The Rawness

This is part 2 of an ongoing series dedicated to piecing together a plausible personality profile of Obama. Part 1 can be found here.In the last part, I mentioned how I thought Obama’s main strategy was to sell himself using a compelling narrative rather than focusing on a message with a strong intellectual policy foundation. I’m currently reading his autobiography Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, and it hit me that Obama was portraying himself in the book as a Byronic Hero, which I discussed in part 1 of this series. In the book he also mentions his grandfather owning a copy of How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie.

He doesn’t mention reading it himself though, but it made enough of an impact on him as a kid for him to mention it decades later. It made me wonder whether seeing his grandfather own and use that book to help him with his sales career made him open to the idea of reading self-help books to improve communicating and connecting with people too.

I flipped through my copy of How to Win Friends and Influence People to see if I could see an obvious influence of the book on his personal style, but I couldn’t really see it, at least not in the first three chapters of his book or his campaigning style, which is all I really know of him right now. (As this series progresses I hope to eventually read everything about him I can get my hands on)

Right next to my copy of Carnegie’s book however was The 48 Laws of Power, so no a whim I flipped through that next, and the similarities between the book’s advice and Obama’s approach to defining himself and winning the Presidency were staggering.
Here is a brief summary of each of the 48 Laws of Power. I’ll highlight key laws which I think apply to Obama below. Most of the connections between each law and Obama are self-explanatory, but for some of them I added commentary in bold and brackets for clarification.

Law 2
Never put too Much Trust in Friends, Learn how to use Enemies
Be wary of friends-they will betray you more quickly, for they are easily aroused to envy. They also become spoiled and tyrannical. But hire a former enemy and he will be more loyal than a friend, because he has more to prove. In fact, you have more to fear from friends than from enemies. If you have no enemies, find a way to make them.
[PUBLICLY DISAVOWING HIS FRIEND AND MENTOR REV. WRIGHT, OFFERING SEC. OF STATE TO HILLARY, IMMEDIATELY MEETING WITH JOHN MCCAIN]

Law 3
Conceal your Intentions
Keep people off-balance and in the dark by never revealing the purpose behind your actions. If they have no clue what you are up to, they cannot prepare a defense. Guide them far enough down the wrong path, envelope them in enough smoke, and by the time they realize your intentions, it will be too late.

Law 4
Always Say Less than Necessary
When you are trying to impress people with words, the more you say, the more common you appear, and the less in control. Even if you are saying something banal, it will seem original if you make it vague, open-ended, and sphinxlike. Powerful people impress and intimidate by saying less. The more you say, the more likely you are to say something foolish.

[RATHER THEN GIVE SPECIFICS AND GOING IN-DEPTH, OBAMA RAN USING VAGUE PHRASES AND SOARING BUT BANAL RHETORIC LIKE "YES WE CAN," "HOPE," "CHANGE," AND "UNITY"]

Law 5
So Much Depends on Reputation ? Guard it with your Life
Reputation is the cornerstone of power. Through reputation alone you can intimidate and win; once you slip, however, you are vulnerable, and will be attacked on all sides. Make your reputation unassailable. Always be alert to potential attacks and thwart them before they happen. Meanwhile, learn to destroy your enemies by opening holes in their own reputations. Then stand aside and let public opinion hang them.

Law 6
Court Attention at all Cost
Everything is judged by its appearance; what is unseen counts for nothing. Never let yourself get lost in the crowd, then, or buried in oblivion. Stand out. Be conspicuous, at all cost.
Make yourself a magnet of attention by appearing larger, more colorful, more mysterious, than the bland and timid masses.

Law 7
Get others to do the Work for you, but Always Take the Credit
Use the wisdom, knowledge, and legwork of other people to further your own cause. Not only will such assistance save you valuable time and energy, it will give you a godlike aura of efficiency and speed. In the end your helpers will be forgotten and you will be remembered. Never do yourself what others can do for you.

