Taboo

Please give my Amazon review a helpful vote - https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R2W3OQ9R1MW8V?ref=pf_ov_at_pdctrvw_srp

I am a factual-details, empirical-data person. When someone makes a claim, I typically ask “Evidence?” Opinions are fine, but I want to know what the facts behind the opinions are. I don't just read the headlines, I read the article and then I ask questions and fact check the questions. So much of what passes for knowledge is wrong. The gaslighting that exists is designed to prevent us from even thinking of questioning the buried assumptions in our thinking.

This applies to virtually everything, from history to economics to entertainment, etc. It's what you don't know you don't know that will get your every time.

So, I loved this book. Professor Reilly takes on ten of the planted assumptions surrounding race. These planted assumption are not simply maintained by gaslighting and misdirection - although there is a lot of that going on - but by outright hostility.

Professor Reilly's taboo facts and data are:

#1 The Police Aren't Murdering Black People

‘The basic claims of BLM are simply not true. Fewer than 1,200 people were killed by police in the year the movement began; only 258 of them were Black, and exactly 17 were unarmed Black men shot by white officers. Because they were directed at a nonexistent problem, the sweeping solutions of these proud young activists did far more harm than good. In a typical Midwestern city, shootings increased by half while police stops dropped 80 percent. Whatever the movement's intentions, it is hard not to come to an unpleasant and unavoidable conclusion: Black Lives Matter got a ton of Black people killed.”

17????

Reilly also points out that while cases involving POC get the lion's share of attention, those involving whites get none. I'm from Fresno and I had forgotten the example of Dylan Noble, killed in Fresno, while absolutely unarmed and no threat to anyone.

#2 There Is No “War on POC”... and BBQ Becky Did Nothing Wrong

“There is no race war going on in the U.S.A., and there certainly is no epidemic of white-on-Black crime. In fact, interracial crimes on an annual basis have been consistently 75–85 percent Black-on-white for the past thirty years. More importantly, there is no horrifying epidemic of interracial crimes of any variety because 84 percent of white murder victims and 93 percent of Black murder victims are killed by a mundane member of their own race. We see constant media coverage of BBQ Becky, Permit Patty, Coupon Carl, and George Zimmerman not because these people are everywhere, but because the corporate media have an agenda to push. We should stop taking this agenda seriously—today.”

#3: Different Groups Perform Differently

Professor Reilly's position - backed by data - is that different population groups perform differently in different areas but not for genetic reasons since performance can change over time and be higher for subpopulations within the same race. This example has been around for a while:

“Black West Africans and Caribbean people are essentially genetically identical to Black Americans, almost all of whom descend from West African captives sold overseas as slaves. Thus, again, an eight-to-ten-point tested IQ gap between Black West Africans and Black Americans logically cannot be genetic. After suppressing a bit of a giggle here, let me note that high Black immigrant IQ is also not a result of uniquely rigorous immigration processes employed by the U.S.A. and modern Europe.”

Asians do better than whites on entrance examinations. These are facts and ignoring the facts can make for failed social policy as the “mismatch effect” where affirmative action pushes less well prepared “POC” into colleges where they have lower graduation rates.

#4: Performance—Not “Prejudice”—Mostly Predicts Success.

Race is a far too easy single-cause explanation for success. There are numerous - several dozen factors - that affect success, the largest of which may simply be having a two-parent family.

This is a small point, but I found this interesting:

“While it is shameful that 7 percent of Americans would not vote for a qualified Black member of their political party for president, my immediate reaction to that statistic was that at least the same level of prejudice must exist against many white groups. Fifteen minutes of research verified that this is in fact the case. According to 2015 data, 6 percent of Americans would not vote for a (presumably white) Catholic President, 8 percent would not vote for a woman of any race, 7 percent would not vote for a Jew, 8 percent would not vote for a Mormon, and 24 percent would not vote for a gay person. It is almost offensive to argue that this level of discrimination, which we literally all face, could stop a driven Black or Hispanic American—or an Irish Mormon, for that matter—from succeeding. For minorities and others, culture predicts success far more than outside prejudice of this kind; it “matters.”

