Reader Email – Book Suggestions
First, some miscellaneous stuff. I’m currently in Stockholm, Sweden. Just got here yesterday. Had a stopover in Finland for a few hours. Finnish people had a very stern, quiet and sometimes gruff demeanor and really seemed to be a people that you could tell were descended from Viking warrior stock. Sweden was very, very different. The men here are incredibly metrosexual, to the point that there are men you would expect to be without a doubt gay only to discover they are (supposedly) 100% heterosexual. That being said, the men didn’t seem as wimpy or pushovers as some guys in the neighboring European countries like to characterize them. I’ve even encountered quite a few tough Swedish alpha male type guys here. Then again I’ve only been here one day so I haven’t seen enough yet to really justify any sweeping generalizations.
Also, I’ve written about why women are judged more harshly for promiscuity than men, I’ve given advice to both men and women on how to ruthlessly manipulate each other, I’ve defended stereotyping, had a slew of antifeminist postings, have done several posts on black women and plenty of things I expected people to hate or be offended by that actually got very positive reviews. How was I to know that my Dark Knight post, a movie review, would be my most controversial post? I lost A QUARTER OF MY SUBSCRIBERS from that single post! Awesome.
Anyway, on with the point of this post. A reader sent me the following email:
Your views “conservative” views, especially on the welfare state and its effect on the Black family, intrigue me, and I was wondering if you would mind sharing with me some of the books you’ve read on the subject. I’m looking to expand my knowledge base a little on the subject.
I can actually give you the names of a few books that really turned me around from a lifelong liberal guy to a conservative, and especially changed my mind about liberal policies and whether they harm black families. There are five books I especially recommend:
The first two are the best books I read about the black family
1) Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America
I still recommend reading his book if you can though. He goes a little more in-depth there. His main thesis is that racism was once the biggest problem facing blacks, but much of it has been conquered, although it will always linger, and nowadays the main things holding blacks back are anti-intellectualism, self-segregation and victimology (embracing and holding on to an eternal victim mindset).
2) The Ten Things You Can’t Say In America, Revised Edition
Chapter 1. Blacks are more racist than whites
Chapter 2. White condescension is as real as black racism
Chapter 5. America’s greatest problem: illegitimacy
Chapter 7. The welfare state: helping us to death
You can find all his articles dating back to 2000 over here.
3) Basic Economics 3rd Ed: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy
To get an idea of what he and his writing are like, here’s an archive of his articles dating back to 2000.
4) Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News
5) Coloring the News: How Political Correctness Has Corrupted American Journalism
Both of these books make great cases for how political correctness has ruined the mainstream news.
If you read any of these, I’d love to hear your feedback about them.
Recommended Reading:
(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
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Sowell is the man.
In other news, I was recently converted by:
http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com
Couldn’t tell you how surprised I was by that, but moving from libertarian to conservative was a relatively small jump.
Aside from their views, being a black conservative in Academia today takes guts, and I mean GUTS. There is nothing to be gained by it, career-wise; liberals hate them, and white conservatives don’t know what to make of them; the only reason McWhorter, Sowell, and Elder can have for writing as they do is dedication to the truth. Anyone who has that kind of guts, and that kind of dedication to finding the truth, is worth reading. And that’s also why I hit this site as well…
5 (and two halves) points.
(1) thank you for recognizing the MASSIVE differences between sweden and suomi (i don’t like to call it “finland”, because, irony of ironies, that’s its swedish name).
in the finnish language, the word for “swede” is basically equivalent to “homo”; on the other hand, those dastardly ex-soviets to the east are regarded as all colors and sizes of other bad stuff, but never gay.
(1a) actually, the suomalaiset (native finns) are pretty much universally thought not to be descended from vikings, or from any other anglo-saxon people for that matter. they are thought to be descended from other finno-ugric peoples (think hungarians and estonians) who migrated northward into the peninsula.
(2) i admittedly ignored the dark knight post, partly because of my severe attention deficit (sorry, what was that again?), but mostly because i just don’t watch movies.
butbutbut – a 25% casualty rate? that’s harsh.
must … stick … to … topic … of … blog.
(3) sowell et al should co-opt al gore’s buzzword of “inconvenient truth” for their own writing, to which it is much, much more apropos.
(4) Tschafer above is absolutely correct.
as you know, i am also a social conservative (and an extremely unlikely defender of high culture), a fact that tends to erect huge walls of isolation between me and the milieu in which i live and work – to the point where i have at least two completely distinct lives, one in which i share ethnic, childhood, and family connections with others, and the other, completely disjoint one in which i share intellectual connections and indulge my more, ahem, highbrow tastes.
and almost certainly never shall the twain meet.
