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Jan. 1, 2006 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
45:36
36 Race and the State (Part 2)
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Good afternoon, it's Sisterfan Molyneux.
This is 3.27 on January the 9th, Monday January the 9th, and this is the, I guess fairly long-awaited for those who are tracking such things, the sequel to Race Part 1, which I did Low last year, I do believe it was.
So sorry it's taking me so long, but I wanted to sort of organize my thoughts on the topic and I got sort of prey not only to my own natural tangents, but to the tangents that I followed from other people's emails.
So this is sort of race the question part two.
So to me the central question of race is the question of And I'll sort of phrase this in a personal way.
This is what I have been unable to sort of figure out from those who treat race as a sort of socio-political issue.
The question is this.
Do you want me to treat you different based on your race or not?
And that to me is sort of the essential question.
If you want me to treat you differently based on your race, then I can understand that, but you wouldn't necessarily be fair or right or just in saying to me that I only want you to treat me differently in a positive sense based on my race.
So, you know, if you say, yes, race is an essential enough factor in a human being's existence that It should require different treatment under the law, different treatment under a sort of social circumstances, then unfortunately you get the bad with the good, right?
So you then get all of the negative aspects in which differentiation can manifest itself, such as racism and bigotry and so on.
So that's the question that I've never been able to get resolved within my own mind when I hear about You know, issues of race.
And, you know, I can't figure out whether people want, like, so whether sort of black community leaders, do they want me to treat blacks differently based on race or not, right?
And if not, then I think that's wonderful.
I mean, I don't want to treat anybody differently based on race.
In which case, you know, you sort of should be consistent, right?
And say, well, we don't want to be treated differently based on the fact that we are a different race, but unfortunately they do want to be treated differently based on race.
Now, as to the question about the motivations of, you know, leaders of minority communities and so on, and of course this could include leaders of white communities, so please don't think I'm just picking on our other brethren, but the people who lead these communities, I really don't think that they are particularly concerned with race.
I think that they are particularly concerned with what works in terms of the transfer of money from the taxpayers to their groups, or the advancement of preferential legislation, or Political pressure and so on.
You know, I've mentioned before about an aspect of economics which I call negative economics.
Positive economics being, you know, I have a pen, you have two bucks, you want to buy a pen, I want your two bucks, and so we exchange and we're both better off.
That's positive economics.
Negative economics is, you know, you have a lunch, I have a bad temper and want your lunch, and if you give me your lunch I won't punch you.
That's an example of negative economics.
So there's still a transfer and there's a value, but it's not an added value.
It's the avoidance of a negative value.
You know, this is like the mother who guilts you into coming over for Sunday brunch even though you don't like her.
What you're buying is respite from the guilt that she herself has inflicted on you.
It's the same thing you do with the priest.
When you get a priest to absolve you of original sin, well, you know, he's the one who told you about original sin to begin with and generated that need.
So that's another example of negative economics.
And this shows up sort of all over the place, right?
We buy our freedom from the government by paying 50% taxation.
That's an example of negative economics.
Most of human history is based on negative economics, of course.
And so when you look at sort of the community leaders, and I can only really speak about community leaders in sort of racial, in the aspect of race, because that's the one that really is the most prevalent these days.
So when I sort of speak about community leaders, it's very hard to know what they themselves think of race, because of course they're Focus on race is heavily funded, right?
They're paid to focus on race and to focus on injustice, right?
The more that they focus on race and injustice, the more money they get paid.
So it's very hard to say to what degree do they actually believe about, you know, about injustice and so on.
Because, you know, you can't separate what benefits them economically from what their opinions may be.
So, like, if I asked you, did you like this movie, and I'm going to pay you $10,000 if you say yes, it's kind of hard to know what you feel about this movie.
And if, for instance, I say to people, or if there's a situation where people watch a movie, and then I pay them $10,000 for giving the movie a thumbs up, liking the movie, And I don't pay them anything for not liking the movie.
And then everybody says, gee, well, I like the movie.
It's kind of hard to know what the real facts of the matter are, what the real situation is.
And so, in matters of race, and this is true also, of course, in terms of gender, but in matters of race, it's very hard to know what people think.
And the reason that it's so hard is because, you know, groups get paid, you know, very large sums of money from the taxpayers through the government.
Racism, right?
I mean, and that is, treat me differently based on race, is subsidized, you know, and basically paid for to a large degree by the government.
So it's very hard to know what people's opinions about race are, you know, without that warping influence of government money.
So that part I have never quite figured out, and I suspect that I haven't figured it out because it can't be figured out.
