John Derbyshire Making 'Conservatives' Look Bad

[Kathianne]

F'ing unbelievable! I like National Review, there's some very good conservative writers there. Derbyshire is an editor, though for how long is anyone's guess. He didn't publish this essay on National Review, gee wonder why? I've never been fond of himself, he seems the privileged characterization of an elite Republican. He's a snob, though he can write:

http://takimag.com/article/the_talk_nonblack_version_john_derbyshire#axzz1rJP lABLB


The Talk: Nonblack Version

by John Derbyshire

There is much talk about “the talk.”

“Sean O’Reilly was 16 when his mother gave him the talk that most black parents give their teenage sons,” Denisa R. Superville of the Hackensack (NJ) Record tells us. Meanwhile, down in Atlanta: “Her sons were 12 and 8 when Marlyn Tillman realized it was time for her to have the talk,” Gracie Bonds Staples writes in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

Leonard Greene talks about the talk in the New York Post. Someone bylined as KJ Dell’Antonia talks about the talk in The New York Times. Darryl Owens talks about the talk in the Orlando Sentinel.

Yes, talk about the talk is all over.

There is a talk that nonblack Americans have with their kids, too. My own kids, now 19 and 16, have had it in bits and pieces as subtopics have arisen. If I were to assemble it into a single talk, it would look something like the following.

Please share this article by using the link below. When you cut and paste an article, Taki's Magazine misses out on traffic, and our writers don't get paid for their work. Email editors@takimag.com to buy additional rights. http://takimag.com/article/the_talk_nonblack_version_john_derbyshire/print#ixzz1rNVFW72u
...

National Review has commented:

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/295506/derbs-screed-rich-lowry


Derb’s Screed
By Rich Lowry
April 6, 2012 9:08 P.M.
Comments
0

Needless to say, no one at National Review shares Derb’s appalling view of what parents supposedly should tell their kids about blacks in this instantly notorious piece here.

[jimnyc]

Wow, don't forget to read the comments! LOL

IMO, black parents should be teaching their kids the same as white parents, and Hispanic, and Asian...

[Kathianne]

I'm happy to say that Forbes and Red State have already called for his firing:

http://www.redstate.com/leon_h_wolf/...i-am-a-racist/

http://www.forbes.com/sites/joshbarr...hn-derbyshire/

On The Atlantic they are hoping for it:

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/polit...red-yet/50803/

Even Media Matters admits that the right has pounced right on this, including National Review editors and contributors:

Colleagues Condemn National Review Writer For "Appalling" Race-Talk "Screed" | Media Matters for America (http://mediamatters.org/blog/201204070001)

[Kathianne]

NRO fired him, as they should. Perhaps NBC, CBS, CNN, WaPo might take a lesson?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/apr/08/national-review-fires-john-derbyshire/print


National Review fires John Derbyshire over race article Columnist is sacked after writing article urging white and Asian parents to tell their children to avoid black people

<time datetime="2012-04-07T22:19EDT" pubdate="">Saturday 7 April 2012 22.19 EDT

</time>The National Review has fired its contributing editor John Derbyshire after he wrote an article for a website urging white and Asian parents to tell their children to avoid black people.


The National Review's editor, Rich Lowry, called the article "nasty and indefensible" while defending Derbyshire himself as "deeply literate, funny and incisive".


He wrote in a statement about the article on the National Review website (http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/295514/parting-ways-rich-lowry): "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. So there has to be a parting of the ways."
British-born Derbyshire wrote the article for Taki's Magazine, run by the rightwing Greek socialite Taki Theodoracopulos. He suggested white and Asian parents should give their children a "talk" urging them not to attend events where black Americans might be present in large numbers, to avoid black neighbourhoods and not to be a "good Samaritan" to black people who appear in distress...

<time datetime="2012-04-07T22:19EDT" pubdate="">
</time>

[logroller]

Maybe in a few years he can claim those weren't his views--he was just an editor.:coffee:

[Gator Monroe]

Minority Youth need supervision ?:clap:

[SassyLady]

I agree with this assessment of the situation from The Unalienable Right:



We’re generally opposed to the idea that a person should lose his livelihood because he says or writes something that other people find offensive, whether the offender is on the right or the left. So we don’t join the growing calls in the blogosphere for John Derbyshire to be fired by National Review for opinions he wrote on race (which were on a different website, not nationalreview.com), specifically about what he would teach his children about their black fellow Americans.