(4a) wow, shit, that was all one sentence. just as you can’t seem to write short posts, i can’t seem to write short sentences.
(5) enjoy your trip buddy.
…and victimology (embracing and holding on to an eternal victim mindset).
This isn’t just “killing” Blacks, but everyone. As far as I can tell, anyone that can (basically, anyone that isn’t a White, Heterosexual Male) is trying to be a part of the victim class. And this causes one huge problem, there is only so much sympathy to go around. So, you get inflation.
Gay men, Fat Women (just check out BfdBlog.com. Trust me, they view themselves as victims), Hispanics, Artists…everyone is a victim.
Chris Rock once said in an interview that African Americans were once the most sympathized race (say, in the late 60′s, 70′s and part of the 80′s) but that, that was mostly gone now.
And he is right, very few people, Blacks included, sympathize when they see some fatherless family living in the ghetto.
I personally think that over the next few generations will care less and less about the “victims” and start being more openly selfish in our politics. Less need for euphemisms like “family values” or “safety nets” and more calls for “strict policing” and “more quotas”. Personally, I think that will be a good thing. The sooner that we are honest with one another, the sooner we can do something about it.
Anyway, great post.
oh, one last thing. At least according to a recent Atlantic Monthly article, there are a lot more conservative Blacks than you might think. At least the ones attending the “secret” Bill Cosby lectures are.
I can’t believe you lost a quarter of your subscribers because of the Dark Knight post – hilarious! It’s very intriguing, what gets people upset. But hey, I’m still reading – controversial views of Batman movies or not.
I know this is a sensitive subject, but the possible role of genes in causing average differences among groups and the consequences for public policy have to be considered too. Recommended here are:
Arthur Jensen, The G Factor
Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein, The Bell Curve
(Murray also wrote the big book, Losing Ground, that lead to welfare reform.)
One of the more interesting black intellectuals to come up recently is Roland Fryer at Harvard. He actually had this to say on the genetics controversy:
”I want to have an honest discussion about race in a time and a place where I don’t think we can. Blacks and whites are both to blame. As soon as you say something like, ‘Well, could the black-white test-score gap be genetics?’ everybody gets tensed up. But why shouldn’t that be on the table?”
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03.....wanted=all
We need to have this openly investigated and discussed.
Thursdays last blog post..Publication
Well, it’s unlikely people are going to get riled up about most of your posts – most of your readers agree with you. The people I see commenting here also comment on blogs that have a similar focus & philosophy as yours – you’re part of a “blog ring” of sorts. I doubt feminists, libs, innocents who believe in transparent human relationships, black women, etc. make up a major part of your audience, so you don’t need to worry about major disagreement breaking out in your comment sections. The movie review is really the only thing I can think of that was posted here that could offend your audience since it’s not tied in to your main themes.
Guido – Wow, Unqualified Reservations is pretty impressive. I’m going to really have to take my time to delve into that one.
Tschafer – I used to think being a black conservative was the gutsiest thing you could do too, but now I think it’s being anti Dark Knight.
J5 – I totally get the double life thing.
Usually Lurking – Blacks are much more socially conservative than white liberals, even though they always vote Democrat. The problem is, even though they are socially conservative, they are also very economically into quasi-socialist policies. This is the stumbling block that keeps many of them from voting conservative. Reducing the welfare state, getting rid of affirmative action and hiring quotas and diversity initiatives or minority set-asides, they have mental blocks with understanding how many of these things, although it seems counterintuitive, actually hurt blacks more than help them.
B and B – You know what’s even stranger? After a few days they seem to have all come back! I don’t know, was that a one-day boycott or something? Did they plan to leave for good but just couldn’t stay away from my awesomeness? Who knows?
JY – I actually get a lot of first time visitors who don’t agree with me, but they tend to email me more than comment. The problem is they usually end up saying stuff like “At first I disagreed with you but by the end of the piece I could see where you were coming from.” The Dark Knight post was fun because people really came out of the woodwork to attack that one, lots of new first-time commenters. I enjoyed that comments section.
Hey Thursday,
Your comment got eaten up by my spam filter for some reason so I never got to respond to it. I have some ideas about blacks, genetics and the IQ issue and plan to post on it sometime soon. I do think it’s something people should discuss openly and honestly, but in this current climate where everyone is afraid to discuss things that may hurt another person’s feelings it’s not easy.