I mean, if somebody wants, if you say, don't treat me differently because I'm Hispanic, But I want preferential immigration policies and preferential subsidies for people who are Hispanic who own businesses, and subsidies for Hispanic groups, and I want this, that, and the other.
Then, of course, it's a contradiction, right?
It's like, treat me differently because I'm Hispanic, but treat me the same because I'm Hispanic.
And I know that there's all of these examples of, well, the blacks, for instance, in the U.S.
were You know, there was slavery, and so they didn't get to aggregate capital.
So, you know, I think President Johnson, in the 60s when this sort of stuff began to really be talked about during the Civil Rights Movement, you know, he said that, you know, if you have, you know, two people in a race, but the white guy is like, at ninety feet on a hundred foot line and the black guy starts at zero.
You know, do you see how he's got race in a race?
Like, it's kind of cool, right?
From a metaphorical standpoint, it's very clever.
But he says, you know, of course that's unfair, so given that the white man has an historical advantage because of his ethnic status, therefore we need to give the blacks a sort of a leg up, or the minorities a leg up, and so on.
But unfortunately, you know, that is judging people by race, right?
So, of course, there are black people who are born with, you know, great looks, great brains, great families, great inheritances, and so on, right?
And they have, you know, wonderful, I guess, natural advantages.
And then there are sort of white people born in a trailer park who inherit no wealth, who are, you know, ugly and, you know, dumb and whatever, right?
So, you can't make any sort of generalizations based on race from that standpoint without there being an injustice.
And one always has to, in my view, be suspicious of people who claim historical injustice, right?
Obviously, the people who owned slaves were evil and wrong.
And the people who sold them slaves were evil and wrong.
And the parents who sold them into slavery were evil and wrong.
And the people who hunted them down and brought them back to their owners were evil and wrong.
But they're all dead, right?
I mean, that's the problem.
They're all dead.
And there's really nothing that can be done to resurrect jail terms for corpses, right?
There's no place in time where you can historically go back and say, well, here is where we're going to cut off historical injustice and provide reparations for it, and here's where we're not.
So if we're going to say, well, the Blackstone Road reparations for slavery in the U.S., then of course I can say, well, The Romans invaded England.
My ancestors suffered, you know, so the Italians owe me some money.
I mean, there's really no limit to this.
And, of course, what it does is it puts an abstract thing like race as a moral category when it's not.
It's just a biological description and, you know, an empty category with no more value to it than that.
So, that is a problem which is pretty significant and sort of hard to resolve.
Now, the issue of positive discrimination is also one of these, I think, pretty challenging issues that is hard to resolve.
And one of these things, like most government programs, you know, it works against its intended benefit, right?
It actually harms those.
After the very first few people who benefit from it, it's a huge harm to everyone else.
With the possible exception of it's an economic positive to the bureaucrats who administer it.
But, you know, if you look at something like sort of positive discrimination in Entrance exams for universities, right?
I mean, this is, to me, a particularly heinous crime against, you know, people of all races.
But I think in particular it harms those whom it's intended to benefit, as all government programs tend to work out, right?
The use of force against the innocent always produces the opposite than what you hope.
And so for instance, if you're, you know, let's say that I'm a black guy and I want to get into university.
So, you know, I, my black leaders or maybe it's white leaders or who knows what, right?
Somebody puts in this thing which says, you know, we're going to get more blacks into university.
So more blacks than would normally come in by scores, right?
It's why?
Because their schools are worse and you know, whatever, right?
So that's fine.
So then a bunch, let's say, you know, a hundred black teenagers get into Harvard.
I don't know what the numbers are but, you know, a hundred black teenagers get into Harvard who wouldn't normally have gotten in, you know, based on just sort of marks and extracurricular activities and their essays or whatever.
Well, you know, these guys then get through Harvard and, you know, there's not a whole lot of point getting them in and then just dropping them out.
So you have to sort of give them slightly preferential nudges all the way through.
And I'm only talking about the hundred blacks who got in who wouldn't have got in otherwise.
You know, I'm not talking about blacks in general who I'm sure are just as fine and bright as anybody else.
But the problem is then that when it sort of gets known in society, as it will be pretty quickly, that blacks are going through the school system and they are getting preferential treatment and basically you have blacks going through the system who, if all objective and sort of other criteria were applied, would not be getting through that school system.
Then the problem is, why is it so unjust?
It's not only is it unjust To, you know, the whites or the Hispanics or whoever else might have gotten in.
But it's very unjust to those blacks who are going through the school legitimately, right?
Those blacks who got in on their own merits and those, you know, blacks or minorities who are getting through on their own steam.
It's incredibly unjust to them.
Because when you're an employer and you know about preferential placement policies in universities and you get the application from somebody with an identifiably black name or somebody who, when you interview them, is black, you don't know.
