Le racisme americain

Hier, Dimanche le 5 Fevrier, on a assiste a une manifestation typique de racisme americain. A l’occasion du plus grand evenement sportif de l’annee (le “Superbowl”), plusieurs dizaines de gladiateurs millionaires se sont heurtes violemment devant un public assoife de sang. 75% de ces gladiateurs etaient  des Noirs, bien sur. Auparavant, deux femmes noires se sont vues forcees de chanter l’hymne national et un autre chant patriotique devant un public survolte. A la mi-temps, une autre femme noire, accompagnee sur scene de dizaines d’autres Afro-Americaines   agissant sous la contrainte d’au moins un million de dollars de cachet a du se donner en spectable a demi nue sous un jeu violent de lumieres accentuant encore sa nudite et celle de ses co-victimes. Le jeu de lumieres utilise pour mieux exploiter ces pauvres femmes noire s’est revele tellement violent qu’il a fini par couper le courant electrique pour le match proprement dit. Encore une fois, les Noirs sont au premier rang de ceux qui souffrent!

PS desole pour les accents. Cela prend trop de temps.

Ron Paul Won’t Get My Vote

My low-level research on Ron Paul has paralleled his rise in the polls. What I have done is to give a number of opportunities to people who I know favor his candidacy and to people and organizations who I think support him to react to the latest accusations against him. This is low-level research as I said. (I am a respected conventional social scientist; no need to bore me with injunctions about scientific rigor.) This low-level research is more than most people try to do in pursuit of a rational vote, I think.

The latest accusations are also old. I am referring to the report that newsletters entitled: “The Ron Paul Letter” and such, published in the 1990s, contained both clearly racist and clearly anti-Semitic statements. (I mean anti-Semitic, not anti-Israel. He had some of those too but that’s another story altogether.) I have asked Libertarians, and what I call “orthodox libertarians”,( non-party members who are doctrinally aligned with the Libertarian Party) what they thought of the charges. This is a deliberately open-ended question. It gives the respondent a wide latitude to answer even if by changing the subject.

I received no answer or no clear answer from anyone, on my blog or through Facebook. One orthodox libertarian with whom I argue often on this blog gave me, gave us, a reading list. Of course, I don’t need, don’t want a reading list. My reading schedule is full until June 2012. Besides, there is something presumptuous about giving others reading lists. One should do it with much restraint, if at all. I imagine that my correspondents, my reader, who favor Ron Paul could have given me instead any number of easy-to-grasp, reasonable answers. After all, as thinking people, they have, or they had, to make up their minds, to decide for themselves unless they are eager to avoid the topic of those accusations altogether.

Here are some possible answers:

I don’t believe it.

It does not matter because it was a long time ago.

The statements attributed to him (that Paul himself does not deny) are not enough to prove either racism or anti-Semitism.

I don’t care if he is a racist.

I don’t care if he is anti-Semitic.

He, Paul, was not paying attention to his newsletters, as he said himself. So, the statements show nothing about him. Therefore, I don’t care.

Here is what this attentive libertarian-leaning conservative thinks about this issue. I have two explanations that are not mutually exclusive and that tell us much about him as a potential president

I think Ron Paul is both a racist and an anti-Semite but in a mild, passive way, if there is such a thing. Racism first. It has several possible sources. We are used in America to the poisonous, virulent kind of racism, to the brand that is associated with lynching. I doubt Paul has this in his heart. I think his passive racism is rooted in indifference, in callousness only. When an ardent follower of his, an orthodox libertarian insists (on this blog) that one kind of Africans massacring hundreds of thousands of another kind  of Africans with machetes and bricks is none of our business, he demonstrates precisely this kind of callousness.But he certainly does nothing to encourage one kind of black people to murder another kind of black people. He just thinks that both killers and victims are too unlike us for us to be concerned. (There is a huge paradox there in that libertarians tend to define as “us” those who share citizenship in our state, the same state they say they want to eviscerate.) Besides, we don’t know enough to hold off the machete or the brick. Besides we don’t even know who started it. . . .

