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Being Black Means We Have to be 200% Better
Chanda Prescod-Weinstein
1.2K163

Being Race-Obsessed Means Being 200% More Myopic, More Angry, More Profane and More Annoying to the Rest of Us

by Alexander Zubatov

We’ve often heard it said — as Chanda Prescod-Weinstein suggests in her recent article (https://medium.com/@chanda/being-black-means-we-have-to-be-200-better-c724a974c908#.vhpn70j9h) that screams at a writer for daring to criticize the black physicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson for being boring (yes, for being boring, not for being black: http://www.wired.com/2016/04/neil-degrasse-tyson-black-hole-sucking-fun-universe/)— that being black means having to be 200% better. Rarely when we hear a claim like this advanced do we stop to say, really? Is that a scientific fact? Where did you get that percentage? I, for one, wasn’t sure where the number came from, so I figured I’d see if I could tease it out. So here we go. What does needing to be 200% better if you’re black actually mean?

  • Does having to be 200% better if you’re black actually mean that you need to be 200% better to get into a good university? Well, no, kind of the reverse, reverse … as in the all-too-familiar, state-sanctioned, out-in-the-open, bare-faced, commonly practiced form of “reverse racism” known as affirmative action. (And, in case you were wondering, yes, “reverse racism” is a thing: https://medium.com/@Zoobahtov/racism-prejudice-power-reverse-racism-racism-bdf3f4bb4da6.) Here are some stats for you: “Asians need SAT scores 140 points higher than whites, 270 points higher than Hispanics, and an incredible 450 points higher than blacks (out of 1,600 points) to get into these [selective private universities]. An Asian applicant with an SAT score of 1,500, that is, has the same chance of being accepted as a white student with a 1,360, a Latino with a 1,230, or an African-American with a 1,050. Among candidates in the highest (1,400–1,600) SAT range, 77 percent of blacks, 48 percent of Hispanics, 40 percent of whites, and only 30 percent of Asians are admitted.” http://www.city-journal.org/html/fewer-asians-need-apply-14180.html. I could try to do the math to see if that works out to blacks needing to be 200% better, but, well, unfortunately, in an effort not to get affirmative-acted out of a top university, I studied very hard and got a perfect score on my math SAT, so, hard as I’d try, I can’t really make the math work out backwards for you. (Note: I’m not blaming blacks for this sad state of affairs. It’s largely the fault of the well-meaning but short-sighted white liberals who made it possible.)
  • Does having to be 200% better if you’re black mean actually committing 200% fewer crimes, or does it mean being 200% more likely to be the victims of crimes committed by white people than white people are to be the victims of crimes committed by blacks? Let’s check on this one. Although blacks make up about 12% of the population, as compared to about 63% for non-Hispanic whites, whites were responsible for about 69% of crimes (+6% as compared to their percentage of the population), while blacks were responsible for about 28% of crimes (+16% as compared to their percentage of the population). https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2012/crime-in-the-u.s.-2012/tables/43tabledatadecoverviewpdf. That’s 10 percentage points worse, not 200% better. When we turn to data for homicide and other violent crimes, blacks are still more over-represented: “blacks commit around half of homicides in the United States. DOJ statistics show that between 1980 and 2008, blacks committed 52% of homicides, compared to 45% of homicides committed by whites. More up to date FBI statistics tell a similar story. In 2013, black criminals carried out 38% of murders, compared to 31.1% for whites, again despite the fact that there are five times more white people in the U.S. From 2011 to 2013, 38.5 per cent of people arrested for murder, manslaughter, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault were black.” http://www.infowars.com/black-crime-facts-that-the-white-liberal-media-darent-talk-about/. Not 200% better. And what about black-on-white crime, as compared to white-on-black crime? “White violence against blacks is dwarfed by black on white violence. In 2012, blacks committed 560,600 acts of violence against whites (excluding homicide), and whites committed 99,403 acts of violence (excluding homicide) against blacks, according to data from the National Crime Victimization Survey …. Blacks, in other words, committed 85 percent of the non-homicide interracial crimes of violence between blacks and whites.” http://www.nationalreview.com/article/420565/shameful-liberal-exploitation-charleston-massacre-heather-mac-donald. To put this another way, “despite being outnumbered by whites five to one, blacks commit eight times more crimes against whites than vice-versa, according to FBI statistics from 2007. A black male is 40 times as likely to assault a white person as the reverse. These figures also show that interracial rape is almost exclusively black on white.” http://www.infowars.com/black-crime-facts-that-the-white-liberal-media-darent-talk-about/. No, definitely not 200% better. (Note: I’m not blaming blacks for this. Poor people commit more crimes. Black people are disproportionately poor in America. Why they are disproportionately poor is a complicated story well beyond the scope of this brief piece, but certainly — while what sociologists call “black cool-pose culture” isn’t helping the situation — the legacy of slavery and post-slavery discrimination is a big part of the picture.)
  • Does having to be 200% better if you’re black mean being 200% more likely to be the victim of police brutality? We’ve all heard of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Walter Scott, Tamir Rice, Sandra Brown and so on and so on. We’ve all heard of #Blacklivesmatter. Surely, this one must be true. Well …. “Despite the fact that black people commit an equal or greater number of violent crimes than whites, whites are almost TWICE as likely to be killed by police officers. According to data from the Centers for Disease Control, between 1999 and 2011, 2,151 whites died as a result of being shot by police compared to 1,130 blacks. Critics argue that black people are overrepresented in these figures because they only represent [12]% of the population, but they are underrepresented if you factor in violent crime offenders. In other words, you would expect the number of blacks and whites killed by police to be roughly equal given that they commit a roughly equal number of violent crimes, but that’s not the case. Whites are nearly 100% more likely to be victims.” http://www.infowars.com/black-crime-facts-that-the-white-liberal-media-darent-talk-about/. If you don’t believe it, here’s more for you: in a recent controlled experiment, white police officers, 96% of whom showed implicit bias against blacks, were, nevertheless, “slightly more than three times less likely to shoot unarmed black suspects than unarmed white suspects.” This is because white police “officers were ‘more hesitant and more careful in their decisions to shoot black suspects.’ In effect, the officers ‘displayed a counter bias, or “reverse racism” effect.’ ” https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/true-crime/wp/2016/04/27/this-study-found-race-matters-in-police-shootings-but-the-results-may-surprise-you/. Interesting, isn’t it? All of this means that while #Blacklivesmatter might be 200% louder than everyone else, the underlying facts the movement is relying on, if indeed it’s relying on any facts at all, are not 200% truer, and no, blacks don’t have to be 200% better to avoid being shot by police officers. #Whitelivesmatter, anyone? (Note: I’m not blaming blacks for this. The fault lies largely with the sensation-peddling mass media which turned a few high-profile police shootings into an alleged epidemic and fueled the latest round of our national obsession with race and racism. #Blacklivesmatter is, of course, utterly ridiculous, but the movement is largely a puppet show, with the strings being pulled by the powers-that-be in the Democratic Party establishment that uses race to divide people and get out the vote (of black people voting against their own economic interests) for the likes of the panderer extraordinaire Ms. Corporate Clinton in lieu of that old white socialist from Vermont who actually had the integrity to tell people of all races that the problem here is class, not race.)
