Young black men in America are eight times more likely than young white men to commit murder and five times more likely to commit other violent crimes. On the basis of that data, is it fair for me to conclude that a young black man standing in front of me is a mugger and murderer?

No, of course not. The vast majority of black men are not violent. Logically speaking, general information about a group is unreliable evidence about an individual. Legally speaking, it’s inadmissible as evidence in court. Morally, it’s racist.  

Racism is hard to overcome because in an anthropological sense it’s quite natural. Our DNA has programed us to be wary of unfamiliar faces. Back on the savanna, unfamiliar faces were from other tribes, many of which were unfriendly. Hominins whose DNA did not include this programing tended not to propagate it.

You can see the wariness of unfamiliar faces in infants. The first few times they see a person of another race, they’re confused. In immature minds, and many mature ones, confusion produces fear. That’s instinctive.  

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James Jordan was a serviceman and then a textile worker. He studied mechanics under the G.I. Bill and married the former Deloris Peoples. They loved their children.
One son was athletic. James taught and encouraged him. In baseball the kid was good, but in basketball he was extraordinary.

After the son grew up, James was murdered as he slept in his car alongside a highway on a road trip. His body was dumped in a swamp and recovered 10 days later, badly decomposed and identifiable only by dental records. His murderers looted his car.

Among the items the murderer’s stole were two NBA Championship rings given James by that son, Michael.

MJ lives in rarified air with Muhammad Ali, Wayne Gretzky and Pele. He’s one of the very greatest.

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Back when we thought the way to end racism was to make people less conscious of race, social engineers proudly pronounced that there’s actually no such thing as race anyway.

From the outset, this was socially well-intentioned but scientifically silly. Society long ago classified people on the basis of their appearance or “phenotypes.” White (formerly called Caucasian) people generally look different than black (formerly called negroid) people who look different than Asians and so on. This difference in appearance is not a “social construct.” It’s real and it’s measurable and it relates to different geographic origins and ancestry.

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A black writer recently asserted in a headline that 99% of black men are misogynistic.

I think the true figure is less than 99%. But the writer has a point, even if he exaggerated to make it. Black male rap lyrics, for example, are notoriously demeaning to women. Curiously, blacks don’t demand a stop to them.

Black men’s disrespect towards women seems directed mostly toward black women and less toward white women. It’s generally known and the data show that black men are the demographic most likely to date and marry outside their race. About 25% of black men marry outside their race, compared to only 7% of white men and 16% of Asian men. That 25% figure of black men marrying outside their race is more than double the 12% of black women who do so.

(This raises a tangential question that must be depressing for black women: How are they supposed to find husbands of any color if black men marry whites far more than black women marry whites and far more than white and Asian men marry black women? Is this scarcity of husbands for black women part of the reason that 77% of black babies are born to unwed mothers?)

I raise these points not to provoke a sensitive race discussion, but a political one. Can Kamala Harris, a black woman, get black men to vote for her?

Or a placebo. As I indicated in last week’s column, I volunteered and have been chosen to participate in the clinical trials of a COVID vaccine. Yesterday I received the first injection, despite the exhortations and exclamations of the anti-vaxxers.

About 30,000 patients are in the trials for this vaccine developed by pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and its partners. (Big Pharma is evil until we need a new life-saving drug, huh?)

The particular clinic that injected me is a third-party clinical trials company engaged by Pfizer. It’s performing about 200 injections over the course of six weeks. That means there are hundreds of such clinics around the country. So far, my clinic has done 30. Continue reading →

A recent Instagram chat (pretty hip!) between Joe Biden and his President-in-Waiting, Kamala Harris, was filmed by the networks at Democratic Campaign Headquarters, otherwise known as Joe’s basement.

Alert viewers of the footage (which of course does not include any modern journalists) noticed two things. One, Joe was holding his iPhone upside down. Two, Joe had a set of talking points in front of him in about 40-point font.

I have now examined the footage carefully and found between the lines of the talking points the entire Democratic Platform. In an exclusive from the Aspen Beat, here it is. Continue reading →

I’ve been called an idiot and a traitor for this. An idiot for taking a small chance on a vaccine that looks very effective and safe in clinical trials so far, and a traitor for turning against some of my tribe who think the virus is a hoax.

And then there’s the anti-vaxxers.

My decision is mostly for selfish reasons. As a 64-year-old man in reasonable health, I’m tired of being locked down. I want to see my adult daughters and friends without them or me worrying that we’ll transmit the virus. I used to travel a lot and I want to be able to resume that legally and safely.

Only slightly less selfishly, I want to be part of a pioneering effort to defeat this thing. Our parents and grandparents beat polio, measles, smallpox and mumps. Our generation will beat this disease too. This virus picked the wrong host.

Lastly, my participation might be good for humanity is a small way. We need people not to cower but to step up. Brilliant scientists have developed these vaccines at warp speed – they’ll go down with Jonas Salk and the polio vaccine – but now they need help.

They need patients. Preferably, patients of the demographic that are susceptible to the disease who will present a real test of the vaccine. I can be one such patient.

The scientists are the real heroes, but I too can be a hero, albeit a teeny, tiny, itsy, bitsy one.

Here’s how it works. Continue reading →

People today have more wealth and leisure time than ever, and they work less than ever. But depression rates are at an all-time high. Let’s consider why.

People spend their abundant wealth and free time on recreation. It’s fun to ski, drink, romance, and even watch TV, play video games and preen/protest.

People often define those fun recreational activities as “life” and the less-fun activities that pay for those fun recreational activities as “work.” Almost by definition, people find recreation more fun than work.

Work consequently takes a backseat to their recreational “life.” They don’t work hard and don’t achieve much. Their half-hearted work produces half-assed results.

That’s OK, they tell themselves, because happiness lies in fun. And fun lies in recreation, not work.

But they’re wrong. Continue reading →