Three hypotheses

In which various explanative hypotheses for the recent black riots are contemplated:

Hypothesis One: Different races—different local varieties of Homo sap., that have followed different paths through evolutionary space for many, many generations, end up with different distributions on most heritable traits. That includes traits of intelligence, behavior, and personality.

So in a multiracial society that rewards certain traits and penalizes others, different races will precipitate out, average-average, at different social levels. American blacks, for example, with low average IQ, low average impulse control, and high average inclinations to antisocial behavior, will tend to pool at the bottom of society, in slums and prisons and criminal gangs.

The blacks thus pooled, being too dimwitted to understand anything about biology or statistics, will attribute their sorry plight to the malice of hostile agents. They’ll develop a lot of anger against those agents, the anger occasionally breaking out in riots.

Their attributing their crappy life outcomes to the machinations of evil agents is itself a hypothesis of course, one that you can set down on the table next to mine. It’s Hypothesis Two.

Here’s one black guy expounding Hypothesis Two last Saturday, one of the Milwaukee rioters.

It’s sad, because, you know, this what happen because they not helping the black community. They, like, you know … The rich people, they got all this money, and they not, like, you know, trying to give us none.

Here’s Hypothesis Three, offered by The New York Times. This one must be serious stuff, backed by rock-ribbed deep social analysis, to be aired in such a prestigious outlet. Right?


Tackling the root causes of crime would be the most effective way to make the community safer and calm tensions, Reggie Moore, Director of Milwaukee’s Office of Violence Prevention, said. “I think it’s a matter of having a dual conversation about what justice needs to look like in this particular situation, but also the broader conversation of what a just community looks like,” Mr. Moore said.

Brilliant! Tackle the root causes of crime! Have a conversation!—a dual conversation! And then a broader conversation!

With a penetrating intellect like Mr. Moore’s on the job, we should have the problem solved in no time. How can it be that, in these fifty years since the long hot summer of 1967, how can it be that no-one ever thought we need to tackle the root causes of crime? And have a conversation? It’s so simple!

So there you are: three hypotheses about what causes riots.

Hypothesis One: cranky old Derb with his stupid, bigoted, so-called “race realism.”
Hypothesis Two: It’s the fault of rich people not giving money to the black community.
Hypothesis Three: It’s our failure to tackle the root causes of crime and to have conversations.

Take your pick.

Well, regardless of which hypothesis is correct, I think we all know what the answer is: education.