Law 8
Make other people come to you – use Bait if Necessary
When you force the other person to act, you are the one in control. It is always better to make your opponent come to you, abandoning his own plans in the process. Lure him with fabulous gains – then attack. You hold the cards.

Law 11
Learn to Keep People Dependent on You
To maintain your independence you must always be needed and wanted. The more you are relied on, the more freedom you have. Make people depend on you for their happiness and prosperity and you have nothing to fear. Never teach them enough so that they can do without you.
[OBAMA HAS DONE THIS WITH HIS FOLLOWERS BY ENCOURAGING THE MESSIANIC FERVOR HIS FOLLOWERS HAVE FOR HIM. IT'S REACHED THE POINT WHERE PEOPLE SAY THINGS LIKE BELOW]

Law 12

Use Selective Honesty and Generosity to Disarm your Victim
One sincere and honest move will cover over dozens of dishonest ones. Open-hearted gestures of honesty and generosity bring down the guard of even the most suspicious people. Once your selective honesty opens a hole in their armor, you can deceive and manipulate them at will. A timely gift – a Trojan horse – will serve the same purpose.

[OBAMA'S POST-ELECTION OVERTURES TO MCCAIN AND HILLARY CLINTON, TWO PEOPLE WHO COULD CAUSE HIM POLITICAL GRIEF IN THE FUTURE, FALL UNDER THIS LAW AS WELL]

Law 13
When Asking for Help, Appeal to People’s Self-Interest, Never to their Mercy or Gratitude
If you need to turn to an ally for help, do not bother to remind him of your past assistance and good deeds. He will find a way to ignore you. Instead, uncover something in your request, or in your alliance with him, that will benefit him, and emphasize it out of all proportion. He will respond enthusiastically when he sees something to be gained for himself.
[THIS WORKS WITH OBAMA BY MAKING PROMISES BASED ON CLASS WARFARE. HE PAINTS A ROBIN HOOD IMAGE WHERE HE'LL REDISTRIBUTE THE WEALTH OF THE RICH AMONG THE POOR AND MIDDLE CLASSES. THIS LEADS TO DISPLAYS LIKE THE WOMAN IN THE YOUTUBE VIDEO ABOVE PROCLAIMING THAT HER GAS AND MORTGAGE WILL BE PAID IF OBAMA WINS.]

Law 20
Do Not Commit to Anyone
It is the fool who always rushes to take sides. Do not commit to any side or cause but yourself. By maintaining your independence, you become the master of others – playing people against one another, making them pursue you.

Law 24
Play the Perfect Courtier
The perfect courtier thrives in a world where everything revolves around power and political dexterity. He has mastered the art of indirection; he flatters, yields to superiors, and asserts power over others in the mot oblique and graceful manner. Learn and apply the laws of courtiership and there will be no limit to how far you can rise in the court.

Law 25
Re-Create Yourself
Do not accept the roles that society foists on you. Re-create yourself by forging a new identity, one that commands attention and never bores the audience. Be the master of your own image rather than letting others define if for you. Incorporate dramatic devices into your public gestures and actions – your power will be enhanced and your character will seem larger than life.

[FROM WHAT I'VE READ SO FAR IN HIS BIO, OBAMA ALWAYS SEEMS TO BE TRYING TO RECREATE HIS IDENTITY GROWING UP. THE BOOK ITSELF SEEMS TO BE AN ATTEMPT TO RECREATE HIMSELF]

Law 26
Keep Your Hands Clean
You must seem a paragon of civility and efficiency: Your hands are never soiled by mistakes and nasty deeds. Maintain such a spotless appearance by using others as scapegoats and cat’s-paws to disguise your involvement.
[PLENTY OF LEAKS AND CHEAP SHOT ATTACKS DONE BY OBAMA SUPPORTERS AND THE MEDIA, ESPECIALLY AGAINST PALIN, WHICH OBAMA THEN DISTANCES HIMSELF FROM BY PUBLIC DENOUNCING AFTER THEY'VE ALREADY HAD THEIR EFFECT. NOT SAYING HE WAS DEFINITELY BEHIND THESE ATTACKS, BUT HE DID BENEFIT FROM THEM WHILE MAKING SURE TO KEEP HIS HANDS CLEAN PUBLICLY]

