Author: Richard Knight

Jenny Agutter in Walkabout (1971)

1,420 words

This is a follow-up to an earlier article, which began with a look at the theory that sex differences are due not to nature, but to society or men. I’ll skip the preamble this time, nor will I argue that the listed differences are due to nature. Take it from me, they are.

1. When a couple walks hand-in-hand, sometimes the woman leans on the man. You don’t see men leaning on women. (more…)

Prof. Rebecca Walkowitz of Rutgers claims that the only way to deal with racial inequality is to get rid of grammar altogether.

2,276 words

The word “moronic” was never a particular favorite of mine, but a few years ago it started coming to mind increasingly at things I heard people say. At first I thought I must be getting less tolerant, but I eventually concluded that there was indeed a rising tide of moronity. To record the fact, I started making a note of statements that especially triggered me. (more…)

David Starkey

2,070 words

In recent years an attempt was made to reshape Britain on the model of a totalitarian dictatorship. We were constantly being urged to report each other to the authorities.

This was done by the government, which wanted us to denounce our neighbors if they left their houses more than once a day, and by the police, who did all they could to attract reports of “hate incidents.” (more…)

English philosopher John Gray is convinced we’re passing through a big historical moment, but he couldn’t tell you what it is.

1,397 words

1998: What struck me

In 1998 it struck me that our civilization was dying. Moreover, it was dying by its own hand. Our institutions seemed to be bent on doing everything they could to destroy white society and culture, nor was any deception beneath them in their attempts to put a gloss on what they were doing. This degree of racial masochism would not reverse itself, I thought, nor would it be stopped by anything else. We were going to destroy our civilization come what may. (more…)

Woodcut of a slave caravan in the Congo from 1888.

2,808 words

White people commonly respond to demands for reparations for slavery and slave trading by pointing out that it was whites who abolished these things.[1] I don’t know whether they notice that this doesn’t get them the credit from their antagonists that they seem to expect; they certainly don’t appear to see why this is. (more…)

2,644 words

Introduction

Some people think that the sexes only differ because of discrimination, “society,” or “the environment.” Were it not for the way they are treated, their upbringing, or the advertisements they see, women would be just like men. (more…)

Mau Mau leaders.

3,129 words

Introduction

It can be instructive to look at the racial politics of 50 or 60 years ago, so here are three illustrative episodes. The first section below paraphrases six pages of Tom Wolfe’s essay “Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers” (1970). The second summarizes Wikipedia’s article about the Black Power movement (1965-c. 1985). The third gives an account of Afrocentrism (1970 to date). Each shows us a precursor of Black Lives Matter. (more…)

2,730 words

I know a kind person who has achieved a lot. We first met 40 years ago, although for many years we were not in touch. Then we remade contact, and now I don’t think we’re friends anymore. He found my political incorrectness hard to bear. (more…)

St. Louis Police Chief John Hayden

2,514 words

June 1-11, 2020

Introduction

Below are the first few entries in a “BLM diary” I started keeping a week after George Floyd died in May 2020, recording events connected with this event and my thoughts about them. The diary’s introduction is here. (more…)

Sir Francis Galton

1,191 words

Many people believe in innate racial equality, yet I have never seen an argument made for it. All I have seen are attempts to keep people away from the opposite view, whether by calling it racist pseudo-science, saying that racial differences should not be studied, denying that there is anything to study by saying that there are no such things as races, or condemning a belief in racial differences on the grounds that it entails judgements of superiority and inferiority. To see what line it took, I watched a video produced in 2014 at University College London (UCL) about Sir Francis Galton (1822-1911). (more…)

1,211 words

Seeing the fuss being made about the death of George Floyd in the mainstream media in May 2020, and gathering that it was if anything worse on social media, I started keeping a “Black Lives Matter diary” to record subsequent events and my thoughts about them. Two years later, having concluded the diary, I edited it to make it more readable and, dreaming that it might one day be published, wrote an introduction. (more…)

Judith Butler

4,207 words

Introduction

Why do Mary Wollstonecraft, Simone de Beauvoir, and Hannah Arendt appear alongside Aristotle, Leibnitz, and Wittgenstein in a list of the 50 greatest philosophers of all time, which omits Spinoza, Frege, and Popper?[1] Why does a list of 90 supposedly famous philosophers include people like St. Teresa of Avila and Anna Comnena, whoever they were?[2] It is done to be politically correct. The lack of great female philosophers is so complete that it is felt that one or two women must be put on such lists so as to suggest that it is not beyond a woman to think deeply. (more…)

Stokely Carmichael

2,468 words

To understand the term “institutional racism” as a political device, one needs to distinguish its natural from its anti-racist meaning. For most people it denotes pervasive racial discrimination in an institution, but in its anti-racist meaning it denotes the opposite: namely, an institution’s practice of treating all the same without regard to race. How can this be? (more…)