Ta-Nehisi Coates's Blog, page 49

The Dark Art of Racecraft

Mordecai Wyatt Johnson, the first black president of Howard University

Dave Weigel is one of my favorite reporters, but I think this piece on Jason Richwine, intelligence research, and "race" deserves a closer look:

Academics aren't so concerned with the politics. But they know all too well the risks that come with research connecting IQ and race. At the start of his dissertation, Richwine thanked his three advisers -- George Borjas, Christopher Jenks, and Richard Zeckhauser -- for being so helpful and so bold. Borjas "helped me navigate the minefield of early graduate school," he wrote. "Richard Zeckhauser, never someone to shy away from controversial ideas, immediately embraced my work. ..." 

Anyone who works in Washington and wants to explore the dark arts of race and IQ research is in the right place. The city's a bit like a college campus, where investigating "taboo" topics is rewarded, especially on the right. A liberal squeals "racism," and they hear the political-correctness cops (most often, the Southern Poverty Law Center) reporting a thought crime.

It is almost as though the "dark arts of race and IQ" were an untapped field of potential knowledge, not one of the most discredited fields of study in modern history. We should first be clear that there is nothing mysterious or forbidden about purporting to study race and intelligence. Indeed, despite an inability to define "race" or "intelligence," such studies are one of the dominant intellectual strains in Western history. We forget this because its convient to believe that history begins with the Watts riots. But it's important to remember the particular tradition that Charles Murray and Jason Richwine are working in. A brief reminder seems in order. 

Here is antebellum "race realist" Josiah Clark Nott writing in 1854 to justify slavery:

That Negroes imported into, or born in, the United States become more intelligent and better developed in their physique generally than their native compatriots of Africa, every one admits; but such intelligence is easily explained by their ceaseless contact with the whites, from whom they derive much instruction; and such physical improvement may also be readily accounted for by the increased comforts with which they are supplied. In Africa, owing to their natural improvidence, the Negroes are, more frequently than not, a half-starved, and therefore half-developed race; but when they are regularly and adequately fed, they become healthier, better developed, and more humanized. Wild horses, cattle, asses, and other brutes, are greatly improved in like manner by domestication : but neither climate nor food can transmute an ass into a horse, or a buffalo into an ox. 

Here is an excerpt from Madison Grant's 1916 study The Passing of a Great Race:

These new immigrants were no longer exclusively members of the Nordic race as were the earlier ones who came of their own impulse to improve their social conditions. The transportation lines advertised America as a land flowing with milk and honey and the European governments took the opportunity to unload upon careless, wealthy and hospitable America the sweepings of their jails and asylums. The result was that the new immigration, while it still included many strong elements from the north of Europe, contained a large and increasing number of the weak, the broken and the mentally crippled of all races drawn from the lowest stratum of the Mediterranean basin and the Balkans, together with hordes of the wretched, submerged populations of the Polish Ghettos. 

Our jails, insane asylums and almshouses are filled with this human flotsam and the whole tone of American life, social, moral and political has been lowered and vulgarized by them. With a pathetic and fatuous belief in the efficacy of American institutions and environment to reverse or obliterate immemorial hereditary tendencies, these newcomers were welcomed and given a share in our land and prosperity.... 

The result of unlimited immigration is showing plainly in the rapid decline in the birth rate of native Americans because the poorer classes of Colonial stock, where they still exist, will not bring children into the world to compete in the labor market with the Slovak, the Italian, the Syrian and the Jew. The native American is too proud to mix socially with them and is gradually withdrawing from the scene, abandoning to these aliens the land which he conquered and developed. 

The man of the old stock is being crowded out of many country districts by these foreigners just as he is to-day being literally driven off the streets of New York City by the swarms of Polish Jews. These immigrants adopt the language of the native American, they wear his clothes, they steal his name and they are beginning to take his women, but they seldom adopt his religion or understand his ideals and while he is being elbowed out of his own home the American looks calmly abroad and urges on others the suicidal ethics which are exterminating his own race.

Another from Lothrop Stoddard's 1922 work The Revolt Against Civilization and the Menace of the Underman:

In Massachusetts the birth-rate of foreign-born women is two and one-half times as high as the birth-rate among the native-bom; in New Hampshire two times; in Rhode Island one and one-half times, the most prolific of the alien stocks being Poles, Polish and Russian Jews, South Italians, and French-Canadians. What this may mean after a few generations is indicated by a calculation made by the biologist Davenport, who stated that, at present rates of reproduction, 1,000 Harvard graduates of to-day would have only fifty descendants two centuries hence, whereas 1,000 Rumanians today in Boston, at their present rate of breeding, would have 100,000 descendants in the same space of time. 

