Archive for July 2010

In an age of diminished resources, the United States may be heading for an intensifying confrontation between the gray and the brown.

Two of the biggest demographic trends reshaping the nation in the 21st century increasingly appear to be on a collision course that could rattle American politics for decades. From one direction, racial diversity in the United States is growing, particularly among the young. Minorities now make up more than two-fifths of all children under 18, and they will represent a majority of all American children by as soon as 2023, demographer William Frey of the Brookings Institution predicts.

At the same time, the country is also aging, as the massive Baby Boom Generation moves into retirement. But in contrast to the young, fully four-fifths of this rapidly expanding senior population is white. That proportion will decline only slowly over the coming decades, Frey says, with whites still representing nearly two-thirds of seniors by 2040.

These twin developments are creating what could be called a generational mismatch, or a “cultural generation gap” as Frey labels it. A contrast in needs, attitudes, and priorities is arising between a heavily (and soon majority) nonwhite population of young people and an overwhelmingly white cohort of older people. Like tectonic plates, these slow-moving but irreversible forces may generate enormous turbulence as they grind against each other in the years ahead.

Already, some observers see the tension between the older white and younger nonwhite populations in disputes as varied as Arizona’s controversial immigration law and a California lawsuit that successfully blocked teacher layoffs this year at predominantly minority schools. The 2008 election presented another angle on this dynamic, with young people (especially minorities) strongly preferring Democrat Barack Obama, and seniors (especially whites) breaking solidly for Republican John McCain.
[Read more]

Sammy Sosa: Then and Now

These rather striking photos of retired baseball slugger Sammy Sosa Before and After he began using one of those lotions so popular in the Third World for bleaching skin got me to thinking (as usual) about the future of American politics

These amusing Sosa pictures are particularly ironic. I have been involved in dozens of discussions where some naive newcomer has asked, reasonably enough, “On what grounds do Hispanics get racial preferences? Are they a race?” Then, somebody familiar with the federal categories of legally protected groups will explain that, officially, Hispanics can be any race, such as, say, black.

And the most frequently cited example of a black Hispanic has been, in my experience, Sammy Sosa.

Yet Sammy himself apparently isn’t too happy about being the face of black Hispanicity. (Hey, powerful chemicals worked for Sammy before in challenging Mark McGwire for the home run record. So why not try some new ones?)

Weird and painful as it looks, this kind of thing happens all the time all over the world, although it’s usually women expensively bleaching their skin.

Watching foreign TV commercials can be eye opening. In India, leading cosmetic products have names like Fair and Lovely and Fair and Handsome. In Thailand, Vaseline Healthy White Body is popular.

[Read more]

Dr. David Yeagley

Dr. David Yeagley, an author, composer, and blogger, joins Richard Spencer to offer an American Indian’s perspective on white guilt and patriotism.

Listen to the podcast here.

Visit Dr. David Yeagley’s website, badeagle.com, here.

In my last VDARE article, I critically examined Richard Nisbett’s book, Intelligence and How to Get It: Why Schools and Cultures Count. Nisbett, a social psychologist at the University of Michigan, [email him],received the most favorable reviews, not only in the media, but academia as well, for arguing that there has been a 35% Black gain relative to Whites in average IQ test scores and tests of educational achievement. Moreover, Nisbett asserted (incorrectly, it turned out) that cultural factors alone could explain all the Black-White gaps—which he also claimed could be eliminated altogether through educational and social interventions.

All of which was just what the huge sector of the Education Industry devoted to closing the racial “Achievement Gap” wanted to hear. But it was wrong.

(My article was based on a longer academic review [PDF] that Arthur Jensen and I contributed to The Open Psychology Review).

Now I want to focus these allegedly improving Black scores in more detail. This article too is based on an academic journal essay by Arthur Jensen and myself: in the March 2010 issue of Intelligence, The rise and fall of the Flynn Effect as a reason to expect a narrowing of the Black-White IQ gap.

When Jensen and I reviewed Nisbett’s book, we noted that his claims of Black IQ gains relative to whites were far too high. But, in common with other race realist scientists, we tended to assume there must have been some improvement.

However, our new analysis finds that from 1954 to 2008 Black 17-year-olds consistently scored at the level of White 14-year-olds on tests of mathematics and reading—i.e. in more than fifty years, there had been no significant change at all.
[Read more]

Ohio’s public schools are losing about half their African American and Hispanic students before they graduate from high school, making the state among the nation’s worst at graduating minority students, two recent national reports show.

Diplomas Count 2010, put out by the Editorial Projects in Education Research Center in Bethesda, Md., found that only 47.5 percent of Ohio’s black public school seniors graduated on time in 2007, the most recent data available for state comparisons.

That makes Ohio eighth worst in graduating black high school students.

The national average graduation rate for African American students is 53.7 percent, the study says.

Another report by the National Center for Education Statistics, using different calculations, lists Ohio’s black graduation rate at 55.5 percent in 2007, sixth- worst in the nation.

