White Folks, Please Come Rescue Detroit!

The editor of Detroit's largest black newspaper has given up on black folks running Detroit. He calls on educated white folks to rush in and rescue it. I wouldn't have stated it in those terms, but he did. He's surely more fed up than I could ever imagine. He's an older man, and I assume a life-long Detroit resident. His despair and disappointment is surely unmeasurable. I disagree that this problem is black and the solution is white. But I suppose it approximately is.

In any case, a pretty devastating essay.

Cop Brutalizes Bicyclist; Where's Outrage?

Here a white cop brutalizes a white guy riding a bike. But because both are white, no mass outcry, because this incident doesn't exemplify the only form of police brutality that the media and "community activists" care about: white-on-black police brutality.

White on Black Racism Against Obama

Here's evidence or real racism by whites against blacks. Workers for Obama are reporting racist slurs around the country. Revolting. And yet in most states, Obama wins a majority of white democrat voters. A white-majority state elected him senator, and he's about to win the nomination of the party formerly devoted to slavery and Jim Crow.

Leftists Give Less to Charity, Have More Income & Wealth

Myth 1: The republican party is the "party of the rich," and the democratic party is the "party of the poor and working class."

FACT: The average income and wealth of people who describe themselves as "liberal" or "leftist" is higher than that of people who describe themselves as "conservative".

Myth 2: Republicans and conservatives are "less compassionate" than liberals / leftists / democrats.

FACT: Republicans / conservatives donate a larger fraction of their incomes, and more of their time, to charities.

Perhaps liberals / leftists have substituted support for govt policies that donate OTHER PEOPLES' money for their own donations, and such support for actual efforts.

Dr. Zhivago, Cinematic Masterpiece

Sunday afternoon will go down as vital in my personal history. It comprised Detroit's first 2008 day of spring, and the first time that I enjoyed the completion of my home salon, which my suburban neighbors call, "the family room." With a fresh pot of Ethipean coffee, I laid alone on my new super-modern couch, and for the first time ever watched from beginning to end the cinematic masterpiece known as "Dr. Zhivago." If your life lacks a modern-designed salon, it surely does not lack the resources to create yourself one, as I did. And if your life lacks the memory of Dr. Zhivago, it certainly lacks any reason not to correct that as well.

Devastating Reality of "Athletic Scholarships" vs. Ghetto Myth of "The Only Way Out"

Anybody who still thinks that high school sports provides any way of financing a college education must read this article in today's NYT:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/10/sports/10scholarships.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

This article doesn't even address the old and persistent ghetto myth that sports provides anybody "the only way out" of poverty. This article focuses on affluent parents who spend ten thousand bucks or so annually hoping that an oxymoronic "athletic scholarship" will fund their kid through college. Even the tiny fraction of kids who get one of these abominations find that it only funds a fraction of their college expense (rarely even repaying all the dollars invested before college!). Further, accepting one of these "scholarships" obligates the student to so much time as to limit his/her academic possibilities.

Conversely, real scholarships (ACADEMIC SCHOLARSHIPS, a term that is actually redundant!), the article states, are much more financially rewarding. Plus, the effort spent directly pursuing these real scholarships actually helps the aspirant in college, whereas the efforts spent on obtaining "athletic scholarships" has the opposite effect.

The article does not discuss that persistent nonsense about ghetto boys having only one of two "ways out" of poverty: sports and crime. As all informed people know, algebra, writing, and book-reading have transformed a zillion times more ghetto kids from poverty to affluence than all the sports and crimes put together. And just imagine how many ghetto kids get left with nothing putting all their efforts into sports, compared to how many of those kids would make it to self-sufficiency if they instead focused on reading, writing, and arithmetic.

My recommendation: remove interscholastic sports teams from K-12 schools and from universities. Leave heavy-duty sports competition -- a worthy activity -- for other institutions. This would help sever the harmful and phony link between sports and academics.

Slavery debate

My Old view (pre ~1998?): Slavery was a white-on-black injustice created by Europeans, and which devastated an otherwise just and civil African continent.

My New view (post ~1998?): Slavery was a widespread social practice, just as popular as black-on-black forms in Africa as it as white-on-white forms in Europe. In the 1500s - 1700s, all human civilizations to that point comprised all manner of evil and awful practices, with the rule of might dominating: people organize and take from each other whatever their armory and deviousness could earn them. In this regard, no people of any "race" or on any continent were any better or worse than any other. During different periods of time, different groups of people led the way in advancing civilization in its various forms: architecture, law/justice, literature, science, math, etc.

History shows that both African leaders such as Shaka Zulu as well as various European rulers have visited the absolute worst possible crimes of social conquest on other people bearing their same skin color. Unless you and I were born into royal positions in either sort of society, we would both find ourselves living under crushing everyday injustices.