To return to the more general aspect of the problem, it is clear that both in Europe and America the quality of the population is deteriorating, the more intelligent and talented strains being relatively or absolutely on the decline. Now this can mean nothing lees than a deadly menace both to civilization and the race.

More from Lothrop Stoddard's 1921 book The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy:

In the United States it has been the same story. Our country, originally settled almost exclusively by Nordics, was toward the close of the nineteenth century invaded by hordes of immigrant Alpines and Mediterraneans, not to mention Asiatic elements like Levantines and Jews. As a result, the Nordic native American has been crowded out with amazing rapidity by these swarming, prolific aliens, and after two short generations he has in many of our urban areas become almost extinct.

The racial displacements induced by a changed economic or social environment are, indeed, almost incalculable. Contrary to the popular belief, nothing is more unstable than the ethnic make-up of a people. Above all, there is no more absurd fallacy than the shibboleth of the "melting-pot." As a matter of fact, the melting-pot may mix but does not melt. Each race-type, formed ages ago, and "set" by millenniums of isolation and inbreeding, is a stubbornly persistent entity. Each type possesses a special set of characters: not merely the physical characters visible to the naked eye, but moral, intellectual, and spiritual characters as well. All these characters are transmitted substantially unchanged from generation to generation. 

To be sure, where members of the same race-stock intermarry (as English and Swedish Nordics, or French and British Mediterraneans), there seems to be genuine amalgamation. In most other cases, however, the result is not a blend but a mechanical mixture. Where the parent stocks are very diverse, as in matings between whites, negroes, and Amerindians, the offspring is a mongrel -- a walking chaos, so consumed by his jarring heredities that he is quite worthless. We have already viewed the mongrel and his works in Latin America.

Here is Karl Pearson in 1925 looking at Jewish immigration into Britain:

What is definitely clear, however, is that our alien Jewish boys do not form from the standpoint of intelligence a group markedly superior to the natives. But that is the sole condition under which we are prepared to admit that immigration should be allowed. Taken on the average, and regarding both sexes, this alien Jewish population is somewhat inferior physically and mentally to the native population. It is not so markedly inferior as some of those who wish to stop all immigration are inclined to assert. But we have to face the facts; we know and admit that some of the children of these alien Jews from the academic standpoint have done brilliantly, whether they have the staying powers of the native race is another question*. No breeder of cattle, however, would purchase an entire herd because he anticipated finding one or two fine specimens included in it; still less would he do it, if his byres and pastures were already full.

Far from being relegated to some musty corner of intellectual life, the Stoddard tradition, the tradition in which Jason Richwine stands, proved to be an influential force in world history. The Stoddard tradition gave us forced sterilization, "euthanasia" programs, miscegenation bans, and, ultimately, the Holocaust. 

[image error][image error]

One might oppose the Stoddard tradition strictly on its penchant to birth suffering, misery and catastrophe. But one can oppose it for simpler reasons--its practitioners have a nasty habit of being wrong.  Harvard still stands. The Jews of Poland seem to understand American ideas quite well. And it was not the darker races who threatened civilization, but the cannibal Nordics rampaging under the Nazi flag. History has been deeply unkind to Jason Richwine's spiritual ancestors.  It's comforting to think that the academics who show no interest in the "dark arts," do so out of fear of the leftist cabal. More likely they do so to avoid being associated with a specious field of study whose primary contributions to the world include justifying slavery and inspiring genocide. 

Which is not to say these authors should not be read. Pearson is especially instructive. In 1925, he claimed the Jews immigrating to Britain threatened to become a "parasitic race." Taking up similar thinking Jews were subsequently subjected to college quotas all through America. Today the descendants of Pearson tell us that Jews are the intellectual cream of the genetic crop.

This is what Barbara Fields means when she talks about "racecraft." Power must justify itself. When it is proven wrong, it simply recalibrates. Conditions and actions are explained away as the inalterable work of genetics. Yesterday's yellow peril becomes today's model minority. In the 1930s Jews dominated basketball because of their "Oriental background" and "flashy trickiness." Today blacks dominate it through their animal strength and agility.

