Somebody pinch me. A person has just been called a racist, and the tag actually fits.
Meet John Derbyshire. Until very recently, Derbyshire was a columnist for National Review, the conservative magazine whose editors and writers have skewered liberal thought — and liberals themselves — for well over 50 years.
Rich Lowry is editor of the National Review. In a recent statement published in the magazine, Lowry called Derbyshire “a deeply literate, funny and incisive writer.”
Derbyshire, according to Lowry, “is also maddening, cranky, outrageous and provocative.” So why would Lowry fire a writer with all those qualities? It was for a piece Derbyshire wrote for another publication — the webzine Taki’s Magazine — which, Lowry said, “lurch[ed] from the politically incorrect to the nasty and indefensible.”
Since the death of Trayvon Martin, several black columnists have been inspired to write pieces about having what they call “The Talk” with their teen sons. “The Talk” is supposed to be about how those teen sons are to handle themselves in encounters with either the police or, heaven forbid, vigilante neighborhood watch captains like cowboy George “Yippie-ki-yea” Zimmerman.
Derbyshire has children of his own. And so not to be outdone, he decided to write a piece about what he’s telling his offspring. He called it “The Talk: Nonblack Version.”
And here’s some of the advice that Derbyshire gave his kids during the nonblack version of “The Talk,” taken from Derbyshire’s piece in Taki’s Magazine:
1. “Avoid concentrations of blacks not all known to you personally.”
2. “Stay out of heavily black neighborhoods.”
3. “If planning a trip to a beach or an amusement park at some date, find out whether it is likely to be swamped with blacks on that date (neglect of that one got me the closest I’ve ever gotten to death by gunshot.)”
4. “Do not attend events likely to draw a lot of blacks.”
5. “If you are at some public event at which the number of blacks suddenly swells, leave as quickly as possible.”
6. “Do not settle in a district or municipality run by black politicians.”
7. “Before voting for a black politician, scrutinize his/her character much more carefully than you would a white.”
8. “Do not act the Good Samaritan to blacks in apparent distress, e.g., on the highway.”
9. “If accosted by a strange black in the street, smile and say something polite but KEEP MOVING.”
Were Derbyshire being completely honest with his children, he’d have added that it was thinking like his that led to years of racist Jim Crow practices that resulted in black Americans being segregated and marginalized.
But I kind of doubt he did that.
Reaction to Derbyshire’s Taki’s Magazine piece was swift. The “racist” charge was leveled, and rightly so. One observer noted that Derbyshire had done more damage to the conservative cause than any liberal ever could.
Lowry was worried about the damage to the National Review. In his statement, he gave his reasons for firing Derbyshire.
“We never would have published it,” Lowry said of the Taki’s Magazine piece, “but the main reason that people noticed it is that it is by a National Review writer.
“Derb is effectively using our name to get more oxygen for views with which we’d never associate ourselves otherwise. So there has to be a parting of the ways. Derb has long danced around the line on these issues, but this column is so outlandish it constitutes a kind of letter of resignation.
“It’s a free country, and Derb can write whatever he wants, wherever he wants. Just not in the pages of NR or NRO, or as someone associated with NR any longer.”
Racism has no place on the pages of the National Review. Apparently it does on the pages of Taki’s Magazine.
Examiner Columnist Gregory Kane is a Pulitzer-nominated news and opinion journalist who has covered people and politics from Baltimore to the Sudan.
