More from Guy White making sense on Race.

SAT scores matter

The short answer is: yes, they were. Consider the changes in admissions profiles and six-year graduation rates of the classes entering in 1997 and 2001 at SUNY’s 16 baccalaureate institutions. Among this group, nine campuses raised the emphasis they put on the SAT after 1997. This group included two prestigious research universities (Buffalo and Stony Brook) and seven smaller, regional colleges (Brockport, Cortland, New Paltz, Old Westbury, Oneonta, Potsdam and Purchase).

Among the campuses that raised selectivity, the average incoming student’s SAT score increased 4.5 percent (at Cortland) to 13.3 percent (Old Westbury), while high school grade-point averages increased only 2.4 percent to 3.7 percent — a gain in grades almost identical to that at campuses that did not raise their SAT cutoff.

Yet when we look at the graduation rates of those incoming classes, we find remarkable improvements at the increasingly selective campuses. These ranged from 10 percent (at Stony Brook, where the six-year graduation rate went to 59.2 percent from 53.8 percent) to 95 percent (at Old Westbury, which went to 35.9 percent from 18.4 percent).

Most revealingly, graduation rates actually declined at the seven SUNY campuses that did not raise their cutoffs and whose entering students’ SAT scores from 1997 to 2001 were stable or rose only modestly. Even at Binghamton, always the most selective of SUNY’s research universities, the graduation rate declined by 2.8 percent.

The change is even more striking if we compare experiences of three pairs of similar SUNY campuses that, from 1997 to 2001, took sharply divergent paths. First, Stony Brook and Albany, both research universities: over four years, at Stony Brook the average entering freshman SAT score went up 7.9 percent, to 1164, and the graduation rate rose by 10 percent; meanwhile, Albany’s average freshman SAT score increased by only 1.3 percent and its graduation rate fell by 2.7 percent, to 64 percent.

Next, Brockport and Oswego, two urban colleges with about 8,000 students each: Brockport’s average freshman SAT score rose 5.7 percent to 1080, and its graduation rate increased by 18.7 percent, to 58.5 percent. At the same time, Oswego’s freshman SAT average rose by only 3 percent and its graduation rate fell by 1.9 percent, to 52.6 percent.

Finally, Oneonta and Plattsburgh, two small liberal arts colleges with 5,000 students each: Oneonta’s freshman SAT score increased by 6.2 percent, to 1069, and its graduation rate rose 25.3 percent, to 58.9 percent. Plattsburgh’s average freshman SAT score increased by 1.3 percent and its graduation rate fell sharply, by 6.3 percent, to 55.1 percent.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/18/opinion/18salins.html?_r=1

Legacy of Slavery

I just noticed that I began receiving google traffic from the keyword “legacy of slavery”.

If you google the term, my post on the legacy of slavery is #4. It is the only entry I could find on the first page (few people go beyond page 1) that doesn’t take the PC view that whites are the evil of the world and poor, poor blacks can never get over the legacy of being bought from Arab or their fellow African slave-traders (like Barack Obama’s ancestors on the father’s side) by white slave-owners who freed them.

I would like to expand that entry. Anyone who has any ideas as to what to put there, please let me know.

It is our one change to get our views out there to the mainstream audience, including college kids who may be giving class presentations on this topic. Normally, they would just state all the PC garbage and sit down. This is a chance to give them some counter-points to balance out their presentation. Even if they disagree, they might say, “but the other side believes xyz”, which would already be significant progress.

In Defense Of The White Man

Very much worth reading. I got this via AfricanCrisis.org

Is this the kind of dialogue Mr. Holder was looking for?

By Selwyn Duke
February 24, 2009
NewsWithViews.com

While many believe that prejudice has diminished over time, it’s not really true. Prejudice is much like the wind: Its direction changes, and the sheltered and well-situated may not sense it, but it’s always blowing on some people somewhere. Put literally, every age has its fashionable biases – and unfashionable people.

This was obvious during the presidential inauguration benediction, given by the Reverend Joseph Lowery. While making a supplication to the Lord, he made the following anachronistic plea:

“. . . help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get back, when brown can stick around, when yellow will be mellow, when the red man can get ahead, man, and when white will embrace what
is right.”

