JAMES N. writes:

With regard to the “Negro Question:” Everything we have believed is wrong. All of it, without exception.

Anyone who, in 1963, was a supporter of “civil rights,” knowing how society would change by 2013, would have predicted – paradise. They would have predicted – did in fact predict – that if we followed their counsel, things would be better. Maybe not all better, maybe not completely better – but better than they were in 1963.

What a disgusting farce. Things are not only worse, they are much, much worse. And Philip Chism is the messenger, bearing the message that is the refutation of every … single … thing that white “people of good will” believed, that Colleen Ritzer undoubtedly believed.

“I hate you all.” That’s the answer to 50 years of struggle. I hate you all.

White America. He’s talking to you.

Laura writes:

Chism’s note, “I  hate you all,” was the outburst of an enraged adolescent. Angry teenagers say that kind of thing all the time. But teenagers don’t commit acts of extreme brutality all the time. The note represents something more than an emotional  outburst.

I would like to suggest a very obvious reason for why Chism killed Ritzer. This is speculation, but it is based on what has been reported. I do not believe he was angry because she spurned his advances. A boy would not expect a teacher to return his interest and would be unlikely to be enraged if she did not respond. Instances of that kind of violent, jealous sexual rage toward a female teacher are virtually unknown. Nor do I believe he acted simply out of sexual desire for Ritzer.

The intense rage he expressed in the killing clearly indicate that he felt dissed by Ritzer. And we see from the reports that she did in fact dis him. She asked him in front of other students to stay after class. In other words, she acknowledged in front of the class what he probably knew — that he could not keep up with the math work. A student can hide his academic struggles in English or gym, but not in math class. Chism reportedly spent his time in Ritzer’s class doodling — this is something he may have done to affect a lack of interest when he was in fact overwhelmed by the material, either because it was too hard or because he was going through adolescent problems that made it hard for him to concentrate.

From The Daily Mail:

Student Rania Rhaedaoui was sitting just one desk away from Chism in his final math class with Ritzer, a couple of hours before the killing.

Speaking to the MailOnline, she explained: ‘We were supposed to have a test last Friday and Philip wasn’t participating in class on Tuesday. He was drawing in his note book and not working. He always draws, but I didn’t ever see what he was sketching because he was quite private about it.

‘Miss Ritzer spotted what he was doing and asked if he could stay behind so she could help him. It wasn’t a punishment and it was something she did a lot with other students. If you couldn’t stay it was no problem.

 Also:

The documents also describe how Chism’s parents were going through a difficult divorce and the student had become visibly upset at Miss Ritzer after she asked him to stay behind after class on the day of the killing, according to the Boston Herald.

Let’s remember what kind of place Danvers High School is. It’s a typical white suburban high school where doing well  in school and sports are everything, where students are consciously preparing for college and where the desire to have a black student who is keeping up is strong. It is a probably significantly more competitive and academically rigorous than Chism’s former school in Tennessee. One wonders if he was moved there by his mother precisely because it was a “good school,” meaning the chances of him getting into a good college from there would be high. He was in a place that pressured him, and expected him to be, what he was not and possibly would never be. He may have had cognitive limitations or he may have been unable to work well in such an environment because of the stress of his move and family breakdown. Chism’s father is black and his mother is white, possibly of Latino background, further adding to his problems.

It was clearly an act of revenge and hatred. He cut her throat; he mutilated Ritzer’s body. He hated her and everyone around him. He was responding in rage to what he felt was an unforgivable slight. Ritzer knew that he could not keep up. His mother may have been expecting good grades, that’s almost certainly the case with a hard-working single mother, but Ritzer knew he wouldn’t be getting good grades. She knew the truth. And he hated her for it — and hated her all the more because of her sweet and sunny offers of help. Her telling him in front of the class to stay for extra help was the last straw.

His mother, by the way, is unlikely to say to the entire world, “My son was struggling in school. He was failing math.” She may have built great expectations around him, as women often do who have ruined marriages and relationships with their children’s fathers.

