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The New York Times has published an important article that measures the economic gains that could be achieved if anti-black discrimination were ended. In “Racism Impoverishes the Whole Economy,” Professor Lisa D. Cook of Michigan State University writes that “new research” finds that “discrimination inflicts a staggering cost on the entire economy, reducing the wealth and income of millions of people.”
Prof. Cook says that if American blacks were not held back by personal and institutional racism, their contributions would match those of whites. They would take out countless patents, start high-tech companies, invent new medical procedures, and rejuvenate every field. Prof. Cook calculates that this would have added an additional $16 trillion worth of GDP since 2000. Americans of all races would benefit if the tremendous talents of 40 million black people — now repressed — were allowed to flower.
Prof. Cook’s analysis is an encouraging beginning, but it is too narrow. Racism hurts us, not only because it prevents African-Americans from fulfilling their potential but because it channels them in tragic directions. Driven by the forces of racism, black Americans commit more than half of all murders and robberies, for a rate 7.5 times that of whites.
In New York City, blacks are 30 times more likely than whites to be arrested for murder and nearly 100 times more likely to be arrested for “shootings,” in which a victim is hit but not killed by gunfire. In an equitable society, these crimes would virtually disappear, and thousands of families would be spared the deaths and devastation that are the legacy of racism. Across the country, prisons would empty, and reductions in crime would persuade even conservatives to support defunding the police.
Prof. Cook also failed to note that racism has terrible health consequences, especially for black women, our most vulnerable and marginalized population. They are 60 percent more likely than white women to be obese, twice as likely to be diabetic, 56 percent more likely to have high blood pressure, 6.9 times more likely to have gonorrhea, and 4.7 times more likely to have syphilis. They are twice as likely as white women to become single mothers, and single mothers are twice as likely as married women to die from childbirth-related complications. Freed from the daily struggle against bigotry, black women would make healthful life choices that would benefit themselves and their families, and would slash medical costs.
Prof. Cook should also expand her vision of an equitable future to include our neighbors. Haiti, practically on our doorstep, suffers from the global equivalent of the institutional racism that oppresses African-Americans. As we assume leadership in the campaign for equity, we must broaden the scope of disciplines such as critical race theory so as better to understand the malign forces that prevent the people of Haiti from fulfilling their historic potential as the second Western-Hemisphere nation — after the United States — to free itself from colonial rule.
Research in this area must be conducted by institutions such as the newly founded Boston University Center for Antiracism Research. Under the pioneering leadership of Ibram X. Kendi, it is already discovering how color-blind policies and even the best-intentioned whites nevertheless crush the potential of African-Americans. Unfortunately, the center’s mission statement is too narrowly American: “We are working toward building an antiracist society that ensures equity and justice for all.”
The same insights that will free African-Americans from the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow must be adapted to the world, with the liberation of Africa as our primary goal. Once we have defeated the malevolent systems that hold back both Africa and African-Americans, what racists once called “the dark continent” will lead the world. This graph from the Hoover Institution, is a projection of the sizes of national and regional workforces.
Beginning in 2040, sub-Saharan Africa (the blue line) will be the world’s largest pool of human talent. By the end of the century, it will be greater than all the rest combined. Dismantling systemic obstacles to the full flowering of African genius is therefore one of the crucial tasks of the decades ahead.
Joe Biden has said that “rooting out systemic racism” is “the moral obligation of our time.” Of course, he is right, and now that we can put the nightmare of “American First” behind us, he should understand the incalculable potential of putting Africa first. The future of our species could depend on it.
Professor Lisa Cook, who wrote the Times article, is a member of Joe Biden’s transition team. It is heartening to know that the new administration will be guided by such people, but I urge her and her colleagues to lift their eyes above economics and beyond our borders to unleash global forces for good that have been held in check for centuries. Progressives must never be guilty of the soft bigotry of low expectations.
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Precisely. And we must not forget that arch-racist Albert Schweitzer. He might very well have devoted his life to improving the condition of the negro in Africa, but let us recall that he observed that prior to the white man’s arrival there, the negro had watched duck feathers gently borne across lake and river by the breeze for more than a thousand years, yet it had never occurred to him to devise a sailing craft. Further, he remarked that the negro must at all times be made to understand who was master, otherwise he was likely to turn on his benefactor with sudden and seemingly inexplicable violence.
Clearly, this white racism had even gone before the white devils, working its mischief by a mysterious, vicarious and remote penetration. The world shall never be at peace until all traces of the evil whites are at last removed, and we must thank the (((Chosen Race))) for their sterling and selfless efforts in achieving this noble end.
Maybe sociologists should give some thought as to why the most successful cultures of the world are those who, at least per theory, are ostensibly “Out of Africa.”
They talk about how ‘racism’ in some hidden manner ‘impoverishes’ the economy, when in fact…
Having lower-than-average IQ, fast Life-History strategists in one’s midst is what really impoverishes!
NOT in just the obvious ways: welfare usage, Gov’t handouts, police/prisons maintenances etc., etc., etc.
But also in actual HIDDEN ways, i.e., similar to the ‘Parable of the Broken Window’: normal people having to spend in security, having to spend in private schools for their children etc., etc., etc.
This is what happens when people start off with an assumption based entirely on an unsupported ideological stance. The aforementioned assumption is that all populations of humans everywhere must have identical potential aptitudes in all things. If one accepts that assumption then logically all differences in performance must be environmentally based. Obviously there is no basis whatsoever for that assumption, if it was true it would be a truly remarkable phenomenon. Imagine for example that a zoologist hypothesised that all populations of horses everywhere in the world had an identical average running speed, across all distances and in all terrain. Other zoologists would scratch their heads and wonder how their colleague had come up with such a crazy theory.
