Tag Archives: Discrimination

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Guest post: Christians should oppose Black Lives Matter

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The following is a guest post by a friend of mine who is also a software engineer.

The Problems with Black Lives Matter

All over Facebook I’ve seen naïve Christians posting Black Lives Matter (BLM) material, hashtags, and even donation links. According to their official statements BLM aims to:

  1. “Disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure”
  2. Foster a “queer‐affirming network” and “freeing ourselves from the tight grip of heteronormative thinking,” instead of helping people escape LGBT lifestyles and live as God intended.
  3. “A national defunding of police,” BLM is a member of M4BL which also calls for abolishing prisons.
  4. BLM parent group M4BL is pro-abortion: “we demand reproductive justice that gives us autonomy over our bodies and our identities.”
  5. BLM parent group M4BL is anti-capitalist. The alternative to capitalism is removing the freedom to buy and sell and putting the government in charge of resources. When government power is absolute, all checks and balances against evil disappear and atrocities become inevitable. I know of 100 million people who didn’t have a good time in anti-capitalist countries, especially minorities.
  6. BLM finds racism in everything with no concept of forgiveness. While masking the much larger and real causes of black inequality in the US. More on that below.

These goals don’t seem very Christian.

Some Christians say they only support the slogan “black lives matter” but not the organization. They’re probably friends with people who call themselves “National Socialists” and enjoy re-explaining to everyone they meet how it’s not actually the German kind. To each their own. Yet better slogans could be used to support black people.

Avoid the slackidasical “all lives matter” retort. That distracts from the real issues:

Black Inequality

Black inequality in the US is real. But BLM promotes a false narrative, blaming it entirely on modern systemic racism. If that’s true, why are blacks 3 times more likely to receive government assistance than whites? Why are police are about twice as likely to use lethal force against whites under arrest than blacks (although more likely to use non-lethal force against blacks)?

Before getting to the real reasons let’s first dig into that last source. It comes from the left-leaning Center for Policing Equity. The wording in their report focuses on specific localities where the police are harsher on blacks. But the overall data tells a different story. In tables 6 and 7 on page 20, police are 1.73 times more likely to use lethal force against whites under arrest than blacks, and 2.41 times more likely to use lethal force against whites under arrest for violent offences. Black Lives Matter and the left-leaning media would never tell you this.

Don’t police just arrest blacks way more than whites? Yes, absolutely. You can even find stats showing unarmed blacks are 5 times more likely to be killed by police than unarmed whites, a product of being arrested much more frequently. But unfortunately (trigger warning) it’s because in the US, blacks commit significantly more crime:

I looked up the FBI data this meme links to, converted it to rates per million and got the same result. Non-lethal crimes have a similar proportion by race.

What are the Real Causes of Black Inequality?

Perhaps the court systems are racist and blacks are convicted of murder more often? One could speculate so, but murders involve more investigation than most crimes, and you’d have to argue the system is so biased it only makes it appear as if blacks are 12.8 times more likely to kill whites than whites kill blacks. Quite a stretch.

Use careful grace in sharing these stats, as they’re easily abused by the small number of people wishing to paint blacks as an unredeemable, inferior race. Instead consider the better explanations for black inequality:

  1. 2.7 times more black children (65%) grow up in single parent homes than white children (24%). 17% of blacks were born out of wedlock in 1940 but that number is >70% today. Other races also increased but not nearly as much. We know broken families are strongly correlated with poverty, poor education, crime, and many other ills.
  2. As noted, blacks are three times more likely to receive government assistance than whites, a number that’s changed very little in 40 years. If welfare programs lifted people out of poverty, by now shouldn’t we see more than a slight decrease in blacks on welfare? Rather I suspect welfare increases rates of fatherlessness: women don’t need a man when the government pays the bills.
  3. Universities, employers, the government, and the media use “soft racism,” giving special treatment to blacks, sometimes causing an unhealthy and unnecessary inferiority complex.
  4. Due to this persecution narrative, and fear of being called racist, poor behavior among blacks isn’t called out, worsening the broken family cycle. Even being used as an excuse for the poor behavior of the recent rioters. Black CNN journalist Don Lemon received a “firestorm of criticism” for pointing to out-of-wedlock births as a problem among blacks.

