Author Archives: City Journal
Unteachable
“A teachable moment.” Have you noticed how the phrase, so redolent of reasonable and sober reflection, gets hauled out by the mainstream media every time liberals get into a serious fix involving race? With each such incident, however, fewer and fewer of us are playing along. Continue reading
The Obsolete New York Model
Where a tax-eating majority votes itself a permanent income Continue reading
Ricci and the Skills Gap
The main function of the race industry today is to repackage problems of black underachievement as instances of white racis Continue reading
Destroyed By Communism
Two decades after the Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing, everything in China has changed, and yet nothing has changed. Visible to all, China’s large cities have undoubtedly undergone great transformations. Largely invisible, China’s dirt-poor countryside seems unchanged, even immutable—as does the nation’s pervasive political repression. It is still forbidden to mention the Tiananmen massacre in China. Officially, nothing happened in the square on June 4, 1989. Government discourse and children’s schoolbooks mention some vague disorder that took place that year, immediately followed by the Beijing police’s restoring order. The Communist Party denies that there were any casualties. Even today, their number is unknown: according to the Red Cross’s estimate, the Chinese military killed about 3,000 students. Most of the bodies have disappeared, snatched away and burned by soldiers to destroy the evidence. Continue reading
Richard Pryor: Stand-Up Philosopher
On his way to fame and self-destruction, Pryor became the funniest man in America by creating a new kind of comedy—a hilarious, heartbreaking, and conflicted view of life seen from the underside. He was conscious of his minority status but refused to take the route of special pleading. His vocabulary was down and dirty, but his work had a surprising elegance. Continue reading
California Agonistes
California’s problems stem from a dysfunctional, Democratic-dominated state legislature that has increased spending steadily while lacking the two-thirds majority necessary to pass commensurate tax increases. But California voters themselves also bear responsibility for the spending. Continue reading
