Liberals equal and surpass our parodies of them

Robert P. writes:

Here is an example of liberals’ epic ability to ignore reality. In a dialogue at grantland.com, author Malcolm Gladwell said:

America has one of the highest incarceration rates in recorded history, for example. (We have six times more people behind bars, on a per capita basis, than Europe does.) That works out to about 2 million people—the majority of whom are young men, and a disproportionate share of those young men are young black men. Surely there must be hundreds—if not thousands—of potential professional athletes in that number, not to mention scientists or entrepreneurs or poets.

Yet another example of how a seemingly intelligent man can, as Ayn Rand called it, blank out.

LA replies:

“Surely there must be hundreds—if not thousands—of potential professional athletes in that number, not to mention scientists or entrepreneurs or poets.”

He ACTUALLY SAID THAT.

Now, race-realist conservatives will say things like that as a parody of liberal attitudes. For example, I’ll post a mug shot of a black murderer with extremely primitive, menacing features, and add, “if it wasn’t for racial discrimination, this man could have been a physicist or a Supreme Court justice.” But Gladwell really meant it. What can one say?

However, I would not call his behavior “blanking out.” He’s not merely ignoring reality. He is constructing an entire false reality of his own.

- end of initial entry -

June 9

Brandon F. writes:

There are plenty of black athletes, scientists, entrepreneurs, and poets in prisons in America. The athletes work out and play basketball regularly. The scientists are fussily concocting alcoholic beverages, intoxicants, and tattoo ink from different available elements. The entrepreneurs sell the products of the scientists. The poets write gangster rap lyrics and creatively insult each other in the prison yard. All with free room and board … and health care!

Stephen T. writes:

I wonder if, shown a photo of a representative sample of the white prison population, Malcolm Gladwell would declare that it, too, contained a large number of “scientists, entrepreneurs and poets”? I’m betting not, as popular culture increasingly restricts the depiction of high achievers to minorities who are, statistically, least likely to be that. Witness all the staged photos today that show young black males peering into test tubes and telescopes, and crowds of Hispanic kids crowding around the displays at natural history museums, etc. It’s an Orwellian inversion of reality. It’s not surprising that Gladwell would see undiscovered Einsteins and Gateses in a cellblock photo of gangstas at San Quentin. Nor that he would probably declare most white prison inmates to be “violent, frightening racists”—who are right where they belong.

Buck writes:

The Simmons-Gladwell dialog is long and must be a gold mine. I read the next “insightful” exchange immediately following the nugget cited by Robert P. They lament the failure of America to utilize or capitalize on so much of its best talent:

SIMMONS:

It’s a little different than Canada—where they somehow utilize 147.3 percent of the available hockey talent.

GLADWELL:

Exactly right. Not to mention the Kenyans in distance running, and the Dutch in soccer, and the Jamaicans in sprinting. It’s the flip side of the same point. In theory, big countries should dominate all sports because they have the biggest talent pool. But they don’t, because societies squander their talent. If you are a tiny country you can hold your own against someone 10 times your size just by being slightly more efficient in finding and developing the Battiers and Kingstons of the world. Could Battier have taken our jobs, if he wanted to? It wouldn’t surprise me. If our talent spotting in basketball and football is so lousy—and those are two areas about which, arguably, we care more in this country than almost anything else—how lousy must it be in journalism? You and I owe our livelihoods to the fact that this country doesn’t have its act together.

Timothy A. writes:

That Gladwell quote reported by your correspondent Buck is hilarious. The Kenyans dominate long distance running and the Jamaicans punch above their weight in sprinting competitions because they are more efficient at spotting and developing talent in those sports. It’s funny that every country with descendants of west Africans (U.S., U.K., etc.) are efficient at spotting and developing sprinters. But only among the west African population, not the non-west African populations of those countries. No innate genetic differences among races for Gladwell. No siree Bob!

Posted by Lawrence Auster at June 08, 2012 09:14 AM | Send