Saturday roundup

 Christopher J. Ferguson, writing at Arc Digital, says that a new paper published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences explores the possibility that a self-perception of being a victim may be a personality trait. 

Josh Hammer has a piece at Newsweek entitled "The Toxicity of the Permanent Outrage Mentality." One reason it tends to be permanent is that it's a lucrative career path:

The unfortunate reality is that, in our modern political and media ecosystem, a permanently aggrieved, outraged, victimized mentality pays well. For the charlatans and hucksters of "anti-racism" and "critical race theory," therefore, conceding that a development such as Chauvin's conviction might indicate that America's criminal justice system is not "systemically racist" is unconscionable. Indeed, an entire industry has been established to perpetuate this rotten myth. "A post-racial America would be an unmitigated disaster" for this industry, David Azerrad recently wrote for Newsweek. "Instead of charging $6,000 an hour lecturing corporate America on its white privilege, Robin DiAngelo would be selling plastic jewelry on the Home Shopping Network."

At It Bears Mentioning, John McWhorter's Substack newsletter, he says it's time to face facts about police shootings and race:

Whenever the national media reports on a black person killed by cops, we must ask ourselves “Would a white cop not have done that if the person were white?”

Because: we are taught that white (and even non-white) cops ice black people (usually men) out of racism. It’s possibly subconscious, but in the heat of the moment, they revert animalistically to their white supremacist assumption of black animality and pull that trigger.

This is why so many can only bristle at the idea that George Floyd did not die because he was black.

It’s why now, when the cop who killed Daunte Wright not only says she mistook her gun for a taser, and is even recorded as having done so, legions of people still insist on parsing it as evidence of “racism.” The idea is, I suppose, that she wouldn’t have made that mistake, would have been more prudent, if Daunte Wright was instead a white guy named Donald White.

* * *

Here is why we need that mental exercise. Tony Timpa was quite white and was killed quite in the way that Floyd was, including it being recorded.

AND white people have been killed when cops mistook their guns for tasers. I wonder why no one ever heard about this one beyond one day in Philadelphia? (Wait – there will be objection that the shot didn’t actually kill this guy. But that’s random – it could have, easily.) There are many others -- there has been media coverage this week of cases where cops made the mistake that Officer Potter did towards Daunte Wright (where the person shot died). You can be quite sure that if their authors had found that the mistake only happened when the victims were black, we’d know by now.

This is a dog that didn’t bark and for a reason – that this week’s headlines have notbeen about how cops only mistake their guns for tasers when they are dealing with a black man is because … wait for it … they don’t! I suggest you take a little time and do a quick search on the cases listed by media articles like this. When the victim is black, it’s noted – big surprise – and quite often, the victim simply is not. By that I mean that often the victim was white. The journalists seeking to show that cops only mistake guns for tasers when they are confronted with a black person couldn’t find it and thus just write that officers have sometimes been “confused” while studiously leaving race out of it. Their head editors have made sure they did. 

In this vein, what you didn’t hear this week is that cops killed a teen pointing a toy gun at them. Many will recall that cops killed (black) Tamir Rice for holding a toy gun, with this considered a prime demonstration that cops kill out of racist animus – why just a teen waggling a toy around? I mentioned this new case in my Twitter feed this week and have been bemused to see almost Talmudic exegesis arguing that the killing of Rice was “worse” because the white kid was actually aiming the gun at the cops and then picked up a knife. 

But the answers to that are these.

1) The cops first shot the white kid when he aimed the gun but before he held up the knife, and if we rolled the tape again they could have killed him right when he held up the gun – the bullet they fired then only happened by chance not to kill him. (Say it’s wrong of me to reason that closely and I ask why you think so. Roll your eyes, click your tongue, and then explain. But you can’t.)

2) Evidence is likely forever unclear as to whether Rice seemed to be “reaching for” that gun when the cops came to him. Of course Rice did not deserve to die regardless, whatever he may have been doing in his pocket at that moment with his toy. But the iconic idea of Rice just looking off into the distance waving a toy at the sky is not the indisputable truth. 

3) Most important – if this white kid were black, then even if the cops had shot him for aiming the toy right at them and then killed him when he raised the knife, we can be quite sure that the idea would be that the cops should have understood he was mentally disturbed – i.e. trying “suicide by cop” – and that they only killed him in seeing him as a “black body” rather than as a person.