Well, I wonder if the reverend has ever asked the Lord why He scourged the world with white people in the first place.

It isn’t surprising that caucaphobia is in fashion. You can demonize any person, group or place; all you need do is focus on the object’s failings to the exclusion of its/his accomplishments. It isn’t even hard to do. To bastardize one of Abraham Lincoln’s lines, if you look for the worst in a group, you’re sure to find it. It’s just as with a person. If I repeatedly disseminated your sins and mistakes among the town folk while downplaying your good points, how long would it be before they were chasing you with pitchforks?

So it has been with whites for a long time now. It is not correct to say that history textbooks, documentaries and entertainment inundate us with stories about slavery and civil rights abuses; no, they inundate us with stories about whites’ practice of slavery and abuse of civil rights. There !
are movies such as “Roots” and “Mississippi Burning” but none of note about the Aztecs’ or Shaka Zulu’s domination of neighboring peoples, or the current African slave trade or Zimbabwean “president” Robert Mugabe’s persecution of whites and political opponents. Then, relating the American history guidelines of a prominent textbook publisher, the author of The Language Police, Diane Ravitch, writes:

“European Americans, the guidelines suggest, were uniquely responsible for bigotry and exploitation in all human history.”
This philosophy imbues school textbooks. While featured prominently are the sins of whites, others’ sins are whitewashed. For instance, due to special-interest-group pressure – such as that applied by Moslem activists – examples of slavery perpetrated by non-whites are in short supply or are sanitized. This, despite the fact that Moslem North Africans did at one time capture young boys of both the white and black races, castrate them and sell them into slavery. And this bias is a continuation of decades of anti-white propaganda of the kind embodied in Susan Sontag’s famous 1967 line, “The white race is the cancer of human history.” It’s an idea that has taken hold.

Thus must I mount a defense of the white race. But I want to preface it with a few remarks. First, don’t ask why I undertake such an endeavor. When the president has a preacher talking about the black, brown, yellow, red and white, it’s silly to ask why I speak of race. I’m not initiating such a discussion, I’m responding. I’m not throwing punches, I’m blocking.

Second, because of this – since I’m refuting those who assign blame by highlighting the sins of whites – it’s necessary that I trumpet whites’ accomplishments. Unlike those I’m refuting, however – who often ascribe the evils they feature to something inherent in whites – I don’t claim there is an innate quality in the race that should be credited with all these triumphs. On the contrary, I believe the force primarily responsible for Western civilization’s glories is Christianity, but that is grist for a different day.

It’s not hard to figure out where a defense of whites must start: Slavery. It’s the most odd of issues, in that we all thoroughly agree on the wrongness of it yet it is thoroughly divisive. It is the defining grievance of black America, something that imbues millions of black psyches. As an example, I attended a gathering a few years ago at which there was a certain guest, a rather emotive and outgoing black fellow who was very good at relating every topic of discussion, from the meaningful to the mundane, to America’s slavery. It was as if he could channel Kunta Kinte in every conversation.

Yet the reality of slavery is that, along with prostitution, it is one of the world’s oldest institutions. It is mentioned in the Bible and Koran, and, to the best of my knowledge, every major civilization has practiced it. And, if we’re to believe history and Afrocentrists (and I suppose you cannot believe both), the ancient Egyptians were black (no, they were not!) and enslaved Jews.

Moreover, the Islamic slave trade took at least as many Africans into bondage as did the European variety, and African tribes themselves had slaves and sold them to both civilizations. Additionally, while the word “slave” conjures up the image of a black person in the typical American mind, the term itself is derived from the word “Slav.” This is because great numbers of Slavs were once sold into slavery by conquering peoples. In other words, no group ever cornered the market on slavery – it touched ever corner of the Earth.

Yet, in the history of involuntary servitude, something else should be noted. It is a startling fact:

While whites weren’t the first ones to practice slavery, they were the first ones to abolish it.

Let’s be clear about this. Slavery was accepted. It was the status quo. It was an institution whose origin was shrouded in the mists of time. It was unquestioned.

That is, until Europeans said “No more.”