  • Does having to be 200% better if you’re black mean having to make a movie that’s 200% better to get an Oscar? #OscarSoWhite, right? Case closed. Not quite. “The numbers indicate that, whereas the film industry most certainly fails to represent America’s diversity, the whitewashing occurs not behind the closed doors of the Academy, but in drama schools (shown in the SAG membership) and casting offices. For most of the past 15 years, the Academy has largely judged what has been put in front of them: minority actors land 15% of top roles, 15% of nominations and 17% of wins. Once up for top roles, black actors do well, converting 9% of top roles into 10% of best-actor nominations and 15% of the coveted golden statuettes, a bit above their share of the general population.” So, that 200% better stat is a bit off-base here as well, isn’t it? (Note: I’m not blaming blacks for this. Our obsession with instituting racial quotas in every facet of society is something the largely white and extremely left-leaning academic establishment is responsible for, even if many blacks are happy to join in on the fun.)
  • Does having to be 200% better if you’re black mean your voice is 200% less likely to be heard on college campuses unless you’re 200% louder? If so, this would explain why the famous Yale shrieker (http://dailycaller.com/2015/11/09/meet-the-privileged-yale-student-who-shrieked-at-her-professor/) had to scream so loudly and profanely at a professor in order to get heard — and she certainly got heard (like, by all of America), didn’t she? In fact, the prominent moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s findings (which I’ve described here: https://medium.com/@Zoobahtov/enslaved-by-history-parasite-privilege-and-the-silenced-majority-98eeea6b6151#.etphtc8v8) are suggesting something that anyone not blinded by propaganda already realizes: we are no longer living in 1760, 1860 or even 1960, and when it comes to race issues in America, it’s whites, not blacks, who don’t have much of a voice anymore. Blacks are simply far more comfortable speaking up. This should not surprise anyone, since when they voice their views, they don’t generally get reflexively shouted down as racists, purveyors of white privilege, defenders of white supremacy, exponents of white fragility or the like. And, in fact, their speaking up gets results. At Harvard Law School, the liberal white dean just recently announced that the law school’s shield — a meaningless emblem that is otherwise of interest only to fratboys and codgers — is going to be changed because of its associations with slavery. What associations, you might ask? Well … there’s nothing on its face suggestive of slavery (https://today.law.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/HLS_2-color_Shield-1200x630.jpg — those are bushels of wheat, not cotton, in case you’re wondering), but it was designed by a guy based on a bookplate (what’s that?) belonging to another guy named Isaac Royall, Jr. (who’s that?) who gave money in 1779 to Harvard to found a law school. So this guy Isaac Royall, Jr., whom you’ve never heard of, apparently had slaves that were passed down to him by his father. Is that it? He wasn’t some vocal defender of slavery? Nope. The guy just had slaves, like many people did back then. And, as I said, no one simply looking at the law school shield would even know it’s based on anything having to do with this guy, and even if they did, they wouldn’t know who this guy was, and even if they learned who he was, in order to become offended, they’d then have to learn he had inherited slaves and judge him as a horrible person based on that single fact (and ignore the fact that he gave up a bunch of that money he earned through slavery to Harvard to found a law school, so maybe it’s fair to recognize him in some very small way, no?). But a bunch of largely black students — students benefiting from studying in the prestigious law school Royall’s gift founded — started protesting about this in the fall of 2015, so the law school’s well-meaning liberal dean convened a diversity committee composed entirely of very liberal professors, including two professors of color, and they reached the foregone conclusion that the shield should be purged, which recommendation the well-meaning liberal dean promptly seconded and which was then adopted. Similarly, at Yale University, the well-meaning liberal dean announced that the title of “residential college master” — sort of like a dorm supervisor — was going to be changed to “head of college” because the word “master” has an association with slavery. Of course, the word “master” in this context doesn’t really have anything to do with slavery. It “derives from the Latin magister, meaning ‘chief, head, director, teacher,’ and it appears in the titles of university degrees (master of arts, master of science, and others) and in many aspects of the larger culture (master craftsman, master builder).” (That, by the way, is a direct quote from the well-meaning liberal Yale dean’s e-mail that, despite such considerations, announced the change.) This is, in other words, sort of like that Washington, D.C. mayor’s aide who got fired for using the word “niggardly,” which ignorant people mistakenly thought had something to do with the dreaded N-word. If we’re going to ban the use of the word “master” because it was used in the context of “slave masters,” why not also ban the use of the word “labor” because it was used in the context of “slave labor”? Why not ban all sales of cotton, for that matter? Sorry, I’m getting worked up about this nonsense. Back to the point, which is that black voices on college campuses and beyond are being heard loudly and clearly, and the cowardly white liberals in power are bowing to the pressure, caving in to demands, changing names, whitewashing history and appointing dystopian diversity committees and truth commissions aplenty to investigate anything and everything that looks vaguely white and moves (or even that no longer moves, in the case of Isaac Royall and slave masters). I can’t put a percentage on this, but what I can say without any doubt is, no, blacks don’t have to be 200% better to be heard. (Note: I’m not blaming blacks for this. Liberal and largely white college deans, professors, administrators, boards and trustees are the ones with the power. It’s not the fault of blacks that most of these people are spineless sycophants, is it?)