I have not seen any news reports which include information about Chism’s grades in the class. It seems such an obvious issue. I’m not even sure what kind of math Ritzer was teaching. Was it algebra? Probably. Algebra is typically introduced in ninth grade and it usually separates those who have higher math skills from those who do not. I do not know anything about Chism’s abilities, but the average black is not capable of learning algebra. It involves a level of abstraction that he cannot grasp, through no fault of his own. A major problem with high schools today is that they force blacks to try to learn algebra when they have not yet mastered basic computational skills. This only alienates them and does them absolutely no good. It’s a form of educational malpractice. You can see why black students become angry and drop out in large numbers in ninth grade. The world disregards who they are.

If it was possible to admit this reality, to acknowledge black limitations, Chism might never have been in that class to begin with and never have been enraged by being publicly humiliated by a sweet, conscientious and naive teacher who had no sense of the egotism, pride and aggression lurking in a failing black student in a mostly white school.

— Comments —

Sam writes: 

[My original version of this entry did not include the last two paragraphs. Sam responded to the original post, making many of the same points I was to make.]

You mention that Chism might have been inattentive in class and harboring a sense of disrespect because he was overwhelmed by the material. Math is one of the most abstract disciplines there is, and it is well documented that blacks are, in the main, very poor at abstract reasoning. This calls to mind a comment I made two years ago on Lawrence Auster’s website. I edited the quote for relevance, but you can see it here:

“Every year I have black students who are consistently disruptive and disrespectful. But they do not usually start out that way, rather, their hostility and aggression build over time. Now I think I have an explanation for this.

Typically, they seem as if they simply don’t belong in college. They cannot read well, they probably have IQs well under 90, and they perform abysmally relative to their peers. But they have been told by egalitarian liberals that they do belong in college, that they can perform, and that it is not their fault they perform abysmally. So of course they become angry and embittered, and they come to disrespect both the class and the material. They probably come to think that abstract reasoning and verbal sophistication are nothing but white “tricks” which we use to promote each other and keep them from getting ahead.

Their anger is, in a way, justified. The liberals have told them to do what they cannot, and told them that it not their fault if they cannot. It is like asking someone with an IQ of 80 to do calculus, and when hecannot, ensuring him that it is not his fault. What will he do? He will eventually conclude that he is being duped and cheated, and that calculus is just a meaningless series of symbols designed by those in authority to “trick” him. His anger and hostility grows; he has been put into an impossible situation, like someone trapped in a Kafka short story.

All of this underscores just what a monstrous, inhuman ideology liberalism is.”

Diana writes:

James N. writes:

” single … thing that white “people of good will” believed, that Colleen Ritzer undoubtedly believed.”

Please let’s not be too hard on this poor girl. She suffered so, and her family is in anguish.

I would rather put Diana Chism, the murderer’s mother, in that sentence.

Diana continues:

At this point, conjectures about Chism’s intellectual level are just that – conjectures. I happen to think that with a white mother, his IQ was probably above that of most blacks and that he was capable of understanding elementary algebra, which is not really abstract – it’s just basic computation with some unknowns.

I find it interesting that when the cops found him, he was watching a Woody Allen movie. Would a typical black kid even know who Woody Allen is? Danvers has several movie theaters, although it’s true that not all of them would be in walking distance to the high school. His mother called the police to report Philip missing at 6:34 PM:

This timeline shows what a load of work this murder was, with a lot of to-ing and fro-ing. This took planning.

Contrast this with the behavior of Trayvon Martin’s father, who didn’t even realize that his son was missing until late that night (if memory serves). Philip wasn’t home for dinner – she called the cops. This is middle-class parenting.

I only read the affidavit once, thank you, but I remember that he brought the box cutter to school that morning. He placed the body carefully (not “dumped”), and in such a way that Miss Ritzer looked especially degraded. This all points to calculation, not an out of control response to a perceived slight. He may have manipulated Miss Ritzer into keeping him after class. He may have done this before and knew her reactions. We don’t know.

I say that he hated all whites, but white women in particular. He hated his mother and killed her proxy in Colleen Ritzer.

Oscar writes:

Given the racial history of blacks in the U.S., it is undeniable that we have now arrived at a situation where the nuclear family virtually no longer exists in this community, and educational achievement is not valued.

That aside, I was stuck by your statement that “the average black is not capable of learning algebra,” for two reasons: the first relates to the question of race, and the second relates to educational achievement.

