While part of me saw and understood the rationale behind John Derbyshire's white version of "the talk" that got him booted from National Review Online—he was mostly arguing from statistics*—I still found Derbyshire's article odious and, well, racist. Now here is Matt Walsh, making essentially the same argument Derbyshire did. Is Walsh being any more reasonable? You be the judge.
I think statistics have their uses in argumentation, e.g., when talking about black-on-black gun violence versus police-on-black gun violence. Heather Mac Donald (yes, that's how she spells her last name) uses stats to make her arguments all the time, and she does an impressive job of it. But that's all being done in a rarefied, academic context—something like a God's eye point of view. What Derbyshire and Walsh are talking about is practical considerations when you're walking down the street, and to me, basing your judgment of a person on stats as opposed to on individual merit comes awfully close to judging people as a racist might. Feel free to try to change my mind in the comments.
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*I talk about the irony of conservatives using statistics to judge people here.
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