The Black Struggle: A Reader

George Floyd, Black America's latest martyr

America is in the grip of a reckoning. George Floyd’s death in police custody in May set off a national paroxysm of protests, riots, arson, and vandalism. White people in government, academia, the press, big business, and Hollywood are begging for absolution for their sins. As many have pointed out, it bears all the signs of a Great Awakening.

Congressional Kente cloth ritual

Why now? In a recent piece, we gave several reasons for this tumult:

 

•                      Coronavirus lockdown: Young people have been cooped up for months with none of their usual outlets--sports, concerts, festivals, bars, parties, nightclubs. Suppressed energy is waiting to burst.

•                      Mass unemployment: Coronavirus has led to tens of millions of job losses in the first world, especially the U.S. This is a way to express despair.

•                      Trump anger: Lingering rage at Trump's 2016 victory, failure at all attempts to depose him by soft coup (Russiagate, etc.). Non-stop media drumbeat that he's the next Hitler.

•                      Riot cycles: We haven't seen big race riots since the bloody days of Obama's tenure, and it was simply 'time.'

•                      Far left revolution: The highly-organized nature of the white rioting has led some to believe big-pocketed fomenters of 'color revolutions' are using Antifa as foot soldiers in yet another coup attempt.

•                      Simple mass hysteria.

 

Image source

The self-flagellation and rending of garments among white people may seem hard to understand, since the death which sparked this hysteria was in no way a racist incident. Many black men are killed by the police each year in the U.S. while resisting arrest, just as many Hispanic and white men are. In fact, a white man is killed by an American cop every 15 hours. 

 

Everyone knows the name Freddie Gray or Michael Brown, but not many know Zachary Hammond, Daniel Shaver, Dylan Noble, Justine Diamond,  Jesse Jenson, Benjamin Evans, Jason Lappe, William Bowers, Bailey Turner, Tyler Miller, Eric Scott, Seth Adams, Cody Wayne Jarrett, Bobby Rex Horne, Richard Dinneny, Danny Cupps, Jerry Hardwick, Gilbert Collar, Dillon Taylor, Robert Henning, or John Geer.

 

Death by cop--to general indifference

 

When a white man is killed by the police, not only do Whites not riot, they don’t even seem to lift an eyebrow.

 

It is possible to consult a list of all killings by U.S. policemen: Unsurprisingly, the vast majority (from all races) are the result of a suspect lunging at police with a weapon, generally a knife or gun. But a great many are not.

 

So why does the white community shrug when one of their own is struck down, while the black community treats these incidents as worthy of burning down cities?

 

Another Minneapolis interracial murder by cop (sans riot)

 

Are Blacks really affected disproportionately by police violence?

 

Brian Burghart aims to find out. His database Fatal Encounters exhaustively tracks racial data on civilian deaths in the U.S. caused by police encounters.

 

Over the last 20 years, they count 28,126 total deaths due to encounters with the police. (Causes: shooting, vehicular death, taser, medical event, asphyxiation, drugs.)

 

47% of them were white, 27% black, 16% Hispanic, 2% Asian (6% were race unspecified).

 

The 2010 census (which falls square in the middle of this period) showed the U.S. population to be 62% white, 13% black, 16% Hispanic, and 5% Asian. This means that by race, rates of death-by-police per population group look like this:

 

Data source

 

Thus, blacks are roughly two and half times more likely to die in an encounter with the police than whites. They’re a little more than twice as likely as Hispanics to die this way, and a whopping five times more likely than Asians.

 

But do all Americans have brushes with the police at the same rate? Instead of just comparing the 'Fatal Encounters’ data to the general population, it would be more useful to compare it to the population that has encounters with law enforcement. If one out of 100 Blacks who have police run-ins die from them, but only 1 out of 1000 Whites who have police run-ins do, then that tells us something more salient.

 

What does the data say? 

Department of Justice arrest records for the year 2018 report 7,710,900 total arrests (all crimes), of which Whites made up 69%, Blacks 27%, and Asians 1.4%. 