I’m curious. Will you argue that fatherlessness leads to negative outcomes among whites, but a 2.7x greater rate among blacks doesn’t significantly increase their negative outcomes? Really?

Perhaps it’s even possible that police target blacks more frequently because these issues actually do lead them to commit more crimes, causing some police to subconsciously be more suspect of blacks? I don’t know if that’s true, but if so who is at fault?

Is Racism Still a Major Issue?

Before continuing please read this piece by conservative commenter David French (white), who adopted his black daughter from Ethiopia. He describes how through many incidents it made him realize racism is still alive and well in America.

Meanwhile, the black economist Thomas Sowell offers a contrary view:

Who’s right? David French says he used to think there were almost no racists. I’m still in that place. I don’t know anyone who is racist other than one or two people I met on strange corners of the internet. After adopting his daughter French discovered that yes, of course racism still exists, outlining several real incidents of bias against her. For example his daughter’s friend said, “My dad says it’s dangerous to go black people’s neighborhoods.” Alt-right trolls even made a cruel meme of his young daughter in a gas chamber.

Such memes are of course reprehensible. But French uses the wrong benchmark. The real question is not if racism exists, but if blacks face greater external hardship than other groups? People who are too smart, dumb, fat, thin, short, tall, attractive, ugly, rich, poor, Christian, or amoral. Or any other category. Almost everyone belongs to at least one. French doesn’t address that question.

Compared to Christian Persecution in the US (Yes, Really)

I can’t answer for most of those groups. But I am a Christian. I’m very glad to live in the US with its many Christian freedoms. I don’t even feel comfortable talking about Christian “persecution” in the US because other parts of the world have it so much worse. Yet there are still examples of anti-Christian discrimination here:

  1. I know a Christian friend who was kicked out of her PhD biology program for being a creationist. An intelligent, articulate, and polite one at that. I used to think people like her must’ve just been belligerent, but I hear similar stories from nearly every creationist or intelligent design proponent I speak to. Many keep their beliefs hidden. Books and documentaries are filled with such stories. Well known professor and textbook author Larry Moran has even called for universities to flunk by default any students who believe in intelligent design: “Flunk the IDiots.” Forbes later wrote a glowing bio of Moran for his stance. Imagine the outrage if Moran called to flunk all black students!
  2. In 2016, hapless Chinese scientists published a paper in the journal PLOS One, stating that the human hand shows “proper design by the Creator.” The remark was in passing and the rest of their paper had nothing to do with the evolution or design. As soon as this was realized, I watched as the backlash unfolded in the comments section. Five editors of PLOS One requested the whole article to be retracted (rather than the wording removed), two of those editors said they’d resign if it wasn’t retracted. Two others said the editor who approved the paper should be fired. And five scientists commented, saying they’d boycott PLOS One. Then the paper was retracted. Even though the Chinese researches explained they only meant to say “mother nature,” and English wasn’t their first language. No other issue with their research was found. That backlash was only for a translation issue. Imagine if they’d been Christians who actually believed God designed life.
  3. Practicing Christians are no longer allowed to hold certain jobs in the United States. A county clerk like Kim Davis cannot in good conscious abet two people into a lifelong commitment to live in sin, yet was jailed for refusing. California once banned all judges who volunteered with the Boy Scouts because the group previously required heterosexual scout leaders.
  4. Many friends often tell me they can’t publicly speak out against homosexual behavior in fear of losing their jobs. I doubt their employers have issue with vegetarians saying meat is murder.
  5. And of course secularists make memes, sometimes violent, mocking Christians all the time. So what.

Imagine if I took the crime stats above and marched around with signs about “white genocide” or “systemic racism” because blacks are more likely to get welfare or whites more likely to be shot while under arrest. That’d make me a complete narcissistic jerk. Or worse if I used it to justify arson, looting, and violence. Yet I’d still be more correct than Black Lives Matter because at least the data supports me.