You don't know if they are the real article or somebody who got through based on legislative aides.
So that's pretty horrible.
I mean, if you've put all of this work into getting through school and you're a black kid, I mean, the idea that some sort of preferential policy is going to dilute the value of your degree because nobody knows if it's you who got through on your own merits or if you're just some, you know, quota kid.
That's pretty horrible.
I'd be enraged, of course, if that were happening to me.
That did happen to me in a negative sense, right?
Like when I was graduating from my master's degree, one of the things that kept me out of the PhD program was that, you know, there was a big strong drive on to hire non-whites and women and, you know, aboriginals and disabled people and so on.
So, you know, somebody sort of took away the value of my degree based on ethnicity or at least, you know, minimize the value or reduce the value of it.
And, you know, that sort of pissed me off too.
But, you know, particularly the case if you're, you know, some black teenager, you put yourself through school, you're a bright kid and you're doing great and then you go out to hire and the employer doesn't know if it's a genuine degree or not.
So, So, you know, what this does is when you put people in through quotas, you reduce the value of the process for everybody who's there who wouldn't need the quotas, who's part of that identifiable group.
So, You know, of course, this has the exact opposite effect as is intended.
So, for instance, you want more blacks to go into university, so you sort of jam a couple of blacks in who wouldn't necessarily have gotten there otherwise.
And what happens?
Well, you know, as they graduate, you know, the value of a black degree, or a degree if you're a black person, goes down.
Because the employers don't know if you're the real article or, you know, somebody, a quota kid.
Now that's not due to anyone's bias on anyone's part other than the bias of those who are advocating and implementing quota systems.
So what happens is you just end up with far fewer blacks who want to go to university.
And why?
Because the value of a black degree has been diminished.
And I think that's just terrible.
I mean it's racism of a pretty terrible kind.
So that's another aspect when you look at quotas.
It becomes a huge issue.
Quotas will absolutely benefit It's like inflation, right?
Inflation benefits the first people who get a hold of the money that's just been sort of printed or magically sort of created, but everybody down the road faces this inflation and the value of their money gets eaten away worse than just, you know, the extra 10 billion dollars in inflationary currency.
And it's the same thing for quota systems or any systems based on force.
The first few people get pretty significant benefits and everybody after that gets endless losses.
And if you think about mass theft or nationalization, it's the same thing.
If you suddenly nationalize the car industry, you're going to make a fortune for A couple of weeks.
But then what's going to happen is, you know, nobody's going to invest in the car industry, nobody's going to buy cars that are created through your crappy, you know, state-run system.
And so everybody after that, it's a huge net loss.
But for the first couple of weeks, it's a positive.
And so, you know, the first, I don't know, the first, maybe the first year of graduates from these quota programs do pretty well, right?
Because nobody knows and maybe nobody's really looked into it or they just say, you know, whatever.
I'm sure it's fine.
But then as these people sort of, in their work, In their work progress, they sort of show that, you know, there's a reason why they didn't get in based on their marks, right?
Maybe they're not that bright or they're not that creative or they, you know, whatever.
Then, you know, the word spreads, right?
You can't help it.
I mean, it's not racist to say, you know, these couple of people that I hired, I don't know anymore if they came through legitimately, if they were pushed through by quota programs.
It's a problem.
And so what happens is now you don't know and so the value goes down.
You know, that to me is just terribly racist, right?
The only people who benefit are the first couple of people who are hired out of that program.
And, of course, the people who benefit, the people who really benefit and the people that we always forget about is, you know, the bureaucracy and the lawyers and, you know, all of the parasites who feed off that.
So the blacks do worse through this program.
And, you know, it particularly strikes the, you know, large numbers of intelligent, creative, hard-working blacks who go through quota programs, who are, you know, just as good as anybody else, and now can't differentiate themselves from the herd, or the group of people who went through unjustly.
And, you know, so everybody loses except for the bureaucrats, the lawyers, the politicians, the community leaders, and so on.
And that I sort of found, you know, that's so obvious and so common that, you know, you'd just think it was, you know, I remember, I think it was, was it Murray Rothbard or somebody from the Von Mises Institute was talking about, you know, the sort of state training programs that went into place under Lyndon Johnson where you get poor people and you train them in a skill, right?
Because 80% of people don't even complete the course and only two-thirds of them show up and, you know, the first year this thing was in place, This training program was in place, I think, in 1967 or something like that.
You know, you've got people sodomizing each other.
You've got murder and theft and assault.
I mean, all this mess, right?
And, of course, they're spending the equivalent of Harvard education and federal money on these people.
