April 11, 2012: Fired Columnist Says Racist Writing Merely ‘Common Sense’

John Derbyshire, recently ousted from his position as a National Review columnist (see April 7, 2012) over an overtly bigoted essay he wrote for a far-right, white supremacist blog (see April 5, 2012 and April 5-6, 2012), tells a reporter from the conservative news Web site Daily Caller that he was surprised by the firing. His essay was nothing more than “common sense,” Derbyshire tells reporter Chuck Rudd: “I thought the piece was just common sense, backed by facts established beyond the range of dispute.” Derbyshire wrote that white and Asian parents should teach their children to avoid blacks because that racial group is genetically intellectually inferior and predisposed to violence. Asked if he foresaw the firestorm of criticism that his essay engendered, he says, “No.” As to his firing, he says of the National Review senior management: “I didn’t think they cared about my Takimag columns, which contain no references to National Review. I didn’t realize they were THAT race-whipped.” American Conservative columnist Noah Millman, who describes himself as a friend of Derbyshire’s, calls the column “bluntly racist,” and adds, “Derbyshire seems to think that there’s a straight line of deductive reasoning from his views on the science of racial differences and the observable statistical disparities in things like crime rates, to his ‘advice’ to his children about how to keep themselves safe from black-on-white violence.” Millman says that Derbyshire is mistaken. Derbyshire blames the “shrieking… witch-hunting” left for his firing, and says: “I know who my enemy is. It’s not conservatism, not the NR [National Review] brand nor any other.” [Daily Caller, 4/11/2012]