I don’t think there’s anything special about hardships faced by US Christians. You could make a similarly troublesome list for hardships of unattractive and overweight people, probably worse. I’m not planning any protests for them or for US anti-Christian discrimination. That’s too minor compared to many greater injustices in the world. And please don’t take this and claim I’ve said racism no longer exists. The experiences of David French’s daughter are bad things that need to stop. But unlike in decades past, I’m not convinced it’s currently any worse than hardships faced by any number of other classes of people for a wide variety of reasons.

The Media Amplifies Racism for Profit

A couple weeks ago I posted to Facebook about Israel planning to ban their only Christian news station for proselytizing. Two friends commented that it was a great idea, because Christians indoctrinate people. I get similar comments often. Oh woe is me! But imagine if they’d instead called for banning black history? Call CNN! We found another Amy Cooper!

Although sometimes doing well, George Floyd had a long and sometimes violent criminal record. Nobody thinks he deserved to die. I’m glad the officers involved are being investigated. But put his case in perspective. People do awful things for many reasons. In the United States each year we have:

  • 600,000+ abortions
  • 250,000 deaths from negligent medical errors
  • 15,000 murders
  • 1,500 dead from child abuse.
  • 1,000 suspects killed by police (with 90 to 95% attacking police or another person). Among a total police force of more than 800,000.
  • 85 police officers killed.

Despite all that, the deceptive media amplifies any incident with a white perpetrator and black victim. Everyone knows about George Floyd, but few have heard of Tony Timpa (white), who in 2016 also begged for his life as police suffocated and made fun of him. The media gets away with this bias because almost everyone actually does hate racism, leading to collective outrage. So much that it brings riots, looting, and buildings on fire. Plus news media profit from increased news viewership of these riots. While the media ignores many greater injustices in the previous list.

The leftist media then uses Black Lives Matter as a front to push ridiculous leftist policies like defunding the police. Oh you’re against BLM? Racist.

Black inequality in America is real. If you love people of all races as Christ commands, then you should want to solve this problem. That can only be done if we tackle the real causes, and not the left-leaning media’s exaggerated racism narrative that masks them.

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Why you should read “Up From Slavery” by Booker T. Washington

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Lately, my friends have been very excited that I’m a non-white conservative. They want me to answer the grievances of BLM people, and explain from my own experiences what Christianity and conservative policies have to say about making the lives of non-whites better. My friend Wes recommended “Up From Slavery” by Booker T. Washington to help me focus my thoughts.

Here’s a summary of the book:

Dignity through Labor

Over the course of Up From Slavery, Washington develops the idea and ideal of dignity through labor. For Washington, the gravest aspect of the institution of slavery is the denigration of labor for both blacks and whites. Because the enslaved had no personal investment or return on their labor, they did not complete their work with an attitude toward improvement. Likewise, whites, largely deprived of meaningful labor, were robbed of the ability to achieve self-sufficiency. In both races, this produced personalities and characters that seek to escape labor. Washington emphasizes labor as the only way to make oneself useful in an interdependent, modern society. Throughout the whole of Up From Slavery, Washington searches for and obtains work. Further, once he obtains it, Washington completes all labor to best of his ability, no matter how lowly the task. At the Tuskegee Institute, Washington makes this idea and ideal a foundational ethos. All students who study at the Tuskegee Institute must learn a trade or industry alongside their more traditional academic pursuits. In addition, many of the buildings, most of the furniture, the wagons, and the materials used at the school are produced by students. This level of practical skill and diligence also acts as the foundation of Washington’s theory and program for racial uplift.