And so, of course, one student, I can't remember which lecture it was, one student said, he was saying, one student said, well, why wouldn't they just cancel the program since it didn't work?
And it's like, because it does work for everybody who's handling the program, right?
They have a job, they have a career, they have security, whatever, right?
That's why, like, 35 years later, it's still chugging along.
And actually, I think Clinton invested even more in it because, you know, he gets lobbied pretty fiercely from the people who want to handle the money, right?
I mean, if you put your money in the bank, you give the banker a job, right?
So he's handling your money and that's his career.
So the bureaucracies always win, right?
And that's why these programs last.
They serve the needs of the bureaucrats.
They certainly don't serve the needs of the clients, right?
The clients are the bureaucrats and everybody else is just a means to an end.
So that's sort of one aspect of racism that I think is particularly interesting.
And, you know, I certainly don't fault, you know, minorities or black people or anything like that for the existence of these programs, other than it may be a little bit more credible if they oppose those programs.
But I certainly don't blame them for it, you know, any more than I blame, you know, white people for the income tax, right?
I mean, it's just a natural system when you have a government that it's going to get corrupted and pulled around and re-sort of re-written for the sake of special interest groups and, you know, it's going to pillage the population.
Government is a fiction wherein everyone tries to live at the expense of everybody else.
So I don't fault, you know, anyone other than the sort of theoreticians of it and, you know, to some degree perhaps the black leaders who, you know, were educated enough to know better.
And, you know, Martin Luther King Jr., I mean, this is sort of what he said, right?
I dream of a, you know, a place where you are not judged by the color of the skin but by the content of your character.
I mean, isn't that wonderful?
Right?
But, of course, the people who are into affirmative action say, no, no, no, no.
It's the color of your skin that matters not.
the contact of your character.
And of course, this ends up with ludicrous situations wherein, of course, race is a continuum, right?
I mean, there's jet black people, there's snow white people, and then there's everybody in between, right?
And so, you know, does somebody who is, you know, half white and half black, are they, you know, what race are they, Do they get to be part of these preferential hiring policies and all of this stuff?
Now they have to sort of have genetic tests to determine your race and things like that.
I mean, it's all perfectly ludicrous and would be funny, except insofar as it really does destroy the value of higher education for minorities that are part of these quota programs.
And in that, the hides of the people who create this mess are eternally damped as they're doing sort of the worst things in the world.
Now, there's some other aspects to race that I think are important.
One of them is that When you think about race, you know, we often think of the color of one's skin, but there are lots of other cues that are pretty important when it comes to, you know, people's feelings about race.
So let me sort of give you a hypothetical example that you are, you know, it's a young woman and you want to get home.
You've been out of the clubs.
It's a little bit late and you have to take a bus.
So, it's like 2 o'clock in the morning and you are walking towards a bus stop.
And you see two young men who are standing at the bus stop.
Now, the first young man is, you know, it's a young black man who's in a suit and he's leaning against the lamppost and he's reading a computer magazine.
And you can sort of see that because you have magic vision.
And, you know, the other guy is, you know, it's a white guy with a mohawk who is, you know, sniffing something suspicious in a bag, you know, with piercings all over his face and a facial tick or whatever, right?
Now, you know, if you're that young woman, who are you going to be more relieved at if they leave?
Are you going to be more relieved if the black guy in a suit reading the computer magazine leaves or the white guy with the mohawk and the piercings leaves?
Well, I can tell you which one.
I'd certainly be a lot more relieved if the white guy sort of ambled off into the darkness and I was left with the black guy reading the computer magazine.
Now, that's sort of important, right?
And, of course, that's an exaggerated example.
But what it means is that The question of race, you know, even if there is bigotry that is, you know, common and so on, which to me is not a certain thing, but even if there is bigotry that's common, there are factors that are far more important than race when it comes to one's initial impressions of another human being.
And that's fairly significant because, you know, there, in that example, race is, you know, relatively unimportant relative to things like he's in a suit, he's reading a computer magazine, you know, obviously this is not a guy who's likely to be, you know, assault you or anything like that.
So, there are lots of social cues by which we judge people.
Race may or may not be one of them, but, you know, other things sort of are important.
And so, for instance, you know, I mean, again, not to pick on the blacks, but, you know, there are certain segments within the black population that, you know, certain young men who really enjoy that sort of rap look, right, like the That sort of 50-cent kind of New York Yankees cap pulled to one side, the bandana, the low pants, you know, that kind of stuff, the do-rag or whatever.
And, you know, they have it, you know, and it comes from gangsters, right?
It comes from the, you know, the prison culture, right?
