I see that Derbyshire's latest piece got him fired from National Review. Well, National Review has been run by cowards for a while now. Still, there is one part in particular that really deserves condemnation:
In that pool of forty million, there are nonetheless many intelligent and well-socialized blacks. (I’ll use IWSB as an ad hoc abbreviation.) You should consciously seek opportunities to make friends with IWSBs. In addition to the ordinary pleasures of friendship, you will gain an amulet against potentially career-destroying accusations of prejudice.That's a hell of a thing to say to any man who was your friend -- or rather, who ever thought he was. If Derbyshire is advocating such deception -- toward a man you'd dare to call a friend! -- it's the kind of deception I admired him for never making. If he has actually made such deceptions in the past, he's not the man I took him to be from his writings.
Other flaws in the piece are lesser because they lie within the scope of fair play for social commentary: he is guilty of anecdotal evidence for very serious claims, which should expose him to refutation if there is stronger evidence against his positions. But that is fair play: refute him. Or, he makes much of IQ data the value of which is in serious contest; that's a fight that can be had fairly as well. Or, his recommendations for practical action are uncharitable and may be overwrought; but there, too, a response can be formulated. (I went down to Freaknik '93 myself, alone and after midnight, and suffered no ill effects; though several young men did advise me that I would be subject to violence if I did not leave, none of them seemed inclined to actually undertake it. Is that evidence for against his position? Whichever, it's only one more anecdote: where is the data?)
The question isn't whether Derbyshire is a racist: he always proclaimed that he was one. I'm an antiracist myself, but I've known enough racists who were otherwise good men -- even very good men -- that I have come to think that this is something we need to think through much more carefully than we usually do.
One of them we have almost forgotten: the Reverend Mr. Wright. He was a fighting man too, a former Marine, who nevertheless had some hostile and vicious things to say about us and our country. I always liked him, just because he was the kind of man who would call on God to damn me. God probably should. The whole miracle of Easter week is that God did so much to avoid damning those of us who merit it.
Derbyshire has written many things I disagree with, but that's why I always liked him. His word was good: right or wrong, he'd defend the ground where he planted his flag.
If his racism has caused him to travel under false flags, deeming black men unworthy of an honest accounting of his friendship, that is a very great offense. It is worse that it violates a virtue that he had otherwise given every appearance of mastering. It should not, however, prevent us from recognizing that he is currently defending his honest position -- whether he lives or dies on this ground, he has chosen it and will fight for it.