Tuesday 10 April 2012

The other people who have Trayvon Martin's blood on their hands

I got a fascinating glimpse of the workings of the Liberal Mind a couple of years back when a friend of my son’s was attacked in a street in Shepherd’s Bush by a young black man, who, inevitably, was accompanied by a gang, and, again inevitably, was much older and much bigger than his victim. The attack resulted in serious damage, including a smashed cheekbone.

My son was nearby at the time. The next day we got a call from the victim’s mother. I expected a torrent of anger about the beast who had done this to her son. But, no, this impeccably liberal lady only wanted to find out whether her son had provoked the attack by racially insulting his assailant, which, she pointed out, would have been “unforgiveable”.

Genuinely astonished, I suggested that, even if insults had been exchanged (my son afterwards said the attack had been entirely unprovoked), I doubted that her son – a bright kid – would have decided, out of the blue, to racially insult a much larger and older boy who was with a gang. Even if he had, I insisted, that wouldn’t have justified the appallingly violent assault.

In the wake of the incident, I had a talk with my son about what to do in future if he saw a gang of blacks approaching him in a quiet street.

You will have heard of the case of an entirely innocent 17 year-old black boy named Trayvon Martin who was shot to death in Florida by George Zimmerman (who lists himself as Hispanic and certainly looks it in his photographs, despite the name), a neighbourhood watch co-ordinator.

Reports of the incident were confined to Florida for the ten days following the death, until CBS got hold of it and made it a national story. NBC then edited a 911 call Zimmerman made before the shooting in an apparent effort to make him sound as if he was “racially profiling” Martin (why does truth seem to act like Kryptonite on so many liberals?). The liberal Washington Post, to its great credit, accused NBC of “high editorial malpractice”.

The US race relations industry’s leading beneficiaries – the likes of Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, Spike Lee and Barack Obama – swung into hysterical action (Obama: “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon”). But let’s shovel all those parasitic creeps to one side.

Fox News’s Geraldo Rivera (about as liberal as it gets over at Fox) suggested black youths who didn’t want to get into trouble shouldn’t wear hoodies, a remark for which he later apologised. (I’ve no idea why – if you don’t want to get mistaken for a criminal in a country where many people carry guns, don’t dress like one.)

This was followed by a lot of talk about “The Talk” that black parents have with their teenagers about how to behave in the presence of police officers and other authority figures. This led John Derbyshire, a conservative commentator (who I’ve often quoted in my “Sense” column on the right-hand side of this blog) to pen an article for Taki’s Magazine entitled “The Talk: Non-Black Version”, in which he writes about what he has told his teenage children (who are half-Chinese) about interacting with blacks. (You can read it here.)

The article got Derbyshire fired by his main journalistic outlet, the conservative National Review.

Well, I’ve read the article, and I can see where Derbyshire went wrong. From the point of view of someone living in London most of it seems perfectly unexceptionable (the points about black politicians and affirmative action are largely irrelevant here – so far) and in many ways echoed The Talk I had with my own son after his friend had his face smashed in. If any parent of a non-black teenager in London would prefer to remain true to their politically-correct liberal principles rather give advice which they hope will keep their child safe – well, shame on them! (I bet the parents of black teenagers in London aren’t so delicate when it comes to dispensing wisdom, given that the overwhelming majority of attacks on black teenagers are committed by other black teenagers.)

Where Derbyshire goes off the rails is when he starts talking about the relatively poor results routinely achieved by blacks in IQ tests. As Professor Hans Eysenck discovered when he questioned whether differences in IQ between various races were entirely a function of environment, this sort of talk doesn’t tend to go down well with equalitarians.

But where Derbyshire really gets it wrong is when he writes in the last three sections of his article (Nos. 11-13 inclusive), albeit semi-joshingly, about IWSBs, or “intelligent and well-socialised blacks”, and the importance of cultivating one as a friend to stave off potentially career-ruining charges of racism. I think these sections are meant to be satirical in a Swiftian way, but if so, the “humour” doesn’t work, and he gets the tone spectacularly wrong – there’s a dead seventeen year-old kid involved here! Most of the black people I’ve known belong in the IWSB category: why Derbyshire would set out to belittle them is a mystery. The final part of his article unbdoubtedly leaves a nasty taste in the mouth.

For God’s sake, Derbyshire – intelligent, well-socialised whites are thin enough on the ground these days, and we don’t have the race relations industry trying to pull us down by constantly telling us that we’re all victims, and demanding we show solidarity with the stupid, non-socialised, criminal elements within our own racial group, no matter how badly their vile behaviour affects society’s perception of well-socialised, intelligent us.

So, why – given that he started off with a perfectly valid premise for an article – why did Derbyshire proceed to make such a balls of the whole thing? Partly, I suspect it was because he was writing for Taki’s Magazine, which has evidently set out to commit GBH on as many liberal shibboleths as possible, and quite often goes too far, even for someone of a decidedly right-wing disposition.

And Taki himself has hardly made a secret of his wince-inducing anti-Semitism. I suspect that any other mainstream media outlet – no matter how right-wing – would have pointed out to JD that he had got it wrong, and asked him to rewrite the last third of the article, or suggested he drop the most offensive sections.

I despise those who offer weaselly excuses for their bad behaviour, but… Derbyshire has leukemia and undergoes regular chemotherapy sessions. In this instance – who knows? – the effects of the treatment may just have caused him to lose his internal editorial compass on this occasion. I know that I’ve written things when feeling less than tickedy-boo which I’ve afterwards regretted, and I’ve never undergone anything remotely as debilitating as chemotherapy.

The problem with Derbyshire’s article is that it allows lefties and liberals and the vultures of the race business to pretend that the high criminality levels of black youths here and in the United States is somehow all Whitey’s fault, when the truth is that it’s as much to do with those who rush to provide them with them with ready-made excuses. Those black youths who rob, rape, assault, mug and terrorise – and those who seek to excuse them – also have Trayvon Martin’s blood on their hands: it’s they who plant the suspicion in our minds that a young black man walking around our neighbourhoods at night wearing a hoodie is probably up to no good.

If John Derbyshire had just stuck to that undeniable truth, he’d still have his job with the National Review.

6 comments:

  1. I've just read an ecellent article by Dennis Prager in the National Review (the mag that fired John Derbyshire) in which he says:

    "The United States is the least racist and least xenophobic country in the world. Foreigners of every race, ethnicity, and religion know this. Most Americans suspect this. Most black Americans and the entire Left deny this.

    Black Africans know this. That is why so many seek to live in the United States. Decades ago, the number of black Africans who had immigrated to the United States had already surpassed the number of black Africans who were forcibly shipped to America as slaves.

    Members of other races and nationalities know this. Even Muslim and Arab writers have noted that nowhere in the Arab or larger Muslim world does an Arab or any other Muslim have the individual rights, liberty, and dignity that a Muslim living in America has. As for Latinos and Asians, vast numbers of them from El Salvador to Korea regard America as the land of opportunity."

    The whole article can be found at: http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/295611/still-least-racist-country-world-dennis-prager

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  2. If the boy had said the "unforgiveable" and got a beating,I suppose his mother would have said well that's alright then.
    I wonder what would have happend many years ago if I had been provoked by the comments of two black men whilst I was SWW (shopping whilst white) in Peckham;hang out to dry probably.
    Interestingly,and one hopes its not the company one kept,I've known five white guys get a bit of a shoeing from the police.One of them was a school chum,three were work mates in various fields:"My dear chap where did you get that shiner?"
    "The old bill mate,I was pissed n well out-of-order,"
    And a university friend,a boxer, who knocked two police cold before they wisely desisted in this uncivilised tactic.He was later heavily fined and his potential career at the Bar as an advocate was over.
    Only one ot them ever complained,and most preferred a good hiding to a fine or custodial sentence.

