The Color Of Crime And The New Orleans Nightmare: George W. Bush vs. Jared Taylor
And so it begins
again …
"President Bush, who had
just returned from his fourth visit to the Gulf Coast,
told an
audience at the National Cathedral today that he
would use the rebuilding process to correct the poverty
born of racial discrimination that had left so many of
Hurricane Katrina`s victims vulnerable. `The greatest
hardship fell upon citizens already facing lives of
struggle: the elderly, the vulnerable and the poor,` he
said. `And this poverty has roots in generations of
segregation and discrimination that closed many doors of
opportunity. As we clear away the debris of a hurricane,
let us also clear away the legacy of inequality.`"[Bush
says Reconstruction Must Address Poverty, Inequality,
By Emma Vaughan and Johanna Neuman
Los Angeles Times September 16, 2005]
Of course, what we all saw on TV from New Orleans was
less the "legacy of inequality" with "roots in
generations of segregation and discrimination" than
the full display, in the
absence of the Police Power, of the modern black
underclass tendencies toward
violent criminality and
feckless dependency.
Indeed, the great majority of the thugs who
terrorized the
flood victims and
rescue workers were born long after
LBJ`s War on Poverty began in 1965. Most, probably
after the last white mayor of New Orleans left office 27
years ago.
Yet, already our visual memories are being
overwritten by the professional word-slingers
because—as
John Derbyshire recently pointed out in a column
that got spiked by National Review for the
tautological reason cited in its title—"You
Can`t Talk About That."
So, now, 41 years after LBJ`s, we have
GWB`s War on Poverty. The first one turned out to be
a moral disaster for
African-Americans, helping their crime and
illegitimacy rates shoot upwards. But, judging by the
President`s recent speeches, he is gearing up, like a
French general in 1939, to refight the last
War on Poverty.
Will the new one turn out any better? Only if
America`s policy elite freely discusses what actually
are the
problems of poor African Americans—the ones that
cause too many of them to behave as we saw in New
Orleans.
And what are the odds of that?
Instead, the social engineering programs will be
designed to battle those ills that we are allowed to
write about: "segregation,"
"discrimination,"
and "inequality,"
to quote the President, who, I seem to recall, was
once a Republican.
Of course, one step the Bush Administration could
take to help poor blacks would be
enforce the laws against the
illegal immigration that drives down the wages
African-Americans
could earn by
honest labor.
But don`t expect any mention of that!
Here`s one simple test of whether the New, Improved
War on Poverty will be based on reality rather than
tired clichés: Will
Jared Taylor`s fact-filled
new report on racial difference in crime rates, an
updating of his 1999 survey "The Color of Crime,"
[PDF]
be discussed openly in the press or will it be as
hushed up as the original?
I`m not optimistic.
The self-serving reasons that journalists don`t
write in public what
everybody talks about in private are thoroughly
entrenched.
Taylor notes:
"In total, blacks had the
highest incarceration rate at 7.2 times the [nonHispanic]
white rate, followed by Hispanics, at 2.9 times the
white rate. [American] Indians and Pacific
Islanders were imprisoned at about twice the white rate,
and Asians at only 22 percent of the white rate."
The
black imprisonment rate is a striking 33 times
higher than the
Asian imprisonment rate—a figure I`ve never seen
quantified before (although I don`t think anybody could
be too surprised by it).
These incarceration statistics, the report shows, are
very much in line with the racial patterns also seen in
both arrest rates and in the FBI`s Annual Survey Of
Crime Victims.
So unfairness in the justice system plays little or
no role in these disparities.
High
crime rates in
black neighborhoods are a terrible burden on local
entrepreneurs, thus holding back the economic
advancement of the race. But it is largely taboo to
discuss racial disparities in criminality in the
mainstream media, even though most of the data Taylor
assembles is currently available on scattered government
websites. For example, the federal Department of
Justice`s
page on homicide statistics by race states,
"Blacks were 7 times more likely than whites to commit
homicide in 2002."
I`m sure the statistics Taylor reports will be
dismissed simply because it will be easy to criticize
Taylor`s principles.
He and his journal,
American Renaissance, espouse a
white nationalist viewpoint. Of course,
Black,
Hispanic,
Asian,
Armenian,
Jewish,
Arab and all those other
cheerleaders-with-a-chip-on-their-shoulder activists
push for the interests of their ethnic groups too—but
that is different, apparently.
I disagree with Taylor`s principles. As I wrote in
VDARE.com last year:
“Personally, I am a
citizenist… My starting point in analyzing policies
is: `What is in the best overall interests of the
current citizens of the United States?`
“In contrast, so many
others think in terms of: `What is in the best interest
of my: identity group / race / ethnicity / religion /
bank account / class / ideology / clique / gender /
sexual orientation / party / and/or personal feelings of
moral superiority?`
“Precisely because basing
loyalties upon a legal category defined by our elected
representatives is so unnatural, it`s the least
destructive and most uplifting
form of allegiance humanly possible on an effective
scale.”
Yet disputes over values are irrelevant to whether
the facts in Taylor`s report are correct or not.
(They are.)
Of course, that won`t keep Taylor`s report from being
denounced
ad hominem.
In 1942, George Orwell
famously observed:
"Nazi theory indeed
specifically denies that such a thing as `the truth`
exists. There is, for instance, no such thing as
`Science.` There is only `German Science,` `Jewish
Science,` etc… This prospect frightens me much more than
bombs
And yet, this manner of thinking, this dismissal of
objective reality in favor of assessing whose side
the speaker is on, is probably as popular today in
America as it was in Berlin and
Moscow in Orwell`s day.
In recent weeks, I`ve
written extensively about the
racial IQ gap, a subject the press typically
ignores—or disseminates disinformation about. Still, we
shouldn`t blame them too much: IQ is a moderately
complex topic, one that many members of the press simply
aren`t smart enough and intellectually curious enough to
master.
In contrast, censoring the news about crime rates
can`t be blamed on journalists` stupidity. Instead, it
demonstrates an appalling degree of moral corruption in
our media because virtually every adult in America
knows there are racial differences in crime rates.
Everybody talks about real estate, and the
racial makeup of
neighborhood is the largest single factor driving
crime rates and thus differences in house prices and
apartment rents within a metropolis.
The media elite`s assumption appears to be that if
the public someday became aware of the truth about race,
then the American people would instantly dig up Hitler`s
ashes, clone his DNA, and elect Hitler 2.0 as
Fuhrer-for-Life.
Or something like that…
But, as I`ve been pointing out for a
decade, most Americans do in fact know the basic
facts about race. They talk privately about them all the
time. And the world continues spinning on its axis.
Instead, what we`re really not supposed to do is
write about the facts for the elites interested in
public policy.
This 21st Century attitude toward thinking about race
contrasts strikingly with the Victorian attitude toward
thinking about sex. This was that the masses should
not be allowed
to read erotic materials, but that the policy-making
elites did need the facts.
Consequently, the raffish adventurer
Sir Richard Burton (not the actor, but the
Victorian explorer,
writer, and diplomat who was a model for Evelyn
Waugh`s Basil Seal) was knighted by Queen Victoria three
years after he published his translation of the
Kama Sutra.
Burton was Victorian Britain`s most prominent
advocate of
polygamy, harem-keeping, and
Eastern erotica. But he was also employed by the
Foreign Office for decades. Her Majesty`s Government
didn`t approve of Burton`s enthusiasm for non-Western
sexual mores and practices. But if they were going to
run the Empire, they knew they needed to understand
them.
In contrast, the American elite`s attitude is that
the worst sin is to try to understand race honestly.
So what exactly would happen if the press told the
truth? Would white neighborhoods have
higher housing prices than black neighborhoods?
Oh, wait, that already happens…
No, the main difference would be that if we could
honestly discuss how the world works, we could use
that understanding to craft policies more likely to
achieve the goals of the American people.
So why do the pundits and reporters lie? In my
experience, the liberal whites who run the media don`t
actually care much about blacks or other minorities. Nor
are they consumed by
White Guilt.
They`re not blaming themselves, you`ll notice,
just other white people, ones they
already despise. What they truly care about is
claiming social superiority over other whites by
demonstrating their exquisite racial sensitivity.
The typical white intellectual considers himself
superior to ordinary white people for two contradictory
reasons:
- a] He constantly
proclaims belief in human equality, but they don`t;
- b] He has a high IQ, but they don`t.
For this reason, Taylor`s strategy of wanting whites
to imitate the ethnocentrism of minorities, while it
will inevitably gain adherents as the white majority is
reduced to a
white minority by immigration, is highly unlikely to
succeed any time soon. There is simply too much rivalry
among whites.
To many elite whites, minorities are just useful
pawns in the great game of clawing their way to the top
of the white status heap.
Which is, more or less, the only game in town.
Taylor`s dream of white solidarity has no appeal to
white intellectuals and writers simply because they
believe, condescendingly but also fairly accurately,
that they don`t face significant nonwhite competition.
The vast majority of their rivals are other whites.
For media people, white solidarity makes no more
sense than for Professional Golf Association stars like
Tiger Woods and
Phil Mickelson to agree to stop competing against
each other so they can band together to do battle with
the
Ladies Professional Golf Association.
Thus, America`s
verbal elite favors
illegal immigration—nobody from
Chiapas is going to take their jobs.
For American citizens on the whole, however,
especially for
poor African-Americans who desperately need the
dignity and the discipline provided by having a
decent-paying job, illegal immigration is a
massive problem.
Still, the American elite is going to pay at least
some of the taxes for the GWB War On Poverty. And Jared
Taylor`s data suggests that dumping dollars on the
problem won`t cure it this time either.
[Steve Sailer [email
him] is founder of the Human Biodiversity Institute and
movie critic for
The American Conservative.
His website
www.iSteve.blogspot.com features his daily
blog.]