You see this shifting in Weigel's own article, where are told that Richwine is looking into "race." But Hispanics are not considered an ethnic group, not a race. That is because we have trouble explaining why Matt Yglesias, Sophia Vegara, Carmelo Anthony, Rosario Dawson and Charlie Rangel can be said to comprise a separate "race." One should also have trouble explaining why  Walter White, Whoopi Goldberg, Djimon Hounsou, Jay Smooth, Mordecai Wyatt Johnson and me are the same "race." 

These people do share something in common--their geographic ancestry makes them target them potential targets of white racism. If there is any fact we are warned away from, this is it. Richwine's theories originate from a long tradition of white racism, the tradition of Grant, Stoddard and Pearson.  But to say this is to indict an insupportable portion of our own history and traditions. It is to remind us that the differences between us were constructed by men who sought power, and are maintained just the same.

       

Ban This Fan

USA Today

There's a lot of humor going around about this picture of a Heat fan giving Joakim Noah the middle finger. Behind  it is the notion that athletes are paid to take ill-treatment from the fans. Surely they are paid to take some ill-treatment—trash talk, booing etc. Flipping the bird in a player's face strikes me as taking it too far.

I imagine that had Joakin Noah gave the middle finger to Heat fans on the way out, he would have been fined. And rightly so. Perhaps I'm reacting to the angle or the still picture. But this strikes me as an actual invasion of a person's space, and an invitation for violence. Noah did the right thing and is saying all the right things. But they should strip Filomena Tobias (the fan) of her season tickets.    

'Your Sloppy Scrounging for Views-Ass Remix Is Terrible'

Jay-Smooth takes on the autotuning of Charles Ramsey and does what only he can do. Aisha Harris brings the science and notes the obvious trend of the "hilarious black neighbor."
I get why the initial interview was funny. I don't get why seeing snippets of it over and over and over is funny. Part of this is that very few white people know someone like Charles Ramsey and know him within the context of other black people who exhibit the range of humanity. If you see some of us bougie folks are cringing, that's why.        

'Your Sloppy Scrounging For Views-Ass Remix Is Terrible'

Jay-Smooth takes on the autotuning of Charles Ramsey and does what only he can do. Aisha Harris brings the science and notes the obvious trend of the "hilarious black neighbor."
I get why the initial interview was funny. I don't get why seeing snippets of it over and over and over is funny. Part of this is that very few white people know someone like Charles Ramsey and know him within the context of other black people who exhibit the range of humanity. If you see some of us bougie folks are cringing, that's why.




       

The Ghetto Is Public Policy

Reader Devin Bunten sent me a note expanding on the problems of contract-buying, redlining, and the kind of segregated housing market that characterized America through much of the 20th century:

I wanted to send you a quick note about the thread today, with some added economics. I could/should just post it as a comment, but it's quite late for that thread I'm afraid. You mentioned in the thread that "the vast majority of these guys found themselves buying houses way beyond the appraised value." A house appraisal is only meaningful in the context of the neighborhood, and the switch from an all-white neighborhood to an all-black neighborhood would have changed the appraisal substantially -- which is of course a large part of the point. 

However, that's separate than how economists think about price and value, and I think adding the econ perspective actually makes the situation worse. I'd think about it like this: in Chicago at the time, there were two fundamental housing markets: one for whites, and one for blacks. 

Removing the black population from competition within the white market was a(nother) large transfer of wealth to whites: whites faced less competition for the large supply of houses, which actually kept white house prices lower than they would otherwise be. 

This enabled a large number of whites to move up the ladder into the middle class. On the other hand, the legal framework, enforced by terror, that prevented blacks from moving into these neighborhoods meant two things: a small supply of houses in the "black housing market", and a large and increasing demand. 

This would have kept prices quite high -- much higher than any appraised value. Any black family would be bidding not against the white speculator, but against the large number of other black families looking to get a house. Because the speculators were few and the black families were many, prices were kept quite high in these black neighborhoods. The rules you wrote about obviously kept these high prices from being realized by black sellers, as blacks so rarely came to own the homes they were paying for.

Devin's last point is basically how the the history actually played out. In the overcrowded ghettoes of Chicago, there was a pent-up demand for housing. The money was there. And the money was pilfered.