Law 27
Play on People?s Need to Believe to Create a Cultlike Following
People have an overwhelming desire to believe in something. Become the focal point of such desire by offering them a cause, a new faith to follow. Keep your words vague but full of promise; emphasize enthusiasm over rationality and clear thinking. Give your new disciples rituals to perform, ask them to make sacrifices on your behalf. In the absence of organized religion and grand causes, your new belief system will bring you untold power.

Law 28
Enter Action with Boldness
If you are unsure of a course of action, do not attempt it. Your doubts and hesitations will infect your execution. Timidity is dangerous: Better to enter with boldness. Any mistakes you commit through audacity are easily corrected with more audacity. Everyone admires the bold; no one honors the timid.

[OBAMA IS VERY GOOD AT THIS. HE ACTED LIKE HE WAS ALREADY PRESIDENT WHEN HE WAS IN THE DEBATES BY CONSTANTLY SAYING "WHEN I'M PRESIDENT..." AFTER HE WON, IN HIS ACCEPTANCE SPEECH HE IMMEDIATELY STARTED TALKING ABOUT HIS SECOND TERM. THAT'S BOLD AND AUDACIOUS.]

Law 30
Make your Accomplishments Seem Effortless
Your actions must seem natural and executed with ease. All the toil and practice that go into them, and also all the clever tricks, must be concealed. When you act, act effortlessly, as if you could do much more. Avoid the temptation of revealing how hard you work – it only raises questions. Teach no one your tricks or they will be used against you.

Law 32
Play to People’s Fantasies
The truth is often avoided because it is ugly and unpleasant. Never appeal to truth and reality unless you are prepared for the anger that comes for disenchantment. Life is so harsh and distressing that people who can manufacture romance or conjure up fantasy are like oases in the desert: Everyone flocks to them. There is great power in tapping into the fantasies of the masses.

Law 33
Discover Each Man’s Thumbscrew
Everyone has a weakness, a gap in the castle wall. That weakness is usually an insecurity, an uncontrollable emotion or need; it can also be a small secret pleasure. Either way, once found, it is a thumbscrew you can turn to your advantage.

[OBAMA IS A MASTER AT TELLING EACH INTEREST GROUP EXACTLY WHAT THEY WANT TO HEAR]

Law 34
Be Royal in your Own Fashion: Act like a King to be treated like one
The way you carry yourself will often determine how you are treated; In the long run, appearing vulgar or common will make people disrespect you. For a king respects himself and inspires the same sentiment in others. By acting regally and confident of your powers, you make yourself seem destined to wear a crown.

Law 37
Create Compelling Spectacles
Striking imagery and grand symbolic gestures create the aura of power – everyone responds to them. Stage spectacles for those around you, then full of arresting visuals and radiant symbols that heighten your presence. Dazzled by appearances, no one will notice what you are really doing.

[OBAMA'S STRIKING ICONOGRAPHY IS LIKE NOTHING I'VE SEEN FROM A MODERN CANDIDATE. SLEEK, BOLD, COMPELLING, CLEAN AND COLORFUL, IT'S THE TYPE OF BRANDING YOU'D EXPECT FROM A FRESH NEW HIP PRODUCT DESIGNED BY A TOP AD AGENCY AND GRAPHIC DESIGN FIRM. MANY OF HIS SPEECHES HAVE ALSO BEEN COMPELLING SPECTACLES, LIKE THE ONE HE GAVE IN BERLIN TO 200,00 PEOPLE]

[LOOK AT THIS CROWD OF 200,000 THAT CAME OUT TO SEE OBAMA SPEAK IN BERLIN. HOW'S THAT FOR COMPELLING SPECTACLE?]