It was not Asians who effected this bold and unprecedented social change. It was not South Americans. It was not Africans. It was not American Indians. It was not Aborigines. It was Europeans, that cancer of human history, and they were just as white then as they are today. They gave the world change you can really believe in.

People will try to explain away this historical fact, saying that this striking example of man’s humanity to man has nothing to do with race. I will simply reiterate that the why of the matter is a discussion for a different day. For now, I’m content to say that if whites can be demonized without explanation for being one of many groups to enslave Africans, they can be credited without explanation for being the first group to outlaw the enslavement of anyone.

One of the reasons we fixate on slavery that ended more than 150 years ago concerns the effects many believe it has today. This is called the “legacy of slavery,” which, actually, seems not nearly as big a problem as the legacy of obsessing on legacies. Be that as it may, what is the real legacy of slavery?

Well, let’s think about it: Many lament blacks’ economic state in America, claiming it’s part of slavery’s legacy. But where would blacks be were it not for slavery? The answer is Africa, where people’s economic state is far, far worse than that of American blacks.

In other words, there is no reason to agonize over an event – even an evil one –responsible for your presence in a country that has offered its citizens unprecedented rights and standard of living. (Of course, to be precise, most blacks currently in the U.S. would not actually have been worse off absent slavery. This is because they wouldn’t have “been” at all, as ancestors whose procreation led to their existence would never even have met. The big picture is a funny thing, isn’t it?)

The point is that most people who arrived on American shores were driven here by some kind of persecution. Whatever the reason, however, thank God we’re in the land of opportunity and not languishing in a slum in Asia, South America, Africa or Eastern Europe. So, it’s ironic, but that some blacks were brought here in chains yesterday ensured that their descendants wouldn’t have to wear chains today.

Now we come to prejudice, another supposedly characteristic white fault. Yet the truth is quite the opposite. In reality, racial prejudice is probably found least among whites, due to political correctness.

Most white children are raised today with the idea that it’s profoundly immoral to be prejudiced. This isn’t to say there aren’t some Archie Bunker types extant, but they certainly aren’t in fashion. Remember, it was mainly white people who originated, promoted and funded sensitivity-training classes, tolerance programs and multiculturalism (come to think of it, I may start hating white people myself). Now, while I consider these abominations to be worse than what they ostensibly remedy, this brings us to a relevant question: Can you think of another group that has gone to the point of self-flagellation to purge prejudice from its ranks? Heck, with how we beat each other up over this, no one really has to worry at all about whites. We’re all black and blue.

Then we have the matter of white achievement. The vast majority of what makes the lives of all races better today – modern science and medicine; our luxuries; Western art, literature, legal institutions; etc. – is the handiwork of whites. Oh, this is simply a matter of circumstance, of opportunity, of a twist of fate, you say? Perhaps. Again, this is not the time to discuss the ways and whys. Suffice it to say for now that if President Obama (PBUH) can frame matters in terms of race at his inauguration (and in his books and everywhere else, it seems), I can in an article. And if whites can be ridiculed for their transgressions, they can be recognized for their triumphs.

Yet, despite all this and more, caucaphobia is still not only accepted but often encouraged. And the hypocrisy is stark. The left admonishes against making even valid generalizations or entertaining intellectual discussions about group differences. And indulging stereotyping – that specter of egalitarian nightmares – can fast earn one pariah status in addition to a place on the unemployment line. Why, even the positive variety is off limits. We cannot say blacks are better athletes, even though the sports arena may bear witness to this; we cannot say Asians are more intelligent, even though they have the highest average I.Q. of any major racial group; we cannot say Latinos are good dancers (not sure about that one). The idea is that such beliefs can lead to stigmatization or resentment or, or . . . whatever the theory du jour may be.

But when the matter is whites, even baseless negative stereotypes aren’t thought cause for alarm. A Reverend Lowery can imply that whites are uniquely flawed and immoral, they can be portrayed as the bane of man, as “the cancer of human history,” and it’s ho-hum.

Yet, are we to believe that such demonization magically becomes harmless when whites are the targets? What does history teach about the plight of consistently scapegoated and dehumanized groups? It’s that they almost invariably end up suffering persecution. And given that current demographic trends indicate whites will becomes a minority in America during the lifetimes of many reading this, and given that even majorities sometimes are tyrannized – as Sunnis’ domination of Shiites under Saddam Hussein and the Spartans’ enslavement of the Helots proved – it’s foolish to dismiss the peril posed by mainstreaming caucaphobia. (In fact, whites already suffer the sting of persecution).

