Race Matters Under Review
Race Matters Under Review Evidently The Weekly Standard has a highly unusual (if not unique) "don't ask, don't tell" policy in assigning book reviews. Dinesh D'Souza had a glaring conflict of...
...Frankly, any group that can make NOW do the shimmy shake can't be all bad...
...His historical analysis was pedestrian at best and laughable at worst...
...Rev James Barker Elmont, NY As one who reads everything about evangelicals, I simply cannot praise Matt Labash's article enough...
...2:9...
...The Council for Basic Education has always prided itself on its independence and insistence upon excellence...
...But skeptical readers can open the volume themselves and stare at the 76 tables and many other data...
...The apostle Paul put it this way: "I do not frustrate the grace of God: for if righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain" (Gal...
...D'Souza accuses us of attempting to curry favor with "liberal reviewers"—a studied insult to scholars such as Alan Wolfe who reviewed our work in The New Republic and certainly cannot be pushed around by "posturing...
...Further, D'Souza does not explain in what sense white counterparts are comparable if the groups are uncompetitive in every area...
...Ours is indeed an optimistic book— and Sowell shares our optimism...
...Would it fit within the budget of The Weekly Standard to send a complimentary copy of this issue to the few remaining members of the National Organization for Women...
...Dave Anderson Granger, IN Semitic Semantics Mitchell G. Bard's otherwise excellent article is marred by an imprecise use of the word "Palestinian" to describe the Arabs who were, in 1947, residents in what is now Israel ("The Palestinian Welfare State," Oct...
...D'Souza complains that we attack only extremists who see no black progress over the past decades...
...D'Souza had written a good first book—a solid journalistic account of the p.c...
...It is true, we didn't make a great effort to document the point in the book, because the literature on race is so heavily skewed in the liberal direction...
...First, not one single panelist who serves on the two advisory panels for mathematics and reading stayed at the Four Seasons Hotel...
...Thomas J. Meeks Petersburg, VA Holding out the Promise Ienjoyed Matt Labash's "What Is— Or Are—the Promise Keepers...
...We do not name "a single reputable conservative" who actually espouses the "see no evil" position, D'Souza charges...
...As far as Labash's sarcastic crack about "your daughter's hemline" is concerned, allow me to remind him that the Bible teaches that women should "adorn themselves in modest apparel" (I Tim...
...Michael Cromartie Washington, DC Matt Labash's piece was an excellent examination of a group that many pundits have trouble dealing with...
...To dismiss our carefully considered views as pious or frivolous is in itself frivolous—as well as insulting to our command of statistical analyses...
...Sowell is certainly our model of a scholar, and we fully embrace his views, as should have been evident from a cursory reading of the book...
...He hails Herrnstein and Murray's The Bell Curve as advancing "serious claims based on a wealth of data" without noting the wealth of serious objections raised by serious scholars to the same work...
...The meeting was consistent with these principles...
...It was theologically sound, historically accurate, and politically nuanced...
...Martin Luther King Jr.'s movement, D'Souza argued, because their commitment to "the code of the gentleman" prevented them from arguing publicly that blacks were innately inferior...
...It is a "see no evil" view, for example, to make the astounding claim that the South's Jim Crow system—perfectly constructed to deliver a message of blacks as a lesser breed—was actually "designed to encourage and preserve" black self-esteem...
...Independent Baptists are too busy evangelizing a lost and dying world to waste time hanging around football stadiums bouncing beach balls, listening to insipid "Christian rock music," and enduring inane psychobabble from "nerf theologians" like Gary Smalley...
...The word has no ethnic basis...
...While CBE's costs and overhead for management of the technical panels are indeed reimbursed by the government, as a non-profit organization we do not "earn a tidy sum...
...Would that only liberal extremists were ignorant of the story of astonishing black advancement, beginning in the 1940s— a story that we ourselves did not know until we wrote the book...
...The British army unit "His Majesty's Palestinian Brigade" was a Jewish force, the Palestinian Philharmonic was the forerunner of the Israel Symphony, and even the redoubtable Jerusalem Post was known as the Palestinian Post prior to 1948...
...It was following the Fez Summit that the Arab states engaged the J. Walter Thompson Company in New York to polish their image—one that was clearly understood at the time to be 22 Arab states facing tiny Israel...
...Payback time, is how we read his review of our work...
...The Four Seasons was used only for meeting space and meals...
...I agree with Bob Diehl that we are in a war, but I'm afraid he may be on the wrong side...
...8, 1995) and was harshly critical of it...
...It describes middle-class blacks as "uncompetitive with their white counterparts on virtually every measure of academic achievement and economic performance...