On the issue of race, a facet not often considered, but which has been highlighted on your blog is of those who are light enough to pass for white. I even believe one of your contributors descended from one such Louisiana family – in polite society, with appropriate dress and mannerisms, they would be considered white; are these people also incapable of learning algebra? What proportion of one’s genes have to be Negroid for one to lose arithmetic ability?

I don’t know if you ever saw the documentary Waiting for Superman; this gave a tragic insight into what has become of the educational system in the U.S. One of the silver linings on an otherwise dark horizon was the sight of ‘average’ blacks, who realized the value of an education, and were encouraged by their guardians (a single mother in one case, and a grandmother in another, as the biological parents had drug related issues) and ended up in charter schools, where their educational achievement were very good. The problem is that these were a vanishingly small minority. Their achievements, however, would suggest your blanket statement is inaccurate, as they were otherwise average blacks, on whom fortune smiled, and they ended up in charter schools, thus transforming the educational trajectory of their lives.

Yes, the average black person in America, after 50 years of LBJ’s welfare schemes, chooses not to be educated; the educational system itself has mostly become a left wing propaganda machine focused more on indoctrination than teaching children to read, write and do arithmetic, but to say the average black person is intrinsically incapable of algebra is something I, perhaps naively, would not have expected from you.

As you may guess, I am black; I grew up outside the U.S., and moved to the U.S. a couple of years ago for work. I am horrified at what I see in black ‘communities’ in the U.S. Black people are enabled, perhaps by white guilt, in making very bad choices, and in return, they provide a reliable voting bloc. There is also a lot of hate and resentment in many U.S.-born blacks towards white Americans.

Racial politics is a dark place, especially in the U.S., but do you really believe that the average black person is intrinsically devoid of the ability to learn school algebra, if the other variables such as welfare dependence, drugs, and family breakdown were not part of that equation? What Philip Chism did to his mathematics teacher was vile and hateful, and he should never walk free again, but to pivot from that to the innate intellectual abilities of black people is something I wouldn’t have expected of you. Even accounting for perceived racial differences in IQ testing, the fact that a people, for whatever reason, choose not to learn doesn’t equate to an inability to learn.

 Laura writes:

You write:

Racial politics is a dark place, especially in the U.S., but do you really believe that the average black person is intrinsically devoid of the ability to learn school algebra, if the other variables such as welfare dependence, drugs, and family breakdown were not part of that equation?

Yes.

The average IQ of blacks is 80. It is difficult to learn higher math with an IQ of 80. Perhaps many more average blacks could understand basic algebra if they were educated in a disciplined environment that was tailored to their needs. I don’t know, but they certainly could not go far in the subject. And so what? Why should they? Is life not worth living because one cannot learn algebra? Black parents are largely uninterested in their children’s knowledge of a subject like algebra because they themselves are incapable of understanding it. Family breakdown undoubtedly keeps many blacks from fulfilling their potential, but a stable family will not change these facts. American blacks were not excelling in math before the large-scale family breakdown of the 20th century. There are virtually no black mathematicians. The failure to recognize the cognitive limitations of blacks and their behavioral patterns is, I maintain, a major factor in high school drop out rates. I suggest you look at the performance of blacks on standardized tests. These limitations are massively documented. I am sorry I cannot offer you many statistics at the moment. Also, if you talk to any algebra teacher in a largely black school, he will confirm them.

You mention a minority who performed well in charter schools. If they did indeed master higher subjects (one must be wary of the claims of charter schools as they are businesses) than they were not average as you claim they were. Of course, some blacks can perform at a high level but then they are above average.

What proportion of one’s genes have to be Negroid for one to lose arithmetic ability?

There are blacks who of are high intelligence and whites of low intelligence. We are speaking of averages and it would depend on the parentage of mixed-race individuals.

I recommend Michael Levin’s book Why Race Matters for a fuller discussion of innate racial characteristics. Again, we are dealing in generalizations.