Similarly, I suspect (“suspect,” I don’t know) that Ron Paul shares in the casual anti-Semitism of his Southern social class. He is an MD. It’s common (not universal by all means) for medical doctors to have received a poor undergraduate education in the liberal arts because of the focus on “pre-med” competitiveness. His anti-Semitism, if any, is of the passive kind. It will never lead him to favor the slaughter of Jews but it allows him to live comfortably with a hazy knowledge of the harder European brand of anti-Semitism and of its historical consequences. Plus, medicine is a field of endeavor where one might bump hard against common Jewish unscrupulous industriousness. (Not my formula; I cribbed it; how sad I am it’s not mine!) Dr Ron Paul would not discriminate ever against Jews but he would not be exceedingly alert to the occurrence of such discrimination in his environment. That’s not because he is evil but because he is extremely dogmatic. Ideological dogma helps you stay consistent by telling you what to ignore.

I am adding something separately so no one will accuse me of sneakiness. It’s not difficult to find, on talk-radio and even around my coffee-shop, individuals who spout the perfect libertarian anti-interventionist line and whose discourse against Israeli “aggression” quickly drifts into the expression of characteristically anti-Semitic sentiment. I agree that politicians in general and Ron Paul in particular cannot generally be held responsible for the words of all their followers. Yet, when an occasion arises spontaneously to condemn what’s disgusting among one’s disciples, one should seize this opportunity vigorously and loudly. Mr Paul has not done this.

In addition to moderate, passive racism and anti-Semitism, Mr Paul displays a sovereign disdain for factualness. As I have pointed out several times in this blog, Mr Paul does not only make light with facts when he deals with an unexpected question, or a “gotcha” question from a reporter, or from a rival, a question for which he is not prepared. He will sometimes volunteer false information the better to make a point:

The Iraq war and the Afghanistan war are not only very wasteful, they are

stupidly wasteful. So, for example, the US armed forces spend 20 billion

dollars each year in those war theaters on air-conditioning alone.

 

There is a chance that 2 billion dollars would not be impressive enough so, why not add a zero, two zeros? What the hell?

I have met this kind of shameless mendacity before. It’s common among leaders of virtuous small sects who have spent many years in the wilderness, addressing only small groups of the already converted, the elect, those who will never contradict. In the seventies, I knew members of tiny Trotskyst groups, splinters of splinter of splinters, the shavings of multiple ideological schisms. They would speak well, with winning logic, and demonstrate a thorough knowledge of history. And then, they would come up with a howler that reminded you instantly that schizophrenics too can sound intelligent. Not that I claim Ron Paul is insane. His mind is just way out on a limb and he does not care that it is, and he probably even enjoys it.

Underlying the passive racism, the matter-of-fact anti-Semitism, and the indifference to fact lies a tremendous intellectual elitism that is fundamentally undemocratic. Ron Paul, like his fellow isolationists from the Left, does not really care what the great unwashed masses of voters know, understand or believe. He thinks they should vote for him because he is right on everything, or on everything that matters. If they don’t, too bad for them.

As I have said repeatedly, on domestic issues, I am closer to Ron Paul than to any other candidate. And I don’t treat lightly the other big difference I have with him, and with Libertarians, on foreign policy and on defense. Yet, interestingly, if this last difference did not exist, I still would not vote for Paul for president. I would not vote for him for some of the same reasons that would have turned me off Barack Obama if he had been a libertarian-leaning conservative, one favoring radical shrinkage of the federal government. There are personality issues that disqualify.

And, naturally, I have not dealt here again and explicitly with the fact that Ron Paul’s foreign policies views make him as dangerous as President Obama to the survival of this constitutional republic. Or, possibly, he is even more dangerous since Mr Obama l finally revealed himself a secret admirer of covert military action against those who would destroy us. The 01/2/12 issued of the Weekly Standard has several nice pieces about the moral giant Vaclal Havel who died last week. One article reminded me that Havel was firmly in favor of the expansion of NATO.

In the Wall Street Journal of Thursday December 29^th 2011, the political columnist Daniel Henninger gives his own take on Mr Paul’s recent surge, pre-Iowa surge, in the polls. Henninger argues that though Paul has his own strong, small but consistent following, the upsurge is simply the latest expression of the mass of “not Romney” voters seeking a good horse to ride. In this perspective, the Paul upsurge is of the same ilk as the earliest vogue for Perry, then for Cain, then for Gingrich.

Meanwhile, every day, brave young Syrians die for wanting the liberties we take for granted. None of our business, of course.

