Recently a columnist for the American
conservative magazine The National Review decided to write a column titled ‘TheTalk: Nonblack Version’ about some advice that he gives to his kiddies.
John Derbyshire littered his 1,500 word
piece with such gems as “Stay out of
heavily black neighbourhoods”, “Before voting for a black politician, scrutinise his / her character much
more carefully than you would a white” and “Do not attend events likely to draw a lot of blacks”.
He also stated that some
black people “go to great lengths to inconvenience or
harm [white people] and that the “mean intelligence of blacks is much lower than
for whites”.
If you want to read the whole piece in its
original, warped glory then head over to Taki’s Magazine, which is run right-wing
socialite Taki Theodoracopulos
who has himself had a bit of the dabble with the old racist remark.
Although the column was not published in The National Review and the editors can take no responsibility for Derbyshire’s
actions they took the decision today to fire him calling his column “outlandish, nasty and indefensible”.
Of the incident The National Review's
editor, Rich Lowry, said: “His latest provocation, in a webzine, lurches from
the politically incorrect to the nasty and indefensible. We never would have
published it, but the main reason that people noticed it is that it is by a
National Review writer. Derb is effectively using our name to get more oxygen
for views with which we'd never associate ourselves otherwise. So there has to
be a parting of the ways.”
Now I’m not going to sit here and write
a thousand words about why Derbyshire is a self-important, miseducated racist who
uses random news stories and events and shapes them around whatever vile dialogue
he wishes to spit out. I’m sure you are all intelligent people and you can
figure out why Derbyshire might be a bit of a knob. I can’t stop thinking about
the National Review’s response.
They fired him because of the media
storm created around the article because, as everyone knows, it kills careers
and reputations (well only for a few months) to be labelled as a racist and the
magazine didn’t want to be linked to that. So, I can understand why, even
though the offending article was written for another publication, they still
had to take a strong stance. What I don’t understand is their utter surprise
and shock at the fact that a man who once described himself as a racist and a homophobe, who said that women should not have the right to vote and that their
attractiveness peaks at around 15-20 years old would at some point put all of
those views to paper with devastating results.
Any good editor knows what his staff are
like, how they work and what their weaknesses are. Lowry would have to be an incompetent
fool to not know Derbyshire’s views and he would have known it could all blow
up at some point.
So why did Lowry, and Taki’s Magazine,
pander to Derbyshire and employ him. Well, it could have been for many reasons.
It could be that they knew if he toned it down and played the whole ‘I’m just
telling it like it is’ then he would appeal to the majority of American conservatives
who believe Obama just looks a bit dodgy and rely on gut instinct rather actual
intelligence. It could also be the case that the magazine as a whole shares the
same or similar views as Derbyshire. That would not be too big of a leap. The
whole conservative movement in America right now is built around politicians,
writers and news anchors making quasi-homophobic, quasi-racist and quasi-sexist
statements that most people can see for what they are but others believe to be
statements of absolute truth. Its almost as if all these white conservatives
feel like they’ve somehow been repressed for years and years by minority groups
and now they’re getting their revenge. They feel they are the minority, we are
the threat and they deserve to keep us down so they dedicate all of their
culture to biased, poorly reported stories that confirm their narrative.
There are a lot of conservative writers
that could have tripped over the invisible racism line that goes from banter
and ‘telling it like it is’ to vile, disgusting hate speech. Derbyshire was
just the one that had his mask ripped off him today, but there are thousands
more like him, brainwashing the masses with hate speech. The National Review has just taken down one man to save
the machine. They know what they’re doing.
