Rosa Parks (center)

My suggestion to those who wish to believe these statistically and historically questionable assumptions is to take up their argument with God or nature. This is not the way the world seems to operate, and those who wish to make counterarguments should be allowed to do their thing. The other side should be equally free to present a refutation on the basis of empirical evidence.

As PC demands get ratcheted up, I wonder whether those who are buying time (perhaps until they retire) understand the silliness of throwing people under the bus to stop a runaway vehicle. The left is not going to be stopped in its tracks by signs of weakness. As the French say, l”€™appétit vient en mangeant. Either our side permits open discussion”€”especially discussion of what the left doesn”€™t want to have discussed”€”or we simply agree to capitulate every time the left calls someone a racist, anti-Semite, anti-transsexual, or whatever. Although we should treat each other, including other races, with as much civility as circumstances permit, to me it is obscene that we should be kept from serious discussions of socially relevant empirical data because some media thugs may beat up someone who transgresses their no-nos.

I”€™m also not sure that noticing racial differences is less justified that observing other ones. We assume this priority because the media has usually come down harder on dissent here than they have with other verbal taboos. But that may be owing to the fact that other victim narratives have been piled on to the black and feminist ones, which gained momentum in the 1950s and 1960s. And in that period there was visible discrimination against blacks, particularly in Southern states, where they have always been most numerous. As Derbyshire and others have pointed out, this narrative should already be wearing thin. Other developments have overtaken it: desperate efforts by the government and private sector to provide blacks with compensatory justice, widespread violence among black youth, a conspicuously disintegrating black family structure, and increased restrictions on what members of other races are allowed to say about blacks. Then there are the publicized torrents of invectives against whites coming from black spokesmen and white liberals.

Given these problems, I”€™m not sure there is any moral or intellectual justification (if there ever was) for forbidding an honest discussion of innate racial differences as well as other group differences that may have genetic sources. It is not clear to me that these genetic disparities may be the most critical for understanding key behavioral differences, but it seems ridiculous to exclude them from public or scholarly discussion. The reason we do is our fear of suffering the wrath of the increasingly totalitarian left.

In places such as Germany, the left now unleashes collective violence on “€œfascist”€ targets rather than simply knocking them out of the public arena. It may reach that stage here no less than in Europe unless the right is willing to stand up for intellectual freedom. By the “€œright,”€ I don”€™t mean those “€œkennel-fed”€ publicists who are throwing people under the bus.