PS My constant concern about anti-Semitism does not mean that I am Jewish. I am not, never have been, never will be.

AND I AM PRETTY SURE THE MAYAS’ MATH SKILLS WERE GREATLY OVERRATED. THE FATAL DATE WAS ACTUALLY 1212. I DOUBT THE WORLD WILL REALLY END THIS YEAR, 2012, BUT IF IT DOES, I HOPE WE WILL HAVE TIME FOR ANOTHER END -OF-THE-WORLD PARTY.

Immigration: More on Conservative, Liberal Ignorance

I have heard conservative radio talk-show callers express indignation at immigrants who don’t “become American citizens,” as if it showed ill-will on the part of the immigrants, or lack of love for America.

These calls demonstrate a basic lack of understanding of our immigration laws. First, you have to become a legal immigrant (get the famous “green card”). Most foreigners cannot qualify for this in any way. The doors to this country are not wide open. (See below.) For those who are allowed to apply, it takes time and patience, unusually so, because the Immigration and Naturalization Service is one of the worst, least responsive of Federal bureaucracies. Then, once you are legal, you have to wait four to seven years to apply for citizenship. This arduous process leaves little room for ill-will. It’s exhausting and discouraging.

I have also heard many indignant liberals (liberals are almost constantly indignant or “appalled”) make statements implying that American immigration laws discriminate on the basis of race. They do, but not the way liberals think. In fact, it’s extraordinarily difficult for a European (most European are “white” in American classification) to emigrate to this country. There are reasons I don’t want to go into here though I will on demand. The numbers show unambiguously that people from Latin America or Asia are admitted legally in several times the numbers of Europeans. Of course, federal legislation considers almost all Latin Americans and all Asians in this country as “protected minorities.” This means that they deserve special treatment because they were historically oppressed by reason of their race.

Don’t blame me or conservatives in general for the stupidity of the relevant federal laws. They are entirely the handiwork of liberal opinion. Be it as it may, here is the summary: If you are “brown” or “yellow” your chances of coming here legally are slim. If you are “white,” your chances are practically nil.

If you find all this had to believe, please take a little trip to the Statistical Abstract of the United States. It’s readily available on-line and easy to read.

Much of our political debate in this country is wasted because people are ill-informed of the issues about which they feel strongly. There is no excuse for this situation. Obtaining info used to be arduous; it used to require specialized skills. Not anymore.

Pure Racism and Chinese Dining

There are several kinds of racism. The roots and the dynamics of racism are among the most interesting sociological issues. Here is a small but important fragment of the whole matter. The most common kind of racism involves three separate mental operations: 1 Assign an individual to a group; 2 Assign certain undesirable features of character or culture to the same group; 3 Assign these same undesirable characteristics to the individual because he belongs to the group.

The most pure from of common racism I know used to make me laugh. Of late, it has begun to annoy me. Here is a relevant story.

I pick up my wife at the airport after a short trip. We go out to celebrate our reunion. My wife wants to eat Chinese food. There is a Chinese restaurant near the airport where I have had excellent dinners in the past. It’s a large and old establishment with many Chinese customers. In fact, every time I have been there, I was with Chinese friends.

We sit down a little early. I don’t like the early bird menu, of course; I don’t like the regular menu either; the “specials” menu is not much more attractive. None of these menus corresponds well with my golden memory of the several original meals I have had there. I ask the waitress if there is a Chinese menu with different dishes than are on the English-language menu. “No,” she says. My wife and I order the less boring dishes from the main menu.

Within minutes a dish of crab with snow-peas appears on a nearby table. There are four Chines-looking people sitting around the table. I check; crab and snow-peas is not on any of my menus. I call the waitress. She acts as if she did not know what I am talking about. In truth, I don’t know if she does understand me. I have been there before. I come prepared. I pull out of my wallet a little note in Chinese characters a Chinese friend has prepared for me. The friend is a well educated man who bears me no ill-will. The note reads:

“ This foreign (barbarian or ghost) actually likes our traditional Chinese dishes, including organ meat. Please, serve him anything he asks for. He will pay without discussion for everything he orders.”

