Dean Cook

Who We Are, And How The Races Got To Have Different IQ Scores

Introduction: When I Realized Koko The Gorilla Was Fake

When I was maybe eleven years old, I found a book in my elementary school library about Koko the gorilla. Supposedly, Koko could talk through sign language. At that age, I assumed this must be true. (After all, it was in a book at the library.) Within a few years, I had forgotten about Koko the gorilla. I didn’t give it any more thought. Importantly, I didn’t reconsider whether it was true that Koko was capable of conceptual thought like a human being.

When I was about 18, I was watching Rush Limbaugh on TV. (He had a TV show in the early to mid 90’s). He did a comedy bit with a person in a monkey suit doing fake sign language that was supposed to be a parody of Koko the gorilla. The bit strongly implied that Koko couldn’t talk like a person. I remember thinking: “Oh yeah, that’s true. Clearly, Koko the gorilla is fake.” I hadn’t really thought much about Koko at all in the intervening years, but as soon as I saw this Rush Limbaugh bit, my mind refocused on the phenomena of Koko the “talking” gorilla, and quickly concluded it wasn’t real. (Note: I went back and found this clip on YouTube, and the bit may be from more like 1996, which would have made me about 22. I had forgotten this was actually about a story of children being taught that Koko was real in elementary school, like I had been.)

I bring this up because this was a minor piece of false information that I had been fed when I was still a child, and not fully capable of understanding that people can lie or commit fraud for a wide variety of reasons. The lying reaches up to the highest levels of our society, institutions and government. Think about what it took to have a book about a gorilla that could supposedly talk in an elementary school library. It meant there was some adult that had been authorized by other adults, in local and state government, to pick out this book, and put it into the library, despite how misleading and false it was. The book gave children the false impression that a gorilla mind and a human mind are more similar than they actually are. It helped to advance left-wing and egalitarian narratives that human beings are no more important than animals. A lot of what is taught in schools is of a similar nature. It’s about advancing a socio-political agenda held by most universities and major institutions today. That agenda will attempt to deny reality when it does not conform with it.

It is another moral axiom of that agenda that all human beings have the same intellectual capacity, and any difference is NOT because of genetics. Instead, all differences in intelligence or other aspects of the mind between human beings is entirely a result of some external factor, like “environment”, “discrimination”, “colonialism”, or “a legacy of slavery”. To advance that moral axiom in schools, its proponents at universities, the news media, and in government have systematically denied reality for at least as long as I have been alive, and probably much longer. But, eventually, the truth will out. That seems to be what is happening now, when it comes to certain issues surrounding race, IQ, and the mental differences between races.

David Reich’s Book

In 2018 Harvard geneticist David Riech published a book aimed at a non-scientist audience.

The book discusses advances in the science of DNA analysis that allows scientists to extract DNA from the bones of ancient humans, and sequence their DNA. This has allowed scientists like Reich to develop databases of ancient human populations, and then compare the genes of those ancient people to the genes of modern humans.

“These advances mean that whole-genome study of ancient DNA no longer requires screening large numbers of skeletal remains before it is possible to find a few individuals whose DNA can be analyzed. Instead, a substantial fraction of screened samples dating to the last ten thousand years can now be converted to working genome-wide data. The new methods have made it possible to analyze hundreds of samples in a single study. With such data, it is possible to reconstruct population changes in exquisite detail, transforming our understanding of the past.” (Introduction, Who We Are And How We Got Here, David Reich)

Much of his book doesn’t have anything that would be considered obviously controversial. The second chapter discusses how scientists have concluded that Europeans contain approximately one to two percent Neanderthal DNA, on average.

More controversial topics come up, but are glossed over, or their implications are not considered. For instance, in Chapter 9, Riech says:

“In 2012, Sarah Tishkoff and her colleagues studied the biological impact of archaic admixture on the genomes of present-day Africans without access to ancient genomes like those of Neanderthals and Denisovans that had been used to document interbreeding between archaic and modern humans in Eurasia.’

Tishkoff and her colleagues sequenced genomes from some of the most diverse populations of Africa and analyzed their data to search for a pattern that is predicted when there has been interbreeding with archaic humans: very long stretches of DNA that have a high density of differences compared to the great majority of other genomes, consistent with an origin in a highly divergent population that was isolated until recently from modern humans. When they applied this approach to present-day non-Africans, they pulled out stretches of DNA that they found were nearly exact matches to the Neanderthal sequence. Tishkoff and her colleagues also found long stretches of deeply divergent sequences in present-day Africans whose ancestors did not mix with Neanderthals. Since Neanderthals have contributed little if any ancestry to Africans, this was likely to have been the result of mixture with mystery African archaic humans-ghost populations whose genomes have not yet been sequenced.” (Who We Are And How We Got Here, David Reich, Pg 208 to 209, emphasis added.)

So, not only are Europeans and Africans genetically distinct because Europeans generally contain some Neanderthal DNA, but also, Africans generally contain an unknown “ghost population” of proto-human DNA that Europeans do not have.

“We provide complementary lines of evidence for archaic introgression into four West African populations. Our analyses of site frequency spectra indicate that these populations derive 2 to 19% of their genetic ancestry from an archaic population that diverged before the split of Neanderthals and modern humans.” (https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aax5097)

So, on average, present-day Africans contain anywhere from two to nineteen percent of their DNA from an archaic proto-human population that is even more ancient than the split between humans and Neanderthals. In the past, Africans bred with a population of proto-humans that was, presumably, even more primitive and backward than Neanderthals. It’s entirely possible that those genes affect not just African physiology, but African brains, and, by extension, African mental capabilities. (This is speculation on my part, but it is something that needs to be studied.)

Just as an interesting aside, West Africans formed the bulk of the slaves brought to North America:

“…a considerable number of enslaved people had their origins in the West African nation of Ghana, as well as neighboring parts of the Windward Coast, now Ivory Coast.” (https://www.history.com/articles/what-part-of-africa-did-most-slaves-come-from)

In other words, the two to nineteen percent archaic human population found in West Africans is presumably found in most of the people of African ancestry found in North America today. This potentially explains a lot about this racial group in the United States, and why they are so behind on many measurements of socio-economic success. It also points to a possible reason they were enslaved by their fellow Africans in the first place.

Of course, Reichs doesn’t say or imply any of this in his book. He doesn’t speculate like I am. (Although I think my speculation should form the basis for some scientific hypothesis that could be tested, but probably won’t, because scientists are afraid of the results of any such experiment.)

Reichs spends a lot of his time convincing the reader he’s not racist:

“The real offense of racism, in the end, is to judge individuals by a supposed stereotype of their group -to ignore the fact that when applied to specific individuals, stereotypes are almost always misleading…Everyone is his or her own person with unique strengths and weaknesses, and should be treated as such. Suppose you are the coach of a track-and-field team, and a young person walks on and asks to try out for the hundred-meter race, in which people of West African ancestry are statistically highly overrepresented, suggesting the possibility that genetics may play a role. For a good coach, race is irrelevant. Testing the young person’s sprinting speed is simple -take him or her out to the track to run against the stopwatch. Most situations are like this.” (Who We Are And How We Got Here, David Reich, Pg 267.)

Of course, this isn’t actually true for anything except, possibly sports, where sub-Saharan Africans appear to excel. I question even that, however. I suspect a lot of white people don’t dedicate their high school and college years to professional football or basketball, because they know that they have an infinitesimally small chance of getting into the NFL/NBA. Black overrepresentation in the NBA or NFL may just be a feature of white people being better at statistics and probability, so more of them focus their efforts on things that are a better bet of paying off.

Why can’t we just apply the metaphorical equivalent of a “stop watch” in fields like law, medicine, science, engineering, or any other job? Because it has been made illegal to do so. It is largely illegal, thanks to Supreme Court precedent interpreting the Civil Rights Acts, to prohibit workers from taking employer IQ tests. It’s called “disparate impact discrimination”, which is just a fancy way of saying black people don’t do as well on IQ tests. The “stop watch”, in things far more important than the high school track team, has been made illegal.

David Reich and every other mainstream academic out there loves to use sports analogies when it comes to the issue of race and IQ, because sports are the one area black people seem to do okay in. Reading between the lines, I think they are trying to convey to their audience: “I’m not racist! Please don’t think I’m racist! See? I acknowledge black people are better at something, so I’m not racist.”

I find it sad and pathetic. They need to stop caring if they’re racist. One of two things is true at this point. Either the concept of “racism” has been so twisted and expanded that it means nothing, and should be ignored as a useful concept, or, sometimes, “racism” means nothing more than acknowledging reality, in which case it’s a virtue.