The reason that low pants are sort of a fashion symbol is because in prison you're not allowed to wear a belt, right?
your pants kind of hang down.
So, you know, hung down pants is an indication that you're tough because you've been to prison and so on.
And of course, in prison, you're not allowed to have a baseball cap or a hat.
So the do-rags are part of that whole, right?
So basically, you've got a sort of fashion sense that is based on a respect for people who've been to prison and survived that life.
Now, again, I don't want to sound overly prejudicial in this area.
But, you know, I would say that if you are a young gentleman who wishes to get along and sort of put your best foot forward and so on, then, you know, one of the things you might not want to do is adopt a sort of prison slash drug dealer garb as one of the things you might not want to do is adopt a sort of prison slash drug Because, you know,
You know, it's going to, you know, make you sort of look a certain way and give you a certain... Then of course, you know, you're going to look at people who are shying away from you and maybe say, oh my heavens, you know, how terrible, you know, they must dislike me because I'm black.
Well, I don't feel that that's the case.
You know, if I see a bunch of black kids walking down the street behind me and they're in that, you know, it's dark out and they're in that kind of hoodlum garb, then I feel nervous.
But I can tell you this, it's not because they're black, right?
It's because they...
You know, if a bunch of white kids were coming down, you know, with shaved heads and swastikas on their foreheads, wearing that same kind of garb, then I would feel nervous too.
But it's nothing to do with race.
It's to do with the way that you're presenting yourself.
I mean, you're presenting yourself as a violent predator.
And even if it's just, you know, you're just kind of cool and you're some suburban hip-hop kid, You know, still, it's a statement that you respect that culture or you adhere to that culture.
It's sort of like facial piercings, right?
I mean, I simply assume that somebody who has facial piercings, you know, has terribly low self-esteem and, you know, all these psychological problems and so on.
And, you know, so far, I'm not wrong, I guess you could say.
So, in the matter of presentation, that's sort of fairly important, I think.
That, you know, how you present yourself to people.
You know, we don't live in a small town anymore.
We can't get to know everybody.
We really do have to judge people based on first initial appearances and first impressions.
And if all we get from people is, you know, I really respect people who've gone to jail, and I'm big on, you know, sort of drug culture, violence, gang culture, then we're gonna have a sort of problem, right?
I mean, because I'm gonna probably be a little bit more nervous around you, and that's not irrational, and neither is it bigoted, right?
Because this is how you're presenting yourself.
So that's another issue, I think, that, you know, may be mistaken for race, but instead is, you know, in fact something else, right?
Now, as far as the economics go, there are sort of two things that I've read that are, you know, not entirely... they haven't entirely not affected my thinking.
Now, the first is a book called The Bell Curve, which you may or may not have heard about depending on your age, but this is sort of this big thing where they say, look, I mean, the main predictor of economic success is IQ, In other words, you know, a young man's IQ is the most significant determiner of your financial or economic status throughout your life.
And they've sort of found that, you know, kids born to, you know, really difficult circumstances who have a high IQ do well.
All right?
And kids who are, you know, born to really great circumstances with a low IQ don't do well.
And, you know, that the IQ after a certain amount of time in your life is by far the greatest predictor of your economic circumstances.
Now, they also took, to me, the somewhat radical and, you know, gaspingly brave or daring step of saying, okay, well, let's measure the IQ of races and let's see if that can be used to explain the difference between the races.
It's the same thing they did with the sexes, right?
They say, oh, you know, Women only earn 65% of what men earn, but, you know, women work part-time, and women have flex time, and women are in, you know, different careers, and so they... But if you take a sort of college-educated young woman who's been in the workforce for the same time, single, as a single young woman who's been in the workforce for the same amount of time as a single college-educated single young man, you know, the woman earns like 98 or 99% what the man does.
So it's not just Sexism that's at work, right, in the pay differential between men and women, but probably something to do with, you know, pregnancy and breastfeeding and, you know, motherhood and so on.
And, you know, you may say, well, that should change, and you can change at least one of those equations and have the father become the primary caregiver and so on, but you really can't change the pregnancy thing, at least as yet.
So, you know, where people cry sexism, there may be other things at work.
Where people cry racism, there may be other things at work.
Now, the people who wrote or researched and wrote the bell curve, they did IQ tests and they found that the IQ differential between blacks and whites was pretty much the same differential as the income differential between blacks and whites, right?
Which is a pretty startling Solution to the the problem of wage differentials between races incidentally they also found that so as far as a sort of three races that they studied Oriental Caucasian and You know, African-American or black.
They found that the Orientals were the most intelligent with the highest IQs, and then the whites were sort of in the middle with the medium IQs, and the blacks were at the bottom with the lower IQs.