I understand why academics have spent so much time studying the black poor. But in many ways, if you want to test how true this country has been to its founding creed, the black middle class is a fertile field of study. When you look at the early black home,buyers in mid-20th century Chicago, you are looking at people who did not exhibit the kind of "pathologies" pundits routinely inveigh against. Marriage rates are high. Men are working. In some cases, women are homemakers. In other words, you have the conservative fantasy of what an American family should be.

These American families were swindled by public policy, white terrorism, and private action. This was done to advantage people who happened to look different from them. And we are only talking about housing here. We are not talking about school segregation. We are not talking about job discrimination. We are not talking about business loan discrimination. We are not talking about the shameful implementation of the G.I. Bill. Or the sharecropping system in the South. This is but one front in the long war. 

For young black people growing up in that era, what was the message? America's promise is that everyone who plays by the rules will have a chance to compete. If you are a black boy, or a black girl, and you watch your parents play by the rules while everyone else cheats, what do you conclude? How do you feel when your parents exhibit middle-class values and your country rewards them with pariah-class treatment? How do you then evaluate your own prospects? How do you see your country? Might you then look around, survey all the double standards and hypocrisy, and find yourself not so proud?

       

Will Wright, SimCity, and DRM

EA / SimCity's Facebook page

In order to play the new SimCity—the God Game that allows you to build and manage a city from scratch—you have to be online. The idea of mashing the interconnectivity of MMOs with city-building sounds like it could be cool. Effectively you could have whole worlds, with avatars existing as cities. But of course SimCity has long been an offline game, allowing you to live on your own special island. I can't imagine having to play Civilization V with other people in order to play at all.

Gaming pioneer Will Wright, who founded the Sim franchise (shout out to SimCopter), recently spoke to Steve Peterson of Games Industry International about the latest SimCity roll-out:

When the discussion turned to the launch of Sim City Online, Wright was quick to declare his first thought. "I feel bad for the team," Wright said. Beyond that, Wright had some definite opinions about the launch. "I could have predicted—I kind of did predict there'd be a big backlash about the DRM stuff. It's a good game; I enjoy playing it a lot." Still, Wright understands the audience response. "It was kind of like, 'EA is the evil empire, there was a lot of 'Let's bash EA over it,'" Wright said. "That was basically inexcusable, that you charge somebody $60 for a game and they can't play it. I can understand the outrage. If I was a consumer buying the game and that happened to me, I'd feel the same."

The struggles of Electronic Arts—layoffs, reorganization and the CEO Riccitiello leaving—didn't seem to be that critical to Wright. "It's hard to talk about EA as this monolithic thing with one agenda," Wright explained. "If you move back it's like all these different studios going in slightly different directions; it's almost more like a loose federation. It is going through a lot of restructuring right now, but I don't even have the time to tune into it."

The DRM issues that EA has had with Sim City Online, and the controversy over rumors about Microsoft's new console requiring it to be always connected because of DRM, do seem to have a foundation, according to Wright. "I think people care if it doesn't work," he said. "If you can't play it on planes, stuff like that... I think there are some very valid concerns about it. Also there's a perception; I don't expect to play World of Warcraft on the airplane, because my perception is it has to be on the 'Net. Sim City was in this very uncomfortable space, like the uncanny valley, almost; [it was caught] between was it a single player game or was it a multiplayer game?"

I can't really play more than one MMO at a time. Evidently you can hack your way into a single-player mode.  I've loved SimCity since high-school. But I'm a grown-ass man, dog. I'm not paying $60 only to have to hack my way into the game I want.        

'It Seemed a Sheet of Sun'

A few weeks ago, having finished, Antony Beevor's The Second World War, I was trying to grapple with the notion of a good war. Finishing off Ira Katznelson's stellar Fear Itself, I found myself stumbling into John Hersey's  Hiroshima . I don't want to say too much about what the book means, having really just started but the language and rendering is stellar:

Before six o'clock that morning, Mr Tanimoto started for Mr Matsuo's house. There he found that their burden was to be a tansu, a large Japanese cabinet, full of clothing and household goods. The two men set out. The morning was perfectly clear and so warm that the day promised to be uncomfortable. A few minutes after they started, the air-raid siren went off - a minute-long blast that warned of approaching planes but indicated to the people of Hiroshima only a slight degree of danger, since it sounded every morning at this time, when an American weather plane came over. 
The two men pulled and pushed the handcart through the city streets. Hiroshima was a fan-shaped city, lying mostly on the six islands formed by the seven estuarial rivers that branch out from the Ota River; its main commercial and residential districts, covering about four square miles in the centre of the city, contained three-quarters of its population, which had been reduced by several evacuation programmes from a wartime peak of 380,000 to about 245,000. Factories and other residential districts, or suburbs, lay compactly around the edges of the city. To the south were the docks, an airport, and an island-studded Inland Sea. A rim of mountains runs around the other three sides of the delta. 
Mr Tanimoto and Mr Matsuo took their way through the shopping centre, already full of people, and across two of the rivers to (the sloping streets of Koi, and up them to the outskirts and foot-hills. As they started up a valley away from the tight- ranked houses, the all-clear sounded. (The Japanese radar operators, detecting only three planes, supposed that they comprised a reconnaissance.) Pushing the handcart up to the rayon man's house was tiring, and the men, after they had manoeuvred their load into the driveway and to the front steps, paused to rest awhile. 
They stood with a wing of the house between them and the city. Like most homes in this part of Japan, the house consisted of a wooden frame and wooden walls supporting a heavy tile roof. Its front hall, packed with rolls of bedding and clothing, looked like a cool cave full of fat cushions. Opposite the house, to the right of the front door, there was a large, finicky rock garden. There was no sound of planes. The morning was still; the place was cool and pleasant. Then a tremendous flash of light cut across the Sky. Mr Tanimoto has a distinct recollection that it travelled from east to west, from the city towards the hills. 
It seemed a sheet of sun.

The technique is granular. We think about the lives lost in grand numbers. Hersey reduces to them to their finest, most humdrum, most human details. It's one thing to know humans lived in Hiroshima. It's another to actually know those humans. 
More soon.



       

'It Seemed A Sheet Of Sun'

A few weeks ago, having finished, Antony Beevor's The Second World War, I was trying to grapple with the notion of a good war. Finishing off Ira Katnelson's stellar Fear Itself, I found myself stumbling into John Hersy's  Hiroshima . I don't want to say too much about what the book means, having really just started but the language and rendering is stellar:

Before six o'clock that morning, Mr Tanimoto started for Mr Matsuo's house. There he found that their burden was to be a tansu, a large Japanese cabinet, full of clothing and household goods. The two men set out. The morning was perfectly clear and so warm that the day promised to be uncomfortable. A few minutes after they started, the air-raid siren went off - a minute-long blast that warned of approaching planes but indicated to the people of Hiroshima only a slight degree of danger, since it sounded every morning at this time, when an American weather plane came over. 
The two men pulled and pushed the handcart through the city streets. Hiroshima was a fan-shaped city, lying mostly on the six islands formed by the seven estuarial rivers that branch out from the Ota River; its main commercial and residential districts, covering about four square miles in the centre of the city, contained three-quarters of its population, which had been reduced by several evacuation programmes from a wartime peak of 380,000 to about 245,000. Factories and other residential districts, or suburbs, lay compactly around the edges of the city. To the south were the docks, an airport, and an island-studded Inland Sea. A rim of mountains runs around the other three sides of the delta. 
Mr Tanimoto and Mr Matsuo took their way through the shopping centre, already full of people, and across two of the rivers to (the sloping streets of Koi, and up them to the outskirts and foot-hills. As they started up a valley away from the tight- ranked houses, the all-clear sounded. (The Japanese radar operators, detecting only three planes, supposed that they comprised a reconnaissance.) Pushing the handcart up to the rayon man's house was tiring, and the men, after they had manoeuvred their load into the driveway and to the front steps, paused to rest awhile. 
They stood with a wing of the house between them and the city. Like most homes in this part of Japan, the house consisted of a wooden frame and wooden walls supporting a heavy tile roof. Its front hall, packed with rolls of bedding and clothing, looked like a cool cave full of fat cushions. Opposite the house, to the right of the front door, there was a large, finicky rock garden. There was no sound of planes. The morning was still; the place was cool and pleasant. Then a tremendous flash of light cut across the Sky. Mr Tanimoto has a distinct recollection that it travelled from east to west, from the city towards the hills. 
It seemed a sheet of sun.

The technique is granular. We think about the lives lost in grand numbers. Hersey reduces to them to their finest, most humdrum, most human details. It's one thing to know humans lived in Hiroshima. It's another to actually know those humans. 
More soon.