David Riech’s Hidden Message:

Historically, I think a lot of scientists and intellectuals didn’t recognize, or didn’t want to admit, the obvious implications of their theories:

“For someone who has had more impact on religious thinking than anyone else born in the last 200 years, Darwin wrote very little about religion….The reasons for his reticence are complex. Darwin did not want to upset his wife, who was devout. He did not want to upset public opinion in any way that might retard the reception of his theory. He generally approved of the religious influence on society.” (https://www.faraday.cam.ac.uk/news/Darwins-religious-beliefs/)

David Reich is like Darwin and religion. He’s a “true believer” when it comes to the morality of egalitarianism and altruism. But, his science is constantly undercutting his “faith”, just like Darwin’s science undercut his religion. Darwin may not have wanted to fully admit what the theory of evolution did to the creation story in the Bible, but later thinkers would recognize the logical implications. Similarly, David Reich may not want to admit the logical implications of his work, but others eventually will. The truth will out. The “hidden message” of David Reich’s work is this:

Yes, race is real. Yes there are actual biological differences between races. Based on the genetic data that is being collected, we’ve got to acknowledge it at this point:

“Chapter 11, ‘The Genomics of Race and Identity,’ argues that the orthodoxy that has emerged over the last century —the idea that human populations are all too closely related to each other for there to be substantial average biological differences among them—is no longer sustainable…” (Who We Are And How We Got Here, David Reich, Introduction)

But, David Riech says: Let’s use a euphemism called “ancestry” and pretend like it’s not synonymous with what everyone already meant by “race”:

“…the language of ‘ancestry’ that geneticists like me have adopted is a reversion to traditional ideas of biological race. She has pointed out that in the United States, the ‘ancestry’ terms that we use map relatively closely to traditional racial categories, and her view is that the population genetics community has invented a set of euphemisms to discuss topics that had become taboo….But ancestry is not a euphemism, nor is it synonymous with ‘race’. Instead the term is born of an urgent need to come up with a precise language to discuss genetic differences among people at a time when scientific developments have finally provided the tools to detect them. It is now undeniable that there are nontrivial average genetic differences across populations in multiple traits, and the race vocabulary is too ill-defined and too loaded with historical baggage to be helpful. If we continue to use it we will not be able to escape the current debate, which his mired in an argument between two indefensible positions. On the one side there are beliefs about the nature of the differences that are grounded in bigotry and have little basis in reality. On the other side there is the idea that any biological differences among populations are so modest that as a matter of social policy they can be ignored and papered over. It is time to move on from this paralyzing false dichotomy and to figure out what the genome is actually telling us.” (Who We Are And How We Got Here, David Reich, Pg. 253)

Here, Riech gives us a socio-political reason for not using the term “race”, rather than a scientific one. He simply assumes that anyone who speaks of race is “grounded in bigotry”, whatever “bigotry” means. It’s not “bigotry” to recognize differences in average IQ between races, or average differences in murder rates. It’s recognition of reality. Or, if it is “bigotry”, then sometimes being a “bigot” is a virtue.

I didn’t discover David Reich and his ideas through his book. I discovered him by watching an approximately two-hour long interview on YouTube. (I highly recommend listening to the video interview.) At several points, I had to rewind it and relisten to what Reich said. I found it shocking to hear an academic from Harvard University, an institution I have almost nothing but contempt for, saying what he was saying. My assumption was that Harvard does nothing by carry water for the egalitarian left. I was surprised to see one of the egalitarian left’s most sacred creeds being called into question. I don’t know if Reich has learned more since he wrote his book in 2018, or if he has simply decided that he is more committed to the truth than he is to any ideology. Some of Reich’s apparent discoveries since he wrote the book include:

1. Significant Evolution through natural Selection has occurred in Eurasia since the Bronze Age, 5,000 years ago.

a. This contradicts Steven J Gould, who said: “There’s been no biological change in humans in 40,000 or 50,000 years. Everything we call culture and civilization we’ve built with the same body and brain” https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3721656/#b1-rmmj_1-1-e0006

b. The idea that human evolution has been quiescent for the last 50,000 years was a reflection of Gould’s left-wing, egalitarian ideology, rather than science. https://quillette.com/2019/03/19/the-mismeasurements-of-stephen-jay-gould/

2. Significant evolution through natural selection in Eurasia since the Bronze age has included:

a. Genes Correlated with IQ score. -An increase in those genes:

“In some cases, groups of SNPs were under selection together to influence polygenic traits. Some changes raised the frequency of beneficial traits, including some that are interpreted today as…Measures of behavioral and social status or cognitive functions, such as scores on intelligence tests, household income, and years of schooling…” (https://hms.harvard.edu/news/massive-ancient-dna-study-reveals-natural-selection-has-accelerated-recent-human-evolution)

b. Genes correlated with Bipolar Disorder and Schizophrenia- A reduction in those genes:

“Other changes reduced the frequency of harmful traits, such as those that are interpreted today as: Reduced risk of bipolar disorder and schizophrenia…” https://hms.harvard.edu/news/massive-ancient-dna-study-reveals-natural-selection-has-accelerated-recent-human-evolution

What the above findings tend to suggest:

(1) It’s not your imagination that black people, on average, seem less intelligent.

(2) It’s not your imagination that more black people seem to have more mental health issues:

“Compared to non-Hispanic White individuals, non-Hispanic Black individuals had a significantly higher prevalence of SSDs [schizophrenia spectrum disorders] (4.1% vs. 1.2%; adjusted odds ratio=3.49, 95% CI=1.37, 8.91) and psychotic symptoms (9.3% vs. 4.9%; adjusted odds ratio=2.04, 95% CI=1.15, 3.63), and non-Hispanic multiracial individuals had a significantly higher prevalence of SSDs (5.6%; adjusted odds ratio=4.59, 95% CI=1.53, 13.76).” https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40887946/

(3) It’s not “all racism” or all “a legacy of slavery” that explains the fact that black people have lower IQ and more mental health problems.

(4) I want it be perfectly clear why this matters:

Current racial groups, like Caucasians and Africans developed within the last say, 10,000 years. Current Europeans come from genetic populations that haven’t had much interbreeding with Africans for at least 10,000 years. If there has been “directional selection” for IQ amongst Europeans in the last 10,000 years, then it occurred after European’s ancestors separated from the ancestors of sub-Saharan Africans. It implies that Europeans have evolved greater intelligence than sub-Saharan Africans since those two racial groups separated. It implies that European populations have more instances of genes that are correlated with higher IQ people. In plain terms, it means Europeans are, on average, smarter than sub-Saharan Africans due to their genetics. Biologically speaking, whether you want to call this “superior” or not depends on what environment you find those genes in. It appears those genes are not “superior” in a stone age or neolithic environment, like sub-Saharan Africa up until a couple of hundred years ago. Higher IQ is superior in a modern, industrial world.

Why The Assumption That “Intelligence is always useful in any environment” May Not Be True

In the past, I had doubted that there could be significant average genetic-based intelligence differences between races. My assumption was that intelligence is always useful, whether one lives in a stone age society, or an industrial society. This would mean that Darwinian evolution would always favor increased intelligence for human beings.

I am no longer certain that is true. First, Charles Murray’s Book “The Bell Curve” suggested to me there are differences in IQ between races. Now, David Reich’s work suggests that there was “directional selection” for the genes that correlate with higher IQ in the Bronze age of Eurasia, within the last 5,000 years. Regions of the world like Africa did not go through the Bronze Age, which strongly suggests that sub-Saharan Africans did not face the same selective pressure on the genes for IQ. (It’s just barely possible some other world-wide effect caused directional selection for IQ, for all the geographically isolated peoples of the world 5,000 years ago, but not likely.)

How do I reconcile these facts with my assumption that natural selection would always select for intelligence, because of my assumption that intelligence is always a benefit, regardless of technology level? I cannot explain it at this point, but, here is a hypothesis/speculation that I hope some scientist can test someday.

Intelligence is always a benefit for an adult human being. I am not so sure that intelligence is always a benefit for children, toddlers, or infants. It may be that a child with greater physiological capacity for intelligence (a bigger brain, or more neural connections in his brain, or whatever) expends more energy as a child than a child with lower intelligence capacity. In a stone age environment, where calories are very scarce, it might be that the children born with greater genetic capacity for intelligence have a lower probability of reaching adulthood than children with less genetic capacity.

Intelligence matters much less to a child’s survival. He is dependent on his parents and elders to a great degree. If the more intelligent child requires more calories than the less intelligent, perhaps he is more likely to die in childhood.

The phrase “intelligence is always a benefit” should perhaps be modified to: “Intelligence is always a benefit for an adult human being.” For children, the situation might be different.

Once the Bronze Age occurred, there was greater surplus food, and more children started surviving to adulthood, including more children with greater genetic capacity for intelligence. As adults, they were then more successful than less intelligent people, and were able to survive and reproduce in greater numbers.

Also, the mechanism of childhood mortality for more intelligent children might have been something else besides food. Maybe there is a negative correlation between genes for intelligence and genes for, say, immunity to disease. Maybe more intelligent children were less likely to survive in a stone age environment for some socio-cultural reason unique to stone age cultures. (Maybe smarter children were regarded as threatening to the tribe and were more likely to be killed or abandoned.)

Ancient African genes do not appear to have been tested for correlation to IQ yet. That is the next logical step. We need to confirm that the same directional selection for intelligence did not occur in Africans. (This would help confirm if it was a result of a Bronze Age environment in Eurasia, or something else. Sub-Saharan Africa would seem like a natural control.)

I had decided that IQ was at least partly genetic, and that the averages differed between the races, by about ten to fifteen years ago. But, I was never really sure. I never wanted to say too much about it because I’m not a scientist. I take great care in what positions I take, and to think through the evidence as carefully as I can.

In her article rejecting racism as a form of collectivism, Ayn Rand said:

“Even if it were proved — which it is not — that the incidence of men of potentially superior brain power is greater among the members of certain races than among the members of others, it would still tell us nothing about any given individual and it would be irrelevant to one’s judgment of him. A genius is a genius, regardless of the number of morons who belong to the same race — and a moron is a moron, regardless of the number of geniuses who share his racial origin.” (“Racism”, The Virtue of Selfishness, Ayn Rand, https://ari.aynrand.org/issues/government-and-business/individual-rights/racism/)

It is certainly true that individual sub-Saharan Africans can buck the trend of their race, genetically. Population genetics is the study of populations, not individuals. I also don’t think genetics is 100% of the picture when it comes to intelligence. Your family and social environment growing up also seem to make a difference. The choices you make, especially in late childhood to early adulthood, make a difference.

