My son's first stab at un-PC punditry

Indulge me in taking pride in my young boys for a second.

In the car tonight, the boys were telling some politically incorrect jokes, so I told them they were funny, but they need to be careful what they say around teachers and minority students. I told them minority kids can get very angry at that kind of kidding.

The older boy then said, "What's the big deal? I wouldn't care if they joked about me being white." So I asked him what the answer is. He thought for a second and said, "I wouldn't care because I don't see anything bad about being white. People get upset when you make fun of a weakness of theirs. Minority kids must think there is something bad about being a minority. Nobody likes to hear the truth."

Interesting answer.

Charlton's Thought Prison

Do yourself a favor and read Thought Prison: The Fundamental Nature of Political Correctness--a new book written by the distinguished scholar (and reader of this blog) Dr. Bruce Charlton.  I've read 500-page books before (e.g., Interpretation of Dreams) that taught me very little, but Dr. Charlton's 2-hour book might change your worldview.  If asked, many people might say that the most serious problem facing the West today is economic, but Thought Prison makes the compelling case that the ideology of political correctness will eventually destroy us. According to Charlton, there is a small chance that we can beat it with a populist Right movement, but the more realistic response is personal defiance. What does he mean by this? I'm not going to give the whole thing away. Read the book and find out. Then comment here if you feel like it.    

A critique of Charlton's "clever sillies"

In this paper, Michael Woodley critiques Bruce Charlton's hypothesis that "clever-sillies" use their high IQs and openness to experience to construct social and political views that are farther from the truth than views generated be common sense and social intelligence. According to Woodley: 1) smart people are not necessarily less socially intelligent; 2) smart people might tend to be politically correct only in cultures where liberalism is the dominant view; 3) high-IQ individuals who score high on conscientiousness (and conformity) will adopt PC views in a liberal environment and conservative views in a conservative environment; 4) traditional cultures value dominance, while the modern West values counter-dominance (or egalitarianism); and 5) adopting politically correct views is a way to signal to others that you are altruistic and support egalitarianism, which is then rewarded with enhanced social status and greater access to resources.

Woodley draws on Inglehart's work that has found that, as Western societies have become wealthy, a focus on material concerns (e.g., wealth, security) gives way to an emphasis on post-materialist values, which include self-expression, autonomy, and equality. Social status come less from wealth and more from "higher" pursuits like altruism. This is an evolutionarily novel state of affairs. While men have traditionally been admired for dominant behaviors, now they are rewarded for self-effacement. Believing, for example, in a natural hierarchy among men might have at one time been seen as the mark of a dominant and thus admired man. Now it seems arrogant and ungenerous, and is consequently penalized. High-IQ folks understand this more clearly than others and thus adopt politically correct views.       

To Luis (a Hispanic reader):

You have given me a good opportunity to say a word about the fact that many of my posts document the problems we see in the Hispanic community.

Let me say first of all that I'm surprised that such a sensitive reader as yourself did not complain about my many posts that reflect negatively on blacks, women, homosexuals, etc. One of themes I stress here is that, in contrast to past immigrant groups, the ethnocentrism of Hispanics does not seem to be fading, and all too many are not entering the cultural mainstream. You respond by standing up for your Latino brothers.

You suggest that I change jobs so I don't have to be around Hispanics, and if I'm understanding you correctly, I shouldn't hide the views presented on this blog from my students.

You can't be serious. If I talked in class like I write on this blog, I would be terminated in short order, no questions asked. It doesn't matter in the least that most of what I post is analysis of data. I push it as far as I can in class, but I'm no martyr: I've got hungry kids to feed.

This blog gives me the chance to publish all the things I can't otherwise. If we lived in a society that welcomed hard talk on issues like immigration, the Inductivist would be unnecessary. Our society generates so much race hysteria, you assume that because some white dude documents Hispanic social problems, he must hate Latinos and does not want to be around them.

I wrote in an earlier post that 98% of my interactions with Hispanics have been positive. I've known many fine folks: I attend mass with Latinos every week. The complaints I have about Latino students, I have for students in general: as a group, they don't give a damn. They're indifferent and incurious.

The difference between me and most people is that I take statistics very seriously. And, in contrast to messages from the mainstream media and punditry, Hispanics do not have the same numbers as Middle Class America. Their stats are troubling and do not bode well for their long-term assimilation.

But you asks, what's my point? Isn't that obvious? Blacks are a low-income group. Their population reduces the Middle Class nature of America. The same can be said of American Indians and Hispanic citizens. The fact is that all these folks are part of our society. We have to make the best of a challenging situation.

By contrast, Hispanic immigration is not an inevitability. It's a choice. Since I value an America dominated by middle class families, I document the low-income nature of the Hispanic community in order to make the argument that mass immigration from Latin America is moving us toward a divided society with a large low-income population at the bottom and a small number of elites on top, with fewer middle class folks in between.

One reason why America has been such a good country is because it has been a heavily middle class country. I want to keep it that way. Immigrants that are allowed to come to this country should be the type to raise that middle, not expand the bottom.

America's slide into the muck of liberalism is another concern of mine. One of the most important issues to me is abortion, and every year the country has hundreds of thousands of new Hispanic immigrants who are likely to turn their backs on their religious beliefs and vote for pro-choice Democratic candidates. Latino immigration is tilting the country left, and it doesn't have to happen.

At work and in social situations, our PC culture forces me to walk on egg shells. For me, a blog is a great place to let loose--sensitivities be damned. Face to face, my comments could easily lead to violence, but in this forum, you're able to see in stark terms how some people really think. Most whites are not like me because their thinking on these issues never goes beyond the superficial, so don't take me as an indicator of what your neighbor is really like. Almost all these folks are people with the best of intentions and good will. I'm the same way, only I'm mad.

And you detect my anger--it's not hard to. I'm not sure if I'm very good at self-analysis, but let's give it a stab. I was more or less apolitical growing up, although I was raised in a conservative home. Later, college turned me liberal. I thought of myself as a good guy because my main concern when voting was the welfare black Americans.

After a few years, out of belief that one can learn from all sides, I started to read conservatives. It surprised me how good some of their ideas were, but I remained unmoved. Then I started to read about all the anti-white animus that so many blacks felt. And I started to get pissed off.

Here, when it came to politics, I was more concerned about them than my own family. I was even willing to have my own children and other relatives stand aside so blacks could take their jobs and college spots--and the response I got was that I was an incurable hater and the cancer of humanity.

Basically, I've been pissed off about the whole PC racket ever since. If people get pushed too far, this is what you get. By nature, I have good will toward everyone, but when I start analyzing data and thinking about issues, I will admit that it makes me angry, and I see no reason to feel bad about that.

Minority and female literature: General Social Survey participants (N = 2,628) were asked how they felt about this statement: "It is a shame when traditional American literature is ignored while other works are promoted because they are by women or by members of minority groups." Here are the percentages who agreed (strongly or somewhat):


Percent who agree

White males 63.6
White females 64.6
Black males 52.3
Black females 48.4

The only group short of a majority is black females, so if traditional literature is so popular, why don't we study it?