People in the US today who call themselves "white" or "black" both have ancestors who were slavers and slaves, rapists and rape victims, thieves and the victims of thieves, cultural suppressors and cultural suppression victims. White people in history have done all this to each other, and so have black Africans. At some point these different groups of people started taking slaves from each other's continents. White people started buying from black slave traders who had captured black slaves. The lives of black slaves owned by blacks in Africa was no less horrible than blacks owned by whites as slaves in the Americas, though of course making the middle passage was a special horror. Black slavers in Africa even took several million white slaves, captured by Barbary ships on the north African coast, a practice that led Tom Jefferson to form the US marines and begin the US' first foreign war.

When white folks started the Anti-Slavery Society in London, their opponents included not only evil honkey bastards, but also many African leaders as well. In fact, black-on-black slavery in many African nations did not end until the 1900s, and in some places has not even yet ended today. The freed US black slaves who created Liberia created black-on-black slavery in their ironically named new nation, calling themselves "Americans" and the natives "Africans". These slave owners imposed Christianity on the "Africans", as well as English. Something similar occurred at the conclusion of Haiti's revolution.

Your kids and mine have black and white ancestors. On both sides they have victims of slavery and brutal cultural conquest, as well as perpetrators of same. Different societies over time have been better or worse than their contemporaries. For our children today, I think that immigration statistics show that we should keep them put: many thousands of black Africans immigrate here to the US, and nearly no Americans immigrate to anywhere in Africa.

"Racist" Republicans Like Obama

This poll of Republicans, whom many US-haters claim are "racist" against blacks, finds that Repos like Obama almost as much as they like McCain.

Racial Divide in Detroit?

This article asserts a black-white "racial divide" in the Detroit area, based on discrepancy between black and white average levels of education, income, wealth, and incarceration. But for black and white people who make the same life choices, there is no discrepancy.

Jena Six a Hoax?

This essay by Pat Buchanan asserts some troubling claims that I have seen nowhere else.

Venezuelan Exodus From Chavez, to US

As predicted here, the rise of socialism / totalitarianism in Venezuela (even when occasionally endorsed by mob vote) has caused productive people there to flee to freedom, which of course usually means the US. The article notes that these immigrants have brought billions of dollars out of the Venezuelan economy and deposited it into banks in their new home nation, the US. But of course with the magic of socialism, Venezuelans won't miss or need that fleeing capital: the govt just needs to declare healthcare, education, housing, and food as "free" and "universal"... and of course raise the "minimum wage" and impose price caps against "gouging". That'll work (if by "work" we mean create more immigration to the US).

Source of Black Youth's Bad Rep

Even black adults are leery of young black people. The statistics very clearly demonstrate that young black people are demonstrating a much higher rate of bad decisions (violence, drop outs, hours of reading, teen births) than the national average. This story from a black newspaper writer riding the city bus in Detroit exemplifies those statistics, and the resulting reputation.

ACT "Racial Bias" Fails to Stop Chinese Immigrant

Last year 22 students scored perfect on the ACT, including this Chinese immigrant in Michigan. I wonder about the racial composition of these 22. The US is about 70% honkey, and die-hard lefties claim that standardized tests like the ACT are "racially biased" in favor of honkies. Thus their assertion predicts that more than 15 of these 22 students should be honkies.

I, in contrast, make an alternative assertion: these tests are biased in favor of students who devote time to serious academic matters, including reading, writing, and confronting math problems. I further assert that non-white immigrant kids from Asia on average spend more time than the average white kid in the US. Thus I predict that a racial breakdown will identify fewer than 15 white kids, and a number of Asian kids much higher than their fraction of the test-taking population.

Why So Few Grocery Stores in Detroit?

That's an easy question; a more interesting question is: Does it really take a formal "task force" to figure out the answer? Hardly. The behavior of Detroit residents scares-off grocery stores. Detroit city officials have for decades decided to create a regulatory and tax structure much less favorable than those in the surrounding suburbs. And of course too many Detroit residents have decided to behave in a much more criminal fashion than their contemporaries in the surrounding suburbs.

The article quotes a black Detroit council member as citing "racism" to explain why white-owned grocers shun Detroit. That's another reason for businesses to avoid Detroit: ignorant public scapegoating. Meanwhile, nothing prevents black millionaires from creating fabulous grocery stores in Detroit... nothing besides poor city management and residents generating some of the nation's worst crime statistics.

Lack of Grocery Stores in Detroit for Obvious Reasons

That's an easy question; a hard question is: Does it really take a formal "task force" to figure out the answer? Hardly. The behavior of Detroit residents scares-off grocery stores. Detroit city officials have for decades decided to create a regulatory and tax structure much less favorable than those in the surrounding suburbs. And of course too many Detroit residents have decided to behave in a much more criminal fashion than their contemporaries in the surrounding suburbs.

The article quotes a black Detroit council member as citing "racism" to explain why white-owned grocers shun Detroit. That's another reason for businesses to avoid Detroit: ignorant public scapegoating. Meanwhile, nothing prevents black millionaires from creating fabulous grocery stores in Detroit... nothing besides poor city management and residents generating some of the nation's worst crime statistics.