At this point, however, I don’t think the first part of Ayn Rand’s quote can be considered open for debate any longer. As the environmentalists like to say with global warming, the science is settled. When a population geneticist from a leftist-captured institution like Harvard is admitting what David Reich is admitting, the science on the subject must be really strong. Today, I think the question of race and IQ, and the average genetic differences between the races, is largely proved.

The Cambridge Left Sacrifices Truth For “Diversity”

Cambridge is one of the world’s top universities, and probably has been for hundreds of years. Isaac Newton was a student from Cambridge when he developed his Law of Universal Gravitation. He later became a professor, and laid much of the groundwork for the modern world. We stand on the shoulders of giants like Newton. Today, the core foundations of that great institution have been almost completely hollowed out. Cambridge is now filled with professors like Jason Arday.

Who is Jason Arday? Until recently, he was a professor of education at Cambridge. (https://www.simonspeakers.com/author/arday-jason/ )At age 37, Arday became the youngest black professor at that traditionally hallowed institution of learning. There were only five other black professors at Cambridge when he was hired. (https://channel4news.substack.com/p/the-extraordinary-case-of-professor)

Arday made many extraordinary claims, over and above his claims of academic merit. He claimed to have run 30 marathons in 35 days with a fractured bone. He said he’d raised £5 million for charity . (https://nypost.com/2026/08/10/opinion/plagiarist-prof-jason-ardays-life-story-is-published-tomorrow-and-it-gets-more-unbelievable-by-the-page/)

I’ve been around a lot of black guys who would make extraordinary claims like this. The white liberals around them would just lap it up without question. For this reason, it’s not surprising to me that no one questioned any of his obvious lies. Whenever the black guy shows up in any situation, I roll my eyes and think: “Here we go.” The ass-kissing by white liberals is about to begin.

By way of example, I once went to see a fiction writer’s panel. By my recollection it had two white guys, a hispanic guy, and a woman on it, sitting at a table for five up on a stage. They started giving their spiels about writing. Note that I said there were five chairs, but only four people on the stage? Where was the fifth person? About fifteen minutes into the presentation, a black guy sauntered in and sat down in the fifth chair. (I think he may have apologized for being late, but I’m not 100% sure he even did that.)

The black guy was introduced by the moderator after this belated appearance. The white guy sitting next to him practically fell over himself to shake hands.

The white guys were clearly the most accomplished and professional people up on that stage. But, the black guy was really good at bullshitting and loved to hear himself talk. The female moderator kept asking the black guy questions. The female moderator also routinely cut off the white guys, like she couldn’t be bothered to hear from them. (This was a little bit into the first Trump Administration, to give you some idea of where society was at. On top of that, writers are all mostly on the political left, to begin with.)

It was apparent that the black guy was the least accomplished writer up there. He had been chosen solely because he was black, and they needed a black guy on the writer’s panel. Somehow, even though black people are 13% of the US population, the writer’s panel wasn’t complete unless 20% of it was black.

I’ve seen this pattern a thousand times. The above is just one example. The black guy who is a complete prevaricating crap artist shows up, and all the white people act like what he’s saying just came down from the mountain on stone tablets. I don’t get why this happens, other than white people, especially white “liberals” don’t want to have to face the uncomfortable truth that most black people are not that intelligent. More generally, it probably has to do with most people being altruists, and they are willing to sacrifice what they know to be the truth, in order to spare the feelings of an obviously incompetent ignoramus. Here is a quote from Ayn Rand that seems to sum up this mindset nicely:

“It is your mind that they want you to surrender—all those who preach the creed of sacrifice, whatever their tags or their motives, whether they demand it for the sake of your soul or of your body, whether they promise you another life in heaven or a full stomach on this earth. Those who start by saying: ‘It is selfish to pursue your own wishes, you must sacrifice them to the wishes of others’—end up by saying: ‘It is selfish to uphold your convictions, you must sacrifice them to the convictions of others.’” (Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand, emphasis added, https://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/altruism.html)

So, what happened with Jason Arday? Eventually, it was discovered Arday had committed massive amounts of plagiarism. He used another student’s paper, without citation, in his own work. (https://www.timeshighereducation.com/opinion/i-was-reported-police-over-arday-case-i-was-just-doing-my-job)

When a journalist contacted Arday by email about the apparent plagiarism, Arday responded by calling the Police on the journalist, and claiming he was being harassed. The worst part is the Police took Arday’s side, and told the journalist not to contact him. This was in Great Britain where there aren’t the same protections for freedom of speech as there are in the United States. More altruism, but this time, with the imprimatur of state force to back it up.

Another academic and former Cambridge professor eventually ran Arday’s works through an electronic plagiarism detector, and posted the results online. (https://ncofnas.com/p/dei-fraud-and-cover-up-at-cambridge?ref=quillette.com) This academic had been removed from his job at Cambridge because he said that without affirmative action, almost none of the students at Harvard would be black, which I think is 100% true. (https://freespeechunion.org/archive/why-we-should-defend-nathan-cofnass-academic-freedom )

The latest news development on this story is that Arday has apparently committed suicide, and I do not feel sorry for him at all. I could feel an ounce of compassion for Arday if all he had been doing was the constant bragging and misrepresenting of his worth. Even the plagiarism might be forgivable, since the field of education is probably so shot through with leftist ideas to be almost worthless, anyway. But, on at least two occasions, he called the police on people who questioned him. This shows a willingness on Arday’s part to use physical force to silence his critics. He is a force-initiator, and that is unforgiveable. He deserved whatever ignominy he received. The fact that he was too psychologically brittle to withstand that public shame and scrutiny is entirely on him. He chose his path.

The lesson to be learned from this episode is that we’ve got to shut down affirmative action/DEI, and judge people solely on their ability to do the job. Merit means to deserve or to be worthy of something. It doesn’t mean that practicing virtue and effort will always lead to success. (Sometimes factors beyond your control cause you to fail.) But, for those who achieve a particular value, accolade, job, or social position, it means they made efforts to achieve that result.

Closely related to the concept of merit is the concept of justice. Justice demands that we must judge people in accordance with objective standards, and give them what they deserve. We give them what they deserve for selfish reasons. Jobs at Cambridge or Harvard must go to those who, by objective standards, are capable of producing value at a level that is equal to the (supposed) value of these institutions. Even people who try their hardest, and give it their all, don’t automatically deserve a job. They must, in fact, be capable of producing value that is equivalent to that job. There is no doubt in my mind that intelligence is partly genetic. Many professors or students that end up at Harvard will be there, at least in part, because they won the “genetic lottery” when it comes to intelligence. Others who tried equally as hard may end up as lecturers at the local community college or state college. (There is nothing wrong with that, ethically speaking. What matters on a personal moral level is that you gave it your best effort.) From the standpoint of justice, it’s irrelevant that genetics played a role in someone’s ability to compete in the job market. The most intelligent are capable of producing the most value for Harvard or Cambridge. The owners of Harvard and Cambridge should want the best because it ultimately means the best value will be produced, which benefits us all. If money hadn’t been spent on Jason Arday’s job at Cambridge, they might have been able to afford another cancer researcher. Maybe that scientist would have made the next big breakthrough that results in a cure for cancer. Instead, money and resources were poured down the sewer that is DEI and affirmative action.

If an airline picks pilots for its planes, it should do so on the fact that job candidates are, in fact, best able to fly and land the planes. The self-interest of the owners of the planes demands that, to say nothing of the self-interest of the passengers. That is the purpose of justice. To enhance and promote the lives of the people who practice that virtue. It doesn’t matter if the pilot that wasn’t picked had lower intelligence for genetic reasons, or because he had a bad childhood. All that matters, from my standpoint as a customer, is that the person most capable of flying and landing that plane is in the cockpit. Justice serves self-interest. That’s why we practice the virtue of justice.( https://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/justice/1.html)

Intellectuals at universities are supposed to provide us with new knowledge, and new ways of thinking about the data collected. Academics in the “soft-sciences” like education, the social sciences, and philosophy are there to help us better understand ourselves, and our relationship to society and the universe. They are like airline pilots of the human psyche. When they do their work correctly, they can help us to better navigate a world fraught with dictatorships, warfare, and other dangers. Justice demands that our universities be filled with the best and the most productive. The world’s problems are too serious to tolerate even one incompetent charlatan at Cambridge, who got there through nothing but the color of his skin.

Do You Cross The Street?

In one of his podcasts, Sam Harris talks about a woman getting on an elevator with a black man, because she doesn’t want to appear racist, and it “ended badly for her”. She was willing to sacrifice her life and wellbeing for an ideology that doesn’t have her best interests in mind.

A similar situation is the old hypothetical of someone crossing the street to avoid a random black person, and whether that’s “racist”.

I have come to the conclusion that one of two things are true. Either: (1) “racism” has been expanded as a definition to the point that it is meaningless, or (2) sometimes racism is rational. (I’m indifferent to which it is at this point.)

What specifically do I consider myself to be at this point? I’d call myself a “rational white separatist”. What do I mean by that?

In the two examples above, I’d try to avoid the black person.

Crime statistics show disparities in violent crime. I’m also convinced that you are more likely to be the victim of a violent crime by a black person than a white person. I’m not going to get into the weeds on the statistics here. I’ve studied them enough that I’m convinced. The reader is invited to go study them, or keep living in denial, as they choose. At this point, anyone who denies this, I consider to be fundamentally dishonest.