“Regardless of what study we look at, we see this gap,” said Scott Blake, spokesman for Ohio’s Department of Education. “We have made strides in certain areas, but it hasn’t been completely resolved.”
[Read more]

There is such a thing as a conditioned response. Here’s an example: Leftists call conservatives “racists.” Conservatives cower and stutter some defense. Leftists call conservatives “racists” some more. Conservatives cower some more. Question: How do you think you break this pattern?

We’ve seen this again with the recent vitriol spewed by NAACP head Ben Jealous (a fitting last name). Speaking at the NAACP convention in Kansas City, Jealous accused the Tea Party of, take a guess…cue the “Jeopardy!” music…”racism.” Just as predictably, many conservatives are running around trying to convince everyone that, by gum, they really are swell guys. No, really. I’m not a racist. I don’t beat my wife. I don’t kick my dog. I eat my organic vegetables and drive a Prius.

Look, why don’t we just save everyone the trouble? Every time a conservative renders an opinion, we can just play a recording with a little weaselly voice screeching, “You’re a wacist! You’re a wacist!” (Barney Frank-style) followed by a music video featuring The Cowering Conservative — I mean 1950s-style, duck-and-cover footage, with the tune and all.

And such conservatives abound. Oh, don’t get me wrong, conservative brethren, I love ya, man. But frankly, too many of you are saps. You really don’t get it. People who advocated welfare reform in the 1990s were accused of being “racist.” If you’re for border control, you’re “racist.” If you criticize Obama, you’re “racist.” If you oppose quotas, you’re “racist.” If you say that, be it nature or nurture, there are differences among groups, you’re “racist.” If you want English to be the national language, you’re “racist.” The word has become meaningless, used only to stifle and stigmatize opposition. And if calling you a heretic worked in that regard, the left would do that. And if calling you a Fig Newton worked, they would do that.
[Read more]

Widespread interest in last year’s discovery of a hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold in Staffordshire has prompted Oxford University to embark on a mission to create the world’s largest online archive about the period.

The university is asking members of the public to upload any stories, poems, writing, art or songs they have composed or heard that relate to Old English and the Anglo-Saxons to Project Woruldhord (Old English for “world-hoard”). Oxford is also keen for translations of Anglo-Saxon texts, pictures and videos of Anglo-Saxon buildings or monuments, recordings of Old English, and even videos of historical re-enactments, to be included in the archive.

“We’ve just appointed a new professor of poetry, Geoffrey Hill, whose Mercian Hymns [about eighth-century ruler King Offa] harks back to the period,” said Dr Stuart Lee, who is running Project Woruldhord. “Many other people have also been inspired by the literature and have written their own work.”

[...]

Rare Textus Roffensis is shown at Rochester Cathedral

An Anglo Saxon manuscript said to have inspired the Magna Carta will be displayed in Rochester this month.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10567921
[Read more]

Video linked here.

Republicans on the Senate and House Judiciary Committees are calling for an investigation into allegations that the Justice Department wrongly abandoned a case against the New Black Panther Party and has adopted a policy to ignore voting rights violations against white victims.

Senate Judiciary Republicans sent a letter Friday to Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., chairman of the committee, requesting a hearing and House Judiciary Republicans wrote President Obama on Thursday asking him to direct Attorney General Eric Holder to appoint a special prosecutor to launch an investigation.

A spokesman for Leahy did not return a message left on his cellphone Saturday. The White House did not immediately respond to an e-mail seeking comment.

The requests come as the bipartisan and independent U.S. Commission on Civil Rights continues its yearlong investigation of the allegations. Earlier this month, the commission, which has a conservative majority, called on the Justice Department to investigate its civil rights division after a former employee, J. Christian Adams, now a conservative blogger, testified that supervisors in the division instructed attorneys to ignore voting rights cases that involved black defendants and white victims.

“While we support diversity in the public service, we want to ensure that no Canadian is barred from opportunities in the public service based on race or ethnicity,” Stockwell Day, the Treasury Board President, said in a statement.

The Conservative government has ordered a review of federal affirmative action policies, saying the public service should hire based on merit, not race or gender.

Cabinet ministers Stockwell Day and Jason Kenney announced the review of the Public Service Employment Act, along with any related practices and policies, yesterday.

“I strongly agree with the objective of creating a public service that reflects the diversity of Canada, and with fair measures designed to reach that goal. But we must ensure that all Canadians have an equal opportunity to work for their government based on merit, regardless of race or ethnicity,” said Mr. Kenney, the Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism.

Introduced in 1986, the equity act covers federally regulated companies with 100 or more employees. Under the current policy, the federal government targets four “employment equity groups”: visible minorities, aboriginals, people with disabilities and women. The Public Service Commission of Canada says on its website that most positions are open to all applicants, but that “from time to time, certain positions may be limited to applicants from members of employment equity-designated groups.”
[Read more]