The Last Ditch -- DOUGLAS OLSON -- Blood and chocolate -- letter

www.thornwalker.com/ditch/olson_chocolate_lte.htm


To Mr. Olson's article.
 
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To the editor ...

In March 2005 you posted a critical letter you had received, and in your introduction on the letters page you asked for comments on it, so here goes.

Let's put aside the anger, the vulgarity, and the grammar/punctuation of the letter. "Unsigned" obviously is upset at something he read at The Last Ditch and is accusing you of racism. I've found some content on your site to which he could be referring if he were a relativistic time traveler, namely Douglas Olson's column "Blood and chocolate" (February 20, 2007), in which Mr. Olson uses terms such as "ethnic cleansing" in the context of New Orleans's being "somewhat overwhelmingly less black." This tone permeates the article and makes it difficult to read. Give District Attorney Eddie Jordan ("a Negro") a break. He wants to prosecute criminals, and he doesn't seem to care about their race. Why should Mr. Olson care? Why is his entire column framed in terms of race? Again I quote, "As the [New York Times] article makes quite clear while carefully avoiding mention of race, the simple, overwhelming truth is that negritude — not drugs — is the real cause of the mass murder."

You may think that this is an objective report on the causes of crime in New Orleans. If you do, please think again. Or put up some articles about meth labs in the Midwest where the makers, sellers, and users are all whites. Perhaps race is not a decisive factor in crime, while economic status is.

I came to your website via Ronn Neff's eloquent eulogy of Don Lavoie, who was a close friend of mine. I don't think that he (or Virgil Storr, for that matter) would endorse the tone, or the implications, or the conclusions of the Douglas Olson article.

Neither should you.

Sincerely,
Alan Aho
March 28, 2007
 

Douglas Olson replies

Mr. Aho misunderstands the purpose of an opinion column. Unlike the New York Times, I do not pretend that my piece is "an objective report on the causes of crime in New Orleans." It is an analysis, based on a lifetime of observation of racial and ethnic differences. Whether your correspondent wants to acknowledge it or not, blacks and crime go together like a horse and carriage.

It is not a coincidence that every "murder capital" of the United States over the past 40 years is overwhelmingly black — D.C., Atlanta, Detroit, New Orleans. It is no coincidence that the crime rate has gone down in recent years in the District of Columbia while it has correspondingly skyrocketed in neighboring Prince Georges County, Md., where so many of the city's former black residents have moved. It is not a coincidence that black neighborhoods are the most dangerous areas in Minneapolis, Paris, London, Toronto, Berlin, and every other city throughout the world.

If Mr. Aho will throw off the blindfold of pro-black bigotry placed on him by the media and our "politically correct" culture, the truth is there to see. Both the New York Times and I have written biased columns on New Orleans. The difference is that I am upfront about my bias (which is based on fact), while the Times hides its bias behind a tissue of excuses and lies.

For more than a generation the Times has been deliberately obscuring the connection between race and crime, and painting rosy racial pictures of the future. Yet every story like the one discussed in my column — and they are legion — proves the Times wrong and me correct: crime continues to be rampant in black cities, despite all the welfare payoffs, improved educational opportunities, black elected officials, "compassionate" courts, and anti-white discrimination euphemized as "affirmative action."

All the bias of all the "respectable" newspapers and media outlets in the world, and all the solemn faith of its dupes, cannot change the grim facts about race and crime.

April 28, 2007
 

Nicholas Strakon replies

I am a racist. Let's get that out of the way. Now, I do prefer the term racial realist for its enhanced educational value, but I don't blanch at the plainer version. I believe that distinctive, biologically based differences exist among the races of man, and that they have important and predictable implications for the ability, temperament, and behavior of people en masse. I believe further that awareness of those differences has cautionary value — possibly even life-saving value — when we encounter individuals who are strangers to us.

I will continue to write on "racially charged" subjects, which have become especially urgent to address over the past half-century, a period during which the national ruling class has sought to destroy our freedom of association, impose official anti-white discrimination, and foster anti-white cultural assumptions, all under the false and absurd rubric of egalitarianism.

I encourage all the TLD writers, including the brave Mr. Olson, to continue addressing these issues.

Anent Mr. Aho's reference to the meth scene, which is indeed very big not just in the Midwest but all over the country, it is certain that both black and white crime would decline if the state's notion of drug "crime" were abolished. From what Mr. Aho writes, it doesn't sound as though he believes that black crime would decline more than white crime.* But if the rates for both races fell by the same percentage, the black crime rate would still far outstrip that of whites. I understand that these observations do not touch on Mr. Aho's argument from poverty, but I think they are worth making nonetheless.

* During the cocaine craze some years ago, given the size of the industry it is hard to deny that a large proportion of the Negroes' and Hispanics' customers was white.

April 28, 2007
 

Ronn Neff comments

Mr. Aho writes:

"I came to your website via Ronn Neff's eloquent eulogy of Don Lavoie, who was a close friend of mine. I don't think that he ... would endorse the tone, or the implications, or the conclusions of the Douglas Olson article."

I suspect that Mr. Aho is right: Dr. Lavoie would probably not endorse the tone or the implication or the conclusions of Mr. Olson's article. In fact, I suspect that he would have been fairly uncomfortable with things I myself have written and perhaps with the general thrust of The Last Ditch.

That does not diminish my respect for his work or the value of his insights. For that matter, it does not diminish my respect for the work of Mr. Olson or the value of his insights.

It is always a disappointment when one's friends and those whom one admires disagree with one. I remember well the disappointment I felt when the website of the Nockian Society refused to link to TLD back in the earliest days of its Internet existence.

Nevertheless, we have to learn to weather disappointments in this world and to remember that they do not constitute valid arguments. It is truth, not the approval of others, that is the impetus behind TLD's work. Of course, if Dr. Lavoie were with us to offer arguments relevant to TLD's work, I am sure they would have sufficient merit to consider. But I believe he would be the first to agree that his (imputed) posthumous disapproval is not of such merit.

April 29, 2007

Ronn Neff is senior editor of The Last Ditch.
 

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