The somewhat grudging retort today tends to be to admit the statistics, but to say something like: “Yeah, but we have to treat everyone like individuals.” In the above two scenarios, I know nothing about these two individuals. (The black man on the street or in the elevator). I gain nothing from being in the elevator with him or from walking close to him on the street. No matter how small the odds of death for me, they are real. On the other hand, I loose almost nothing by crossing the street or by not getting on the elevator. (Other than perhaps waiting for the next elevator, which is a trivial loss of time.) I have no information other than group statistics, and my actions do nothing bad to the black person, other than perhaps offend someone I don’t know. (I don’t care about his feelings.) It’s not like I’m trying to justify pulling out a gun and shooting him, unprovoked, in the elevator based on nothing but group statistics. Any restriction of his life, liberty or property would have to be based on more than statistics. Treating him as an individual in a courtroom does matter, because of what is at stake.

I don’t consider myself an absolute “white separatist”, however. I don’t think that makes sense. Sometimes dealing with black people in professional or job settings is unavoidable. It’s also possible that I could meet a black person who is so exceptional that they overcome the presumption I have against separatism. (I’m not going to turn down an invite to meet with Thomas Sowell or Clarence Thomas.) Maybe there’s some black doctor out there who is just exceptional, and I would need medical treatment from him, or, if I was in combat, maybe I need to hide out in the same foxhole as a black person.

I would call myself a “presumptive white separatist”. In other words, in non-professional settings, and when it is legal, I avoid black people in general. But, that presumption can be overcome. (I cannot avoid associating with black people in professional settings, as it is mostly against the law to do so. I advocate repeal of the civil rights acts as violations of my freedom of association.)

Whose responsibility is it to overcome that presumption with me? I place it on the black person that wants to associate with me. The principle is rational egoism, plus freedom of association. They would have to demonstrate to me that association with them is going to be beneficial, and worth any risk.

There is a lot of discussion to be had about the details. All of this needs to be “fleshed out” with examples. I will leave most of that for another time, but I wanted to discuss one counterargument that I find particularly “Reddit midwit”. Someone is going to say something like:

“Well, men are more likely to commit crimes, but you don’t see women not associating with men.”

Women are free not to associate with men, but this isn’t a good comparison. If a heterosexual woman wants to have a relationship with a man, she must associate with at least some men, despite the real danger. (Men do commit more violent crime.) This is no different than if I want to train bears, I have to accept that there is some associated danger that can never be fully avoided.

There is much that still needs to be said about the doctrine of what I am provisionally calling “rational white separatism” or “presumptive white separatism”, including a good name for it. All in good time.

Let’s Create Better Suburban Representation On The DART Board

Getting on the buses and trains for the Dallas Area Rapid Transit system is always an ordeal. There is always that sense of dread as to what sort of crazy person you’re going to run into today. Will there be a bum sleeping off his latest heroin/fentanyl fix lying at your feet? (True story.) Going to get threatened by the local “diversity”? (Also true story.) What if there was a better way?

The City of Plano and several other suburban cities around Dallas are currently negotiating changes to the Dallas Area Rapid Transit system with the DART board. DART was created in 1983, and replaced the Dallas Transit System. DART includes within its service area more than just the City of Dallas. Several suburban cities are covered under DART service, and, as part of this coverage, sales taxes are imposed on the sale of goods and services to cover the costs of DART. (Fees are charged to riders, but the sales taxes provide the bulk of the money for DART.)

I wanted to write a little on this topic because I think it is assumed that anyone in favor of capitalism must be against the use of buses and trains in cities. I think it is a mistake to assume this. In an ideal world, I would very much prefer to use buses and trains. I would generally prefer to live in a place where I did not need to own a car to get around. (I don’t want to get into all the reasons I don’t think this is an ideal world right now, as it would be a distraction concerning my overall point. Let’s just say it relates to the people who tend to be on the buses and trains, and their behavior. It’s also the fact that our cities, especially Dallas, are set up in such a manner that being carless is not a good option.)

In a better culture, with better laws, that was closer to pure capitalism, cities would be private entities. Services like roads for cars, sidewalks for pedestrians and bikers, and trains and buses would all be owned by a private corporation. This corporation would replace all functions of city government, other than the police and perhaps municipal courts. It’s also possible that some services currently provided by a single city government would be provided by multiple corporations. But, I suspect it would make the most economic sense to put most of those services into one entity that provides a complete “package” of services in the area.

People would then “vote with their feet”, on where to live. They’d choose cities with the bundle of services and infrastructure that best served their needs and lifestyles. People who preferred more car-centric cities could live in those cities. People who prefer to use buses, trains, bikes, and walking, could live in those cities. Cities would also set the terms of who could live there, and under what conditions. It would probably become common to require criminal background checks to ensure safety in a city. People with criminal records would be barred from living in certain areas, or even from living in the city at all. Cities would set the terms on which roads, sidewalks, and other city assets could be used on a wide variety of topics. For instance, fully privatized cities could set the terms on whether and how firearms could be carried on private roads, private parks, and private sidewalks. Cities would set the terms on what sorts of gatherings and speech could be engaged in, as it is all private property. People who prefer cities that allow them to carry firearms or to engage in more or less speech on sidewalks and roads could move to the cities that offer more or less of that. The terms of use for things like roads, sidewalks, busses, and trains could also contain a requirement that individuals are subject to “stop and frisk” and other crime control measures, thereby reducing criminality. (People who do not like it are free to move to other cities that don’t have such requirements. No one is forced to pay for cities they don’t like.)

The private city would charge fees for its services. For instance, given advances in technology, city roads would likely be electronically tolled now, with drivers being charged some fee for every mile driven on those roads. (In the past, before electronic toll tags became so easy to implement, this might have been some other system, such as receiving a sticker or plate to put on your car that shows you paid the monthly user fee, and then private security or cops would stop and evict/fine anyone driving on the road without the proper sticker/plate.) Bicycle lanes and even pedestrian pathways might be tolled, or portions of them tolled, too. For instance, a particularly scenic walkway might be tolled with an entry fee, and bicycle paths might be patrolled by security/cops, who require you to have a displayed sticker or small plate, or a QR code, on your bike. (Those who don’t are evicted as trespassers, and/or fined for trespassing.) Rules regarding the use of bike paths, roads, and pedestrian walkways would all be set by the property owner(s). No longer would homeless people and mentally ill people be able to just camp out on sidewalks or roadsides, as this would be trespassing. Likely some portion of the roads, sidewalks, and bike paths would also be paid by local businesses. For instance, the entity that owns a road or sidewalk might charge a business a fee to get access to the road or sidewalk in front of it. Without paying the fee, the entity might block off the road or sidewalk such that access to the business is impossible. (They could erect a large wall, or some other such thing preventing cars and pedestrians from going from the road to the business or vice-versa.) Other methods/business models are possible when it comes to funding. (For instance, advertising billboards might be used on some roads by the owner of the road to defer costs.)

How do we get from where we are today, with city governments delivering services like roads, to a completely privatized city, where the only thing city government manages are the police and local courts? Such a privatization could take different forms. I think it would require some sort of transfer of the ownership of things like roads, sidewalks, bike lanes, and other city land/property to a corporation. Shares in the corporation would then be distributed to the local property owners and taxpayers. Perhaps everyone owning property in the area gets a number of shares in the corporation proportional to the amount of property they own in the city limits. I believe cities are currently funded mostly through sales taxes and property taxes, so these taxpayers should get shares in the corporation, but the exact details of the privatization can be worked out at some future point when our society is actually ready to do so. The principle of the privatization, and who should own city infrastructure, would be based on the idea that the current taxpayers are the true owners of city property. These taxpayers should receive ownership interests in the city in proportion to the amount of taxes they pay.

Until city infrastructure is truly privatized, we should seek to mirror the private, free market model by giving a greater say to those who are actually paying the money to support the system. In the case of DART, that means giving the people who pay the sales taxes a say in how DART is run. People who pay more sales taxes should have a greater say when it comes to DART.

The City of Dallas contributed about half the sales taxes for DART. Up until recently, it had more than 50% of the board members for the entity that controls DART. This was clearly unfair, but apparently Dallas has agreed to give up more seats to other cities to keep them from withdrawing from DART. This is fairer, and closer to a private system where ownership is tied to capital contribution.

I would propose that this be taken a step further. The State Legislature should pass a law that creates a new “charter” or “constitution” for DART that directly ties membership on the entity that controls DART to how much sales tax revenue the city contributes. It should probably be something along the lines of: each city within the DART service area gets one member on the DART Board. A city then gets additional members on the DART Board based on their relative contribution to funding DART through sales taxes. For instance, Dallas contributes roughly half, so it gets enough additional members to give it roughly 50% of the Board members. Every other city gets additional members on the Board to reflect their relative contributions. If a City’s contribution to DART changes over a period of time, then it gets fewer or more Board members. This can all be enforced in court, so a city can ensure it is receiving its fair share of Board members.

Some cursory research indicates that DART’s enabling legislation is found at Chapter 452 of the Texas Transportation Code, so this should be modified to put this into effect. The current DART Board only has 15 members. The Board would probably need to be expanded to ensure each city in DART gets at least one member, and to ensure proper proportional representation based on amount of sales tax contributed. I also believe that members to the DART Board are currently appointed by each city’s council. Another possible reform to consider would be to make the DART Board members elective at the city level, so that members of the public choose their DART Board representatives. There might be downsides to making the positions elective, however. Local elections usually draw very few voters, so it is easy for local interest groups to round up a number of voters, take them to the polls, and influence the outcome of the election. It might be better to leave the system as an appointed system, with DART Board members chosen by the local city council, which has the knowledge and resources to pick good Board members. Alternatively, perhaps one of a city’s DART Board members is elected, and the rest are appointed by the city’s council. This gives some direct representation by the city’s voters. So, for instance, if the City of Dallas had ten members on the DART Board, one of those is elected by the voters, and the other nine are appointed by the Dallas City Council.

