A prominent conservative magazine has canned a longtime contributing writer, who had a history of authoring racially touchy pieces, after he penned a blatantly racist column for an online Libertarian magazine that urged non-black parents to educate their children to avoid black people.
Writer John Derbyshire was axed from the National Review – the legendary conservative magazine founded by William F. Buckley, Jr. – over the weekend amid outrage over a column he wrote last Thursday for Taki’s Magazine titled “The Talk: The Nonblack Version.”
In the piece, Derbyshire recounts columns and articles he read in the wake of the shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin that centered on “The Talk” – conversations black mothers and fathers have with their teenage children about how they should dress, walk, talk and act to avoid dangerous confrontations with whites and law enforcement.
“The Talk” was born of an era – especially in the South – when blacks were routinely lynched, murdered, or gone missing following some perceived infraction against a white person. Fourteen-year-old Emmett Till was murdered in Mississippi in 1955 for allegedly whistling at a white woman.
But Derbyshire writes that “There is a talk that nonblack Americans have with their kids.” He said his children, now 19 and 16, have had the nonblack talk in bits and pieces and added that “If I were to assemble it into a single talk, it would look something like the following.”
The column then reels off a list of do’s and don’ts that includes avoiding “concentrations of blacks not all known to you personally,” staying “out of heavily black neighborhoods,” and “if planning a trip to a beach or amusement park at some date, find out whether it is likely to be swamped with blacks on that date (neglect of that one got me the closest I have ever gotten to death by gunshot).”
Derbyshire advises not attending “events likely to draw a lot of blacks,” and “if you are at some public event at which the number of blacks suddenly swells, leave as quickly as possible.”
“Do not settle in a district or municipality run by black politicians,” Derbyshire continues. “Before voting for a black politician, scrutinize his/her character much more carefully than you would a white” and if “accosted by a strange black in the street, smile and say something polite but keep moving.”
He estimates that about five percent of blacks are “ferociously hostile to whites and will go to great lengths to inconvenience or harm us” and “a much larger cohort of blacks – around half – will go along passively if the five percent take leadership in some event. They will do this out of racial solidarity, the natural willingness of most human beings to be led, and a vague feeling that whites have it coming.”
Though the column appeared in Taki’s, the racist content was too much for National Journal National Review editor Rich Lowry who made the decision to sever ties with the controversial writer who has described himself as a “mild to tolerant” racist.
“His latest provocation, in a webzine, lurches from the politically incorrect to the nasty and indefensible,” Lowry wrote in a blog post headlined “Parting Ways.”
“We would have never published it, but the main reason that people noticed it is that it is by a National Review writer. Derb is effectively using our name to get more oxygen for views with which we’d never associate ourselves otherwise. So there has to be a parting of the ways. Derb has long danced around the lines on these issues, but this column is so outlandish it constitutes a kind of letter of resignation. It’s a free country, and Derb can write whatever he wants, wherever he wants. Just not in the pages of NR or NRO, or as someone associated with NR any longer.”
Derbyshire, who is undergoing chemotherapy for chronic lymphomatic leukemia, told the online site “Gawker” that he was “a bit sad” about his separation from the National Review.
Asked if he could do it again, would he write the “Nonblack Talk” piece, Derbyshire replied: “I never ponder counterfactuals.”
