John Derbyshire was one of the brightest writers in National Review who focused on history, immigration, China, race, and even mathematics – including topics involving the Riemann zeta function. He is conservative and almost (or about) as pro-science (and pro-evolution) as your humble correspondent.



Three days ago, he also wrote an essay for Taki's Magazine about what the American white teenagers should be told about the co-existence with the blacks,



We never would have published it, but the main reason that people noticed it is that it is by a National Review writer. Derb is effectively using our name to get more oxygen for views with which we'd never associate ourselves otherwise.



which was inspired by reports that young black kids were being told by their parents to avoid encounters and especially confrontations with the whites so that they don't end up as Trayvon Martin. Derbyshire wrote pretty much analogous things from the other side. However, his essay also contains lots of facts about the statistical differences between the whites and the blacks in the U.S. and their consequences for a rational decision-making, together with many relevant URL references.In fact, Derbyshire loves to talk about the statistical distributions in this context so much that he became another candidate for who may be the mysterious La Griffe du Lion , at least I propose him as a candidate! ;-)What did he write on Thursday? He wrote lots of self-evident facts about the double standards concerning who may use the N-word and who can't (hint: it depends on the color), about the differences in the average concentration of antisocial behavior in between the whites and the blacks, about the differences in the IQ, about the 5% of blacks who are violently anti-white and the 50% of blacks who are prepared to team up with those 5%, and he proposed some safety measures meant to protect the life and health of the white teenagers (as well as the convenience of the other side). He also said the obvious thing that the affirmative action makes the average black employee in an occupation (especially in the government offices where the affirmative action is strong and omnipresent) to be less competent and/or friendly than the average white employee. And citizens needing these services should adapt accordingly. (He says that the DMV lady is not a myth but a statistical truth.)His essay has attracted over 2,000 comments.Derbyshire's recommendations are as polite and friendly towards the blacks as I can imagine. He tells the white teenagers to stay polite etc. but avoid environments with a high number of unknown blacks because that's where the statistical properties inevitably kick in. Nevertheless, as I would expect, it took just hours before the politically correct warriors started to scream that Derbyshire should have been fired and dozens of hours beforeWhat a warp speed. However, you will still find left-wing loons (and alarmists) who are sufficiently unhinged that they consider the firing too slow . At any rate, the politically correct ideologues feel as happy as any fascists may feel after a successful Blitzkrieg.The explanation of the end of his employment looked like this:Needless to say, this is complete rubbish. National Review has the name it has because of unusually skillful writers such as Derbyshire who have been feeding National Review with oxygen for decades. So if some of the members of the thought police try to declare themselves to "be" the spirit of National Review, they're classic tails wagging the dog. To say the least, Rich Lowry's importance for the spirit of National Review is as many times smaller than John Derbyshire's as a tail is smaller than a dog. They have no right to hijack the identity of National Review in this way because they mostly haven't built it. But of course, some justice will come in the long run: if they fire other drivers such as the Derb, whoever they are, and maybe earlier, National Review will inevitably fade away.Make no mistake about it: What Derbyshire wrote was pure common sense – a type of common sense that the tourist in the fresh video above, posted after the publication of Derbyshire's essay, overlooked. During my 10 years in the U.S., I've interacted with a rather large number of blacks. Many of them were "cultural whites" who were equally intelligent and more peaceful than an average white I knew; Derbyshire called them IWSBs (intelligent and well-socialized blacks) and recommended white folks to befriend a few IWSBs as a protection against the accusations of "racist prejudices". I won't offer a lecture to you about how I enjoyed "my" IWSBs although I did because I don't feel that I need to add such exercises.But I would have to be blind if I have overlooked some of the real statistical blacks.The rent paid by C-Town to the city for this place is $1 per year and one could argue it's a fair market price.For example, in New Jersey (1997-2001), I did many if not most of my shoppings in a black neighborhood of New Brunswick which had a C-Town supermarket (see above); just to make you sure that I have never quite avoided such environments, unlike many hypocritical promoters of the political correctness. After all, as a kid, I lived in a gypsy-loaded neighborhood of Pilsen. (Today, Roudná begins to look very different.) In this sense, I grew up in a similar colored environment – so it feel rather "natural" and "home-like" to me – and it's doubly inconsistent that I wasn't ever given the same affirmative action advantages as the blacks.Nevertheless, there have been many situations in which I saw highly suspicious and potentially aggressive characters on the other side of the road (or a side of the road that I quickly tried to transform into the opposite one). I was often relieved and grateful when I saw a nearby police car and believe me, I am usually not enthusiastic about police cars in my vicinity. ;-)There are