Yet, that increasingly-maligned dead white male Ben Franklin knew whereof he spoke when he said, “You cannot reason a man out of a position he has not reasoned himself into.” Prejudice is a function of emotion, not logic, and emotion is like darkness, in that it can be blinding. A person who sees only color – and through colored glasses – will have a powerful immunity to facts. Thus, I only expect caucaphobia to intensify.

So what can we do? Well, prayer is always good, so I’ll conclude with one of my own right now. Lord, we ask you to help us work for that day when black will cease the attack, brown will no longer frown, white will be alright – and rhymes will fit the times.

© 2009 Selwyn Duke – All Rights Reserve

Selwyn Duke is a writer, columnist and public speaker whose work has been published widely online and in print, on both the local and national levels. He has been featured on the Rush Limbaugh Show and has been a regular guest on the award-winning Michael Savage Show. His work has appeared in Pat Buchanan’s magazine, The American Conservative, and he writes regularly for The New American, and Christian Music Perspective.

E-Mail: SelwynDuke at optonline dot net

More White Middle-Aged Criminals

I turn on the TV just now and the first thing I see is the Wayans Brothers, two young big black men, being robbed by a small white middle-aged man. Off the top of my head, I can’t remember a single criminal in any fiction who wasn’t white and middle aged, looking like your average suburban father.

If by some chance there is a black criminal, he’s always someone very sympathetic, such as John Q. where he’s taken the hospital hostage so that the nasty, uncaring white doctors would be forced to perform a surgery his son requires to survive. Yeah, that’s why most black crime happens! Sure, I believe you!

Every black guy on TV is married and the vast majority looks like he has a graduate degree. Every criminal is white.

And instead of everyone going, “who are they kidding?”, the nation applauds them.

Can a person be born straight?

Sexual attraction is a choice, we are told by the High Priests of the Church of Liberal Orthodoxy. Sure. I don’t have to be attracted to a woman because gender is a social construction. I could be attracted to a man, but I made a prejudiced, homophobic choice not to be.

No doubt it was a conscious decision I made at the age of 11-12 to stop chasing after a ball and instead stare at my classmates’ chests. Probably an oppressive decision too. We must always work oppression in there somehow.

I am not a man and Betty Friedan is not a woman. Ok, they may have a point when it comes to her. But nobody else is a woman or a man either. Nobody is born with any sexual desires they cannot control, it’s all a choice.

So after concluding that nobody can be born straight, the High Priests suddenly tell us that some people are born gay.

Say what?!

So people can’t be born with a particular sexuality, they can’t be born male or female, but they could be born gay.

Seriously?

So let me get this. Some of us are born gay and the rest are bisexuals who have a choice of sex partners? But nobody is born straight?

Oh and one more thing: if gender is a social construct, then how is it that people could be “born into a wrong body”, as transsexuals claim about themselves? If nobody is a man and nobody is a woman, then your body doesn’t matter.

If penis, testosterone, male hair pattern, etc don’t make you a man, and it’s all just our social beliefs, why do the transsexuals have to take testosterone-blockers and cut off their penis? Why is it that people can only be born into a wrong body, but never into the right body?

Doesn’t the fact that some people are born into the wrong body prove that the sex of your brain and your body usually match?

Doesn’t this also prove that people with one type of genitals have a differently structured brain than people with another type, and that it’s not all “social construct”?

Eric Holder’s License to Harass

No doubt all of you heard our racist Attorney-General Eric Holder say that Americans are cowards. One must understand first and foremost that when blacks say that Americans need to be more open about race talk, they mean that black people don’t harass whites enough.

Any black person who doesn’t abuse whites is a “house nigger” and an “Uncle Tom”. Consider for example this poem by Prof. Nikki Giovanni of VA Tech who was chosen by the school eulogized the victims of the massacre by Cho Seung-hui in April 2007. You really should read it. It tells you all you need to know about the “open and frank conversations” that blacks are looking for. If you don’t kill whites, you are a nigger. Pride means murder.