Really – imagine him not named Ham but Harrison, and black. People would be in the streets, some of them looting, in protests against the black boy who aimed a toy gun at white officers and got killed for it – even if he then held up a knife. It’d be all about how officers need better training and such. 

Here, some will just hate, growl, twist, seek to deny. I’m too “assimilated” to really understand, etc. But more than a few know that’s all, frankly, manure. They will be open to the following:

Cops unjustifiably kill white people all the time and in greater numbers than they kill black people.

* * *

But let’s go back to what the enlightened take is. To wit: I am pointing out mere outliers. Surely the endless succession of black people killed by cops that we can mentally review is the main issue. Okay, now and then a white kid gets killed too. But isn’t pointing them out just what a “conservative” denialist about racism does in order to curry the favor of racist white people and make money speaking before them?

I love this notion, in that I turn down so very many offers to speak on race, including on Zoom, simply because I have other stuff to do, but I digress.

The problem is the sheer volume of the white cases. We just don’t hear about them. As I write, what about Hannah Williams? Or this hideous case? No, I’m not laboriously smoking these cases out when they are just weird exceptions to a general rule. They are the norm. It’s just that they don’t make national news. It really is that simple, and that sad, and that destructive to our national conversation about race.

Funny thing – nothing makes this clearer than the Washington Post database of cop murders. Just pour a cup of coffee and look at what it shows, month after month, year after year. As South Park’s Cartman would put it, “Just, like, just, just look at it. Just look at it.”

Yet, the enlightened take on the issue serenely sails along as if that database proves that cops ice black men regularly while white men only end up in their line of fire now and then by accident. The database reveals a serious problem with cops and murder, period, quite race-neutrally.

* * *

To wit, cops, when things get tense, are quite okay with depriving white people of life. It can be hard to imagine this, because of how cop killings of black people has become essentially the keystone of the idea that blackness means oppression. 

But true enlightenment, my friends, means opening yourself up to counterintuitive realities.

Rafael Mangual, writing at City Journal, asks "Who killed Adam Toledo?" 

The immediate cause of Toledo’s death was the bullet fired by Officer Stillman. But it’s worth examining how a 13-year-old boy ended up in a full sprint through a dark alley at 2:30 AM with a gun in his hand and a police officer on his tail.

Start a few minutes before the shooting. Though it hasn’t gotten much attention, a video compilation that the Chicago Police Department released includes footage that seems to show Toledo walking with a young man before one (or both) fired the eight or nine shots at a passing vehicle near the alley where the police encountered Toledo. Exactly who pulled the trigger remains unclear (the footage is grainy), though CNN reported last Friday, citing prosecutors, that both Toledo’s hand, and the gloves of the man he was with, tested positive for gunshot residue. According to police, that man is a 21-year-old named Ruben Roman, who was arrested at the scene for allegedly obstructing Officer Stillman as he gave chase.

All indications are that Roman was exactly the kind of negative influence to Toledo that loving parents stuck in high-crime neighborhoods stay up nights worrying about. Chicago’s publicly available arrest database shows that Roman has been collared at least six times by the Chicago Police Department (CPD) since 2017. He has at least one felony conviction, for a gun offense, for which he was apparently sentenced to probation. According to a Chicago police officer (who spoke with me on the condition of anonymity), Roman is listed as a member of the Latin Kings street gang in the CPD’s database.

Local thugs often lure impressionable children into the gangster lifestyle they glorify by promising protection and brotherhood, and Roman seems an illustrative example. But he didn’t protect or care about his young charge the morning of March 29. In fact, as shown on the body-worn camera footage of the officers arriving after Toledo was shot, Roman didn’t shed a tear after Toledo was shot but pretended not to know the 13-year-old at all. Roman’s decision not to provide police with information about Toledo’s identity meant that the boy would be listed as a “John Doe” in the CPD’s paperwork, and his family couldn’t be notified. Toledo’s body remained unidentified in the morgue for two days before the police were able to contact his mother.

This is a common story, sadly. People like Roman corrupt kids like Toledo, and put them on paths that lead to untimely deaths, incarcerations, and perpetrations of evil. Street gangs recruit child soldiers into their turf wars, which turn playgrounds into battlefields and leave parents holding the bodies of the children caught in the crossfire; and they should be shamed for it.

Quin Hilyer, writing at the Washington Examiner, says, "No, Mr. President, the 'Soul of America' Isn't Racist." 

A very prominent reason why the Department of Education should never have been created and why it should be dismantled yet this afternoon: when poisonously leftist administrations, such as the present one, get hold of it, they turn it in a perniciously corrosive direction. Alex Nester at the Washington Free Beacon has the details:

The Biden administration this week proposed a rule that would encourage public schools to adopt radical, racially driven curricula in American history and civics classes.

The Department of Education on Monday proposed a rule that would prioritize federal funding for education groups that help schools develop and implement antiracist teaching standards. If the rule takes effect, the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education would increase grants to woke groups across the country.

School districts in recent months have increased their efforts to weave critical race theory—the idea that America's political and economic systems are inherently racist—into K-12 curriculum standards. The Education Department's proposal signals the Biden administration's support for this trend.

The rule would allocate federal funding for education contractors who work to "improve" K-12 curriculum by promoting "racially, ethnically, culturally, and linguistically responsive teaching and learning practices." The rule would also require the Education Department to encourage social studies curricula that teach students about "systemic marginalization, biases, inequities, and discriminatory policy and practice in American history."

The Education Department claims that the coronavirus pandemic and "ongoing national reckoning with systemic racism" make changes to the education system necessary. The proposal cites the New York Times‘s 1619 Project and antiracist scholar Ibram X. Kendi's criticisms of American education.

"Schools across the country are working to incorporate antiracist practices into teaching and learning," the proposal reads. "It is critical that the teaching of American history and civics creates learning experiences that validate and reflect the diversity, identities, histories, contributions, and experiences of all students."

The proposal will undergo a month-long notice-and-comment period, during which interested parties can submit questions on the rule to the department. The department must respond to each individual comment prior to releasing a final draft of the rule, which can take months or even years depending on the number of comments received.

Christopher Rufo, a Manhattan Institute senior fellow who has documented the antiracist push in schools and federal institutions, told the Washington Free Beacon that this decision shows the Biden administration's true colors.

"President Biden is structuring the Department of Education's programs to incentivize critical race theory in America's public schools," Rufo said. "Biden campaigned as a moderate, but this decision would bring a radical and unpopular ideology into the classroom. The federal government should reject the principles of race essentialism, collective guilt, and neo-segregation, not encourage them in the public education system."

The Biden administration's move follows national trends to weave anti-American ideology into public schools. The Illinois State Board of Education in February approved a set of learning standards that asks teachers to "mitigate" behaviors that stem from "Eurocentrism" and "unearned privilege."

California has considered adopting standards that teach kids to "resist" Christianity and other elements of the "Eurocentric neocolonial condition." And the North Carolina State Board of Education in February adopted a new set of K-12 history curriculum that teaches high schoolers to "compare how some groups in American society have benefited from economic policies while other groups have been systematically denied the same benefits."

Think STEM is safe from this garbage? Here's what the Virginia DOE is up to:

The Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) is moving to eliminate all accelerated math options prior to 11th grade, effectively keeping higher-achieving students from advancing as they usually would in the school system.

Loudoun County school board member Ian Serotkin posted about the change via Facebook on Tuesday. According to Serotkin, he learned of the change the night prior during a briefing from staff on the Virginia Mathematics Pathway Initiative (VMPI).

"[A]s currently planned, this initiative will eliminate ALL math acceleration prior to 11th grade," he said. "That is not an exaggeration, nor does there appear to be any discretion in how local districts implement this. All 6th graders will take Foundational Concepts 6. All 7th graders will take Foundational Concepts 7. All 10th graders will take Essential Concepts 10. Only in 11th and 12th grade is there any opportunity for choice in higher math courses."

Writing at The Gospel Coalition, Kevin DeYoung reviews Reparations: A Christian Call for Repentance and Renewal by Duke Kwon and Greg Thompson. DeYoung is far more cordial than I'd have been, lauding the book as "both accessible and academic":

Kwon and Thompson have a knack for breaking down complex ideas into helpful categories. For example, they argue that racism can be understood in four ways: as personal, with the need for repentance; as relational, with the need for reconciliation; as institutional, with the need for reform; or cultural, with the need for repair (32-44). There are more lists and rubrics like this throughout the book, many of them insightful and useful.

Kwon and Thompson are also to be commended for avoiding the history-as-screed template. The tone is strong at times, but never incensed. 

But he soon enough comes to the work's problematic essence:

The work of reparations outlined in the book is so expansive and so nonspecific as to be impossible to ever fulfill. Reparations, we are told is “ultimately redeeming for everyone, both those who give and those who receive.” It is an opportunity for all of us to finally be healed (181). But how does that work? When will the debt be relinquished? How will we know that the reparations are complete and the healing can begin? According to Kwon and Thompson, “the call of reparations is not merely for a check to be written or for a debt to be repaid but for a world to be repaired” (178). By this logic, reparations will be our work until the end of the age.

Either Kwon and Thompson equivocate on what they mean by reparations, or, if their definition on page 185 (quoted above) is true, Whites (and Asians?) can never in this life truly be forgiven of the debts they owe. How does that bring healing to everyone? How does this square with the gospel? How does this make sense of Christ’s celebratory meal with Zacchaeus? When do we get to hear Jesus say to the repentant sinner, “Today salvation has come to this house, since he also is a son of Abraham”? If reparations are to be “fixed in the church’s imagination and fundamental to its vocation as the language of repentance and reconciliation,” it would be good to hear more about how we can all find forgiveness for our sins and freedom from condemnation in Christ.

He uses the book's discussion of a repurposed church building in Memphis to really drive home his point:

The eschatological vision in Reparations is about Memphis’s Clayborn Temple. At first a White church, then a Black church after White flight, the church was at the center of Memphis’s civil rights struggle and was for years home to a Black congregation. Now, as Kwon and Thompson tell us, the famous Clayborn Temple is quiet, empty, braced with scaffolding, and boarded up.

But leaders like Anasa Troutman, “a brilliant and charismatic African American woman in her mid-forties” (184), see what the Temple will one day become. And what is that vision? Perhaps a worshiping, evangelizing church committed to racial healing and racial justice? Maybe a revitalized Black church committed to the gospel and its neighbors? Or maybe a multiethnic church learning to love like Christ and share his love with others? This is the vision of Clayborn Temple that closes the last chapter of the book:

Here is where the artist’s studio will be. This will be the performing arts center. This will be the space for education and community meetings. Walking outside, she continues: Out here will be the business incubator, financial services offices, and community kitchen. That land over there will be part of a community-owned cooperative. . . . [Troutman] sees a world healed from the ravages of White supremacy. A world in which we are emancipated from its lies to live in the freedom of the truth. A world in which we are delivered from White supremacy’s control so that we can live together in the fullness of our shared power. A world whose wonders are shared by all and stewarded for the good of everyone. A world in which people don’t spend their lives laboring for justice but have the opportunity to move beyond justice and into joy. What she sees, in short, is reparations. Reparations. Reparations is the cry of the ages. This is the opportunity of the moment. And this is the call of the church. (206–207)

A stirring conclusion to be sure. Sermonic, eschatological, and essentially religious. But it is not a beatific vision that depends on Christian categories or the Christian story. To be sure, it can draw from the Christian tradition in so far as the Christian tradition has a lot to say about restitution and restoration. And yet, the moral arc and the teleological aim do not require a Christian accounting of the world. Suppose American history is as bad as Kwon and Thompson aver. Suppose our corporate guilt is everything they say it is. Suppose everything they want to see under the banner of reparations would be good for our country and good for our communities. The religious vision is still one that I find more in line with a community organizer’s dream for America than a distinctively Christian one. It is a vision where sin is White supremacy and salvation comes from a lifetime of moral exertion. It is a vision where the church’s mission is to change the world and heaven is a world of art studios and co-ops. It is a vision where urban renewal feels central and the grace of the risen Christ feels peripheral. It is a vision filled with many noble aspirations, but one ultimately that depicts a future where the White guilt never dies and the reparations never end. 

Holman Jenkins at the Wall Street Journal looks at Steven Koonin, a scientist who definitely has his head on straight regarding the global climate.

Of course she is: Kimberly Guilfoyle is going to serve as the national chair for the Senate race of Eric Greitens, who had to resign as Missouri governor in 2018 due to sexual misconduct and donor charity list misuse scandals. 

One final note about today's roundup: You will note that all but one of the linked articles and columns have to do with the destructiveness of leftism. The lone exception is a pretty egregious example of the rot that is almost certainly killing the Republican Party, and I fully understand that that rot extends to the GOP still not having come to grips with its cowardice in the face of what happened January 6,  but I cannot sign onto the argument that that cowardice and what, in general, has happened to the party and far too much of the Right over the past five years, dwarfs what the Left is up to. We have to walk and chew gum at the same time. The sum total of what I've presented here today in most of these items is a grim picture of post-America's prospects. The nation is under assault from two directions.