Freedom Hayek writes:

I am a fan of yours. I read your blog about Philip Chism with interest as I have been covering it too (freefabulousgirl.com). Colleen grew up in Andover, where I grew up so I have a certain feeling about the case.  I have to say I was impressed with your “diagnosis” that Chism felt dissed, but judging from the news stories that came out more recently, Chism seems to have been distressed because Colleen was talking about Tennessee, where he had left after the divorce. He was visibly upset and she noticed, changed the subject, and was seen talking to himself after that.  The next day he killed her in what seems to be a premeditated attack.  You see, I don’t think black people care that much about how they do in math or any other subject, in general.  Academics are not a high value for them (in general) so he might have been more upset that she “dissed” him over Tennessee.  That makes more sense to me, given the way black people often react emotionally to stimuli we might find odd, judging from the number of brawls that break out at black weddings and children’s birthday parties.

Laura writes:

Thanks.

I am skeptical that he was insulted by something she said about Tennessee. Judging from what we know of Colleen Ritzer, she would not have said anything demeaning about his years in Tennessee. It is possible, of course, and this is all speculation.

A reader writes:

There was reported physical, emotional, and alcohol abuse by the father and a ruptured family. (Not to forget our entire culture has easily accessible porn and violence.) Sounds like that was the main backdrop for the murder, not IQ and problems with math.

Laura writes:

Yes, I don’t doubt his family situation was a major factor. The question is why he was was angry at Ritzer.

 Robert Oculus III writes:

Here is a relevant quote from my book, The White Book:

[W]hy doesn’t racial and cultural diversity work?

Because it can’t work. Because it is, and always was, a con game, a fraud.

The Dream was a swindle.

The whole civil rights movement of the 1960s was a confidence trick, a classic bait-and-switch scam.

Remember the Noble Negro of 1964? You must have seen him – if not in real life, then in old TV shows, in old books, or in old movies. The the Noble Negro of 1964 was the Negro America fell in love with. He was dignified, well-dressed, quiet, hard-working, family-oriented, Christian, ambitious, and friendly. He wore a sharp gray suit, a gray fedora hat, and a narrow black tie under his conservative overcoat. He had a respectable job, maybe on the line next to Dad down at the Ford plant or behind the counter at the local supermarket. He had a pretty, modest, sweet-natured Negro wife in a freshly-ironed shirtwaist dress. His sons were clean-cut Boy Scouts, his daughters cheerful Girl Scouts.

He was the Bait. The Disingenuous White Liberals who hijacked the American elites showed white, Christian America the Noble Negro of 1964 and offered to make him an equal. In return, the DWLs asked only the White man’s dominant position in society.

And we took the Bait. We had to. Justice demanded it. What white man with a Christian conscience could look at the Noble Negro of 1964, with his hat and his coat and tie and his job and his pretty wife and his adorable kids, and tell him to sit in the back of the bus?

None of us could. Equality was a deal too good to pass up. Instant moral superiority at a low, low cost! Such a deal!

So we handed over our country to the Disignenuous White Liberals like an ignorant hick handing over his money to a three-card monty dealer in Times Square.

Some of us saw through the scam. People like Governor George Wallace of Alabama, for example. He tried to warn us. They shot him for his trouble.

We didn’t listen. And as a result we have learned the hard way that the merchandise we were buying was a fake.

The Noble Negro of 1964 was a sham, a false front presented to us by Disingenuous White Liberals in order to get us to buy the Revolution’s cheap, fake knockoff version of equality.

The Noble Negro of 1964 was a counterfeit Negro, a Negro created by white people, a black man who wore that suit and worked that job and had the wife and kids because he had no choice. The Noble Negro of 1964 had to “act white” in order to survive in a white country. The whole civil rights dream was concocted in order to benefit him.

The DWLs offered us the Noble Negro of 1964 as bait. We took it. And as soon as we bought it, as soon as the sale was concluded and the DWLs had the power, came the Switch.

The Noble Negro of 1964 began to disappear before our eyes. Once White America no longer had the ability to impose its culture on Negro America, the thin veneer of the Noble Negro of 1964 rubbed off to reveal the real black man beneath. The Noble Negro became a “colored person”, then a Black person, then a bold Afro-American brotha or susta, then an empowered African-American. And today? They’re back to being Persons of Color again.