(Hispanics, which are not broken out from White / Black, are listed as 19%.  We estimate, based on Census statistics, that of that 19%, roughly 17% have been placed into the “White” category and 2% into the “Black” category. We have thus adjusted the White rate from 69% to 52%, and the Black rate from 27% to 25%.)

 

So, national arrest rates vs. % of the general population look like this:

 

Data source

 

To put these two graphs side-by-side:

 

 

These numbers are not terribly far off from each other. So it would seem that as a general rule, each ethnic group is killed in run-ins with police at roughly the same rate as that group is officially arrested by the police. It just so happens that Blacks draw serious police attention more than Whites do—but also more than Hispanics do, and far more than Asians do.

 

So the real question is, why do Blacks have so many more brushes with the police than other groups?

 

The reason is that they continue to struggle with a cognitive and behavioral heritage that causes them to create  disproportionate social dysfunction wherever they go in the world.

 

In what ways?

 

1) Impulsiveness

 

Traditionally, sub-Saharan African descended people have struggled more than other groups with gratification delay, also known as time discounting or ‘future orientation.’

 

The famous 'Marshmallow Test'

In Richard Lynn's analysis of the question, he states:

The first study to demonstrate differences between blacks and whites in the delay of gratification was carried out by W. Mischel in Trinidad in the late 1950s. He offered black and white children the choice between a small candy bar now or a larger one in a week. He found black children were much more likely to ask for the small candy bar now.

 

These results were replicated in a multi-ethnic context:

·                     In 1966 by Seagull, 

·                     In 1971 by Zytkoski et al.,

·                     In 1974 by Price-Williams and Ramirez,

·                     In 2011 by Castillo et al.

 

Of course, time preference can be gauged at in many ways.  Studies have shown, for example, that Afro-Americans are less inclined than other ethnic groups to

 

Pay back loans:

 

 

Maintain good credit scores:

Prevent unwanted pregnancies:

 

Stay and raise their children:

Data sources: 1880-1980, 1990-2010

Protect themselves against STDs: (click to enlarge)

 

Respect the speed limit:

Put their toddlers in carseats:

 

 

Wear seatbelts and stop at red lights:

Control their spending:

 

Source, income data

Practice good financial health:

 

These different measures, then, seem to show a population that finds it hard to think ahead, plan for the future, and reflect on the consequences of their actions.

2) Aggressiveness

 

Another trait with which African-descended people have struggled for generations is enhanced aggressiveness. They seem to have a harder time reining in their violent impulses than other ethnic groups.

 

Crime statistics bear this out, both historically and today :

 

Data sources: Bureau of Justice Statistics and Bureau of the Census reports 1926-1986, 1979, 1984,   1990, 1995, 2000, 2005,2010.

 

Data source: Color of Crime 2016

Inter-racial crime statistics tell the same story:

Data source

The same trend holds in many countries, even those which never colonized or enslaved Africans:

Data source

Data source

Data source

Data source 1, Data source 2

Back in the U.S., Afro-American children are disciplined at much higher rates than children from other groups:

 

 

Image source

 

Intimate partner abuse and child abuse are both higher in the black community:

 

Data source

 

 Data Source

 

A variety of psychological disorders manifest themselves more strongly in the black community:

 

 

Data Source

Data Source

There are possible gene correlations with some of these traits, as we’ve reported before (from data by Jayman):

 

 ·        The “Warrior Gene”, monoamine oxidase A (MAO-A): This gene is known to be associated with a host of anti-social behaviors, and varies considerably around the word. Certain variants of this gene were found to be quite prevalent among the Maori of New Zealand.

·        The aforementioned DRD4 gene, which Greg Cochran and Henry Harpending discuss in The 10,000 Year Explosion (p. 112):

The 7R (for 7-repeat) allele of the DRD4 (dopamine receptor D4) gene. It is associated with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), a behavioral syndrome best characterized by actions that annoy elementary school teachers: restless-impulsive behavior, inattention, distractibility, and the like. The polymorphism is found at varying but significant levels in many parts of the world, but is almost totally absent from East Asia. 