The waitress reads the note distractingly, smiles brightly and moves on. She is busy; waitresses are always busy. Besides, I have no way to know how well she reads Chinese characters. She does not come from the Shanghai urban upper-class elite schools, in all likelihood. However, one of the two advantages of age is that your intuition improves with experience. (I don’t quite remember what the other advantage is.) I know I am being ignored and taken for a ride but there is not much I can do. I eat my mediocre westernized dish because I am hungry but it’s not as a good as what either my wife or I could cook at home. Meantime, the Chinese table nearby is having a good time.

I have lived forty years in California, where there are Chinese restaurants at every street corner. Early on, a long time ago, when I was a in community college, a San Francisco Chinese waiter staved off malnutrition by slipping me double helpings of fried rice (also known as “rice fried with whatever leftovers”). Four of those forty years I spent in San Francisco, with its large Chinese-originated population. Yet, I can count on the fingers of two hands the number of times I have enjoyed really good Chinese food in America. That was enough however to convince me that there is such a thing outside the private Chinese homes where I have also enjoyed myself. Every single time I ate good Chines food in an American restaurant but one, I was accompanied by a Chines or by a Chinese-American person. Neatly every other time I had a mediocre to a horrible experience. The last time my wife and I tried to have lunch in Chinatown Number 2 (Clement Street) in San Francisco, by ourselves, the waitress first told us there was no lamb on the menu. When we pointed to five different lamb items in the bi-lingual menu, she said OK with resignation. Then, she brought up a dish of Mongolian-style something or other drenched in some sweet sauce but nevertheless without flavor. It took us but a few minutes to recognize that the lamb was actually chicken, not even an inventive substitution.

It would be wrong to imagine that the company of a Chinese person always saved me from bad food. Two episodes stand out. Once, after class, I am chatting with one of my MBA students from Taiwan. She is a slight, pretty woman with a great deal of aplomb. She occupies an important position in her company and she is obviously well educated. It’s noontime. Knowing what I know, I invite her for lunch at a nearby greasy chopsticks. I like that place because it serves the kinds of disgusting foods that both the Chinese and the French relish (I used to be French; read excerpts of my memoirs linked to this blog.) I am referring to parts of animals’ bodies you don’t even know exist.

I want beef tendon with noodles. People who eat tendon like it for its gelatinous texture. It’s quite distinctive. There is no other meat or part like it. It’s permanently on the menu there but I have already failed twice in ordering it. I figure my well-turned out, upper-class, authoritative Chines companion will pull rank on the scruffy waiter and obtain for me what I want. What I want is a seven-dollar dish of beef tendon, in black on white on the menu. My companion confirms that the dish is also advertised in big Chinese characters on the wall. She conducts a brief conversation with the waiter to order. Negativism is written all over his face and he turns around abruptly toward the kitchen. He comes back carrying two big bowls of noodles with braised beef. No a shred of tendon in sight.

This time, I am pissed off, in part because the scruffy waiter with the grease-spotted, formerly white serving-jacket has caused my female companion to lose face. Although his English appear limited I half-yell at him, “What the hell is wrong? My friend ordered tendon – pointing at the right sign on the wall, and then at my bowl – This is not tendon, NOT!” I am a big man coming from a long lineage of colonial oppressors. At least, I read a bit of anxiety in the waiter’ s eyes. He is not sure I am not going to strike him next. He mutters something in Mandarin. “What did he say?” I ask my companion. Her face has become greenish with anger. “He says that I mispronounced the word for ‘tendon.’” “Any chance?” I ask. “No way, she says, the words for ‘tendon’ and for ‘brisket’ are not even close.” We stomp out and go for a burger. I am re-pissed.

Another Chinese MBA student is also picking my brain after school. This one is a guy, the Chief Financial Officer of his successful Silicone Valley company. I advise him that the first twenty minutes are student advising and after that, it becomes professional consulting and he has to pay my rate. My rate is high because I don’t really want to do consulting. I add that he can avoid paying any bill at all if he will promise me an unforgettable Chines dinner of his choice. He likes the proposal. We agree to meet far away from campus and even farther from my town. On the appointed day, in a pricey-looking restaurant, he has a little conference in Chinese with the waitress. She keeps turning her head toward me and she motions “No.” The young man calls the manager. He starts the discussion anew with the manager. Same routine. Finally, the manager leaves with his order. “Did it work out, I ask?” “Only partly, I had to compromise. He did not want to serve us all that I wanted because of you.” Couldn’t be more clear. We eat pretty well, but I am sure I missed out on something.