And this Person of Color we found ourselves with was nothing like the Noble Negro of 1964. He was not dignified, well-dressed, quiet, hard-working, family-oriented, Christian, ambitious, or friendly. Instead, White America found it had “equalized” itself with a black man who was vulgar, badly-dressed, deafeningly loud, contemptuous of work, sexually promiscuous, irreligious (or in some cases a Muslim of the real or faux variety), unambitious, and hostile. The new black man wore the rig of a pimp or a thug, demanded monetary “reparations” from white America, and had no wife in a shirtwaist dress. Indeed, he had no wife at all. Instead, he kept a harem of “bitches” and “hos” without the formalities of marriage, and callously dumped his kids — if acknowledged by him as his kids –- with dey “baby mamas”, to be raised haphazardly or not at all.

(Exceptions exist, of course. Not all black men are criminals or hustlers. Not all black women are baby mamas or hos. Many good and decent black people exist in our country today, blacks who have truly internalized White culture. These folks, many of whom are derided by their fellow blacks as “oreos” or “Uncle Toms”, deserve our friendship, sympathy, and support, for they certainly get none of these from their fellow blacks. They are “honorary white people”. They are the only hope for blacks in America.)

“But how can you generalize an entire race of people?” squeak the DWLs. Ah, the eternal cry of the Disingenuous White Liberal! He or she knows very well why we can generalize: because the bitch-slappin’, baby-dumpin’, jail-goin’, work-avoidin’, welfare-moochin’, drug-dealin’, merchandise-stealin’ People of Color we enjoy today are not exceptions to the rule. They are the rule. They represent the true face of black America.

“But how can you generalize an entire race of people?” We can generalize about blacks based upon the behaviors typical of blacks as observed in everyday life. The “stereotypical black man” is the typical black man. The proof is as close as the bad side of your own town or city. Take a trip down to where the average black person in your city lives – not the Ghetto, not the Projects, but an ordinary black neighborhood.  What do you See?

Or visit the local theme park on African-American day, or the beach during Black Fraternity/Sorority Week, or a local urban swimming pool or water park. What do you See?

Or visit the local jail. Or that scary spot on the back side of City Park. Or the local welfare office.

Or the auditorium of a majority-black public high school on graduation night. Or a “black prom”. Or the local shoe shop on the day the new basketball player/rap star-label sneaker goes on sale.

Then open your eyes and See the reality of Negroes in America.

But don’t look for too long. Once you cross into Black America, you have left your America behind. When you visit Black America, always remember that to the natives, you are an invader – and a target.

And if you happen to see the Noble Negro of 1964 while you’re there, please ask him to come back. We all really miss him. [pp. 55-58]

 Mrs. H. writes:

I’m going to suggest the absence of his father and Miss Ritzer being a woman and not a man was the biggest problem, if your “dissing” and “fake niceness/condescension” theories are correct.

I have seen the feeling of humiliation from male peers in college (both community college and university), white and black. Of course, those situations did not end in murder, but the anger and confusion as the (always) female teacher humiliated them in front of everyone else was disconcerting. Male teachers would publicly call out individual students, and it usually would result in the student gaining much respect for their professor, and increasing their desire to do well.

I saw the male-female tension a lot clearer than the black-white tension.

Mrs. H. adds:

When I say male-female tension, I do not mean sexual. I agree with you that Chrism was not acting as a potential lover scorned.

Diana writes:

I realized that I left out the most important aspect of my theory of this murder, which is coincidentally suggested by your question: Why was he angry at Ritzer, specifically and not someone else?

Because he was sexually attracted to her. She was pretty in a very white way. This aroused both his budding (and twisted) erotic needs. And he hated her for it.

This is complicated, and I will try to be brief. I do not believe that this murder is an example of ghetto black thuggishness. Therefore I respectfully differ in your theory that the murder is a result of Philip’s (I call him by his first name to distinguish him from his mother) being “dissed.” He had a white mother, his entire demeanor appears white and middle-class. The MO of the murder shows calculation and guile.

However, the motivation of the murder is racial in that Philip was mulatto. All adolescents face the problem of dealing with burgeoning sexual desires, of integrating the jigsaw puzzle of disparate elements of personality. How much more difficult is it for the mulatto to do this! (Read Obama’s book, tellingly subtitled: A Story of Race and Inheritance.) Add this to the rest of the ingredients and you get a true powder keg.

