31 August 2020

The Black Struggle: A Reader



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.


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.

 

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 HammondDaniel ShaverDylan NobleJustine Diamond,  Jesse JensonBenjamin EvansJason LappeWilliam BowersBailey TurnerTyler MillerEric ScottSeth AdamsCody Wayne JarrettBobby Rex HorneRichard DinnenyDanny CuppsJerry HardwickGilbert CollarDillon TaylorRobert 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?

 

 

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.’

 

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: 1880-19801990-2010


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 sourcesBureau of Justice Statistics and Bureau of the Census reports 1926-198619791984,   1990199520002005,2010.

 


Inter-racial crime statistics tell the same story:





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



Data source



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

 


 


 

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


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.



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. 


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:


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:


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






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 examCalifornia 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. 


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."

 



Thank you, as always, for reading.

6 comments:

eahilf said...

Quite the compendium of data/graphics; thank you, and I appreciate the thought and effort it took to put this post together -- I might download a few of the graphics to add to my already large collection.

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.

I did Ctrl-F to search for "genet" before commenting, and was not too surprised to see that you did mention at least "the possibility that some of these behavior differences between ethnic groups do have a partly genetic origin", even if I personally find your statement rather milquetoast and weaselly -- I say this because I think it's rather obvious now that these absolutely are, without question, the industrial age phenotypical expressions of basic average genetic differences between population groups, and thus the failure of amelioration via educational measures, social programs, etc etc, ad nauseam, for decades now -- and it's not just cognitive ability, which is most often the subject of conjecture re a connection between SES and genetics -- it is other vital aspects of behavior as well, which modern quantitative behavioral psychology is helping elucidate.

For only some of the white victims of 'diversity' who are virtually completely ignored by the fully weaponized (against Whites) mainstream media:

Twitter/ExposingWhitePrivilege

eahilf said...

Bold suggestion: delete spam comments.

eahilf said...

If you don't already know about it, this blog may interest you:

Ideas and Data

Related Twitter account:

Twitter/Sean Last

M.G. said...

eahilf—

Sorry about the very late reply, this fall has been frenetically busy.

I think it's rather obvious now that these absolutely are, without question, the industrial age phenotypical expressions of basic average genetic differences between population groups

You’re right of course, and we’ve published data on those likely genetic differences many times on this blog. This data round-up was perhaps aimed at a more general audience.

My sense is that compared to ten years ago when this blog started, people are even more in the dark and/or hyper-sensitive about HBD than ever. What a paradox considering how much info about it is available for free online today! The social media censorship and general hysteria (statues torn down, etc.) these days is making me more careful than ever.

Thank you for the links, very interesting. I’m amazed that that Twitter account hasn’t been purged. We have truly entered into a thought-crime regime state and you cannot be too careful today.

luke2236 said...

"Only by recognizing that diversity means difference will we be able to co-exist in one society."
Sorry - we can NOT coexist - isnt possible. Whites and blacks are so completely different that mutual undestanding and coexistence on a large scale is impossible. White societies are different than any on earth. period. NO 'multicultural' society as ever lived long. As the Bible tells Us, we are a 'peculiar people' and are to be separate. Thats the only way We will ever have any peace...and 'separate ' means separate from other races, including and especially the jew.

Anonymous said...

Actually, luke2236, the Bible tells us that those Christians regardless of race and ethnicity are His people who submit to Him. The highest authority is God, and He delegates authority to others; so, in order to submit to God, we submit to the authority He has placed over us. Under Him, co-existence on a large scale is not only possible, but mandated.