Unfortunately, a completely privatized City of Dallas and local suburbs is not possible under the current system of governmental interference in the free market. Until pure capitalism is established, the State Legislature should do its best to ensure that local taxpayers who pay for DART are in control of the Board, and are able to control the system’s future growth and progress.

End Affirmative Action and DEI In Employment

In 1963, President John Kennedy made a televised appearance and urged legislation similar to what would become the Civil Rights Act. After Kennedy was assassinated, President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law. (https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/civil-rights-act)

The act was the most sweeping legislation on this topic since Reconstruction. It covered many areas, and is broken down into eleven titles. For instance, Title I has to do with voter rights, Title VI concerns federal funding, and Title VII concerns employment. A major intent of the act was to end Southern legal policies concerning public accommodations, voting, and businesses. However, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 went far beyond this, as it did not just abolish certain state laws in the South, but also regulated private action by private businesses and individuals. (https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/civil-rights-act)

Opponents of the Civil Rights Act said it would, amongst other things, lead to a system of racial quotas in hiring. They said businesses would have to hire a certain percentage of each race, regardless of the merit or ability of those persons to do the best job. Proponents of the bill that would become the Civil Rights Act assured the nation it would not institute racial quotas for the hiring of employees. (https://www.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/resources/human-rights/archive/1964-civil-rights-act-then-now/) However, subsequent Supreme Court decisions said that “voluntary affirmative action”, that is open discrimination against whites in hiring, was just fine.

Currently, the courts say any private employer is free to implement voluntary affirmative action programs that are claimed to assist blacks and other minorities. This has been the law of the land since 1979, when the US Supreme Court decided United Steelworkers of America v. Weber, 443 U.S. 193 (1979).

United Steelworkers concerned a collective bargaining agreement between a union and an employer, which said that 50% of employees in a training program would be black “…until the percentage of black craft workers in the plant is commensurate with the percentage of blacks in the local labor force.” (Id.) Weber, a white employee, sued, pointing out that the policy violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. The plan, instituted by the labor union and the employer, was considered by the court to be voluntary, and not one that was required by government. The Supreme Court held that since it was voluntary, and was aimed at helping blacks, it did not violate Title VII.

The Court pointed to the Legislative History of the Civil Rights Act, which indicated it was aimed at helping black people:

“Congress’ primary concern in enacting the prohibition against racial discrimination in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was with ‘the plight of the Negro in our economy.’ 110 Cong.Rec. 6548 (1964) (remarks of Sen. Humphrey).” (Id.)

In other words, the Supreme Court in United Steelworkers said the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was there to help black people, not to create a “colorblind” society, or to create “racial equality in the workplace”.

The Court in United Steelworkers also dismissed a provision in the Civil Rights Act that seemingly prohibited racial quotas, in an act of what I’d call “linguistic jujitsu”:

“Nothing contained in this subchapter shall be interpreted to require any employer, employment agency, labor organization, or joint labor-management committee subject to this subchapter to grant preferential treatment to any individual or to any group because of the race, color, religion, sex, or national origin of such individual or group on account of an imbalance which may exist with respect to the total number or percentage of persons of any race, color, religion, sex, or national origin employed by any employer, referred or classified for employment by any employment agency or labor organization, admitted to membership or classified by any labor organization, or admitted to, or employed in, any apprenticeship or other training program, in comparison with the total number or percentage of persons of such race, color, religion, sex, or national origin in any community, State, section, or other area, or in the available work force in any community, State, section, or other area.”(42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2(j))

The court basically focused on the language: “…to require any employer…to grant preferential treatment…on account of any imbalance which may exist with respect to the total number or percentage of persons of any race….in comparison with the total number or percentage of persons of such race…in any community, State, section, or other area, or in the available work force in any community, State, section, or other area.”

The Court said no one was “requiring” the employer in United Steelworkers to grant preferential treatment to blacks, who were underrepresented in the workforce, in comparison to the number of people living in that area. In this case, the business in question was located in Gramercy, Louisiana, whose local workforce was 39% black. Prior to the implementation of this program, the workers in the business in question, involved in that particular type of work, was only about 1.83% black. (Id. at 198)

It’s doubtful that any court, anywhere, ever, would allow an “affirmative action” program to stand, if the situation were reversed. That is, imagine if the population of a city were 39% white, but only 1.83% of a company’s workforce were white, and the company instituted a program to increase white hiring. (I’m not sure if this would ever really happen, but perhaps if some basketball team decided to have a special program to increase white basketball players?) Not only would such a policy be struck down by the courts, the business would likely be burned to the ground by an angry mob of protestors, but I digress.

Probably the above scenario I present, of a black imbalance of workers over whites, also could never occur because the Court in United Steelworkers went on to say that there were limits on when a voluntary affirmative action plan like that one would be upheld. The Court said the plan in that case was designed to “...to break down old patterns of racial segregation and hierarchy…” (Id. at 208), it did “…not unnecessarily trammel the interests of the white employees…” (Id at 208), and the plan was a temporary measure, and would only continue until black employees as a percentage of workers, were the same as the percentage of blacks in the local population.(Id. At 208).

Like it or not, since 1979, employers have been free to “voluntarily” discriminate against whites, in favor of blacks, as long as they could show it had to do with breaking down “old patterns of racial segregation”, did not “unnecessarily trammel the interests of whites”, and so long as the measure was “temporary”. This is what many companies have done, too. For instance, Larry Fink of Blackrock said that he was instituting an aggressive “diversity program” in order to get rid of “…a bunch of white men…”. (https://www.foxbusiness.com/business-leaders/blackrocks-larry-fink-rattles-employees-amid-political-posturing) (Fink and his defenders would, of course, say that I’m mischaracterizing what he said, but he was aiming to reduce the number of white workers by replacing them with less qualified minority workers, since a profit-oriented business would naturally hire the most qualified, regardless of race, in order to maximize shareholder value and profits.)

There are indications in the legal system, and in the culture, that preferential treatment for black employees in hiring could be coming to an end, however. This has already occurred, “de jure” if not “de facto”, when it comes to affirmative action programs in college admissions.

In the Summer of 2023, the US Supreme Court issued its opinion in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College. This opinion declared illegal any sort of racial preference system for any entity receiving federal financial assistance. Most universities and colleges today receive such financial assistance through student aid programs like Pell Grants or Federal student loans, as well as through research grants and other tax breaks:

“The clearest example of Title VI-covered federal financial assistance is money provided through federal grants, cooperative agreements, and loans. An entity may receive grant money directly from an agency or indirectly through another entity. In either case, the direct recipient as well as the secondary or subrecipient are considered to have received federal funds. In other instances, the funding may be directed to the funding beneficiaries but another entity ultimately receives the funding. For example, a college or university receives federal financial assistance indirectly where it enrolls United States military veterans for whom the federal government provides tuition payments.” (https://www.justice.gov/crt/fcs/T6manual5)

Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 says no person in the United States shall, on the ground of race, color, or national origin, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance. (https://www.dol.gov/agencies/oasam/regulatory/statutes/title-vi-civil-rights-act-of-1964)

Additionally, even without the existence of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, a state government cannot prefer one race over another without likely running afoul of the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause. The majority opinion of Justice Roberts spent a lot of time analyzing the actions of Harvard and UNC based on the equal protection clause of the 14th, but, as far as I can tell, it was simply assumed that Harvard was a state actor. At footnote 2 to the majority opinion, Justice Roberts says:

“Title VI provides that ‘[n]o person in the United States shall, on the ground of race, color, or national origin, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.’ 42 U. S. C. §2000d. ‘We have explained that discrimination that violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment committed by an institution that accepts federal funds also constitutes a violation of Title VI.’ Gratz v. Bollinger, 539 U. S. 244, 276, n. 23 (2003). Although JUSTICE GORSUCH questions that proposition, no party asks us to reconsider it. We accordingly evaluate Harvard’s admissions program under the standards of the Equal Protection Clause itself.”(SFFA v. Harvard, 20-1199, decided June 29, 2023, footnote 2, Roberts opinion, emphasis.)

The opinion’s equal protection clause analysis makes more sense with respect to the University of North Carolina, which is clearly a state actor. It would seem to me that Harvard’s program was struck down more because of Title VI, not the equal protection clause, but the Robert’s footnote 2 makes it clear this is based on past precedent, which no one asked the Court to reexamine in that case. (Whether this makes any difference in future analysis of affirmative action programs at private versus state public universities, time will tell.)

The relevant facts in SFFA v. Harvard concerned the admissions processes at Harvard and University of North Carolina, which ensured that race was a major determinant in whether a significant percentage of black and hispanic students were admitted to these universities. Since there is only a certain number of students admitted every year, if black and hispanic students are being admitted because of their race, and not their qualifications, it meant there were other non-black, non-hispanic students not being admitted, who otherwise would have been admitted, based on academic qualifications alone. (In other words, this was a “zero-sum” situation. The only way for one student to “win”, and be admitted, was for another student to “loose” and not be admitted.)

