November 30, 2014 Public opinion polls – which rule the political world – have spoken. Sixty-two percent of whites and 22% of blacks agree with the decision of the Grand Jury not to indict Officer Wilson in the shooting of a black teenager, Michael Brown. This is because both groups have different experiences with the police. When I was 17 years old, I locked my keys in our car. Back then (1973), there were no electronic devices to open a car door. There was a golf-tee-shaped lock that protruded from the top of the door that was located at the base of the window. Lifting this lock unlocked the door. Thus, I walked into a local business and borrowed a coat hanger. I bent the coat hanger and created a loop that I then pushed through the intersection of the window and the door jamb. I was in the process of lifting the lock when I was interrupted by a police office. “What are you doing?” he said. I was in a foul mode as my congenital absent-mindedness frequently put me in similar contretemps. I sneered at the cop. “What do you think I’m doing?” He said. “It looks like you are breaking into the car.” I … [Read more...]

Printed in the Torrington Register on November 10, 1994   The cumulative frustration caused by the failure of government intervention to create an integrated egalitarian society is now boiling over in academia and on our op-ed pages.   A new book, “The Bell Curve” by Charles Murray and Richard Herrstein, resurrects the concept that intelligence has a racial component and further postulates that a disproportionate percentage of African-Americans are thus genetically incapable of entering the middles class. It fails to acknowledge how misguided social policies have decimated the black family and how structural changes in our economy make it virtually impossible for the working poor, who are disproportionately black, to afford safe housing and health insurance.   Especially disturbing is the pseudoscience used to further this thesis. While there is a difference between the IQs of blacks and whites, this difference narrows with increased economic status, yet does not close completely. Therefore, it is concluded that the difference is genetic. This fails to account fo the fact that our popular culture promotes blacks as either entertainers or athletes, … [Read more...]