All the “dialogues on race” are nothing more than black people getting the license to harass. Blacks scream and yell at whites during these “dialogues” and whites are supposed to just tolerate it.

When Shaneequa complains that she has herpes and AIDS, are we allowed to tell her to stop having unprotected sex with random men?

When Laquisha complains that she has diabetes are we allowed to tell her that racism doesn’t cause the disease, but stuffing her mouth with hamburgers and sitting on her fat “ghetto” ass instead of working does?

When Roshandra complains that she needs more welfare so that she will never have to work because she has 5 kids, can we tell her that we aren’t responsible for supporting her out-of-wedlock children?

Can we tell Mohammad al-Shareeq, formerly known as Mike Johnson, that the legacy of white slavery is that white people decided to abolish it? That blacks should be grateful to the white man for ending slavery, something nobody else had done before? That Arabs, who originally enslaved blacks, would never have freed them and in fact black slavery remains active in several Arab countries?

When Tyrone complains that he and 32% of all black men spent over a year in prisons are we allowed to point out that the difference in testosterone levels – proven to cause violent behavior – is the same between whites and blacks as between teenagers and middle-aged men?

Are we allowed to say that poverty does not cause crime, but rather it is dysfunctional behavior that causes both crime and poverty?

Are we allowed to ask whether the ghetto is crime-ridden because of the people who live there or because buildings in the projects are tall?

When we talk about the causes of the present economic recession, can we discuss the shakedown in the amount of several trillion dollars that banks were forced to pay to minorities?

Are we allowed to ask why the quality of American universities is being destroyed to accommodate black students who got admitted through affirmative action and are incapable of doing the work (here and here)?

Are we allowed to ask why is it that black kids cannot do as well as white kids no matter how much we spend on schools, even if it is $350 million for a single school?

Can we talk about how small genetic differences can cause massive differences in outcome?

Most importantly, are we allowed to talk about IQ differences? Shouldn’t we know the reason why blacks fail?

Is it a conspiracy that blacks score less well than whites on all tests? Which side is lying about IQ results?

Or is it the environment? Or genetics (here, here and here)?

Is IQ research science or pseudo-science? Who’s trying to suppress real research?

Mr. Holder, can we ask those questions?

Because unless we know whether or not white and black IQ is the same, and what caused the differences, we cannot answer why is it that blacks trail behind whites in school and among corporate management.

Unless we know whether or not blacks commit the same amount of crime, and what caused the differences, we cannot answer why more blacks are arrested.

Unless we know whether or not blacks are more likely to have reckless sexual habits, we cannot answer why blacks are so much more likely to have sexually transmitted diseases.

There is great reason to have an open and honest dialogue about race. But Mr. Holder. Sir. Please understand something. A dialogue must be two-sided. That’s the meaning the word ‘dialogue’. Otherwise, it is just a monologue.

When one side gets to make speeches and the other side needs to agree, clap and repent, it is not dialogue. What you are calling for, Mr. Holder, is to allow black people to engage in uncontrolled screaming against whites for which under different circumstances they would get arrested for harassment, intimidation and disorderly conduct. That is not dialogue. That is not openness. That is abuse.

Mr. Holder, you don’t want more openness. You don’t want us to discuss the very causes of the race problems in this country. You want to tell us what assumptions and presumptions we must start with: whites are always to blame.

Mr. Holder, an open and honest dialogue does not mean giving black people a license to harass whites. It means letting people talk about racial differences in IQ, testosterone and sexual behavior, and the genetic and cultural causes, so that we could find the answers based on facts, logic and science, instead of building a wall that blocks information from reaching the masses.

Mr. Holder, if you truly want open and honest dialogue, tear down this wall. Come out in favor of letting us talk about IQ, testosterone and sexual habits!

Logical Dialogue on Race

This comment by HardLogic deserves it’s own blog entry.

I watched this clip twice, and took some notes the second time. I’d like to respond to a few items that were brought up:

Holder: “…we don’t talk enough about things racial.”

Who is it that’s trying to prevent a frank discussion? I’ll give you a hint; this would be the same group that ends people’s careers whenever they bring up an inconvenient racial fact.