And I mean, the statistics weren't that big a deal.
It wasn't like, you know, 50% differences or anything.
But they did find that the differences in wages and other sort of socioeconomic indicators could be explained by differences in IQ.
Now, you know, is this social?
Is this genetic?
I mean, who knows, right?
I mean, and I don't know that there's such a strong differentiator between the two because...
You know, if it's cultural, you can't just sort of snap your fingers and change culture, right?
I mean, you know, there is gene therapy, let's say it is genetic, there's gene therapy, but, you know, if the culture is, you know, I'm just making it up, I don't know, but if the culture is, you know, don't read, don't debate issues, but instead go drinking and whatever, you know, just talk bullcrap the whole time, then you're gonna end up with people who have sort of lower functional intelligences and lower linguistic skills and so on.
But you can't sort of just, there's no one you can wave to change that culture, if that's what's considered to be like the cool thing, right?
So, but that book, you know, I sort of found it interesting, but it's too radical a conclusion for me, which, you know, doesn't mean anything.
I mean, I'm no statistician or expert in this area.
But I sort of prefer to look elsewhere, because that was simply too startling a conclusion for me, and I was not willing to invest the time into looking at the primary sources and figuring out the degree to which it was true.
So I simply pointed out that it was a book that I thought about and reflected upon and reviewed, but it did not give me anything Right?
Because, unfortunately, their claim is largely based on sociology and biology, which are not my fields of expertise, right?
I mean, I prefer economics and philosophy.
And, you know, neither of which particularly apply.
Now, there was another study, though, that was done, whereas I think it was West African blacks, you know, who were brought up in North America, so, like, native speakers and so on.
And I can't remember in which geographical location this was, because this is quite some time ago that I read this study, but The study actually talked about how West African blacks have a higher per capita income than whites.
You know, which would have some indication that, you know, not mere racism was occurring in the income differential between blacks and whites, say, or, you know, between different races.
So, you know, if it was, if by far the largest factor was the race or the ethnicity, then you sort of face a problem in saying, well, if the largest factor is race, but here's a group of people who are sort of physically pretty much identical to sort of native African Americans, then but here's a group of people who are sort of physically pretty much identical to sort of native African Americans, then you would expect them But they're not, right?
I mean, and so it can't just be, I mean, that sort of example is, I don't want to sort of simplify it to the point of absurdity, but that would be a pretty significant hurdle for somebody claiming race is the primary problem to overcome.
And, of course, I mentioned this.
I took a course on race relations in university.
And, of course, I mentioned this to a professor just out of genuine curiosity.
And he just dismissed me with, you know, well, you know, there was slavery and, you know, you can't compare.
It's not just race.
Like, OK, well, then it's not just race, right?
We're studying the after effects of slavery.
Which is, you know, different that slavery is an economic thing, right?
It happened to be a racial thing, but, you know, at certain times it's been an economic thing, or even a religious thing, right?
Like, there were certain times when, you know, Christians were sold as slaves by the Jews, sorry, by the Muslims, and sort of, that wasn't based on race so much as it was on religion.
So what we're studying is an economic disparity situation that happened to be along the race lines, but we're not studying race in particular.
So, you know, that to me was a pretty significant study around the issue of race and what it meant to think of race as an economically deterministic factor for one's success or failure in the market.
And it seems to be a pretty high hurdle for someone to get over who wants to say that one's ethnicity is sort of the key ingredient in determining how one is perceived or treated or one's success in the marketplace as a whole.
And I haven't seen a successful rebut of that other than this vague sort of, you know, we're studying slavery kind of thing.
And of course, you know, as far as slavery goes, and of course this was a much shorter period of time, but, you know, if, you know, forced incarceration and the stripping of one's property were an issue, then one would expect that the Japanese Americans, who faced much worse conditions than the blacks much more recently in World War II, would also face sort of significant problems, or even minor problems, in their accumulation of capital, which, you know, of course has not been the case, right?
I mean, Japanese Americans do fantastically well, despite the fact That it wasn't more than two generations ago that, you know, they were all herded into concentration camps and all of their assets were taken from them.
And I guess the final question that I would have around race, and, you know, if there's anybody out there listening to this who understands this aspect of the race question or race questions, if you could let me know, I would really appreciate it.
But the question that I have is, and this is based on Something that a friend of mine reported from a magazine that he'd read, a newspaper that he'd read, where, you know, one of the things that's going on up here in Toronto is that there is all of these shootings, right?
These sort of people are shooting each other and I assume that it's, you know, gang-related or drug-related or whatever.
And so it's pretty much, you know, racially centered or culturally centered around the black Jamaican community in Toronto.