Every little boy is in love with his mommy and thinks she is the most beautiful woman in the world. At some point the healthy boy integrates this childish love into the proper place and moves on to loving a woman who will become his wife and the mother of his children.

Philip was at the age where this was supposed to be happening. The object of his adoration (his mother) was white. But he was not. This is bound to produce rage. It takes stable parenting to neutralize this rage.

If all this sounds like I am trying to excuse what he did, I’m not. However, I must admit that in thinking about what Philip did, I’ve developed a sympathy for him – not for what he did, but for him. He didn’t ask to be born into a marriage that should never have happened, into a country in the throes of the porn epidemic, abominable parenting, ridiculous ideas about what young men need to thrive.

Philip killed Colleen Ritzer but what he did will never die. He has destroyed the lives of Ritzer’s family, and scarred the psyches of every kid at Danvers High.

Permit me a final word about Diana Chism. I detest her. She really thought she could do it her way: marry a black guy, have his kid, divorce him, rip the boy away from all that was familiar to him, do it all on her own. This is the true fruit of “you go girl!” feminism. It makes me want to throw up.

 Laura writes:

I agree with you about the mother. Her statements to the press that he was “born in love” further show her to be an irresponsible, insensitive parent. I suppose she meant that because she loved his father when he was conceived, he was assured of a normal childhood. Obviously, she gave him a very abnormal childhood.

However, I still question your theory that the main issue was sexual rejection. A teenager does not expect to have his interest in an adult returned. I have never heard of a similar killing in which a teenage boy killed a teacher in a rage of sexual rejection. Also, in saying that she dissed him, I was not suggesting that he had a ghetto mentality despite my use of the ghetto term. He was proud and sensitive to rejection. That can happen even outside ghetto culture. It’s not just a cultural phenomenon but a psychological tendency.

Mrs. H. writes:

I’m actually trying not to read too much media on the murder details, but isn’t it reported that he didn’t assault her with his person, but degraded her with a stick? Which would confirm his intent was not to treat her as an object of lust, but hatred.

I too have sympathy for both Chrism and Ritzler, since they are both victims of all this wicked mess we’ve made of race, sex, class, and family. (Chrism is culpable, of course, for his evil deed, but is not beyond eternal salvation.)

Laura writes:

He raped her and slit her throat in the bathroom and then when dumping her in the woods, put her body in a sexually provocative position, presumably with legs spread, and jammed a tree branch inside her.

I have difficulty feeling sympathy for someone capable of slitting a sweet woman’s throat and mutilating her. I know he had a tough life, but he is a sadistic human being. A swift trial, followed by the death penalty if convicted, is the only humane and civilized response to this kind of crime.

Mrs. H. writes:

“A swift trial, followed by the death penalty if convicted, is the only humane and civilized response to this kind of crime.”

I agree, and didn’t mean to suggest otherwise.

 Laura writes:

Diana said it well when she said that he has “scarred the psyches” of every child at Danvers High School.

Only a sick and decadent society delays justice in such a case. He allegedly confessed to doing it and there is abundant evidence that he did it. What more is needed?

Diana writes:

I didn’t say that Philip was sexually rejected by Colleen Ritzer. In fact that scenario never even occurred to me. If Philip had made advances, Miss Ritzer would have reported them. She certainly would never have invited him to stay after hours.

My point is that she aroused a psychotic response in him due to the peculiar aspects of being the racially black son of a white woman. These peculiarities are assiduously denied by white liberal society.

By the way, I’m with Oscar on the algebra question. I was an adjunct for a while. I had excellent black students with solid primary educations who were manual laborers. They were all foreign. My American black students were sullen, enabled little creeps, who expected an A for showing up, the product of a country run by cowering cowards. (Arne Duncan, I’m talking about you.) If these American blacks were introduced to true competition, they’d be off the island in the first hour. Not so with the foreign blacks. They might not do well in a physics challenge, but then, neither would I.

As for justice and Philip Chism, I quite agree with YOU: this trial is useless – the very opposite of justice. The suffering of the children of Danvers will be compounded, their psyches bathed in real life porn.There is no way for parents to shield their offspring from this.