Dyson: “The black church didn’t come into existence because it desired to be separate from the white church.”

Really? Perhaps this is true, but I sincerely doubt it. Either way, the implication is that only white people were separatist, while blacks were too pure to be self-segregating. In effect, you’re undeniably saying here that only white people are racist.

Dyson: “America [needs] to embrace all of its separate colors…to be willing to say, ‘Hey, maybe we didn’t get it right; maybe white supremacy, social injustice, the whole owning of slaves, Jim Crow law, and vicious bigotry have not lived to the best experiment in democracy.’”

Are you kidding me? Are you actually saying that America is presently asserting–to any degree at all–that any of these occurrences you list were good? Did you just step out of 1850? In a country where blacks can be found in positions at every level of society, where slavery has been entirely outlawed, where affirmative action has a strangle-hold on every aspect of our society, where universities and businesses and government agencies have to meet race quotas, where every white person has to walk on eggshells for fear of being accused of racism, where Black History Month and Black Pride and Black this and Black that are not only tolerated but encouraged, where history texts are rewritten to make whites look evil and blacks look noble, where every child undergoes mandatory mental reform by liberal thought police, are you really proposing that America has not embraced the black population? It would be hard for us to give much more favor to blacks than we already have without all being required to perform fellatio on Al Sharpton.

This must be the key to black exploitation of America: living forever in the sins of the past. It’s my understanding that psychologists consider this a dangerous mental state.

Dyson: “…Oscar Grant and the chimp cartoon…”

Yes, Oscar Grant: You assume he was killed because he was black. You assume this because the cop was not black. We both know you would not assume this if the cop were black or Oscar were white. In other words, you only care when a policeman kills someone under tragic circumstances if it can be used to support your own racism. It never ceases to amaze me how some people can sift through ten thousand incidents of police heroism to find just one of police ineptitude and hold it up as proof of universal racism or oppression. One might even go so far as to say that such people try to stereotype all police officers by the actions of only a few of them. As I recall, stereotyping is one of those unacceptable activities minorities are always whining about (except, apparently, when they are doing it).

And about the chimp cartoon, the incident it was referencing was a recent event in which a celebrity chimpanzee named Travis was shot to death by police in Connecticut after having mauled a friend of its owner. It had nothing to do with Obama unless you incorrectly believe Obama wrote the stimulus bill. Don’t you have anything better to do than wander around looking for things at which to take offense? Grow up!

Dyson: “Many black people are used to hearing negative things about themselves every day in the press; many white people are not.”

The negative things in the press about blacks might possibly have something to do with the fact that blacks commit over 50% of the murders in the US, even though they are a mere 13% of the population. It might have something to do with the fact that, compared to whites, blacks are more than twice as likely to commit domestic violence, more than twice as likely to have children out of wedlock, more than eight times as likely to contract AIDS, almost five times more likely to default on student loans, more than five times more likely to go to prison during their lifetimes, et cetera. Somehow, we are told, this is the fault of white people. No one is sure how that can be the case, but it must be, because the alternative would be to hold blacks responsible for their own bad decisions.

Despite what you say, whites do see a lot of negative press about themselves every day: We are told that we are oppressive, even though the nations founded by our race were the first to outlaw slavery. (Slavery is ongoing in many parts of Africa, as it has evidently been since long before white people brought writing there; Niger, for instance, outlawed slaver in 2003, but nearly 8% of the population is still enslaved there. Ghana outlawed child sex-slavery in 1998, but it is still practiced widely.) Even when slavery was legal in the US, 95% of the white population never owned a slave. In order to view America as a nation of former white slave owners, it is necessary to stereotype white people based on the actions of 5% of them, all of whom have been dead for well over a century; still, White people endure this ongoing negative prejudice in the press. White people are portrayed as racist hate-crime perpetrators, even though the vast majority of anti-black hate crime is committed by Latinos and the vast majority of anti-Latino hate crime is committed by blacks.

Dyson: “We love America; that’s why we have a black president.”

If you love America, why does the president’s skin color matter so much to you? Over 95% of black voters voted for Obama. They turned out to vote in all-time record numbers. Explain how this is not racism.