Some random, disconnected thoughts on race.
I think in many ways a genuine meeting of the minds never occurred with respect to the issue of race. What happened was that through a process of intimidation and exclusion, a coterie of mavericks, thought police, and thugs made it impossible to HAVE a rational discussion, with the result that general adherence to the ideal of perfect tolerance and open mindedness is a thousand miles wide, and an inch deep.
Under the surface, I think black people retain all sorts of doubts about white people, and white people retain all sorts of doubts about black people. This is the main racial divide. If you look at crime statistics, they are not random with respect to race. On the contrary: with some 12% of the population, Americans of African descent make up some 40% of our prison population. That is a significant number. There are more than 3x the number one would expect based on their demographics. As an example, roughly 16% of the population, and the prison population is Hispanic. It’s a match. Caucasians commit crimes at rates lower than one would expect.
Nor are crime statistics consistent with respect to income or class status. Most American poverty is in the Appalachians and similar areas, where they have drug related problems, but nothing like they do in big cities, and where crime rates are really quite low.
We need to ask big, bold questions like: if African Americans have lower IQ’s than European and Asian Americans, on average (which is a fact, albeit one which can be spun many ways), then how do we better integrate them into an information economy? IQ’s are malleable, particularly across generations. How do we start that process? How would we pursue that process in a democratic, voluntary way? What would such programs look like?
Leaving that issue aside, let’s look at another angle: if my experience is that if I am going to victimized in a large city, it will be by a black male, aged 15-40 or so, then it is quite pointless asking me to drop stereotypes. What happens, instead, is people keep their mouths shut, and simply move to the suburbs. Problem solved. There, in their little hideaways, they are quite content to be told not to discuss racial issues. They have rendered them irrelevant.
But no African Americans have been helped thereby. On the contrary, the tax revenue that could have been used to make the city a nicer place–let’s take Detroit as an example–has vanished. Who has suffered in that process? Not the suburbanites.
What is needed in the cities is economic growth. That growth will only happen if people feel safe in their persons, their property, and from confiscatory taxation.
Step one, there, is to be able to say: I don’t feel safe in many areas of Detroit, New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Los Angeles, Chicago, and those are mainly the areas that are mainly black. Who can say that in the current climate? Who is going to speak up for African Americans and–rather than deny the problem and accuse the person of racism–actually start to implement solutions to address the problem. Who are the victims of crime in black neighborhoods? Other black people. Does this hurt suburbanites? Not at all.
Can anyone blame people with the means to do so for moving away from such problems? Of course not. Yes, political firebrands love to paint them as evil, nasty, racist, and generally bad human beings. But they are simply reacting with common sense to a problem that has been created by an inability to have a rational conversation about realistic, actionable solutions. You can’t solve a problem you can’t recognize.
What I want for all Americans, and the whole world, is a life of peace, prosperity, and confidence in justice before the law. The question is not and never should be: “what sorts of statements are allowable?”, but rather, “what is the problem–who is suffering–and how do we most quickly make this problem disappear forever?”
Those who refuse to allow the debate to be framed this way are, by this act, demonstrating contempt for the lives of the very people they claim to be protecting.