Law 38
Think as you like but Behave like others
If you make a show of going against the times, flaunting your unconventional ideas and unorthodox ways, people will think that you only want attention and that you look down upon them. They will find a way to punish you for making them feel inferior. It is far safer to blend in and nurture the common touch. Share your originality only with tolerant friends and those who are sure to appreciate your uniqueness.

Law 43
Work on the Hearts and Minds of Others
Coercion creates a reaction that will eventually work against you. You must seduce others into wanting to move in your direction. A person you have seduced becomes your loyal pawn. And the way to seduce others is to operate on their individual psychologies and weaknesses. Soften up the resistant by working on their emotions, playing on what they hold dear and what they fear. Ignore the hearts and minds of others and they will grow to hate you.

Law 45
Preach the Need for Change, but Never Reform too much at Once
Everyone understands the need for change in the abstract, but on the day-to-day level people are creatures of habit. Too much innovation is traumatic, and will lead to revolt. If you are new to a position of power, or an outsider trying to build a power base, make a show of respecting the old way of doing things. If change is necessary, make it feel like a gentle improvement on the past.

Law 48
Assume Formlessness
By taking a shape, by having a visible plan, you open yourself to attack. Instead of taking a form for your enemy to grasp, keep yourself adaptable and on the move. Accept the fact that nothing is certain and no law is fixed. The best way to protect yourself is to be as fluid and formless as water; never bet on stability or lasting order. Everything changes.

Regardless of whether or not Obama actually read 48 Laws or not, a majority of the book directly applies to the strategies Obama used when running.

Recommended Reading:

[This is the first of an open-ended, ongoing series I plan to have about Barack Obama and what may or may not motivate him. I think he makes a fascinating figure, regardless of whether or not you believe in his politics. I think he is an extremely cunning and Machiavellian figure with methods that, once deconstructed, will be very instructive to anyone interested in human nature. This series will go on for as long as I have insights to make about Obama, but will not be the exclusive focus of this blog.]

I had a lot of debates with my intellectual friends during this election about Barack Obama. Many of them would take apart the logical and economic fallacies of Obama’s proposals, giving examples of why they wouldn’t work and pointing out contradictions and inconsistencies. I kept responding that their intellectual approach was actually an obstacle for them in analyzing the political race because the informed people choose their sides and ideologies early in the game. After all, both candidates laid out their agendas very early in the game, either on their campaign websites, their political careers before the election or in their stump speeches.

Most of these much-sought after “undecideds” or “moderates” are simply not that intellectually engaged in the process, because if they were they’d have made a decision already. The key to these people is not to inundate them with more facts, because that is a waste. There are already more than enough facts out there for them to make a decision on. The key to win these people over is to switch from focusing on content, like facts and policy, and focus on context arguments, like enthusiasm, charisma, emotional connection, pointing out personal and professional associations, and likeability.

Keep in mind I’m not calling these undecideds stupid. Although I think many of them actually were stupid, there were also many intellectuals that were tired of focusing on logic and facts and were looking for someone that would engage them emotionally

This is the beauty of Obama, he perfectly understood the power of context over content. When his informercial came out for example, a friend of mine went into an in-depth refutation of it, declared it a failure for being too pessimistic and showing economic illiteracy through factual inaccuracies. I told him to turn off his intellectual instinct to engage every message on a logical.  He needed to realize that the content was irrelevant. It was pure public relations, and Obama was creating a brand using snazzy graphics, slogans and iconography and creating a narrative using soaring rhetoric, cinematography, drama, characters, the narrative, the music that pulled on the heart strings.  It was pure style over substance, and it needed to be judge it as a feel-good movie trailer or commercial and not a logical argument. And from that perspective, the informercial worked.