Selflessness, Desire to Be Useful to One’s Community

The people that Washington most admires and models himself after are those he labels selfless. Washington defines this as the willingness to work on the behalf of others. For Washington, this is not only about duty or labor, but also about the willingness to do one’s best for the benefit of the collective good. Washington believes that racial prejudice can be overcome if black people make themselves indispensable to their communities and their nation. The brick-making episode provides an example. Though the brick-making enterprise at Tuskegee felled three kilns before successfully producing bricks, the venture eventually proved successful and the school began to sell its bricks on the open market. Washington describes how whites who were unsympathetic or apathetic to the education of blacks and the overall project of the Tuskegee Institute were willing to purchase Tuskegee bricks due to their quality and convenience. Washington suggests that if black race can find their niche in society by fulfilling a need, then they can co-exist peacefully and productively with whites.

Impracticality of Political Agitation

Throughout Up From Slavery, Washington defends his ideas about racial advancement and uplift by subtly undermining the proposals of his critics. Though Washington does not explicitly state his objection to the strategies of specific thinkers like W.E.B. Dubois or even his predecessor, Frederick Douglass, he nevertheless highlights the wastefulness of political agitation for equal rights at every chance he gets. To do this, Washington shows that political agitation results in worse relations and outcomes than those that existed before. For example, when he goes home to Malden after his second year at the Hampton Institute, Washington finds that both the salt-furnace and the coal-mine are not in operation due to worker’s strikes. In Chapter IV, Washington describes how strikers usually spent all their savings during the strikes and returned to work in debt, but at the same wages. He raises the impracticality of political agitation again after his controversial Atlanta Exposition speech. After the success of his speech, he hypothetically asks if a black man would have been invited to give a speech had people agitated to put a black person on the program. He answers in the negative, saying that such opportunities can only arise through merit.

And here’s a summary of his most famous speech:

On September 18, 1895, Booker T. Washington was selected to give a speech that would open the Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta, Georgia. The speech, which is often referred to as the “Atlanta Compromise,” was the first speech given by an African American to a racially-mixed audience in the South. In it, Washington suggested that African Americans should not agitate for political and social equality, but should instead work hard, earn respect and acquire vocational training in order to participate in the economic development of the South. By doing so, eventually, he stated, African Americans would gain the respect of white society and be granted the rights of full citizenship.

There’s a free full audio version of the book, and the full text is online. I recommend this book to people of all races, because as the sexual anarchy brought on by feminism becomes widespread, the majority of the children of tomorrow will face the same kinds of challenges.

I see Washington’s ideas as consistent with a Christian worldview, where we don’t expect to be treated fairly. We expect sinful people to treat us badly. What Christianity says is to be patient, and focus on your relationship with God and loving your neighbor. And one way to love your neighbor is to sell them something valuable that you made through your labor. Another way is to work and save, and give to charity.

Government solutions to problems like racism and poverty aren’t a top priority for Christians. Most of all, we need the freedom to be good, and to do good. That’s priority one. You may not make your life better by being moral and diligent, but it’s rare that doing so causes you to harm yourself. It’s very important that you not harm yourself.

So, this dovetails nicely with my own story. My married non-white parents were not smart enough or willing enough to monitor my education, but they were clear that they wanted me to do well in order to find good-paying work. So I completed my BS and MS in a STEM field, and went to work right away, and I’ve been at it continuously for 22 years now. I save most of what I earn for charity and early retirement.

I’ve never experienced any of the racism or police brutality that American blacks complain about. And that’s because I follow what Washington is teaching. I dress in a clean way that doesn’t communicate danger to others. I’m careful to spend my time reading apologetics, economics and military history. I don’t listen to popular music or watch popular TV or movies. I don’t hang out with people who blame other people for their lack of success.

I got my first job by volunteering to do it for free on Saturdays for 7 months. My first full-time job salary after college was $50,000. Then I got a raise of $6,000 and then a raise of $9,000. I used to work 70 hour weeks in my 20s. I graduated college with $9,000 dollars in the black, because I went to a small local college and lived at home, and never spent any money on alcohol. My net worth is now about $1.35 million. By the way, the secret to becoming wealthy is to not spend money on showing off. You can be very generous to your friends and still get rich. Just never buy anything that is designed to communicate “status” to anyone. And never spend money on alcohol or chasing sex outside of marriage.