Laura writes:

There is no indication that Chism was suffering from psychosis. He was calm and rational, according to police reports. I guess I don’t understand the dynamic you are describing with Ritzer as a surrogate for his mother. In any event, it is clear that this was more than a sexual act. He was seeking revenge. Perhaps we will never know more.

As far as algebra skills, blacks can have very solid primary educations, be good students and be unable to master algebra beyond the very basics. Perhaps you could point to the black mathematicians or PhD students that indicate black aptitude in math. I have a friend who teaches ninth grade algebra in a black high school. The students are not ready for the material and never will be. They are not all disrespectful.

A reader writes:

Regarding Robert Oculus III comment, I don’t see the problems today as the result of integration but of welfare: our government using tax dollars as payments to destroy the family and to increase illegitimacy.

Would there have been such a large increase in white illegitimacy without it being financially rewarded by the government? What will society reap from that increase in instability? I saw an article on a study saying children do not do as well, even when their parents live together with them, compared to children whose parents are married. Yet I have known women, living with their boyfriends and some of those women having one or more children, who have told me it was better for them financially if they not marry.

You get what you pay for and our government has paid for havoc.

 Laura writes:

Welfare has been harmful. Oculus does not deny that. It was part of the equality project. It’s interesting to imagine how things would have been without it. Certainly black family breakdown would be nothing like it is. Many blacks would presumably be working as low paid servants to whites, which would be uncomfortably reminiscent of slavery. If welfare did not exist, black and white cultures would still be very different.

Oculus wrote:

 Once White America no longer had the ability to impose its culture on Negro America, the thin veneer of the Noble Negro of 1964 rubbed off to reveal the real black man beneath.

I don’t agree that the “real black man” was revealed. The black man could be more himself, more a human being and less of a primitive, if forced to conform to white standards.

Diana writes:

Regarding Chism, we are at an impasse. I’ve attempted to explain the psychodynamics of this rage-filled crime as best I can. I prefer not to continue. It’s disturbing, and I’ve said it as best I can.

Regarding the business about algebra, “Perhaps you could point to the black mathematicians or PhD students that indicate black aptitude in math.” Actually, there are black mathematicians, whose names you can look up as well as I can, but as you know, that wouldn’t make a difference as to average aptitude anymore than a 6’2″ woman would prove that women are taller than men. I do not deny statistical reality.

In any case, I’m really not sure what this argument about average abilities and algebra (if indeed that is what Ritzer was teaching) is about. It seems that what you and your other readers are implying is that lower black mean IQ contributed to Philip Chism’s failure to keep up in math class, which contributed to stress, which impelled him to murder his math teacher.

Well sorry, I don’t see the crime that way at all. She could have taught basket weaving. It was her sweetness, prettiness and sheer attractiveness, wrapped in a white skin, and in a female body, which aroused Chism’s sadistic impulses. He felt threatened by what he was attracted to. And he killed it.

 Laura writes:

What I am saying is that he felt humiliated in some way — not for a good reason, but because of some twisted reaction in his own mind. He was distressed after she made the comment that he stay after class. I don’t doubt that he was aroused by her too. His performance in class may very well have had nothing to do with this crime. We don’t know and may never know.

Mary writes:

I look at the public schools in wonderment at this point. When I pulled my kids out to home school the single most frequent question I got, along with looks of deep concern, was, “But what about socialization?”

When did the purpose of “socialization” become the sole property and general goal of the public school system? The mixing of the sexes, all races, social classes, intelligence levels, etc. into one huge amalgam is probably the silliest way to try and achieve “socialization” that one could come up with, not to mention a poor way to inspire excellence. So many kids get lost in this environment.

In my public high school there was much resentment between the social classes, being made up of working class kids from one town and the country club set from another. In high school, when it’s all about clothes and status – and, today, the techno junk – it can be hard to find your place. Facebook must up the ante exponentially, all the here’s-me-at-a-party-with-all-my-friends!! pictures, etc. Being a product of a mixed marriage makes it even more difficult in a way that one’s peers could never understand.

The mixing of the sexes in high school should end today; both sexes do better when separated. The public schools have become places where typical boy behavior is no longer tolerated. Some boys still do well but others can’t find their place and are being pushed “underground”, if you will, and through heavy computer use living secret lives much different from their public ones, lives potentially built around shame or anger or violence and fueled by dangerous video games and porn. Perhaps they are on meds. Perhaps they are in broken families. That boy who killed the kids in Newtown destroyed his hard drive for a reason.

