5 Feet of Fury

Jim Goad on ‘Tiger Mother’ Amy Chua

According to Chua and Rubenfeld, Nigerians are one of America’s Eight Master Races. The book’s promotional material states that “Nigerians earn doctorates at stunningly high rates.” Doctorates in what—childhood witchcraft? Baby farming? Penis panics? How to murder someone via telephone? How to transform yourself into a goat? They are highly accomplished in the art of Internet scamming, I’ll give them that. But I suspect that Nigerians may be mere tokens on this list, tossed in at the end to avoid overt accusations of racism. (…)

The third prong of the triple package is “Impulse Control,” which will immediately lead all readers to think about black people no matter how pure their intentions are. I remember a nun in high school telling our sociology class that the reason Negroes don’t succeed in America is because they haven’t mastered the art of “delayed gratification.” She actually used the word “Negroes,” too.

I miss those days.