At no time did I accept that the problems defined by the secular left were my real problems. And at no time did I accept their “solutions” as real solutions to anything. As black economist Thomas Sowell writes, the “solutions” of the left are not effective at helping people like me. The “solutions” of the left are designed to make leftists feel better, and look more virtuous to others. You are much better off reading the Bible, Christian apologetics, free market economics, American military history, etc., and then respecting what you learn from that in your decision-making. I think that reading the right stuff is even more important than having good parents or attending church.

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Wage gap: are women paid less than men because of discrimination?

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The pay gap is caused by women's own choices
The pay gap is caused by women’s preference for having children

Liberal feminist Hanna Rosin takes a look at this question in the far-left Slate, of all places.

Excerpt:

The official Bureau of Labor Department statistics show that the median earnings of full-time female workers is 77 percent of the median earnings of full-time male workers. But that is very different than “77 cents on the dollar for doing the same work as men.” The latter gives the impression that a man and a woman standing next to each other doing the same job for the same number of hours get paid different salaries. That’s not at all the case. “Full time” officially means 35 hours, but men work more hours than women. That’s the first problem: We could be comparing men working 40 hours to women working 35.

How to get a more accurate measure? First, instead of comparing annual wages, start by comparing average weekly wages. This is considered a slightly more accurate measure because it eliminates variables like time off during the year or annual bonuses (and yes, men get higher bonuses, but let’s shelve that for a moment in our quest for a pure wage gap number). By this measure, women earn 81 percent of what men earn, although it varies widely by race. African-American women, for example, earn 94 percent of what African-American men earn in a typical week. Then, when you restrict the comparison to men and women working 40 hours a week, the gap narrows to 87 percent.

But we’re still not close to measuring women “doing the same work as men.” For that, we’d have to adjust for many other factors that go into determining salary. Economists Francine Blau and Lawrence Kahn did that in a recent paper, “The Gender Pay Gap.”.”They first accounted for education and experience. That didn’t shift the gap very much, because women generally have at least as much and usually more education than men, and since the 1980s they have been gaining the experience. The fact that men are more likely to be in unions and have their salaries protected accounts for about 4 percent of the gap. The big differences are in occupation and industry. Women congregate in different professions than men do, and the largely male professions tend to be higher-paying. If you account for those differences, and then compare a woman and a man doing the same job, the pay gap narrows to 91 percent. So, you could accurately say in that Obama ad that, “women get paid 91 cents on the dollar for doing the same work as men.”

I believe that the remainder of the gap can be accounted for by looking at other voluntary factors that differentiate men and women.

The Heritage Foundation says that a recent study puts the number at 95 cents per dollar.

Excerpt:

Women are more likely than men to work in industries with more flexible schedules. Women are also more likely to spend time outside the labor force to care for children. These choices have benefits, but they also reduce pay—for both men and women. When economists control for such factors, they find the gender gap largely disappears.

A 2009 study commissioned by the Department of Labor found that after controlling for occupation, experience, and other choices, women earn 95 percent as much as men do. In 2005, June O’Neil, the former director of the Congressional Budget Office, found that “There is no gender gap in wages among men and women with similar family roles.” Different choices—not discrimination—account for different employment and wage outcomes.

A popular article by Carrie Lukas in the Wall Street Journal agrees.

Excerpt:

The Department of Labor’s Time Use survey shows that full-time working women spend an average of 8.01 hours per day on the job, compared to 8.75 hours for full-time working men. One would expect that someone who works 9% more would also earn more. This one fact alone accounts for more than a third of the wage gap.

[…]Recent studies have shown that the wage gap shrinks—or even reverses—when relevant factors are taken into account and comparisons are made between men and women in similar circumstances. In a 2010 study of single, childless urban workers between the ages of 22 and 30, the research firm Reach Advisors found that women earned an average of 8% more than their male counterparts. Given that women are outpacing men in educational attainment, and that our economy is increasingly geared toward knowledge-based jobs, it makes sense that women’s earnings are going up compared to men’s.

When women make different choices about education and labor that are more like what men choose, they earn just as much or more than men.