Back to the airport night. I pay my bill with a sense of waste. Then, I spot a Chinese man in his forties who is walking around with an eye to the service. He asks me how my dinner, was, perfunctorily, California -surfer-by-day style. I tell him it was OK but not very good He seems dismayed. We start chatting. I let it slip that I like “authentic”food, that I cook a bit myself, that I collect mussels, and that right now, I have five pounds of fresh chanterelle mushrooms waiting for me at home. Suddenly, his face opens up as if he had been wearing a mask the minute before and the space between us fills with warmth. Yes, they have a Chinese menu; no they don’t usually propose it to “Caucasians” unless they are known personally. It’s up to the discretion of the waitress. “Next time, you talk to me and I will tell you what available.” I am not from the Caucasus, fucker! I haven’t even been there!

For the hundredth time, that night, a half-literate, provincial immigrant, perhaps right off the boat, has taken one look at me and used the only thing she knows about me, my appearance, my race in other words, to classify me. She has determined that I belong to a group that could not possibly appreciate the subtlety, the elegance, the sophistication of real, of good Chinese food. She has decided on the spot that the usual “Caucasian” slop was good enough for the likes of me and my wife. Incidentally, my wife is from India and looks it.

That’s racism in its pure form.

Sotomayor, Semi-Literate; Obama and Competence.

Judge Sotomayor is only a small part of the disaster but a symbolic one. With an activist liberal President commanding absolute majorities of course, we would have had a liberal appointment to the Supreme Court. Could have been worse than Sotomayor.

Se is a racist but, at least, she is self-disciplined. In two-plus days of Senate hearings, she managed to never state the obvious:

“The ‘wise old Latina’ statement was a racist statement. I am sorry I made it. That was 15 years ago. How about you? (The things you said fifteen years ago and before).”

She is also managed to divulge nothing about her beliefs regarding what agitates most Americans, notably abortion and the right to bear arms. When pressed on the inviolability of property rights, in connection with a pro-confiscation ruling she had made, she said her ruling was just following the rules.

The real problem is obvious but no one on the Republican side has the brass to talk about it. So here I goes:

Judge Sotomayor passed the bar, which requires hard work. After that, her career is a pure product of affirmative action. She is a woman with a mediocre mind who was pushed along the way because the system needs women and members of protected minorities in full view. The Republican Party lost a long time ago the will to say no.

The best evidence of her mediocrity is her startlingly poor command of the English language. I know, I know, English was probably not her first language. It was not mine either. Yet, there is zero chance I would confuse “vagrancies” and “vagaries,” or “providence” and “province.” (The latter is a real doozy; see below.) She had a lifetime of legal practice, presumably in English, to learn the language. She did not learn it well enough to be a judge, not even a lower-court judge. That’s what people who are not very bright do: They fail in spite of much repetition to learn something others master by age 20.

For the non-linguists among you, let me point out that what we are facing there is more than simply an inability to acquire a foreign language. “Providence,” in Spanish, is “providencia.” “Province” is, “provincia.” It’s not unfamiliarity with a foreign language that’s the issue. The real issue is language in general. She does not recognize common words in her native language. Uneducated people who are also intelligent usually don’t have this problem. She is well educated, from a formal standpoint. Therefore…. (complete the sentence.)

There is worse: During the friendly Senate hearing, the former clown, Senator Franken – elected by a tsunami of 300-odd votes – tried to help. He asked her a silly TV quiz question, which she flunked. While flunking, she came out with this mind-boggle: When I was watching Perry Mason as a girl, I was amazed that he, “proved most of his clients innocent.” (The words in quote marks are an exact quote; the rest of the sentence is my very accurate paraphrase.)

Hello, Judge Sotomayor! In no American court does a defense attorney have to prove his client innocent. There is no such burden at all. It’s up to the government to prove that he is guilty. That’s not just a matter of words. It’s an issue of burden of proof that is extraordinarily important in the actual practice of American justice.

For whatever reason, the next Supreme Court Justice does not understand a central principle of American justice.

Note: The Sotomayor statements above I heard with my own ears. They are part of the public record. There is no possibility of misunderstanding.