National Review certainly has a right to end their relationship with Mr. Derbyshire. An opinion magazine has every right to decide what opinions it will promote, and which are out of bounds.But all the phony outrage from left-wing blogs and liberal media outlets should be ignored by National Review and everyone else. The left is in no position to lecture anyone about their supposedly superior values, especially on the issue of race. Dividing Americans into groups, and treating people differently based on which groups they’re in, is at the core of leftist ideology and practice.The left’s primary aim is to shut up anyone who disagrees with them, whether it’s John Derbyshire, or Rush Limbaugh, or Glenn Beck, or Sean Hannity, or whoever. Their main objection is to dissent from leftist ideology.

The editor of National Review, Rich Lowry, was attacked as a bigot (http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/295107/bigotry-they-cried-rich-lowry) for simply pointing out the fact that George Zimmerman isn’t the greatest threat in the nation to young black males. Mr. Derbyshire, unfortunately for him and for the publication he writes for, has given the right’s enemies a legitimate complaint with which to attack. And of course they won’t hesitate to attempt to smear the entire conservative movement with his words.Demonstrating that their real objection is to conservatism itself, the outrage is highly selective.

Just a couple of examples from the last few weeks:Director Spike Lee tweeted an address which he believed was that of George Zimmerman (Lee got the address wrong), implicitly encouraging mob violence and putting an innocent couple in some potential danger. And not a peep from most of those who are now so concerned about what Mr. Derbyshire wrote.Al Sharpton routinely says things worse than anything Derbyshire said, and has for years. Sharpton has recently been working to create another Freddy’s Fashion Mart or Crown Heights incident in Florida – and he was an invited guest to the White House this week, and has his own show on MSNBC. And again, you’ll have to look pretty hard to find any criticism of the racist Rev. Al from the left, let alone any effort to have him removed from his television program.

And of course the left-wing propagandists at Media Matters, the Center for American Progress, and Mumia Abu Jamal supporter (http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2012/04/05/van-jones-claims-radicalism-behind-him) Van Jones’ group Color of Change aren’t pushing boycotts of Bill Maher.None of this is to defend what Mr. Derbyshire wrote. We believe it’s a core conservative value to approach people as individuals, and judge them on their own merits, and skin color has nothing to do with anyone’s value as a human being. Liberals are the ones who believe otherwise, who believe in judging people based on their group identity, including the color of their skin.The issue here is one of gross hypocrisy.

Liberals are simply in no position to lecture anyone about their values when it comes to race or anything else.

http://www.federalistjournal.com/fedblog/2012/04/07/john-derbyshire-and-his-critics/

[Kathianne]

I agree with this assessment of the situation from The Unalienable Right:

The part about 'the left has no room to talk,' is key to me. In fact, they project their self-proclaimed superiority of tolerance, progressiveness, and superior ideas throughout the media. Compare NBC's convoluted spinning of their egregious choice to air the doctored tapes of the Zimmerman call. At the time NRO was considering their action regarding Derbyshire, NBC was on giving an unbelievable 3rd or 4th explanation of their reason for the 'mistake.' Mistake or not, supposedly they fired 'the producer' responsible, but that person is unnamed, so... Look at how they deny the president's successful attempts to divide the country in so many areas.

The Conservatives rightly acknowledge the hypocrisy and the wrongness of the actions and words.

Compare most of the reactions from the right on actual, not created acts of intolerance. What we saw happen here is really not all that different than how I see most conservatives act individually in their everyday life. If someone I suspect someone holds prejudices because of comments they make from time-to-time, I can understand that. However, if they act on those prejudices that is another.

[Kathianne]

The part about 'the left has no room to talk,' is key to me. In fact, they project their self-proclaimed superiority of tolerance, progressiveness, and superior ideas throughout the media. Compare NBC's convoluted spinning of their egregious choice to air the doctored tapes of the Zimmerman call. At the time NRO was considering their action regarding Derbyshire, NBC was on giving an unbelievable 3rd or 4th explanation of their reason for the 'mistake.' Mistake or not, supposedly they fired 'the producer' responsible, but that person is unnamed, so... Look at how they deny the president's successful attempts to divide the country in so many areas.

The Conservatives rightly acknowledge the hypocrisy and the wrongness of the actions and words.

Compare most of the reactions from the right on actual, not created acts of intolerance. What we saw happen here is really not all that different than how I see most conservatives act individually in their everyday life. If someone I suspect someone holds prejudices because of comments they make from time-to-time, I can understand that. However, if they act on those prejudices that is another.

Sassylady, I just got home and took a look over at NRO, two posts there, one agrees with you-Mark Steyn (http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/295591/re-derb-mark-steyn) no less; one with me, Andrew McCarthy (http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/295573/derb-andrew-c-mccarthy).