Most Presidents have written books before or during their elections, but they have usually been policy books. Obama main book, the one most discussed in the lead-up to the election, was pure narrative, an autobiography describing his struggles with class and race and not much else. No sophisticated policy arguments, no nuanced intellectual viewpoints, just personal narrative. Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance paints him to be the Byronic Hero. This is an archetype well proven to resonate with people, especially single women, in works of fiction:

A Byronic hero exhibits several characteristic traits, and in many ways he can be considered a rebel. The Byronic hero does not possess “heroic virtue” in the usual sense; instead, he has many dark qualities. With regard to his intellectual capacity, self-respect, and hypersensitivity, the Byronic hero is “larger than life,” and “with the loss of his titanic passions, his pride, and his certainty of self-identity, he loses also his status as [a traditional] hero” (Thorslev 187).

He is usually isolated from society as a wanderer or is in exile of some kind. It does not matter whether this social separation is imposed upon him by some external force or is self-imposed. Byron’s Manfred, a character who wandered desolate mountaintops, was physically isolated from society, whereas Childe Harold chose to “exile” himself and wander throughout Europe. Although Harold remained physically present in society and among people, he was not by any means “social.”

Often the Byronic hero is moody by nature or passionate about a particular issue. He also has emotional and intellectual capacities, which are superior to the average man. These heightened abilities force the Byronic hero to be arrogant, confident, abnormally sensitive, and extremely conscious of himself. Sometimes, this is to the point of nihilism resulting in his rebellion against life itself (Thorslev 197). In one form or another, he rejects the values and moral codes of society and because of this he is often unrepentant by society’s standards. Often the Byronic hero is characterized by a guilty memory of some unnamed sexual crime. Due to these characteristics, the Byronic hero is often a figure of repulsion, as well as fascination.

More on the Byronic Hero can be found here:

The Byronic hero is an idealised but flawed character exemplified in the life and writings of Lord Byron, characterised by his ex-lover Lady Caroline Lamb as being “mad, bad and dangerous to know”.^[1] The Byronic hero first appears in Byron’s semi-autobiographical epic narrative poem Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (1812-18). The Byronic hero typically exhibits the following characteristics:^[2][3]

• high level of intelligence and perception
• cunning and able to adapt
• sophisticated and educated
• self-critical and introspective
• mysterious, magnetic and charismatic
• struggling with integrity
• power of seduction and sexual attraction
• social and sexual dominance
• emotional conflicts, bipolar tendencies, or moodiness
• a distaste for social institutions and norms
• being an exile, an outcast, or an outlaw
• “dark” attributes not normally associated with a hero
• disrespect of rank and privilege
• a troubled past
• cynicism
• arrogance
• self-destructive behaviour“

The Byronic Hero is immensely powerful with women, and usually just about any fictional work that is immensely popular with women has a Byronic hero as its protaganist, from Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights (Signet Classics) to the vampire Lestat in Ann Rice’s works to the character Edward in the new hit movie Twilight, based on a popular novel Twilight (The Twilight Saga, Book 1). I think the immense popularity of Dark Knight last summer with women was because it portrayed a battle of wills between two (arguably three) Byronic heroes. This Byronic appeal was so strong that it created an intense love of the movie among single women despite the fact the movie is, in my humble opinion, utter crap. Is it any wonder Obama’s biggest voting block was unmarried women?

In Obama’s bio, he mentions early on that his grandfather had a copy of Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends & Influence People on his desk. One of the key concepts in the book is to use dramatization and narrative to sell ideas rather than cold, hard logic, which just tends to alienate. I think this is a major part of where his strategy to build narrative over content came from, which is why unlike previous presidents, his book was a book about dramatic personal narrative rather than a book on policy. And within this narrative, he smartly chose to use the Byronic hero as his main character, except with a happier, more optimistic ending. A “safe” Byronic hero with the sharp, dangerous edges filed down if you will.

The other source of Obama’s power I think comes from the book 48 Laws of Power, which I will demonstrate in the next part, which can be found here.