The President is not against competence. He is indifferent to it. He probably thinks it unfair that some people are more competent than others. Besides, he never demonstrated competence at anything himself, except in getting elected.

The Sotomayor nomination is just a small part of the rolling Obama disaster. I don’t have the courage to discuss every part of the disaster. I try to do on this blog what the respectable part of the main media is not doing, or not doing well, in my judgment. Besides, typing hurts my hands. I have to be more selective. Maybe this will improve my writing.

Race in America Right Now

I live in Northern California where Indian restaurant food and French restaurant food taste alike. That’s because the first is Mexican Indian food and the second is Mexican French food. All the cooks are Mexican. That’s an interesting economic fact. That’s not the whole story by a long shot. America is a great country where menial jobs have for generations led to entrepreneurship and in time, to dignified economic independence. So, Mexican cooks sometimes become Mexican-American restaurant owners.

In my town, there are dozens of Mexican restaurants and taco places. One full-fare restaurants stands among all others. It’s located downtown. It’s spacious and clean. The food there is reasonably good and moderately priced. The restaurant is also perfectly organized for the kind of fare it serves. Scarcely more than five minutes elapse between the moment you place your order and the moment it’s brought to your table. The table is cleaned within one minute of your leaving it so that the next customer does not have to wait.

This Mexican restaurant does not belong to a junior college drop-out, aging surfer as is often the case around here. It was launched and it is staffed by Mexicans immigrants and by their grown children and their buddies. You might say that it’s a great American entrepreneurial ship with a wholly Mexican crew.

One day, I noticed there an old Chinese man bent over a broom, laboriously sweeping the restaurant’s floor. It would have been hard not to notice him in the middle of the team of young, fairly loud Mexican workers. Discreetly, I inquired from the Mexican manager, who the old guy was. “We have been warned,” he declared mysteriously.

Apparently, the California bureaucracy in charge of such things had counted racial heads in that obviously successful, proudly Mexican establishment. It must have been decided that an all “Latino” crew violated some law or other. And twisted arms to force greater “diversity.” I would guess there aren’t two hundred permanent residents of Chinese extraction in the whole town. There are other Asians but who do you count in that category for “diversity” purposes? There are plenty of Indians but I think they don’t count. Is it because of a particular historical experience, real or imagined, their ancestors did not have? Or is it simply because they don’t look right for the part. Would Filipinos count then? Often they have brown skin but they also sport somewhat slanted eyes, although, in general, less markedly slanted than most Chinese.

I am getting confused although I have good credentials as a social scientist.

For twenty years, I drove on a narrow but fast mountain road to and from work to cross the chain of hills that separates living from working. At the top of the hill, overlooking a grandiose panorama there is a restaurant. There has always been a restaurant there, always facing the same problem: By the time they reach the summit, drivers want to gun their motor to fifty miles an hour to be home sooner. The compulsion is almost irresistible. It kills whatever impulse there might be to stop for a snack, and especially for a drink. Since there is speeding on that road, it’s often crawling with highway patrol. (Bless their heart!) That’s one more reason to not stop.

Seven years ago, a Korean restaurant replaced whatever other kind was there before. It struggled for two years. Then, the owners threw in the towel, realizing that native-born Americans don’t stop to eat exotic food on their way from work. Neither are they likely to drive up twenty minutes from either side of the mountain for a formal dinner at a restaurant of unknown reputation leaving behind on both sides towns with a wide variety of eating places.

I am more curious about food than most people, I am sure. (I used to be a Frenchman, that’s why.) Yet, I never stopped to sample the Korean fare at the mountain top although I must have driven by a couple of thousand times. This Asian enterprise just failed, I would venture.

A youngish Iranian couple took over and turned the place into a shish-kebab restaurant. They were obviously recent immigrants. The husband staid in the kitchen and said little. The wife served in the restaurant where she spoke sufficient but hesitant English. I know because I stopped there for breakfast with my daughter on a Saturday morning, when the traffic was light.

Although there were no other customers, the fried eggs were late in coming and cold upon arrival. The proprietress did not look right to me. I would not say she was dirty but she lacked the scrubbed-up, coiffed, and made-up appearance one expects of a female breakfast waitress anywhere in America. The room was decorated with a profusion of plastic flowers, reminding me of a discount funeral parlor. There was no music. The silence in that restaurant was deadly. The bill was on the high side, as one might expect maybe in a “scenic” restaurant.