In a six to three decision, the Harvard and UNC admissions programs were found to be illegal by the Supreme Court. As noted, much of Justice Robert’s majority opinion centered around an equal protection analysis under the 14th Amendment, which more clearly applied to UNC. His opinion noted that any exception to the equal protection clause must survive what is called “strict scrutiny”. Under this two-step test, the racial classification must be used to “further a compelling governmental interest”, and second, must be “narrowly tailored” to achieve that interest. In practice, almost nothing will survive strict scrutiny analysis by a court, meaning almost all governmental distinctions based on race are illegal:

“Outside the circumstances of these cases, our precedents have identified only two compelling interests that permit resort to race-based government action. One is remediating specific, identified instances of past discrimination that violated the Constitution or a statute. See, e.g., Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School Dist. No. 1, 551 U. S. 701, 720 (2007); Shaw v. Hunt, 517 U. S. 899, 909–910 (1996); post, at 19–20, 30–31 (opinion of THOMAS, J.). The second is avoiding imminent and serious risks to human safety in prisons, such as a race riot. See Johnson v. California, 543 U. S. 499, 512–513 (2005).3) (SFFA v. Harvard, 20-1199, decided June 29, 2023.)

In a 1978 case, Regents of University of California v. Bakke, the Supreme Court had said that promoting a racially diverse student body could be a “compelling governmental interest”, such that certain affirmative action programs could survive strict scrutiny. As the majority in SFFA v. Harvard noted, this was the opinion of Justice Powell, while the rest of the majority wrote their own opinions about why the program in Bakke was legal:

“In a deeply splintered decision that produced six different opinions—none of which commanded a majority of the Court—we ultimately ruled in part in favor of the school and in part in favor of Bakke. Justice Powell announced the Court’s judgment, and his opinion—though written for himself alone—would eventually come to “serv[e] as the touchstone for constitutional analysis of race-conscious admissions policies.” Grutter, 539 U. S., at 323….No other Member of the Court joined Justice Powell’s opinion. Four Justices instead would have held that the government may use race for the purpose of ‘remedying the effects of past societal discrimination.’ Id., at 362 (joint opinion of Brennan, White, Marshall, and Blackmun, JJ., concurring in judgment in part and dissenting in part). Four other Justices, meanwhile, would have struck down the Davis program as violative of Title VI.” (Id., emphasis added)

In essence, Bakke was a tie, with one judge, Powell, breaking it in favor of the affirmative action side, but for a reason other than “remedying the effects of past societal discrimination”.

The majority opinion in SFFA v. Harvard also discussed another case, Grutter v. Bollinger, from 2003, in which the affirmative action program of the University of Michigan law school was upheld. In that case, the court endorsed Justice Powell’s position from Bakke, that racial diversity was a compelling governmental interest. Interestingly, the court in Grutter, as part of Justice O’Connor’s majority decision said:

“We expect that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today.” (Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306, 343 (2003).)

So, the Grutter court punted on the issue, and said they’d uphold such programs for now, but not at some point in the future.

The majority opinion written by Justice Roberts in SFFA v. Harvard used strict scrutiny analysis to find that affirmative action programs for state universities like the one at UNC were illegal:

“For the reasons provided above, the Harvard and UNC admissions programs cannot be reconciled with the guarantees of the Equal Protection Clause. Both programs lack sufficiently focused and measurable objectives warranting the use of race, unavoidably employ race in a negative manner, involve racial stereotyping, and lack meaningful end points. We have never permitted admissions programs to work in that way, and we will not do so today.”(SFFA v. Harvard, 20-1199, decided June 29, 2023.)

The majority opinion did allow for one caveat. It said that:

“...nothing in this opinion should be construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise.” (Id.)

This is why I said that affirmative action was made illegal “de jure” if not “de facto”. Every university, including Harvard and UNC, will now increase black and hispanic enrollment through the use of essays, where the applicant makes a note of the fact that they are black or hispanic, and ties it in to some way they once were allegedly discriminated against and overcame it. (This will probably generate a whole cottage industry of essay-writers and “editors” that will assist black and hispanic students with this task, or they’ll just use Chat GPT to make something up.) The Court did note that this was not a license for backdoor race discrimination:

“…universities may not simply establish through application essays or other means the regime we hold unlawful today.”(Id.)

But, showing that universities are doing this will become very fact-specific in litigation, and will be difficult and expensive to show, unless a “smoking gun” can be found, like whistleblowers coming forward stating that they were instructed to admit black students based on their essays.

Solely based on its facts, SFFA v. Harvard has nothing to do with employment law or employers engaging in “voluntary affirmative action”. But, the Gorsuch/Thomas concurrence suggests that there might be future movement by the Supreme Court towards overruling United Steelworkers of America v. Weber, and a finding that employer “voluntary affirmative action” is illegal under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.

Unlike the Roberts majority opinion, the Gorsuch concurrence, joined by Thomas, focuses on an analysis of the legality of the UNC and Harvard affirmative action programs from the perspective of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964:

“Today, the Court holds that the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment does not tolerate this practice. I write to emphasize that Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 does not either.” (SFFA v. Harvard, 20-1199, decided June 29, 2023, Gorsuch concurrence.)

What is important about the Gorsuch concurrence from the standpoint of employment law is that Gorsuch believes that Title VII, the law on employment discrimination, should be read the same as Title VI, the law on federal funding to universities and other institutions:

“If this exposition of Title VI sounds familiar, it should. Just next door, in Title VII, Congress made it “unlawful . . . for an employer . . . to discriminate against any individual . . . because of such individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.” §2000e–2(a)(1). Appreciating the breadth of this provision, just three years ago this Court read its essentially identical terms the same way. See Bostock, 590 U. S., at ___–___ (slip op., at 4–9). This Court has long recognized, too, that when Congress uses the same terms in the same statute, we should presume they “have the same meaning.” IBP, Inc. v. Alvarez, 546 U. S. 21, 34 (2005). And that presumption surely makes sense here, for as Justice Stevens recognized years ago, “[b]oth Title VI and Title VII” codify a categorical rule of “individual equality, without regard to race.” Regents of Univ. of Cal. v. Bakke, 438 U. S. 265, 416, n. 19 (1978) (opinion concurring in judgment in part and dissenting in part) (emphasis deleted).”(SFFA v. Harvard, 20-1199, decided June 29, 2023, Gorsuch concurrence, emphasis added.)

After indicating that Title VI and Title VII have similar terms, and should be presumed to have the same meaning. Gorsuch then went on in his concurrence to find that affirmative action programs in education, where the educator receives federal funding, are illegal. In fact, he stated that they are even more illegal under Title VI than they would be under just the equal protection clause, because the strict scrutiny standard might allow for some limited exceptions, while Title VI does not:

“In other respects, however, the relative scope of the two provisions is inverted. The Equal Protection Clause addresses all manner of distinctions between persons and this Court has held that it implies different degrees of judicial scrutiny for different kinds of classifications. So, for example, courts apply strict scrutiny for classifications based on race, color, and national origin; intermediate scrutiny for classifications based on sex; and rational-basis review for classifications based on more prosaic grounds. … By contrast, Title VI targets only certain classifications—those based on race, color, or national origin. And that law does not direct courts to subject these classifications to one degree of scrutiny or another. Instead, as we have seen, its rule is as uncomplicated as it is momentous. Under Title VI, it is always unlawful to discriminate among persons even in part because of race, color, or national origin.”(SFFA v. Harvard, 20-1199, decided June 29, 2023, Gorsuch concurrence, emphasis added.)

The Gorsuch concurrence in SFFA v. Harvard invites other lawsuits under Title VII against employers that use “voluntary affirmative action” or other “Diversity Equity and Inclusion” policies to discriminate against whites or males. In fact, I think the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi, could rule, long before the US Supreme Court ever does, that Title VII should be read the same as Title VI under SFFA v. Harvard, and declare many affirmative action and DEI programs illegal.

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals is considered one of the more “conservative” in the nation, which means there is already an ideological bent in that court that would disfavor affirmative action and DEI programs. Ironically, in United Steelworkers of America v. Weber, the 5th Circuit found in favor of the white Plaintiffs. (“A divided panel of the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed, holding that all employment preferences based upon race, including those preferences incidental to bona fide affirmative action plans, violated Title VII’s prohibition against racial discrimination in employment.”, United Steelworkers of America v. Weber, 443 U.S. 193, 200 (1979).) This indicates that the 5th Circuit would probably prefer to see United Steelworkers of America overruled, and could use the Gorsuch and Thomas concurrence from SFFA v. Harvard to take up the issue. Even though the 5th Circuit cannot directly subvert the United Steelworkers decision themselves, they could use the reasoning in SFFA v. Harvard to perhaps limit United Steelworkers in some meaningful way.

The desire amongst some Circuit Judges on the 5th Circuit to use Title VII to outlaw affirmative action programs by employers is already there. For instance, in Hamilton v. Dallas County, as part of his concurrence to an en banc decision, one Judge said:

“Congress enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to protect every American against every form of prohibited discrimination—not just certain favored classes against certain disfavored forms of discrimination. For decades, however, the judiciary has distorted the Act in various ways to protect some Americans, while excluding others.” (Hamilton v. Dallas County, No. 21-10133, August 18, 2023, James C. Ho, Circuit Judge, concurring, emphasis added.)

Hamilton v. Dallas County involved an allegation of sex discrimination under Title VII. The Dallas County Sheriff’s Department had instituted a sex-based policy to determine when employees who monitor prisoners in jail would get their two days off per week. Men could select full weekends off, that is both Saturday and Sunday. Female deputies could pick either two weekdays off or one weekend day plus one weekday. (For instance, a woman could pick Friday and Saturday, or Sunday and Monday, but a woman could not pick Saturday and Sunday off.) The reason for this was it was believed that it would be unsafe for all the men to be off during the week and that it was safer for the men to be off on the weekends. (Hamilton v. Dallas County, No. 21-10133, August 18, 2023, footnote 2.) (The exact reason the County of Dallas believed this, I don’t know, and I don’t know how meritorious this argument was.)

