A top conservative publication published a column on Wednesday advising young white children to stay away from black people, despite firing a columnist roughly a year ago for writing a very similar piece in a different publication.
Victor Davis Hanson, a scholar of military history and longtime National Review foreign affairs columnist, has a habit of dipping his toes into racially uncomfortable water. In a past column, for example, Hanson accused President Obama of attempting to victimize white people for political gain.
His column today, however, directly echoes the now-infamous piece by self-described “race-realist” John Derbyshire that National Review deemed a firing offense. Derbyshire’s TakiMag piece, the conceit of which was that the author was giving a white equivalent of “The Talk” that black parents give their children about racism, included gems like “avoid concentrations of blacks not all known to you personally,” “stay out of heavily black neighborhoods,” and “if accosted by a strange black in the street, smile and say something polite but keep moving.”
The thrust of Hanson’s argument — black men are criminals and you should stay away from them, my son — is largely indistinguishable from Derbyshire’s. “Be careful if a group of black youths approaches you,” Hanson quoted his father as saying before a move to San Francisco. “After some first-hand episodes with young African-American males,” he continued, “I offered a similar lecture to my own son.”