If the assumption that all human populations have identical potential in all things is taken as axiomatic, then the problems begin. There must be some reason for differences in performance and since those differences still exist when people live in the same country, in the same cities and even go to the same schools….. When those differences still exist even when you deliberately rig the game in favour of the under-performing population group (affirmative action) an explanation is still required.
Rather than abandon the evidently problematic initial assumption, an explanation has been invented, a gratuitously contrived phenomenon called ‘systemic racism’. It must be in the language, in our laws, in mathematics or anything else where the population group is under-performing. It is worth noting that it is NEVER present in any area where the same group(s) are over-represented or over-performing.
Obviously any projections made using faulty assumptions as axioms are going to be wrong but most of us know that already don’t we.
Africa first.
For the eternal – eh – greeting, greening, growing and – greatening! – of uncomparable Africa. It shall rise up to the heavens above!
Amen.
but let us recall that he observed that prior to the white man’s arrival there, the negro had watched duck feathers gently borne across lake and river by the breeze for more than a thousand years, yet it had never occurred to him to devise a sailing craft.
They weren’t even fishing from the shore.
I remember reading about how the Kalahari bushmen don’t have a concept of the word middle.
A White man asked them how they would describe a bird that is between the top of the tree and the ground.
One of them replied “it’s in the tree”.
Maybe sociologists should give some thought as to why the most successful cultures of the world are those who, at least per theory, are ostensibly “Out of Africa.”
Not really their thing.
The ancestors of humans inventing White flight 70,000 years ago is a matter of paleoanthropology 😀
“Systemic racism” is the conspiracy theory most beloved and most zealously propounded by people who claim to have nothing but disdain for “conspiracy theorists.”
Prof. Cook says that if American blacks were not held back by personal and institutional racism, their contributions would match those of whites. They would take out countless patents, start high-tech companies, invent new medical procedures, and rejuvenate every field.
Someone needs to ask Cook how exactly Blacks are held back from filing patents.
It’s a race blind system.
Professor Cook’s logic is based on what economists call opportunity cost.
Her reasoning also applies money wasted on black people. This includes part of the more than $19 trillion which in 2014 the Cato Institute claims had been spent on the War on Poverty, the cost of affirmative action which years back Peter Brimelow estimated at 4% of the gross domestic product, and measures against black crime (federal, state, municipal, corporate and residential expenses).
You also have to factor billions to Africa through the Millennium Challenge Corporation, Peace Corps, USAID as well as American-funded outfits like the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, Food and Agriculture Organization, World Food Programme, and World Health Organization.
Gates and peers have also spent huge sums on Africa under the guise of charity to avoid taxes.
All this money would have yielded better returns for society had it been invested elsewhere e.g., cancer research, nuclear fusion, and practical high temperature superconductors.
Strictly speaking you should be saying flight that became white.
Taylor has evidently recognized the futility of arguing facts with equalitarian fanatics. Sarcasm and mockery, even if insufficient by themselves, are far superior weapons for fighting the reigning lunacy.
Taylor has evidently recognized the futility of arguing facts with equalitarian fanatics.
Arguing with an equalitarian is in fact futile as the typical activist knows full well that they are lying.
However arguing in front of an audience is not.
The committed egalitarian is terrified of open debate for this reason.
If the audience considers that there may be two valid sides then the egalitarian has lost.
Gates and peers have also spent huge sums on Africa under the guise of charity to avoid taxes.
Gates also spent around 200 million education theories that assume the teachers are the problem.
Betsy Devos has spent at least 200 million.
A few other wealthy families have added about 500 million.
Then there are small donors that total over 100 million.
These were made under the conservative assumption that bad teachers or bad unions are the problem. Over 1 billion spent on conservative theories and Con Inc still pitches charter schools as if it is some new fangled idea that has never been tried because of unions.
All this money would have yielded better returns for society had it been invested elsewhere e.g., cancer research, nuclear fusion, and practical high temperature superconductors.
Which would have helped more Black people than egalitarian delusional spending. This is what liberals can’t wrap their brains around.
You also have to factor billions to Africa through the Millennium Challenge Corporation, Peace Corps, USAID as well as American-funded outfits like the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, Food and Agriculture Organization, World Food Programme, and World Health Organization.
Also add 20 billion a year from European governments.
Why bother, when some fool will take you across the ocean at his own expense? Not that you belong there.
This is the typical entrepreneurial activities that black Democrats engage in. Under Biden, we’re going to be looted more quickly and more thoroughly.
https://nypost.com/2020/12/03/street-gang-founded-fraudulent-nonprofit-to-solicit-grants/
If you believe in the blank slate theory in which every race is equal in their characteristics, then her conclusions are flawless…the problem is the blank slate theory is absurd in the face of massive evidence against it
And does your intelligence and culture tell you that, of the bird was three quarters or one quarter of the way up the tree it would be better described as “in the middle of the tree”?
“If you believe in the blank slate theory in which every race is equal in their characteristics, then her conclusions are flawless…”
No, they’re not. Even if you assume fundamental racial equality, and thus assume environmental causes for disparities, it should be clear to anyone not deluded that US black ghetto culture is a noxious environment and a far more likely proximate cause for the disparities between US blacks and the rest of the population than “institutional and personal racism”.
Know orcs, no peace.
No orcs, know peace.
Systemic racism makes black sprinters run faster!