Recommended Reading:

CLICK PICTURE TO ENLARGE:

In the first parts, I discussed why I thought discussion of Blacks and IQ was a waste of time when discussing public policy proposals:

Blacks and IQ, Part 1
Blacks and IQ, Part 2
Blacks and IQ, Part 2.5

I’ve already discussed Jared Diamond’s book Guns, Germs and Steel, and the environmental explanations it gave for IQ differentials by race.

Another thing to keep in mind is that among American slave populations, there probably were not many selection pressures that encouraged high intelligence. In fact, high intelligence was penalized. A smart slave was a dangerous slave, so slave owners deliberately did what they could to keep slaves ignorant. If you read various slave codes from different US states and colonies, the illegality of slave literacy was a common theme. Slaves who showed initiative in trying to teach themselves to read or get smarter were severely punished. It was not an environment conducive to intellectualism. In fact, openly showing high intellectual potential would be more likely to get you killed and your genes weeded out of existence.

I think rather than outright intellectualism, the mental skills slavery selected for were a high-level cunning. For example negro spirituals on the surface where just inspirational hymns, but in actuality they were complex coded messages used to furtively convey messages the white masters wouldn’t notice or decode. Examples can be seen here and here

We still see this particular verbal code aspect manifested in many aspects of black street life such as creating slangs that nonblacks can’t understand, in the form of extremely street smarts, mastering high level con games, highly improvisational cognitive skills that can be seen in everything from off the cuff banter to improvisational jazz to freestyle rapping. Pimping “by the book” (see my pimp week posts for an explanation) is another example of high level cunning.

I don’t think IQ tests can properly test for these, but I think they’re very valid cognitive abilities. For example one can claim that I’m being an apologist making weak excuses and that being high IQ is automatically better than any of these high cunning examples I’m giving, but is that really true? I’ve seen plenty of high IQ people who are useless in a situation that requires street smart and ability to recognize when they’re being hustled. I’ve see socially inept high IQ people who would kill to be able to game women like many black players and pimps can. A great fictional example of this dynamic can be seen in season 5 finale episode of the Shield called “Postpartum,” where high IQ genius and social misfit Dutch gets advice from a lowlife pimp he arrests on how manipulate and game a hot female rookie that he’s unable to figure out how to get with. The pimp gives him the advice, Dutch puts it to use and it works perfectly.

Back to my original point, I think the existence of this cunning, or “hustle mindset,” had much of its origin in American slavery. Even if a slave was very smart in terms of IQ, it had to be coupled with the cunning to use it to fullest advantage while simultaneously downplaying it and flying under the radar. You can see this in the life of Harriet Tubman, an escaped illiterate slave who returned to the south repeatedly to sneak out hundreds of slaves and transport them up north to freedom via her Underground Railroad, which was very dangerous and required a high amount of cunning and good instincts to carry out. Or take into account how Frederick Douglass learned to read:

Upon Frederick’s arrival at the Auld Home, his only duties were to run errands and care for the Auld’s infant son, Tommy. Frederick enjoyed the work and grew to love the child. Sophia Auld was a religious woman and frequently read aloud from the Bible. Frederick asked his mistress to teach him to read and she readily consented. He soon learned the alphabet and a few simple words. Sophia Auld was very excited about Fredericks progress and told her husband what she had done. Hugh Auld became furious at this because it was unlawful to teach a slave to read. Hugh Auld believed that if a slave knew how to read and write that it would make him unfit for a slave. A slave that could read and write would no longer obey his master without question or thought, or even worse could forge papers that said he was free and thus escape to a northern state where slavery was outlawed. Hugh Auld then instructed Sophia to stop the lessons at once!

Frederick learned from Hugh Auld’s outburst that if learning how to read and write was his pathway to freedom, then gaining this knowledge was to become his goal. Frederick gained command of the alphabet on his own and made friends with poor white children he met on errands and used them as teachers. He paid for his reading lessons with pieces of bread. At home Frederick read parts of books and newspapers when he could, but he had to constantly be on guard against his mistress. Sophia Auld screamed whenever she caught Frederick reading. Sophia Auld’s attitude toward Frederick had changed, she no longer regarded him as any other child, but as a piece of property. However, Frederick gradually learned to read and write. With a little money he had earned doing errands, he bought a copy of The Columbian Orator, a collection of speeches and essays dealing with liberty, democracy, and courage.