Attention deficit—differs by race?

·         About that DRD4 gene, the presence of longer copies of the gene are found to vary across the world, and is found to increase as migratory distance from Africa increases.

·         Additionally, a new study also using the Add Health data found that the 2-repeat version of the aforementioned warrior gene, MAO-A, is significantly associated with antisocial behavior and the likelihood of criminality in Black males. This allele is found in 5% of Black males, but is very rare (0.1%) in White males.

 Data source

In the interest of science, then, we must remain open to the possibility that some of these behavior differences between ethnic groups do have a partly genetic origin.

 

 

3) Thinking Abstractly

 

Another area in which Afro-descended peoples have faced many challenges is that of abstract thinking. 

Culture blind? Raven's matrices are said to test reasoning ability across cultures

The ability to think abstractly opens a host of cognitive functions: It permits one to envision the past, the future, the consequences of one's actions, and to 'walk a mile' in another man's shoes.

Standardized tests are the most universally accepted way to measure this ability. For example:

The U.S. gold standard in school-age standardized testing, the NAEP:

Image source

The U.S. college entrance exam, the S.A.T., is widely considered to be a proxy for the I.Q. test. Unfortunately, even the highest-income Blacks tend to score lower on it than lower-income Whites:

Data source (via Steve Sailer)

Due to this disparity, black students are held to much lower standards on college admissions. Some examples:

Data source

Data source

Data source

Blacks also struggle more than other groups to pass the Bar Exam:

As well as the military entrance exam and civil service exams:

Data source: Military entrance exam, California teachers' exam, the infamous
 Supreme Court-reviewed New Haven firefighters exam

Though the reasons are not clear, it has been shown that low cognitive ability and criminality are in fact correlated. This may be one contributing factor to the struggles Black America has had to contain its crime rates.

*     *     *

Since the Civil Rights Era fifty years ago, Blacks have succeeded in many ways. Their education and wealth levels have climbed enormously. Yet it is true that they have not reached the level of other groups such as Euro-Americans, Asian-Americans, and on certain factors, Hispanics.  

Their violent crime rates in particular remain stubbornly high compared to the rest of the population, which explains their frequent contacts with the police. The seeming inability of many black men to be stopped by law enforcement without lashing out aggressively explains most (though certainly not all) of the police violence towards this group.

The black struggle is real. But it is not a struggle against white oppression. It is a struggle against a cognitive and behavioral burden that is surely of partly genetic origin. This group has a harder time with impulse control and future orientation, and we all need to accept this reality and work within it. Only by recognizing that diversity means difference will we be able  to co-exist in one society.

Equal opportunity is a constitutional right and must be assured.

 

Equal outcomes, however, are not. There is no multicultural society on Earth which has equal outcomes for all groups. 

 Ugandans riot against wealthy Indian minority, 2007

America once knew and understood this truth.  Until she does again, peace will not return.

 

As Steve Sailer wrote, 

"Today, you aren’t supposed to mention fundamental facts about the realities of life in the United States, such as that blacks average lower in intelligence and higher in crime, and that probably explains racial “inequity” better than vaporing about Systemic Racism.

 

Because nobody is permitted to be anybody if they point out the possibility that blacks might not be solely victims of whites, but might also have their own tendencies that have evolved over the last 70,000 years of relative continental isolation, the far left keeps winning public arguments.

 

Say we had public discourse in which on the question of why do blacks get hassled by the cops, the permissible views were:

 

·   The Left: White people are evil.

·   The Center: Culture matters.

·   The Right: Culture and evolution matter.

 

The Center view would be better at resisting the racist hate rhetoric of the Left. But without the Right view that evolution matters, the Center is now the Far Right, and therefore is losing badly to the Left.

 

And that’s why our cities are burning.

 

Ideas have consequences.

 

Cancelling ideas has worse consequences."

 

Murdered for Wrongthink: 2020 America

Thank you, as always, for reading.