The district court granted Dallas County’s motion to dismiss under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), meaning the case was dismissed quite early, soon after the lawsuit was filed. Based just on the pleadings of the Plaintiffs, the trial court found that there was insufficient factual basis in the Plaintiff’s pleadings to support a plausible claim for relief, and dismissed their case. (Basically, even if what the Plaintiffs said in their pleadings was completely true, they would still lose.) The Plaintiffs then appealed to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans. The reason for the early dismissal turned on a policy in the Fifth Circuit called the “ultimate employment decisions” requirement. Basically, this said that an adverse employment decision action for Title VII employment discrimination claims turned on whether the discrimination involved an “ultimate decision”, such as hiring, granting leave, discharging, promoting, and compensating an employee. An employer was not going to be found liable in the Fifth Circuit merely for taking a discriminatory action that didn’t affect one of these “ultimate decisions”. So, mere changes to employee work schedules, for instance, would not be an “ultimate decision” and therefore could not form the basis of a Title VII claim in the Fifth Circuit. In essence, it limited the scope of Title VII in employment discrimination. In an en banc decision, the Fifth Circuit overruled itself and discarded the ultimate decision rule as having no basis in the text of the Civil Rights Act:

“Nowhere does Title VII say, explicitly or implicitly, that employment discrimination is lawful if limited to non-ultimate employment decisions. To be sure, the statute prohibits discrimination in ultimate employment decisions—’hir[ing],’ ‘refus[ing] to hire,’ ‘discharg[ing],’ and ‘compensation’—but it also makes it unlawful for an employer ‘otherwise to discriminate against’ an employee ‘with respect to [her] terms, conditions, or privileges of employment….Restricting liability under the statute to ‘’ultimate employment decisions such as hiring, granting leave, discharging, promoting, or compensating’’34 renders the statute’s catchall provision all but superfluous. This we cannot do.’”(Hamilton v. Dallas County, No. 21-10133, August 18, 2023, emphasis added.)

In his concurrence Circuit Judge James C. Ho went on to say that not only was Title VII not limited to “ultimate decisions”, but the plain textual reading of the statute also meant that its protection was not limited to any particular racial group or groups. He cited, with favor, Justice Department positions that various DEI and affirmative action policies would also violate Title VII:

“As the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department noted during en banc oral argument in this case, if “a law firm is having a lunch to do CLEs and you have a policy that says we’re only going to invite women but not men to this CLE lunch, that’s of course actionable, and that’s of course a term, condition, or privilege of employment” under Title VII. Audio of Oral Arg. 23:00–23:29. The Justice Department agreed that “a lot of law firms do that.” Id. at 25:35. It also noted that “work assignments . . . happening on the basis of race” are likewise actionable under Title VII. Id. at 27:12–20.”(Hamilton v. Dallas County, No. 21-10133, August 18, 2023, James C. Ho concurrence.)

Note that Circuit Judge Ho said that a law firm continuing legal education program for only women would violate Title VII in the Fifth Circuit because it is a “..term, condition, or privilege of employment…”, and he also, implicitly, says it still violates Title VII, even though it is aimed at men. Presumably, a meeting of black associates or partners at a law firm that was limited to only black associates and partners would also violate Title VII in Judge Ho’s, and the current Justice Department’s, opinion. He also noted that work assignments are happening on the basis of race, and should be considered illegal under Title VII. For instance, I could see a company sending a black sales representative to meet with a black buyer, which would be a violation if this viewpoint prevailed. Or, in the entertainment industry, perhaps, a producer is assigned to television shows with black audiences or black record artists solely because the producer is also black. All of this would (and should) be made illegal under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.

Circuit Judge Ho invited future litigation against corporate DEI and affirmative action programs by also saying:

“The Justice Department is not alone in expressing these concerns. See, e.g., Andrea R. Lucas, With Supreme Court affirmative action ruling, it’s time for companies to take a hard look at their corporate diversity programs, Reuters, June 29, 2023 (“Title VII bars . . . a host of increasingly popular race-conscious corporate initiatives: from providing race-restricted access to mentoring, sponsorship, or training programs; to selecting interviewees partially due to diverse candidate slate policies; to tying executive or employee compensation to the company achieving certain demographic targets; to offering race-restricted diversity internship programs or accelerated interview processes, sometimes paired with euphemistic diversity ‘scholarships’ that effectively provide more compensation for ‘diverse’ summer interns.”); U.S. Senator Tom Cotton, Cotton Warns Top Law Firms About Race-Based Hiring Practices, July 17, 2023.” (Hamilton v. Dallas County, No. 21-10133, August 18, 2023, James C. Ho concurrence.)

There is a rich (dare I say, “diverse”) number of potential corporate and business targets out there for a Plaintiff’s attorney to choose from. Imagine all the DEI programs major corporations have implemented over the past fifteen to twenty years. There is also a lot of evidence out there, since many of these corporations have not even tried to hide what it was they were doing. They openly discriminated against whites and males as a badge of honor. “The Lost Generation” by Jacob Savage, published in Compact magazine on December 15, 2025, discusses blatant discrimination against white males in favor of women and minority candidates in media, journalism, TV and film, and academia. All of these companies should be sued.

The courts, and the Fifth Circuit in particular, are ready to start taking claims of employment discrimination against white males seriously. I personally believe that the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and all subsequent acts, should be repealed. This is because I believe in freedom of association and freedom of contract. I believe I have an inalienable right to associate with anyone, or to not associate with them. I believe others have the same right. I don’t believe I owe any minority, or group of minorities, anything. Certainly not my time or association. The only thing I owe to people of other races is the same thing I owe anyone: to respect their rights to life, liberty, and property. In a truly free market, with actual capitalism that respected rights to property, freedom of contract, and association, the owner of a business would be free to racially discriminate or not, as they choose. (I think that those businesses that did racially discriminate for irrational reasons would lose profits as a result, but that is their decision to make.)

The reality is that if capitalism, freedom of contract, and freedom of association were legally instituted tomorrow, there would likely be plenty of affirmative action for minorities by companies that would choose to engage in such discrimination against whites. Does anyone really doubt that these leftist businessmen with white guilt, like Mark Zuckerberg or Sergi Brin, wouldn’t? I think affirmative action is unjust and bad for everyone, including black people, but you certainly should be free to discriminate against whoever you want, if it’s your property and your business.

But, in the meantime, while these laws still exist, I fully support the extension of the principles in SFFA v. Harvard to Title VII employment discrimination matters. We should end all affirmative action and DEI programs in all companies by force of law, as long as the law exists. Until the Civil Rights Act is repealed, everyone, both black and white, should feel the pain equally.

W. Dean Cook

How To Think About The Assassination Of Public Speakers Expressing Political, Cultural, or Philosophic Viewpoints

On September 10, 2025, public speaker Charlie Kirk was murdered while speaking at a university in Utah. The best evidence available today says he was shot with an old-style bolt-action rifle from about 200 yards by a sniper on a roof. (I won’t say the probable murderer’s name, as that is giving him too much attention.) Reliable news sources like the Wall Street Journal report that the shooter said he committed this murder because he viewed Charlie Kirk’s ideas as “hate”: “’I had enough of his hatred,’ [the shooter] allegedly responded. ‘Some hate can’t be negotiated out.‘” (Wall Street Journal, September 16, 2025) The shooter thought he could murder someone for expressing what he considered to be “hate”. He shot Kirk through the neck, with Kirk’s blood spurting out like a geyser in front of thousands of people, who will now be traumatized by that event, to say nothing of Kirk’s family and friends. (I had the misfortune of seeing a close up of the video of his death, which sickened and horrified me.)

The response from the more irrational portions of the left-wing mob has been horrific, but not particularly surprising to me. The celebration videos online are awful, but I also think most people behaving this way are just random people on the Internet, not major public speakers or intellectuals. I will not waste time addressing those who are either mentally ill, or moral monsters.

What I do want to spend time addressing is a more subtle way of minimizing or dismissing this murder. How should we think about the murder of Charlie Kirk, if civilization, rationality, and moral decency is our objective? If this is one’s goal, the only thing to be said about Kirk’s murder is: “This is a vicious, unprovoked murder, that I condemn without question, reservation, or qualification, and the murderer must receive the maximum penalty allowed by law.”

If someone says anything like: “I don’t agree with Charlie Kirk’s murder, but I didn’t agree with him on some things.” They are implicitly saying he deserved to get murdered. (Whether the speaker realizes it or not.) It implies that in the speaker’s mind, they are at least entertaining the notion that someone deserves to get killed for expressing their views through speaking or writing. That’s okay if you are not sure about whether force should ever be used to stop someone from expressing their beliefs on politics, religion, morality, or philosophy. But, if you have such doubts, you have no business calling yourself an intellectual, a reporter, a teacher, a lawyer, or a politician. You should not speak on these topics, if you are that uncertain of the baseline value that force should not be used against people solely because of their spoken or written words that express political, philosophical, or religious beliefs. If you do insist on speaking, and say things like I’ve been hearing and reading, about how “…Charlie Kirk didn’t deserve to die, but I also disagree with him…” then you should be judged, and judged harshly, as either evil or an ignoramus.