Also see this interview with a great-grandson of Frederick Douglass who describes how Douglass had to trick white kids into teaching him to read without knowing it:

[Jacquie]

I remember, I read some stories about Frederick Douglass, I remember one, I guess he would do things for some of the white kids on the street in return for them teaching him how to read.

[Fred]

Well, actually, he says many times that he had to steal his education, and so what would happen is many times, he never spent a day of his live in a classroom. But when the white boys would come home from school he would ask them questions like “Well, I bet you can’t tell me what comes after P” and they would mock him and make fun of him and call him ignorant and stupid and so on an so forth. And they’d say “Anybody knows, anybody who went to school would know that Q comes after P.” And so he would say “Well, then tell me, since you know so much then, what comes after W? And again they would mock him they’d say “Everybody who goes to school knows that X comes after W, don’t you know that you idiot, you dummy?” He would not say anything, but he would think, “Well, I do now.” And so that’s what he would have to do, he’d have to trick people into giving him his education.

[Jacquie]

Cause they couldn’t have told him that without him …

[Fred]

Well they wouldn’t have told him that. They were not interested in his education so that’s why he had to involve … he had to think up situations to challenge people and extract the kind of information he wanted out of them because, he could just not simply go to them and say “I want you to teach me this”. They simply wouldn’t have done that because they had picked up the prejudices and views of the day, so, no, that’s not something they would have done. But, if he challenged them as he did, then they would reveal information, and so he would piece this together. After a period of time he was able, if he finished his work early, he might earn a few pennies and nickels doing some jobs for somebody he’d meet, or he might find some coins. And when he was able to get enough money together, he went and purchased a copy of the “Columbian Orator”. And that was really the beginning of his formal education. Self taught! Self-made man! But he was determined.

These stories illustrate how important was to many slave states to stamp out any form of intellectualism they found. Being discovered to have a strong drive to improve oneself intellectually was a great way to get yourself punished or killed. Not only was extreme cunningness a more important survival skill than intellectualism for a slave, the more intellectual a slave actually was, the more important cunning became as it became imperative to hide these smarts and desire to learn.

So during the duration of slavery, we’ve established there were many factors that would weed out intellectualism and make it counterproductive as a survival strategy. After slavery, there was rampant discrimination and segregation that played a big part in keeping black intellectualism low, and kept the IQ gap from getting significantly closer to getting bridged. Even then, despite the discrimination, blacks were improving their social situation and starting a long, uphill climb and showing much potential, as shown in this Sowell article. And then came the last blow that truly derailed any chance of bridging the achievement gap in the 20th century, the Great Society welfare state. A great post illustrating some of the ways in which the Great Society derailed black achievement can be found here.

Here are the things I feel need to be done to help bridge the achievement gap between whites and blacks. First, get rid of affirmative action, hiring quotas, diversity initiatives. For a black person to achieve the same thing as a white person, they would have to have the same credentials. They would need to have the same grades as white kids to get admitted to the same schools. They would need the same experience and credentials and transcript grades as a white person to get the same jobs. The flipside to this is that in addition to removing this diversity initiatives that promote blacks, a serious attempt has to be taken to curtail things that unfairly work against blacks as well, such as racial discrimination that may hurt qualified black applicants and legacy admissions that help substandard white students.

At first this will probably lead to less blacks in Ivy Leagues and top schools, but this will just mean that more of them will instead attend schools and get jobs that are more appropriate to their academic and employment track records. Studies find that putting black applicants into schools and career tracks they are underqualified for actually hurts them more than it helps them. Richard Sander has a 117-page in-depth study of how affirmative action hurts black lawyers that is very worthwhile reading for example. Not only do these policies routinely put blacks into situations they are unprepared for, the ensuing frustration often wreaks havoc on their self-esteem and emotional being, as described in Ellis Cose’s book The Rage of a Privileged Class: Why Do Prosperous Blacks Still Have the Blues?

