Jason Malloy at Gene Expression wrote a long and detailed post on James Watson’s recent statements on evolution in Africa vs. Europe. The opener:

It is long and detailed with a lot of facts. Here’s the opener:

The public intellectual forum is being manipulated with intimidation and coercion and you are being lied to. The media is not doing its job, and the scientific community is not playing its proper public role as a beacon of dispassionate truth seeking, as a conduit of knowledge to the public, or in fostering an open and fair intellectual climate. Both are abusing their power and authority to do the opposite of their honor bound social and intellectual roles; facts are being distorted in service of values.

Watson’s remarks in the interview, like Larry Summers before him, were fairly mild. Notheless, a lot of tsk-tsking from the editorialists at Nature.

When Gahagan posted the other week about the recent Supreme Court Decision on integration, I caught a link to an article by Juan Williams (can’t remember how) celebrating the idea that the Brown decision had earned its keep, but had become obsolete. It reminded me that I had Juan Williams’ latest book sitting on my shelf, so I picked it up and read it over this past weekend.

It’s definitely worth the read, and it’s obvious from the subtitle what the book is about. What isn’t really obvious from the title is the fact that it’s only really Juan Williams book in name. It’s more accurately Bill Cosby’s book. The entire book stems from his speech at the 30th anniversary of the Brown vs. Board of Education at Constitution Hall in D.C.

Williams obviously has serious feelings of his own on the matters of civil rights, race relations, poverty, etc., but Cosby is referenced so much, it’s hard not to consider it really Bill Cosby’s book. The speech in question was billed as a “wake-up call” by his supporters, and “blaming the victim (poor people)” by his detractors. A big point of the book was how little support Cosby got (at first) from those he had spent 30+ years supporting.

Williams spends a good time blasting the likes of Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, and various other “civil rights leaders” who spend all of their efforts blaming and trying to get money from the white establishment on the grounds of “systemic racism,” and not enough trying to actually improve the lives of the black poor community. Also, black rap artists are sincerely castigated as continually feeding stereotypes of poor blacks as thugs and sex-crazed convicts. Williams seems very passionate about this issue in particular.

There’s a lot of statistics that we’ve all heard before, but the most important part isn’t the diagnosis as much as it is the prescription which Bill Cosby offers which is pretty simple: Having babies after age 21 and in conjunction with marriage. Parenting based on good manners, education and learning instead of materialism. Taking control of neighborhoods and holding family, friends and neighbors accountable for criminal activity.

Williams goes a little further in talking about the failures of housing projects in concentrating poverty and crime and hopelessness all in one place, and even offers examples of programs that have worked before that “integrated” instead of isolated those the government is giving a helping hand. He also astutely points out the difference between government programs designed to help the middle class black community that does very little for the poor black community (Affirmative Action, minority business grants, etc.) but comes to the defense of this black middle class, which is often chastised as “uncaring,” “abandoning the race”, or the least defensible, “not authentically black.”

Overall, the sort of “tough love” approach of Cosby’s speech and Williams’ book kind of reminds me of the whole feminist concept: “you have to be twice as good as men in order to be thought of as half as good.” In other words, if systemic racism is still a reality, then that means blacks have to work twice as hard. Cosby’s and Williams’ view seems to be that if that’s the case, it’s better for blacks to simply work twice as hard instead of waiting for racists to join the modern enlightened world and all of a sudden become not racist. Williams also points out that the world has gotten MORE globally competitive (and the good jobs that much harder to get) that it’s pretty obvious those who hold the reins have even LESS incentive than before in letting the good jobs go to minorities for the sake of recompense.

Since I’m not black and I’m not poor, it’s real easy for me to agree with these concepts, but it’s more important to see how much of Bill Cosby’s time, money, and effort has been focused on town hall meetings and seminars in poor urban black communities (with, according to Williams, exceedingly positive feedback) since he gave his famous speech. Cosby has been side by side with the Civil Rights Movement from the beginning so his opinion counts and Juan Williams serves as a good conduit.

Just wish the book would have been officially coauthored by Bill Cosby.

Amazon.com

Don’t Mourn Brown v. Board of Education
By JUAN WILLIAMS Published: June 29, 2007 Washington

LET us now praise the Brown decision. Let us now bury the Brown decision.
With yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling ending the use of voluntary schemes to create racial balance among students, it is time to acknowledge that Brown’s time has passed. It is worthy of a send-off with fanfare for setting off the civil rights movement and inspiring social progress for women, gays and the poor. But the decision in Brown v. Board of Education that focused on outlawing segregated schools as unconstitutional is now out of step with American political and social realities.
Desegregation does not speak to dropout rates that hover near 50 percent for black and Hispanic high school students. It does not equip society to address the so-called achievement gap between black and white students that mocks Brown’s promise of equal educational opportunity.
And the fact is, during the last 20 years, with Brown in full force, America’s public schools have been growing more segregated — even as the nation has become more racially diverse. In 2001, the National Center for Education Statistics reported that the average white student attends a school that is 80 percent white, while 70 percent of black students attend schools where nearly two-thirds of students are black and Hispanic.
…
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/29/opinion/29williams.html

A blurb that’s just coming out into the press.

Slow wave activity (SWA), a stable trait dependent marker of the intensity of non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep, is lower in young healthy African-Americans compared to Caucasians who were matched for age, gender and body weight, according to recent research.

It would be interesting to see the full report on this, whether subjects were matched on social and economic scales, and whether other health issues played a factor.

Update: Apparently there was a big sleep convention lately. Here were some other findings:

Sleep restriction affects children’s speech

Electrical brain waves predict attentional deficits following sleep deprivation

Sleep disorders are highly prevalent among police officers

Sleep deprivation can lead to increased smoking and drinking

Finally:
A good night’s sleep improves athletic performance