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  3. Comment is fraught with danger. The Race Relation boys have it all sown up. No matter what you say in defence is going to be wrong. In Germany, it used to be called "Gleichshaltung" '- look it up - the explanation is too long. Quick points:
    1. In April 2011 two young white Britons were murdered in Sarasota, Fla, for wandering into a black area [James Kluzaris and James Coper]. Their killer, a 17-year old black thug called Shaun Tyson, was jailed for life last month. It was hardly reported on either side of the Atlantic.

    2. We have had this endless Stephen Lawrence enquiry here. The Americans are about to stage a re-run and the media will have a field day and the usual cast of characters will be able to mouth off [as you say, Sharpton etc].

    3. I recommend a novel by Philip Roth called "The Human Stain". Beware the expressions "spook" or "spookey" in your daily discourse. There is a whole bunch of aggrieved people out there waiting for you. And they have the law on their side. And a whole political movement called the Liberal-Left [ the "Appeasers" of the 1930s and how many lives did these bastards cost?] It is scary when you compare a photograph of Anders Behring Breivik with that of Simon Hughes.

    4. To end on an up-beat note. Is George Zimmerman related to Bob Dylan? The world is suddenly full of people with inappropriate names. Mario Ballotelli, for example.You have a strange foreign name. Please explain.

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  4. Many believe that the genesis of "The Human Stain" was the 1999 case of David Howard, a Washington mayoral aide, who was forced to resign when black opponents objected to his use of the word "niggardly" to describe budget cuts. As Howard was a homosexual, the "gay community" kicked up a stink and he was offered his job back (he turned it down, but accepted another post). Which provided an interesting example of both rampant stupidity and how the Hierarchy of Victimhood works.

    Interestingly, the American liberal left used to call themselves Progressives back in the 1910s and 1920s, then eventually switched to Liberals when Progressivism proved to be a crock, and now that that Liberalism has proved to be a crock, they calling themselves Progressives once more. Which all strikes me as a seemingly endless exercise in turd-polishing.

    The liberal media in the US has apparently decided to refer to George Zimmerman as a White Hispanic (er.... I didn't realise Hispanics werent white - I mean, aren't King Juan Carlos and Rafael Nadal white?), but there seems to be confusion as to whether his father was Jewish or not. I think we should just be thankful that his name wasn't Robert Zimmerman, or the racism industry would be demanding a blanket ban on Bob Dylan's music - and the liberal left would find themselves in a terrible quandary!

    My name is of Swahili origin and means "why always me?". But I have no idea what "Grønmark" means.

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  5. Torsten Vorsten19 April 2012 at 13:48

    I am hoping I can be help. In Norwegian, the words Grunnveld Mark mean 'shallow or soiled ground' and is being an expression which apply now a lot to the global warming debatings. Your name might be a shoretenered version. If you are adding it to 'Scott', your name could be translated as 'Why is it always being me on shallow, soily ground?'. I have made much studyings in this region.

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  6. "Fox News contributor Bernard Goldberg is lashing out at the New York Times for its coverage of the Trayvon Martin case. His gripe? The paper’s stylebook. Let Goldberg describe his concern:

    The national media doesn’t do stories on black-on-black crime. . . . They don’t do stories on black-on-white crime. . . . The New York Times, in almost a caricature of a liberal media, refers to George Zimmerman as a ‘white Hispanic.’ I guarantee you that if George Zimmerman did something good — if he finished first in his high school graduating class when he was younger — they wouldn’t refer to him as a white Hispanic, he’d just be a Hispanic. . . . He’s only a ‘white Hispanic’ because they need the word ‘white’ to further the story line, which is, White, probably racist vigilante shoots an unarmed black kid."

    Erik Wemple, Washington Post, 28/3/2012

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