.

The black students who aren’t ready for top four year colleges, rather than attending and dropping out or barely graduating, can enter the workforce, go to vocational school to learn a marketable trade, or they can go to a community college that will inexpensively give them the tools to compete in 4-year college they didn’t receive in high school. Black students who aren’t good enough to get into Ivy Leagues will instead attend respectable four year schools they are better suited for, where they will perform better. The only blacks who will get into Ivy League schools or white-shoe law firms or top investment banks will be the ones who could get in strictly on the basis of their credentials regardless of their race.

In the short run we will see less blacks in high profile schools and jobs, but they will be performing better because they will be in the environments they are qualified to be in based on their credentials. And with time, as blacks adjust to the new standards expected of them, they will start adjusting themselves to meet them. Think of all the industries where blacks outperform whites, and what do they have in common? They never had an affirmative action program in place for them. Entertainment and sports, in those fields blacks faced rampant discrimination, segregation and financial exploitation, and in the short run the early people who dealt with that system suffered. But they adapted to those obstacles, and when they realized they had to be better than whites to compete in those same fields, they worked harder. There were no programs that allowed them to have less skills yet get the same as white athletes. They couldn’t even get a break if they were equally skilled. So they resolved to be better singers, comedians, and athletes than whites, to the point where white bosses couldn’t ignore them anymore because they didn’t want to leave that money on the table and they didn’t want to pass up these gifted people and give their competitors a chance to profit. After getting exploited for a few generations, how often do we hear nowadays of a hot black entertainer or athlete getting exploited financially? They don’t. They’ve adapted accordingly thanks to what happened to the early pioneers. Now we hear about poor mothers of high school NBA phenoms successfully being financially savvy in negotiations with the top colleges and big teams and hiring the necessary agents and lawyers to guard against any possible exploitation. You take away the affirmative action we give blacks in intellectual endeavors and with time the younger generations will be raised to adapt accordingly as well.

Another step I’d recommend is taking away any scholarships that are given just for being poor and/or black. I’m all for poverty-based financial aid if and only if the applicant is academically qualified, and regardless of race. if a black student is poor but has the right grades, it would be a shame for him to miss out on an education just because of money reasons. But if someone is poor and woefully underqualified, to give him a scholarship to a school that’s beyond his abilities in hopes that you can bridge the gap after he arrives is doing him no favors.

Something else I support, but which some find pretty controversial, is to incentivize academic accomplishments for black children. Make the rewards instantly tangible for them. A similar program was suggested for New York by Michael Bloomberg (who as a successful business owner understands market forces and incentives much better than our usual policymakers, lawyers) and was immediately shot down:

Pop quiz: Why do you really show up at work every day? 1) They couldn’t do it without me; 2) I enjoy the abuse; 3) I need the money to support my addictions, like wearing clothes, keeping a roof over my head and eating once in a while.

If your answer included the word ?money,? then you might appreciate New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s plan to pay certain low- income students between $5 and $10 for taking a test and even more ? $25 to $50 ? for scoring top grades on them. Under the plan, which will begin this fall, older students can earn a maximum of $500 while participating schools receive $5,000.

Bloomberg, who sees the program as a way to motivate public schoolers, is no stranger to making money. Local government’s only billionaire, Bloomberg is a businessman who is using his own money and donations from others in the private sector to pay the students. Why would businesses support paying people to excel? Maybe because that’s what private enterprise already does. At least, the best companies reward employees for exceptional performance.

Many of the same people who support giving kids free scholarship money when they haven’t done anything academic to earn it somehow were outraged at the idea of paying kids for tangible achievement, and I don’t really understand why. As I’ve stated in this post, human nature responds much better to the Earn-Reward method than the Reward-Earn method.

Recommended Reading:

…in Harlem of all places: