Here are some remarks I delivered at a panel discussion organized by the Black Law Students’ Association (…)
When the organizers first emailed me to suggest I appear on the panel (…) I said that I was flattered to be invited to speak at such a prestigious institution, and that, having two teenage children, I am always glad to get out of the house for a few hours; but that racial disparities in education and employment have their origin in biological differences between the human races. Those differences are facts in the natural world, like the orbits of the planets.
They can’t be legislated out of existence; nor can they be “eliminated” by social or political action.
That there are natural, intractable differences between the human races seems apparent to me on both rational and empirical grounds.
Mingling for refreshments afterwards, I found the BLSA students a friendly bunch. The only rancor was from some older guy, either a mature student or an academic, who said that my ideas were “old” and my remarks “hurtful.” Apparently he thought that one or other, or both, of these observations invalidated the truth content of what I had said. Everyone else was either pleasant, or just ignored me.
As I said, not really very exciting.
***
OK, I’ll say it:
Is it possible that, as per Derb’s own thesis, some people in the audience just didn’t understand what he’d said?