And So one of the things that you sort of constantly notice, I guess, if you're not black, maybe you notice it if you're black too, that, you know, when you hear on the radio, you know, there was a shooting at a club at two o'clock in the morning at a certain location.
I mean, you kind of, you know, I don't think it's certainly not racist to say, you know, I sort of think that it's a black club, right?
I mean, not because I think blacks are violent, it's just that every time I hear about this, you find out it is a black club.
And yet, of course, they won't say anything, right?
And I think that that's kind of silly.
You know, because it's not racist to talk about facts, right?
It's racist to say, you know, all Orientals are this, or all Whites are that, or all Blacks are the other.
You know, unless you're talking about purely biological criteria, because, you know, that's irrational and not true.
But, you know, if, for instance, you're looking for a suspect in a crime, you know, one of the things that it would probably be important to talk about would be the race of the criminal, right?
You can sort of eliminate a lot of variables in people looking for a suspect if they know the race of the criminal.
And, of course, here we've had Terrible conflicts over whether race-based statistics can be kept.
And the reason that we've had terrible conflicts over it is that everybody knows that there's going to be a problem for certain communities or certain racial communities with the results, right?
I mean, if the results were going to be, you know, everyone's equal in terms of ethnicity and crime, then there wouldn't be any You know, there wouldn't be any problems collecting the statistics, and of course nobody would have any interest in collecting the statistics either.
So that's sort of important when it comes to understanding why, like what it means, you know, if you're not in a particular ethnic group and, you know, what it sort of looks like from the outside is that everybody knows that there's a problem.
Within certain ethnicities.
But, you know, nobody even wants to collect the data because, you know, it's going to be unpopular and so on.
As if, sort of, the facts are offensive, right?
I mean, if I was in a community that was, you know, perhaps had a little bit more of a propensity to violence, I would want as much proof as possible so that I could go to, you know, people within the community and say, look, we have a real problem, we need to deal with it, and so on.
But, you know, you can't collect these statistics because, you know, people will feel like it fuels racism.
But, of course, It's, you know, facts are facts.
You can't, you know, put political imports onto facts unless you're sort of crazy, right?
I mean, if it is a fact, say, that, you know, the black population has a higher preponderance of violent crime, as I believe is the case in the U.S., at least in terms of the people who are in prison.
Then, you know, you have questions, right?
Now, the questions don't have anything to do with, are blacks naturally violent or anything like that.
I mean, that's something that you'd have to check out, right?
It could be that, you know, cops are racist, right?
It could be that the people who, you know, there's a lot of drug crimes that get people in jail and, you know, the blacks are the ones lowest on the totem pole in the drug Gangs, and therefore they're the ones who go to jail most.
I mean, there's lots of possible answers, but you always have to start off with the facts before you're going to come up with any solutions.
Right?
So if you go to the doctor and say, I have a problem, and the doctor says, oh, I have a pain, and the doctor says, where is it?
And you won't tell him, then you can't exactly expect him to diagnose you, right?
So if you don't give the facts of a situation, you can't solve anything.
But the first thing you want to do is to get the facts together.
But, you know, this friend of mine read a letter to the editors just a little while back, you know, where I guess a black guy was writing in and saying, oh my god, you know, I feel so terrible because, you know, this such-and-such a thing happened and I can't remember if it was like the Washington Sniper or something happened.
It's like, oh man, I'm like, please don't let it be a black guy!
Please don't let it be a black guy!
And then, you know, it comes out and it's a black guy and I feel so terrible and, you know, whatever.
And I think it was a black guy who was writing in.
And I just thought, you know, forgive me for my insensitivity to cultural issues, but I just thought, how silly.
You know, what does the actions of one black have to do with the moral choices of another black?
I guess he's concerned that, you know, people are going to sort of start drawing conclusions about the black community.
And, you know, the only thing that I can say to people in this area is, you know, I would say that those of us who are not part of the black community are going to draw a lot worse conclusions if we don't have the facts, especially if we see the sort of black community leaders who are resisting the facts, right?
Because it seems kind of counterintuitive, right?
Black leaders are saying, look, there's all this racism and so on, but the racism is wrong because there are no innate differences between the races.
Well, in which case, they should be trying to get as many racial statistics as possible to show that there is no innate difference between the races, or to show that if there is a difference in, say, arrest statistics or violent crime statistics or incarceration statistics, that it's based on racism.
I mean, what a heinous thing!
Wouldn't it be awful if the cops were arresting blacks just because they were black and throwing them in jail?
I mean, how awful would that be?
Then, you need to sort of figure that out.
Now, if however, you know, blacks are like, you know, I don't know, twice the reported violent crimes of whites, then you have another issue, right?