Imagine if someone were sexually assaulted, and someone said: “I don’t agree with how they dressed, but no one deserves to be raped.” What they are implicitly saying is that they aren’t sure in their own head about that issue. That’s okay if they aren’t, but they have no moral business having a forum, such as a newspaper, a television station, or a YouTube channel, when saying such things. Morally, private newspapers and private TV channels should not give them a forum to express such views. (Obviously, the government has no business being involved in censoring people, even when they express bad ideas.)

We wouldn’t rightfully say of someone murdered, who said 100% truth: “He didn’t deserve to die because he spoke only truth.” That would imply his right to life is tied to the truth of the ideas he holds, when it is not. His right to life has no connection to the contents of his mind. One also wouldn’t rightfully say: “He didn’t do enough good things [however you define that] so he deserves to be murdered.”

If we are to live in a civilized society, whether someone states 100% truth or 100% lies must be irrelevant to their right to live. How they live their life, and what they believe, short of your need to act in emergency self defense against force, doesn’t justify intentionally killing them.

In the past, what I’ve heard from people on the left is: “Don’t blame the victim of a crime.” (For instance, when a woman is sexually assaulted.) First of all, I think this aphorism can be used as a verbal club to attack anyone who points out that you should take some care in how you live your life, and who you associate with. If you hang out with dangerous felons or drugs addicts, you’re more likely to end up the victim of a crime. I think what this saying means in a rational context is something like this: We don’t look for trivial rationalizations about the actions of the victim to minimize or excuse the actions of criminals. Even if the victim was imprudent , that in no way excuses the rights-violation by the criminal. The criminal must still receive full moral condemnation, and the full weight of the law. In this case, we can’t even say Charlie Kirk was imprudent. He wasn’t hanging out with dangerous felons, for instance. He was speaking at a college. No one on the left has trotted out the “Don’t blame the victim” line in the case of Charlie Kirk. I wonder why?

I think saying anything but unequivocal condemnation for the murder of Charlie Kirk is what Ayn Rand and her close associates called context dropping:

“Context-dropping is one of the chief psychological tools of evasion.” (The Virtue of Selfishness “The ‘Conflicts’ of Men’s Interests”, found in Ayn Rand Lexicon)

“Whenever you tear an idea from its context and treat it as though it were a self-sufficient, independent item, you invalidate the thought process involved. If you omit the context, or even a crucial aspect of it, then no matter what you say it will not be valid . . . .A context-dropper forgets or evades any wider context. He stares at only one element, and he thinks, “I can change just this one point, and everything else will remain the same.” In fact, everything is interconnected. That one element involves a whole context, and to assess a change in one element, you must see what it means in the whole context.” (The Philosophy of Objectivism lecture series, Leonard Peikoff, The Philosophy of Objectivism lecture series, Lecture 5, found in Ayn Rand Lexicon.)

The whole context of the murder of Charlie Kirk is this: A man was violently killed while speaking his ideas in public, where the shooter expressly said he did it because Kirk’s ideas were ‘hateful’. You would have to drop the context of: the individual right to life; the right to free speech; and the desire to live in a civilized society, if you gave anything but unqualified condemnation of this shooting as monstrous and evil.

I cannot remember the last time a person was killed solely for expressing ideas in the United States of America. (When they weren’t a politician with political power.) The only historical example I can think of is Martin Luther King. This is the historical, cultural, and moral context of the murder of Charlie Kirk. He was assassinated for expressing his ideas. This must be condemned, without any analysis of his ideas. To do otherwise is to implicitly sanction murder on the basis of belief.

El Eternaut Review

The Eternaut is a new science fiction series on Netflix. It’s in Spanish, but it has English subtitles and English-dubbed dialogue, if you prefer that. It was recommended to me by my online Spanish tutor.

There are several interrelated premises in the series, many of which hearken back to ideas from classic 50’s science fiction. Without having too many spoilers in this review, think of some of the science fiction premises you might have found in Robert Heinlein’s 1950’s novels. It wasn’t that I hadn’t seen these types of ideas before, but I didn’t know much going into the series. The concepts presented weren’t new to me, but it was like being surprised by an old friend you randomly run into somewhere you didn’t expect to see them. Like if you went to a foreign country and randomly saw your old high school pal, or, perhaps, a South American version of your old buddy.

The other interesting aspect for me was its setting in a foreign country. It’s based on an Argentine graphic novel of the same name, which was published in the late 1950’s, as a serialized comic strip. The Netflix series was produced in Argentina, with Argentine actors, director, and writers. This gave it a bit of a different flavor, and helped keep my interest up, although I had to have some of the cultural aspects, such as a card game they play, explained to me by my Spanish tutor.

Overall, there were enough twists and turns in the plot, with enough clues and surprise revelations about the nature of the dangers in the story line, to keep me wondering what would happen next.

Spanish Blackout April 28, 2025 – I Was There

I happened to be in Spain when the blackout occurred. I did a video about it: https://youtu.be/hN80pO84_Jw?si=-P2_UFE6bAr5aYpt

White Student Stabbed by Black Student In Frisco, Texas

Since I’m sure the news media won’t publish much about this incident, I thought I’d make a quick blog post about it. Yesterday, a white student in Frisco, which is the next city over from where I live, was stabbed to death by a black.

Although they are about 13% of the population, they commit about 50% of the murders.

If I had children myself, I’d look at some alternative to sending my kids to schools with a population of people who are much more likely to commit murder. At this point, your only option may be homeschooling, since I doubt even private schools would be free to choose who attends their schools.

At some point, our country needs to get back to true freedom of association, where one can choose who one’s neighbors are, who their kids play with, and where they go to school. Right now, it’s apparently a “human right” to get to have access to white people so that you can stab them to death.

If you’re black, this may be hard to hear, but I don’t owe you anything above respecting your right to life, liberty and property. I don’t owe you my association, my money, or my life. Demonstrate to me that you are not a danger, and you can overcome my presumption not to want to associate with you. But, you’ll have to provide me with evidence you’re not likely to stab or shoot me.

What If Nicole Brown Had A “No Interracial Dating” Policy?

“Interracial couples represented as many as 17.9% of substantiated events, and these couples were 1.5 times more likely to mutually assault each other than ethnic minority couples, and twice as likely as White couples to experience a mutual assault.” (Martin BA, Cui M, Ueno K, Fincham FD. Intimate Partner Violence in Interracial and Monoracial Couples. Fam Relat. 2013 Feb 1;61(1):202-211. doi: 10.1111/j.1741-3729.2012.00747.x. Epub 2013 Jan 22. PMID: 23554541; PMCID: PMC3611980., https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3611980/ )

The new Netflix documentary about the Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman murders is worth a watch. It went through the investigation and trial in a way that made sense, and even made sense of the jury verdict, even if you don’t agree with it. (Which I don’t.)

I want to look at a particularly telling scene in the video. It was an interview by someone in Nicole Brown’s family. The interviewee talked about when Nicole first started dating the person that she would eventually marry, divorce, and later be murdered by. The interviewee said that Nicole told her mother over the phone that she was dating a black man, apparently checking to see if that was going to be a problem with her family. Her mother is reported to have said something to the effect of: “That’s okay.”

Her mom would clearly get the “I’m not racist” seal of approval from the majority of people living in our society since the 1960’s. (Whatever “racist” means, which I’m not sure at this point.)

A few days later, I was driving in my car, thinking about the documentary when a thought occurred to me that was completely novel. I am a product of the mainstream public education system in the United States, and I’ve lived in “respectable” middle class culture here my whole life, so I tend to have a lot of biases and unchecked premises based in that culture, even though I am well into middle age. In other words, I’m just as capable of having “blind spots” in my thinking, thanks to left-wing and egalitarian brainwashing, mostly from the public schools. Anyway, my new thought was this:

“What if Nicole’s mother had responded differently when Nicole told her she was dating a black man? What if Nicole’s mom had responded more like someone from 1940’s Alabama than someone from 1980’s Los Angeles?”

What if Nicole’s mom had said: “If you date a black man, you’re cut off and disowned. We’ll never speak to you again.”

Her mom and dad would have been called “racist” if it got out. There’s also no guarantee Nicole would have listened to them, although it clearly mattered to her, since she “tested the waters” with her parents by letting them know in advance over the phone.

If Nicole had listened to them in this hypothetical case, she probably wouldn’t have died. (Most likely some other white woman would have died, since there are plenty today that would marry a rich, famous football player. I’ll never understand the stupid obsession with football and sports.)

I can hear it now: “There are plenty of white women that get murdered by their white husbands. You’re being ‘racist’. Blah, blah, blah.”

Those people might have a point, except there are studies showing that intimate partner violence is higher amongst interracial couples. We can opine about the causes of this. I’m sure a leftist will say it’s all a legacy of slavery, and really white people’s fault that Nicole’s ex-husband nearly cut her head off. From a personal standpoint, of who you should date, it doesn’t really matter what the reason is or whose “fault” it is that the statistics show what they show. What matters in the dating world today is that one should at least be cognizant of the statistics when thinking about dating interracially. One should at least consider the dangers.

I’m sure someone will also say: “Logical fallacy! Fallacy of division! I’m going to date them, and get to know them, and then, if it turns out that they are dangerous, I’ll just stop dating them, you racist.”

Except, at that point you’re in a relationship with that person, and when you go to break it off with them, they might view you as “theirs”, just like Nicole’s ex-husband viewed her as “his”, and he then killed her in an obsessive rage of jealousy. (Such was the motive theorized by the Netflix documentary.)

Also, keep in mind, it doesn’t matter to me what you do in the end. Virtue-signaling people who do things on the basis of being “progressive” and “open minded” deserve their leftist ideology, I think.