Okay, so I didn’t get much in the way of backup for that blacks-having-to-be-200%-better number. But, unlike Ms. Prescod-Weinstein, I did manage to get through a whole article without throwing in a whole bunch of curses. What was her article about, by the way … other than about the fact that she’s really angry and will curse to prove it? Oh yeah, it was about the fact that a white writer dared to suggest that the physicist Neil deGrasse Tyson was making science boring and disenchanted. And, in the context of that article, he likened Neil deGrasse Tyson to “a black hole sucking the fun out of the universe.” A black hole is a concept in physics. We all know that. So this is a silly pun on the fact that the guy is a physicist. It has, of course, nothing to do with the purely incidental fact that Neil deGrasse Tyson also happens to be black. If this were about race, there’d be something in the article that alludes, however vaguely, to that fact. But no, there’s nothing. This, in other words, is just another one of those cases, like “master” and “niggardly,” in which a word is read out of context to mean something it doesn’t mean. And it’s also another one of those cases where a black person throws a fit over the mere fact that another black person is being criticized, even though the criticism has nothing to do with race. How does this mean any sense? Oh, haven’t you heard? Black people shouldn’t be criticized. Why not? Because they’re black. (Isn’t that just a tad racist?) And being black means you’re 200% more likely to take offense where none is meant. (Surely that’s racist!) And you’re 200% more likely to be totally and completely obsessed with race. (Definitely racist.) But that’s okay, because it’s all 200% white people’s fault. (Note: I’m not blaming blacks for this. Or for anything. Like I said, it’s all white people’s fault. White people are to blame. They are always to blame. They are 200% more responsible for everything — except all the good things — in history. And I know you think I’m 200% more racist than you are. And I 200% don’t care because I 200% believe we really need to STOP thinking of people as belonging to races and STOP talking non-stop about race and racism because it’s only leading everyone to be 200% more angry at each other than they were even a few years back and leading would-be anti-racism crusaders to write absurd articles like the one Ms. Prescod-Weinstein wrote and alleged racists like me to write equally absurd articles like this responding to her, and you really don’t want to read more absurd articles like this, do you?)

(If you liked this article despite its absurdity, please do me a huge favor by sharing it and/or clicking on the green “recommend” heart below. I very much appreciate it!)

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Alexander Zubatov is a practicing attorney specializing in general commercial litigation. He is also a practicing writer specializing in general non-commercial poetry, fiction, drama, essays and polemics. In the words of one of his intellectual heroes, José Ortega y Gasset, biography is “a system in which the contradictions of a human life are unified.”

Some of his articles have appeared in Acculturated, PopMatters, The Hedgehog Review, The Montreal Review, The Fortnightly Review, Mercatornet, New English Review, Culture Wars and nthposition.

He makes occasional, unscheduled appearances on Twitter (https://twitter.com/Zoobahtov).