Which is, you know, and my particular suspicion is something like that the black community, through, has been sort of, the blacks in the states have been taught this sort of entitlement.
And it's not that they're innately susceptible to it, it's just that they've been subject to a lot more propaganda than everybody else.
And, you know, so the community leaders are saying, you know, it's your right, Welfare, it's slavery, and it's your rights, you know, the system owes you something, and, you know, you can't get ahead because there's all this racism, and therefore society owes you stuff, and, you know, you hear that about eight million billion times when you're a kid, and, you know, lo and behold, you probably do have a slightly different mentality, right?
In the same way, it's nothing racial, right?
It's the same way that a Catholic has a different mentality than a Rastafarian, because they've been told eight billion times as they're kids, you know, that this is the world that you live in, and this is the structure that you need to believe in.
So, you know, if community leaders, black community leaders, you know, constantly hop on these topics because, you know, that's what gets them the federal funding or the government funding, then, you know, of course they're going to have an effect on black consciousness, right?
I mean, propaganda works.
We know that.
I mean, because totalitarian states put so much effort into propaganda and, of course, advertisers put so much effort into communicating their message.
So we simply know that it works.
And of course, priests know that it works because they get kids very young.
So we know that this kind of repetitive communication when you're young works.
We also know that people are well paid in ethnic communities for providing it.
And we also know that, you know, that because of slavery, there's sort of white guilt over the treatment of blacks and because of sentimental views of what it was like to be a Native American Indian, there is, you know, white guilt over You know, the retreatment of Indians in the past.
And all of this is a complete racism on the part of whites to look at situations and say, we collectively are responsible for the decisions of white people we never even heard of who lived 200 years ago.
I mean, that's complete racism on the part of white people and it's pretty seconding in my viewpoint.
You can't judge whites collectively and say that we're guilty of racism because you've got... I mean, other than the racism of saying that whites can be judged collectively, especially when you put the factor of time in.
So, you know, that to me is just ridiculous, right?
But it is a sort of something that we have been taught to feel guilty about as whites.
And so it's like a chink in the sort of self-confidence that people sort of widen and make you feel more guilty to get resources out of you.
Like parents do this all the time.
They make you feel guilty, come visit me and so on, even though I don't do anything that you appreciate or like.
So they get the resources by making you feel guilty and they keep working that guilt hole to make it wider and pull more resources out.
And I mean, this is the same thing that happens through the state when there's a particular predatory group of sort of state pressure group tactics.
Then you're going to end up with the same situation where, you know, it's not that any sort of black community leaders really believe in their hearts of hearts that, you know, whites are collectively responsible for slavery.
You know, especially, you know, whites from Finland who just arrived last year.
I mean, it's just funny, right?
But what they do believe and know is that, you know, it's an issue that works in terms of getting money out of people, right?
And people who are good or want to manipulate others are pretty good at figuring out what works and what's going to get money out of them.
And gelt, of course, is a very It's one of the primary economic goods in the world of negative economics, and so that's sort of something else that it's just sort of worked on, right?
And, you know, there's nothing more liberating than you can do to anyone than just sort of recognize the basic facts of reality.
And so, you know, if we really want to, you know, let's just say we're talking to a bunch of whiteys out there, and if we really want to, you know, sort of If you don't treat other races with respect then, you know, the first thing you do is clean your own house up, right?
Stop engaging in racist definitions of your own group.
Because, of course, there really is no such thing as white.
It's just a bunch of biological continuums between white and black.
And certainly, abstract criteria or abstract categorizations cannot have any moral content to them.
There's no such thing as white virtue or black virtue or anything like that.
There is more than American virtue or Japanese physics.
These things don't exist.
So the first thing you want to do is stop judging yourself as part of any collective group, either positively or negatively, and focus on individual moral choices, which can't be summed up or grouped together through any kind of racial criteria.
For heaven's sake, let's just stop dealing with each other in terms of race.
Let's get to that world that we, I think, want to get to, which is the world of sort of rational facts, which is, I don't care that you're black.
I don't care that you're, you know, half Cree or, you know, a quarter Zoroastrian or whatever.
You know, what I do care is, you know, are you a rational, sensible, kind, decent human being?
And that has, you know, has never been in any way cut along race lines that I've ever seen.
So, you know, let's sort of push back this political agenda of this created conflict between the races and just focus on individuals and judge them according to rational standards, not antiquated and obsolete and unimportant biological criteria.
So that's it.
That's my rant for the day.
I hope that it was helpful to you.
I do find the subject of race is very interesting, but more as a study of state power than any innate human capacity.
So be sure to write and let me know what you think.
All the best.
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