PJ Media

13. C:
[...]
I think that people who live in glass houses ought not throw bricks. I looked at some stats myself.
-86% of White victims were killed by whites
-Whites are more likely to kill a family member
-Whites are more likely to commit infanticide
-Whites are more likely to commit eldercide
I found this information at http://ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/homicide/race.htm. If I look at the stats, I can paint a pretty negative picture. If I misrepresent the facts, I can make them sound worse. I am dismayed by the crime rates inthe Black community. It is amusing that when these stats are used to put Blacks down or in their place, the correlations between poverty and violence is not pointed out. Nor is the idea that if a person is going to commit a violent act, that act will usually be against their own regardless of race.

In theory, there is a big difference between outright misrepresentation (as you have rather humorously done with the DoJ statistics) and intellectual shallowness (i.e those who look at the DoJ stats without digging deeper into circumstances like poverty). The two (falsification and idiocy) often overlap – Climategate is a perfect example. But one should also bear in mind what happens when researchers do try to dig deeper – for example, the outrage manufactured in the 90′s over The Bell Curve. The problem with all stats (particularly in the social “sciences” ) is that they look only at broad groupings, and are heavily influenced by our own preconceptions and desired outcomes, and completely ignore the individual and his unique characteristics.

As for great poets, trying to determine whether a poet qualifies as “great” is really more a matter of history than anything else – their greatness doesn’t exist in isolation, but in how deep, broad, and lasting their influence is, which in turn is heavily affected by how successful their culture is over time. But it’s not a simple piggy-back ride for the artists; those that last are those that both reflect and influence their cultures. (I should probably use the term “creative people” rather than “artists”, since not to include people like Newton and Einstein is to miss some of the most important contributors to cultural evolution).

As for the black poets you specifically mention, my own guess (and it is just a guess) is that they probably range in greatness along the same measure as their contemporary white poets, which is at best, minor. Certainly they lack the expressive power of (say) a Whitman, and they seem to reflect the same aesthetic decline found in other contemporary arts (cf painting). (By the early 1900′s, the really bright people who had the courage and interest to break boundaries were investing their efforts in the sciences, not the arts; what remained in the arts has been pretty much reduced to luddism…)