(no subject)

I had a very nice evening with netmouse (Anne). We chatted for a while, then walked to Miki, a Japanese restaurant in downtown Ann Arbor, near the Blind Pig. I liked it, though Anne thought another Japanese place had better sushi. I mistakenly ordered fried whole sweet shrimp. I didn't know I'd be getting whole sweet shrimp. Anne ordered several items, including chicken wrapped with cheese and asparagus. That was tasty.

After that, we went to Tios and ran into some folks that remind Anne of the Back Table. Some of these folks I'd met earlier in the year at the birthday party Anne threw for me, so I reconnected with them a bit. Then it was getting late, so we headed back to Anne's.

I eventually fell into bed around 1:15. I'm only a bit tired.

(no subject)

Have I said that our right to privacy is going down the drain?

(no subject)

Working for the Man Every Night and Day

Black conservatives, with their politics of self-abuse, have managed to obtain access to the halls of power – at the expense of respect from within the black community.

[Larry] Elder – like Shelby Steele before him, and Walter Williams before that, and Ken Hamblin before that, and Thomas Sowell before him, and Clarence Thomas always – says the kinds of things that most white folks love to hear: essentially, that blacks are the source of their own problems in life. Black cultural pathology and bad behavior, according to these types, explain everything from black poverty rates to black incarceration rates.

What about racism?, you may ask. What racism? To the Larry Elders of the world – and to the whites who have made them media stars entirely out of proportion to their scholarly credentials (or decided lack thereof) – racism is just an excuse black people use to explain away their own internal shortcomings.

Lately, two of the more popular arguments made by black conservatives and the white people who love them are, first, that blacks spend too much money on luxury items they can't afford, refusing to save money the way responsible white folks do; and second, that blacks place too little value on education, preferring to critique learning as selling out or "acting white," and thereby sabotaging their own achievement.

That the evidence for both of these positions is utterly lacking makes little difference, it seems. After all, when one is saying what the Man wants to hear, the Man requires no footnotes or actual corroboration.