...We were satisfied, after a conversation, that D'Souza would still be a fair reviewer of the Thernstroms' book...
...D'Souza also devoted much effort to dispelling what he calls "the myth" that the "civil rights movement represented a triumph of justice and enlightenment over the forces of Southern racism and hate...
...He concluded his career with the Pittsburgh Alleghenies, forerunners of the Pirates...
...We refrained, in our book, from once again attacking D'Souza directly, but the first third of our work is an implicit answer to him (and others) who try hard to ignore America's terrible history of racial subjugation...
...From the destruction of the Temple —when Judea was renamed Philistina as an additional Roman affront—until 1973, the word "Palestinian" meant Jew...
...Lionel Chetwynd Los Angeles, CA It's for the Children Iam writing to clarify some misunderstandings about the advisory-panel meeting for voluntary national tests ("Clinton Contractors Dis Congress," Scrapbook, Oct...
...The Weekly Standard is one of the very few publications with a balanced view of the Middle East...
...If Bill McCartney is sincere—and many of us have our doubts—then he needs to consider that the Bible teaches holiness, the preeminence of the local church, and separation from worldliness...
...While the error is trivial, we must retain our high standards in the era of Clinton...
...Rather, CBE was struck by the enthusiasm that the panelists voiced...
...Christopher T. Cross President Council for Basic Education Washington, DC...
...He makes no relevant distinction here—groupism again—and suggests that history, schools, social networks, the welfare system, and the relative return on human capital have little to do with behavior...
...However, as a member of the Society for American Baseball Research, I must offer a correction to one flaw in Labash's piece...
...They have the statistical information with which to work—hard data that are sorely lacking in D'Souza's own writing on race...
...If they see a different story in the numbers, we welcome their analysis...
...Evangelist Billy Sunday played major league baseball with the franchise that became the Chicago Cubs...
...The company's advice was to invert the David and Goliath image by appropriating the name "Palestinian" to describe all Arabs with geographical ties to what is now Israel...
...Panelists stayed at the Georgetown Suites, which honors the government rate...
...wars in higher education—but he simply lacked the necessary training to do justice to the subject of race...
...2:21...
...As the Council for Basic Education recruited panelists and later advised them of the meeting date, there was no indication from the panelists of any nervousness about the timing of the meeting...
...True fundamentalists are not "legalistic...
...This may be convenient, but it is also absurdly reductionist...
...On the question of Herrnstein and Murray, yes, we are among many good scholars who do not find the concept of IQ useful, for reasons we explain in the book...
...Virtually all of our overhead costs are used to support our mission of advocating a strong liberal-arts education for all children...
...Legalism is contrary to the doctrine of grace, and fundamentalists preach salvation by grace...
...Stephan Thernstrom Abigail Thernstrom Cambridge, ma The Editors respond: Dinesh D'Souza did indeed inform us, when we asked him to write on the Thern-stroms' book, that his volume The End of Racism had been the subject of an unfavorable assessment by Stephan Thernstrom...
...Moreover, elite southern whites were unable to offer "intellectual resistance" to Dr...
...And we think he was...
...The "nuanced position" that he identifies presumably includes himself, but in any case ranges from Herrnstein and Murray to Thomas Sowell...
...One of us had reviewed his book, The End of Racism, for the Times Literary Supplement (Dec...
...A second inaccuracy is your claim that participants were nervous about the timing of the meeting, prior to congressional approval...
...He also asserts that we "face a more serious challenge" in dealing with a position "more nuanced" than that of liberal extremists...
...And in more than several places, it was hysterically funny...
...He made one pitching appearance in his career as well...
...It is understandable that the Thernstroms would be disappointed with D'Souza's review, but the differences between them seem to us to be a disagreement between serious writers considering a difficult subject...
...Oct...
...The team was known as the White Stockings and Colts while Sunday played there...
...Dinesh D'Souza's review of America in Black and White answers more questions than it raises—and does so sloppily...
...Life is not a football game that divides groups into winners and losers...
...6), but I have one major complaint...
...He refers to attitudes and behavior within the African-American community as the principal remaining obstacle to continued black progress...
...That advancement is fully documented with statistical data that cannot be found in any other single volume...
...But forgive the quibbling...
...Finally, CBE took tremendous care in bringing to the table a diverse group of individuals to serve on the two panels...
...Such group-ism is offensive...
...But if D'Souza really wants chapter and verse, we can quote at length from The End of Racism, which he presumably considers "reputable" enough...
...Dinesh D'Souza had a glaring conflict of interest in agreeing to review our America in Black and White ("Cockeyed Optimists," Oct...
...During the meeting, advisory-panel members were actively engaged in substantive and productive discourse...
Vol. 3 • October 1997 • No. 6