Steyn:


Andy (http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/295573/derb-andrew-c-mccarthy), for what it’s worth, I regret the loss of John Derbyshire to National Review. Short version: Didn’t like the piece, but don’t think NR should have hustled him into the drive-thru guillotine on the basis of 24 hours of hysteria from the Internet’s sans-culottes. Longer version:


I didn’t agree with Derb on many things, from Ron Paul and talk radio to God and science. For his part, he reckoned I was a bit of a wimp on what he called “the Great Unmentionables (http://www.johnderbyshire.com/Reviews/PoliSci/americaalone.html).” He thought that neuroscientists and geneticists’ understanding of race trumped my touching belief in “culture.” I’m not so sure: Why is Haiti Haiti and Barbados Barbados? Why is India India and Pakistan Pakistan? Skin color and biological determinism don’t get you very far on that.

But I almost always learned something from his columns, and, at a time when punditry is increasingly parochial, I appreciated his range of historical and literary allusion (his recent “Duke of Marlborough moment,” for example). He will be impossible to replace on that front.
On the career-detonating column, I don’t have anything terribly useful to add. But Derb’s wife is Chinese and his children are biracial. And I can see why, in a world in which a four-time mayor of America’s capital city can disparage your own family’s race (http://newsone.com/2000992/marion-barry-says-asians-and-their-dirty-shops-ought-to-go/) (“these Asians coming in . . . those dirty shops . . . they ought to go”) and pay no price, a chap might come to resent the way polite society’s indulgence of racism is so highly selective.


So I don’t share Andy’s insouciance about how what’s sauce for the MSNBC race huckster, Hollywood address-tweeter and New Black Panther bounty-offerer should be a “hanging offense” for the iconoclastic right-wing gander, and them’s the rules and we just have to accept it. The Left is pretty clear about its objectives on everything from climate change to immigration to gay marriage: Rather than win the debate, they’d just as soon shut it down. They’ve had great success in shrinking the bounds of public discourse, and rendering whole areas of public policy all but undiscussable. In such a climate, my default position is that I’d rather put up with whatever racist/sexist/homophobic/Islamophobic/whateverphobic excess everybody’s got the vapors about this week than accept ever tighter constraints on “acceptable” opinion. The latter kills everything, not least the writing skills of the ideologically conformist: Note how cringe-makingly limp the Derbyshire “satires (http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/04/the-talk-what-parents-tell-their-children-about-john-derbyshire/255578/)” are, even in the marquee publications.


The net result of Derb’s summary execution by NR will be further to shrivel the parameters, and confine debate in this area to ever more unreal fatuities. He knew that mentioning the Great Unmentionables would sooner or later do him in, and, in an age when shrieking “That’s totally racist!” is totally gay, he at least has the rare satisfaction of having earned his colors. Yet what are we to make of wee, inoffensive Dave Weigel over at Slate? The water still churning with blood, the sharks are circling poor old Dave for the sin of insufficiently denouncing the racist Derbyshire (http://goodmenproject.com/good-feed-blog/racist-writings-should-derbyshire-and-weigel-be-fired/). Weigel must go for not enthusiastically bellowing, “Derbyshire must go!” Come to think of it, I should probably go for querying whether Weigel should go...




McCarthy:


Long before I had anything to do with National Review, I was envious of Derb’s talent as a writer and thinker. Over the last few years, I’ve gotten to know him a bit. He is charming, fiercely witty company. All that said, racialism is noxious regardless of who practices it. It is wrong that what is a day at the office for the Left’s racialists becomes a hanging offense in Derb’s case. But that is a summons to disgust over the former, not a defense of the latter.
...

I quote more of Steyn than McCarthy because he had more points to make. McCarthy's basic premise is mine, it's wrong regardless who does it. The bottom line there are more racialists on the left, proven time and again by Obama, Holder, The New Black Panthers, NBC, CNN, etc. The Conservatives have rightly call these folks out on it, the right thing to do. That they hold those who are 'right of center' but also divisive, is only staying honest.

[SassyLady]

Another one bites the dust:


‘WHITOPIAS’: ANOTHER NATIONAL REVIEW CONTRIBUTOR FIRED OVER RACIAL COMMENTS



Hot on the heels of John Derbyshire’s dismissal from National Review over a racially-charged article, the magazine has fired another contributor over the same issue. This time, it’s University of Illinois professor emeritus Robert Weissberg.It appears the Professor spoke at a conference for the “American Renaissance” magazine in March, where he discussed “viable alternatives” to white nationalism, like “whitopias.”
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/whitopias-another-national-review-contributor-fired-over-racial-comments/

[logroller]

Another one bites the dust:
Below is the image from the sassy's link; I think he's talking penis size...speak for yourself racist!
http://www.theblaze.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Weissberg-620x442.jpg

[SassyLady]

Men always think penis size is being measured ... I thought he was talking about how big his brain is.
:mooning:

[logroller]

^ men don't differentiate between the two.;)

[SassyLady]

^ men don't differentiate between the two.;)

I believe you on that one.