation in the US economy. The hispanic problem is largely one of breeding patterns and language. We should note that american hispanics are largely a mixture of amerindian and spanish genetic pools. Otherwise, if the USA could forcibly change the language, and the breeding patterns, they would be possible to integrate into the society — albiet criminality is still high in that population. Just as it was for the Irish and Jews before them. And despite the negative impact the catholics and jews have had on the US Court system – particularly the Supreme Court, economically and culturally it has been a successful process of integration. Of course, I make these statements of value because I place rule of law higher in value than democratic will. And I do so for the same reason that the founders did, and the greeks did: the fashions and passions of the people are economically dangerous, and bureaucracy eventually leads to tyranny.
How The Church Solved The Problem Of Norms
The church managed to break european tribalism, which was very similar to racism, by prohibiting intermarriage out to as many as six generations. But intermarriage among europeans is not a visible property once it’s done. You cannot tell a smith from a jones. Races do not carry this same property of anonymity.
The church conducted this program of outbreeding in order to capture more inheritance revenue for itself. It was not a socially beneficent policy. It was entirely self serving. And I wold argue that the state is conducting a program of integration and multiculturalism in order to do the same: create power and wealth for members of the state, at the expense of the non-state, coming english people.
The problem the UK faces with Pakistanis for example, is their high rate of inbreeding — which is demonstrated by their near monopoly on UK birth defects. Inbreeding is also the same reason for muslim familial tribalism, and the reason for, like american blacks, a standard deviation lower IQ and higher impulsivity, both of which lead to disenfranchisement and criminality. If the UK were to ban intermarriage out to six generations again, it may be possible to integrate Pakistanis and other muslims into society. But as it stands, they are not integrating even after two or three generations, even if they are economically successful. They are forming a permanent subclass, which is maturing into a permanent caste, which will seek political power wherever it has density, in order to alter the privileges of, and persist and improve the status signals for the group.
SUMMARY
The problems of the USA are occurring in the UK, and for the same reasons: Under any kind of democracy, where it is possible for groups to obtain political power, and where political power enables control of the purse, norms must be homogenous to prevent political divisions. Norms are more difficult to establish between racial groups than they were between tribal and family groups.
Our sentimental political values for tolerance arose from an era of religious and tribal rather than racial differences. And religious and tribal differences disappear with intermarriage and the enforcement of norms. Racial differences don’t because they’re visible, and because at the EXTREMES (jews on one end, blacks on the other) it is against the interests of those groups to adopt the norms, as it would impact their status signaling economies, and therefore their real economies. It is important for jews to be racist, so that they can persist their advantages. Whites used to be racist but the wars ended their comfort with self confidence. Blacks are racist at the bottom. And Arabs like blacks will remain racist for a long time to come. Because signaling in-group is beneficial to them, and out-grop it is not. And the dirty secret is that the races are materially different in distributions of talents, and as such these signals have extraordinary value and meaning to the members of each group.
Closing With Satire and Ridicule
So, like many things we observe over the past two centuries, the USA is just a window into the future for Europe in general, and the UK in particular. I remember the high-minded criticism of the States by UK and continental pundits as the banking system collapsed, and the cheering of the vox populi as they congratulated themselves on their superior wisdom — that was, until a lunch of steaming crow was served in heaping portions when it turned out that the problem was even worse in Europe than in the States. The same is true for the race issue: Do not attribute to wisdom and character, that which is a function of demographics and luck. We here in the states will start saving our crow in large freezers in preparation for your feast. Because UK populists will very soon be eating it.
(FYI: Eating crow is a U.S. colloquial idiom, meaning experiencing humiliation for having been proved wrong after taking a strong position.)
UPDATE: BANNED FROM THE GUARDIAN FOR THIS POST!!! This is a longer version of a post I put on the Guardian, which was later removed for ‘violating community guidelines’. The fact that facts can be offensive is offensive to me. 🙂 This is quite a good post which will reward the patient reader with new understanding. — CurtUPDATE 2: Dirbyshire was fired from the National Review for writing the article. The primary failing he made, and one I make as well, is to made clear that the race problem is one of distributions: black lower classes are the problem because of where they sit in relation to other groups. I would suppose that most of us think that’s just patently obvious, but then again, that’s because we think in terms of classes. Racism is just plain stupidity. You never know who it is you’re talking to by the color of their skin. But if the color of their skin raises a question, and their signals and behavior make obvious their class, then he’s just right on all counts.UPDATE 3: Again, racism between individuals is simply irrational stupidity. You cannot judge an individual by the properties of his class, only a class by the properties of an individual. However, that requires that you KNOW the individual and that we are talking about individuals, not groups, when groups act as groups because of shared interests. The fact that violent criminality is predominantly a property of the lower classes, the American lower classes are dominated by african americans, and that 40% of african americans are below what we consider ‘cognitively limited’ 10% of whites are. That means that there is a one in ten chance that if you meet a white person entirely at random that you’ll find someone not very bright (a random event which isn’t possible, since people geographically colocate by IQ). And in that group, the dominant majority will use various pressures to control the behavior of those individuals. WHen meeting a black person, there is a four in ten chance that you’ll meet someone who is not very bright. The difference is in the DISTRIBUTION of white and black, ‘dumb’ people. If you’re in africa, and everyone else is black then you don’t think you’re kept down. If you’re black in the states, and 90% of white people are better off than you are, it’s obvious to you that it’s intentional ostracization, rather than a byproduct of the meritocratic sorting of mating and economics. We KNOW that people all rate themselves as above competent until they’re highly competent. We can measure it. But if you’re part of a group that is systemically at a competitive disadvantage, and where you intuitively judge yourself as normal, and therefore everyone else outside your group is conspiring against you, and when everyone on street that you meet treats you as having a 40% chance of being an idiot, and a 80% chance of being a criminal, and when your peers try to find solidarity through signaling that tries to evangelize primitive expressions, so you adopt those expressions of your group for solidarity and perhaps survival, and then walk a street with those signals all about you, simply verifying by signals what outgroup people expect, then it makes sense that you would be frustrated. THe only question asked by conservatives then, is a) why can’t I prohibit those signals if they contribute to an inability to integrate?, b) why can’t I prohibit people from my neighborhood who look and behave a certain way? c) why should I pay for people in that gene pool to have children? This isn’t irrational on anyone’s part. THe only reason conservatives can come up with is to empower the government.