Putting pretty, young women in charge of teenage boys is very unwise and goes against common sense, especially in a class like math, which is rather masculine in its formality and which boys are supposed to excel at. For what it’s worth, math was my best subject and from grade five all the way through college I never had another female math teacher. Anecdotal, I know, but it seems to point somewhere in this mess. Teenage boys need authority, not niceness, especially boys with no father in the home.

Laura writes:

I agree.

It’s entirely inappropriate to have pretty, young women teaching adolescent boys. It’s stupid for a number of reasons.

Paul writes:

Psychoanalysis, though it should continue as a scientific discipline, is iffy in a practical way.  No one will ever know this madman’s motive.  This man has a psychiatric disorder of some sort, probably psychopathy.  The details revealed above indicate this goes beyond racial influences.  Although I classified this as a racial crime when I first heard about it, the gory details above (which I always avoid)  indicate this was not primarily racial although race might have been an excuse in the criminal’s twisted psyche.  And our society could be a contributing factor because it classifies whites as persecutors of blacks and as deserved victims, if only because the Media won’t cover black violent crime as racist.  And blacks know it.  But this madman’s mind eventually would have manufactured some hideous crime out of other circumstances.

Functional psychopaths should be hung within ninety days of their crimes.  When we have limited resources, we should not spend money on functional psychopaths.  With all the righteous things that we need to spend our money on, such as care for the elderly, I don’t want to spend a dime on such criminals.  Should we treat psychopathic leaders for war crimes?  Of course not.  We hang them, or at least Iraq still does.

Mary writes:

But can psychopaths be generated or are they simply born that way? There seem to be triggers in the form of events and/or environment. Those who commit these school-related atrocities have commonalities: most obviously, they are virtually always a male in the formative years; are quite often on meds of some kind; always seem to have hidden lives on the computer; are often the product of a broken family and living alone with their mothers (or few siblings); etc.

A rudimentary knowledge of the nature of the sexes tells why this last one is a problem. Boys in the formative years need to be around other boys and under the authority of strong male authority figures. Boys turn to their fathers in these years, but often today there is no father to turn to. And so it’s even more important that they are taught by men; a male teacher can start to fill in the hole left by the absent father.

Boys are slowing down in school while girls gain and I think it’s worth examining why. If what I have read is correct, females now outpace males in med/law schools, while boys drop out of high school at a higher rate. The ratio of female to male high school teachers is now 2 to 1. As the number of male teachers has dropped so the schools have lost their tolerance for male energy and different learning styles, etc. So a boy in high school in the past few decades has to deal with being outdone by girls, or the fear of being outdone by girls and its accompanying humiliation, witnessed by an authority figure in the form of a female, so double humiliation. The world has become a place where boys no longer thrive, a softened place of niceness and calm and cheerfulness. But when boys hit puberty what they need is strong discipline, demands made upon them that they can fulfill and at the same time provide an outlet for their…. well, their very masculinity.

Boys actually like to work hard. Really hard. It’s an outlet for their natural aggression and deeply satisfying to them. And then they like to eat and talk and rib each other. Without girls around. Public schools insist on keeping boys in school until 18, where many of them are antsy and distractible and given meds to solve it; if they drop out, they are considered all-around failures and carry that with them, sometimes for life. But all some of these boys want to do is go out and work hard. Make money, start living. Boys with an intellectual bent want deep and meaningful discourse and argument and endless discussion, not what passes for discourse in the average American high school; they want to bang their ideas against someone who forms a rock wall of authority and truth: a man. Someone who understands them and knows what it is to be male. And as they bang away, their minds become refined and their intellect grows and they are satisfied. Hard work of the mind and body satisfies boys like no video game ever will.

My youngest son recently told me that he saw a girl in a t-shirt that said “girls rule, boys drool”. He explained to me that girls would be “so mad” if boys wore shirts like that. There was actually a girl-power convention in our area recently. Yes, girls are surging, with support from all sectors, but are still treated as victims of suppression by males, even as they stampede to the top.