Driving back, week by week, I could read the couple’s growing desperation in the ever increasing size of the signs they put up to draw speeding drivers’ attention and interest. The last sign was built squarely on the side of the restaurant. It advertised, “Best lam-shops in California.” It was as tall as the restaurant building and a third as wide as it was long. Steadying it in the wind must have required good carpentry skills. Then, the sign disappeared and the place looked deserted. This other set of immigrants from a less-developed country had lost its battle, apparently.

Nowadays, there are often dozens of cars in the parking lot. On nice weekends, it’s nearly full of motorcycles. The new owners have invested in a new large sign they placed on top of the building. The restaurant is now called, “ The ‘X’ Road House.” It sports a massive redwood sculpture of a bear, or of an eagle. I don’t even remember what the subject is. All the same, it cries out, “Redneck.” Rednecks will get out of their car and off their bikes for a bacon omelet with other rednecks.

Whites: 1; people of color: 0. Smacks of racism, right?

I hear the following news on Fox News, that cesspool of progressive sentiment: A privately owned swimming club in a white town in Pennsylvania abruptly canceled its contract to give access to its pool to a summer camp with many black children. It seems that everyone cries “racism.” Nothing is less obvious.

First things first: Depriving children of bathing and swimming they have been promised is crappy behavior. The swimming club decision-makers deserve a special place in Hell for this action, whatever their motivation.

The victims’ minders and all commentators I have heard assume the motivation is good old-fashioned racism, in the manner of Alabama circa 1940. It disturbs me that no one seems willing to consider other explanations. I think it’s because people are afraid of where it would take them. Racism may be involved but it’s also a lazy and cowardly explanation. It lets all of us who are not racists off the hook.

Here is a ready alternative: The lazy press gave no details about the social identity of the black children who fell victim to this decision.

Suppose many of them, even some of them, were the children of ghetto mothers who have never worked and who have had four children from three different men, none of whom is around. Suppose further these children live normally in the midst of drive-by shooting over drug turf. If both my suppositions are correct, is it possible that the children’s behavior would be judged much more disruptive than is considered acceptable in a middle-class suburb?

Low tolerance toward disruptive behavior may say something about the intolerant but it’s not racism. It ‘s not the same as past racial segregation. And yes, there is still racial prejudice in America, amazingly little considering this country’s history. Recently, an entertainer who was a also a freak and almost certainly a drug addict received a more grandiose national funeral than Abe Lincoln. It’s a mathematical certainty that most of the mourners had to be white although the deceased was black (or still kind of black, a little, anyway).

I am referring above mostly to white racism. Judge Sotomayor is a racist, of course.

I don’t know if any of my speculations above about the black children in the pool incident is correct. They are all plausible, however. It would have been easy for the lazy media to investigate and report. There are always alternative explanations to a given behavior. Deciding that one is correct without examining the others is bad social science. It’s also irrational and intellectually dishonest.

It disturbs me that liberal and progressive low-level intellectual terrorism seems to have won in America. I don’t like a world where some thoughts may not be thought and hardly anyone breaks the rule.

Pres. Obama is in Ghana as I write. I think he chose Ghana because it’s one of four or five democratic countries in sub-tropical Africa.

He is trying to burnish his image as the first really black President without getting splashed by the genuine self-inflicted horrors of the African continent.

Black Africa watchers are up in arms about his inaction concerning aid to Africa. His budgets decrease aid to Africa in general. I think that part of the world needs aid less than it needs honest ways to make a living. That requires trade fairness. American agricultural subsidies are killing African agriculturists in world markets. They can’t compete against cotton, for example, that earns money before it’s even come out of the ground.

The President owns both the bully pulpit and absolute majorities. The press believes he walks on air, like Jesus, except more graciously. The Republican Party is busy trying to sort out its (heterosexual) sex scandals. Why doesn’t the President do the obvious against a practice – subsidizing large farming corporations – that has no ethical justification whatsoever? It’s certainly not good capitalism.

This is a real question.

CHECK MY ARTICLE WITH NIKIFOROV ON ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION FROM MEXICO, IN THE INDEPENDENT REVIEW (VOLUME 14 NUMBER 1, SUMMER 2009)