unquestionable differences between the body of the whites and the body of the blacks – equivalently, about the statistical differences between the members of the groups – and there are unquestionable sources of additional tension in the interactions between typical members of these groups that do justify some kind of segregation, at least under certain circumstances. Whoever denies these things is, in my opinion, plain insane. And whoever even wants to force others to deny these things is a dangerous fascist.Of course that I have considered America to be a role model when it comes to freedom but it has lost this status many years ago. Around 2005, I realized that people with common sense concerning similar matters are pretty much dealt with in the same way as the Jews in Germany 80 years ago so it was a matter of safety (especially if you appreciate my existential dependence on the visas and therefore the jobs over there) to largely shut up for 2 years and escape before it's too late. The unbelievable harassment of the feminist activist Larry Summers – who was still found insufficiently feminist by some of the true loons who were apparently in charge of the situation – was just a scary thing to observe for people like me who are still much more rational than Larry Summers when it comes to the issues of group differences.Let me tell you something about the history. During communism, some of our teachers were rather brave anti-communist pundits, some of them were enthusiastic communists, some of them just did what was expected without showing strong opinions in either way. Still, the official propaganda had the goal to convince us that the capitalist countries sucked. We were constantly told that they had to pay tuition and healthcare and similar things – those things were always viewed as an advantage of socialism by pretty much everyone, not me, however.Also, capitalism was being (irrationally) linked to racism. So in the early 1980s, we would often see pictures of Ku-Klux-Klan members in their costumes. We were told (by some of the teachers who weren't afraid of looking ludicrous from the viewpoint of the eternity; but I am not talking about the most hardcore communists now) that this was how everyday life looked like in South Africa and pretty much in the U.S., too.However, some of the teachers also offered us an "update". I am not sure whether they were instructed to do so (a new spice in the propaganda machine) but several of them offered the "twist" seemingly independently. They said that the textbook material on racism was pretty much obsolete because the old racism was pretty much replaced by the reverse racism which is structurally analogous to the old one but which puts the blacks to the privileged spot. You might say that in order to maintain its hostility against the capitalist countries, the communist countries observed that there was no racism in those countries anymore and decided to make a U-turn when it comes to the declared main injustice that penetrates the capitalist world.Only decades later, I realized how accurate this observation was. Among other things, America is suffocating under the influence of taboos. And the disadvantage of these taboos is not only that they invalidate the claim that the Americans enjoy the freedom of expression when it comes to important social and political matters. In this case, these taboos will lead to the loss of human lives and other negative consequences because Derbyshire's recommendations are clearly helpful to avoid some very tough situations.Let me say once again that I don't know what exactly happened before Zimmerman shot Trayvon. It's plausible we will never have a reliable and accurate enough picture of the events.And I find it plausible that Zimmerman was shooting earlier than he would shoot if he were threatened by a white guy. But don't try to hide it: if this difference in the timing existed, it would be totally rational. Statistics makes it unambiguous that the degree of threat one faces when meeting an average black teenager in an otherwise analogous situation is significantly higher than if one encounters a white teenager. So if a guy like Zimmermann is hardwired to press the trigger once his perceived degree of threat surpasses a fixed and well-defined threshold (and this is a totally sensible strategic algorithm to control a gun), it should be expected that he will shoot a black potential aggressor before he would shoot a white potential aggressor.Of course, the judges may still decide that people in the same situation as Zimmerman are required to raise the threshold if the color of the threat is black. But even if you "codify" these color-dependent threshold of danger that people are obliged to undergo, it won't change anything about the fact that the "shoot the black guy earlier" has a rational justification, at least if you consider your immediately threatened life more important than the amount of legal hassles you will face later.Whether you like it or not from some aesthetic viewpoint, it's just common sense. We are also more likely to allow the doctors to amputate our leg if it threatens us with a serious risk of death than if the leg carries a less harmful infection for which the risk is much lower. You can't really change such things unless your goal is to make the people's behavior utterly irrational which might be extremely dangerous. At most, you can do things similar to what John Derbyshire recommended; to use the actual real-world data to rationally adjust the behavior of the people who are adjustable in order to improve the life for everyone.Unfortunately, people like John Derbyshire aren't allowed to improve the society in the rational way because a system of racial prejudices that put one group in an advantage is the only socially acceptable way to approach these questions in the contemporary America.Jason R. (who is not responsible for any opinions written above)