#5: Racism Didn't Cause the New Problems of Today

Prior to the great society, the African-American community had largely intact families. The change occurred after the civil rights era. The destruction of the two-parent family has had a pernicious effect on the African-American community as a whole.

“The problem with the idea that racism has declined (“gone underground”) little, if at all, and that the minority problems of today are caused by racism—just as those of the past may have been—is threefold. First, most contemporary Black problems were less serious when racism was much worse. Few Black teenagers had babies out of wedlock in 1960, and almost no middle-class Black men went to jail, although the Black crime rate was still frankly a bit higher than the white crime rate. Second, most of these contemporary problems do not exist today for visibly non-white immigrants from Africa, South Asia, and the West Indies, who often outperform both American whites and Blacks. Finally, most of these issues, along with other terrible problems like opiate addiction, do exist for the working-class whites who live alongside poor Blacks. All of this indicates that internal American cultural collapse is the root cause of the problems we as a society face”

#6: Anyone Can Be Racist (and “Racist” Has a Real Meaning)

There is an odd sense among a large part of the left that it is impossible for minorities to be “racist.”

“Everett went on to reject that idea and instead argued, “To carry out acts of racism, a race must have power and privilege.” She concluded that there has never been a time in American history when a substantial number of non-whites have been in positions of power or privilege over whites. Barack Obama, president of the United States when Everett wrote, could not be reached for comment. Nor could Eric Holder, his attorney general, or General Colin Powell, who was secretary of state during the previous Bush administration. Jokes aside, the claim that racism is “prejudice plus power,” and thus is possible only for members of dominant groups, is not confined to campus radicals and other fringe-dwellers.”

Reilly points out that if racism can't be racist without power, that leaves the obviously racist South African White Nationalist movement in a position where it can't be described as racist.

#7 and #8: Whiteness Isn't the Only “Privilege”—and “Cultural Appropriation” Is Not Real

Reilly nicely punctures these windbags, usually with deft humor, but the subject is very serious:

“The example of the literal return of actual segregation shows the real danger of such concepts as cultural appropriation and universal white privilege, which might initially seem lightweight and silly. These are not mere fancies, but rather tentative first steps down a very dangerous road. If we decide to again judge people not primarily as individuals, but rather as members of intractable and often squabbling tribes, it will become increasingly difficult to ever find common ground between them. Down that path lies balkanization and the clashes and even genocides that resulted from that in the Balkans themselves. Let us take a different road.”

#9: A Sane Immigration Policy Isn't Racist (And We Need One!)

This is a well-argued section. I am going to highlight this factoid because it is stunning:

“This policy might, again, be dismissed by some as harsh. However, it seems to me to be no great favor to bring people who might well have benefited their home societies into a potentially hostile foreign country where they will almost certainly be unable to earn a good living. The empirical evidence in favor of this argument is staggering. A recent article in Stockholm's The Local reported that by May 2016, fewer than 500 (494) of more than 163,000 Africans and Middle Easterners to migrate to Sweden during the past decade or so had managed to find jobs in that nation's first-world economy. Many of those who had not, often ambitious working-age men, were miserable.”

#10: The “Alt-Right” Has Nothing to Offer

I really did not know what the Alt-Right was. Long story short, they are as crazily racist as the left. They argue for inherent differences between the races, eternal enmity between the races, and the retreat of whites to Idaho.

This simply isn't the America that I was raised to believe in, any more than I was raised to believe that whites bear the mark of Cain and should constantly apologize for their alleged sins against humanity.

Professor Reilly is right; we're better than this nonsense. We're Americans. We're in this together. Let's act like it.

This books was information and filled with common sense insights and a good sense of humor.

I recommend it.