Derb

John Derbyshire, who writes for conservative, especially alt-conservative magazines, has a firestorm article over at Taki's Magazine. It was written in response to the writings of black columnists in the wake of the Trayvon Martin shooting. (Several links to same in the Derb article.) It's an important bit to keep in mind in any defense of Mr. Derbyshire, as those articles have some pretty racist and certainly intellectually soft bits themselves. But a mainstream-acceptable racism, you see.

Derb defends himself as well as he might over at Gawker, so I don't need to give thumbs up or thumbs down here.

Steve Sailer had an interesting take, relating The Talk, black version to a conversation parents of any race should have with their child. He's a bit harsher on cops than I would be - perhaps attributable to my living in NH - but this information went out to my various sons in direct or indirect form. (The Romanian sons have mixed American and Eastern European attitudes.

My sons aren't black, but I have given them the exactly same Talk about cops, although mine was probably less polite toward cops. I made ensure to emphasize that "Cops have guns, with which, if you piss them off or make them feel uneasy, they might kill you. The kind of people who become cops have personalities where they want to dominate others around them. (If they just wanted to save people, they could have become firemen.) So, let them. Remember, cops have guns."

Jonah Goldberg's "Goldberg File" from NRO is by free subscription, not on the site, but his take was of the Straw, camel's back variety to Rich Lowry "firing" Derbyshire over the article. More importantly he notes what I think would be important to readers here, as we have covered it before: Derb keeps saying he's using science - specifically, statistical data - but a good deal of what he puts forward as evidence is in fact, anecdote. I have mentioned before, including quite recently, how much I think that is essentially deceptive. For example, Derb asks us to suspend our ordinary rules for whether we would help a stranger in distress by linking to an incident in which a Good Samaritan was killed by a black couple. Try as he might, I don't think Derb can maintain he's got solid Good-Samaritan-ends-up-dead numbers broken down by race. The sample size is too small.

As my son Jonathan points out, there is also a tone problem with the essay. It is one thing to report the IQ numbers (and I could state those same numbers a different way in full honesty), quite another to lean almost gleefully, or at least pompously, on the topic. He's a professional writer. He knows tone.

I do think John Derbyshire made some good points in the column. In the aggregate, however, it is weak and unpersuasive.