       

Hip-Hop and the Company Line

PepsiCo

Lil Wayne just got dumped by Mountain Dew for making a crude reference to Emmett Till and sex. Given how much time I spend looking at how white terrorism shaped America, I can't really bring myself to actually write what he said. Google it. At any rate Wayne paid a price:

"We do not plan any additional work with Lil Wayne moving forward," PepsiCo said in a statement on Friday. "His offensive reference to a revered civil rights icon does not reflect the values of our brand."

Wayne began appearing in ads for the brand early last year. A rep for the rapper told The Times the split was due to "creative differences," and said it was an amicable parting. On Wednesday, months after he created a firestorm for the reference that appeared on a remix of the hit "Karate Chop" by Atlanta rapper Future, Wayne acknowledged the effects of his controversial lyrics in a letter he sent to Till's family.

"It has come to my attention that lyrics from my contribution to a fellow artist's song has deeply offended your family. As a father myself, I cannot imagine the pain that your family has had to endure," he wrote. "I would like to take a moment to acknowledge your hurt, as well as the letter you sent to me via your attorneys."

Jon Caramanica looks at the decoupling of Rick Ross from Reebok, and Mountain Dew's decision to pull an ad crafted with Tyler, The Creator:

Mr. Ross's lyric is reprehensible; Lil Wayne's is regrettable and tacky. (Lil Wayne is by no means the only rapper to mention Emmett Till in song, but his use is easily the messiest.) Both men issued tepid nonapologies.

Mr. Ross eventually progressed to a full apology, but only after prodding.

In each case justice was swift, as companies said, rightly, that their values didn't jibe with the sentiments of those lyrics—and, by extension, those artists.

Except when they do, that is. A cursory glance at any rapper's catalog, from Jay-Z on down, will be likely to turn up a lyric that's offensive, in poor taste or eyebrow-raising. By that metric, almost every rapper of note would be ineligible for corporate partnerships.

I think the issues is the difference between a catalog and right now. I also suspect that Jay is a little savvier than Wayne and Rick Ross.

In terms of the substance, I don't really see the hypocrisy. Corporations exist to make money. We have evidently reached a point where endorsing rape, or insulting the family of lynching victims can be judged to have market consequences. That is a good thing.        

How to Be an Opinion Journalist, Cont.

I'm working on a story right now that is rooted in the racial wealth gap and New Deal era public policy -- mostly housing policy. One of the problems with writing about racism is that even though the public is shamefully ignorant of its effects and its foundational role in America, academics have produced reams of excellent research on the subject. In my explorations of slavery and the Civil War, I only skimmed the surface, and I know it. (Never read any David Brion Davis. Shameful, I know.) It's the same for public policy and the black/white wealth gap. There is just a ton of great research on the subject. Moreover, the excuse that "academics can't write" doesn't really hold water. A lot of this stuff is really compelling -- but very few people ever read it.

At the end of the day, the writer is charged with sifting through a great deal of information and deciding what to present. He may not have ever taken a basic statistics class. He certainly has not sat through the various symposiums on his subject. If he is doing his job, he is familiar with the important debates (Did racism precede slavery, or did slavery precede racism?) But at the end of the day, he is an amateur, pulling from various sources. And various disciplines.  The sociology bleeds into history and statistics, and the history bleeds into economics and anthropology, and the anthropology bleeds into philosophy, and the philosophy takes you right back into history. And so on.

This is largely a vent. Or rather it's an attempt to distract myself from the tons of academic papers I have currently sitting in my dropbox. There is just so much to know. It really is ridiculous. 

I think our own Yoni Applebaum gave the best advice some years back:

Choose the things about which you genuinely care, and come to know them deeply and well. Form your own judgments, and constantly question them. In other matters, attempt instead to ascertain the consensus of expert judgment. It will be right far more often than not. The only alternative is to form your own judgment upon every question, and I can assure you that you will be correct far less frequently. 

If you encounter an attack upon a conventional piety that troubles you, first assess its source. Has its author taken the time or trouble to know his subject deeply or well? Then, assess its content. Does it seem sophisticated and convincing? If it meets those two tests, ask yourself how much you care to know about the matter. You can always add it to the list of things you wish to know deeply. But if you feel that you simply don't have the time, because of the realities of your life, then bracket your concerns and set them aside. The regnant consensus will do.

Wise words. You simply can't know everything, and you can't always be right. But you can be honest and you can be brave.