Paved with Good Intentions, by Jared Taylor

Review by John Engelman

I became aware of Jared Taylor after I had been mugged and nearly murdered by four blacks. This was not my first experience with black crime. Friends and relatives of mine have also been victims of black criminals. Someone suggested that I read "The Color of Deception," by Tim Wise.
     
This is an effort to demonstrate that the problem of black crime is a myth. However, it failed to convince me that the physical and psychological wounds I suffered from those four young black men were imaginary. "The Color of Deception" is also an effort to refute The Color of Crime, which was co written by Jared Taylor.
   
Paved With Good Intentions was written in 1991. In this book Jared Taylor drew attention to the fact that the good intentions of the civil rights movement had lead to bad results. The War on Poverty, which was begun in 1964, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 had been followed by five years of black ghetto rioting, and more enduring increases in black crime and illegitimacy.

From 1964 to 1991 the crime rate per 100,000 inhabitants in the U.S. had increased from 2,388.1 to 5,897.8.

The rate of violent crime had increased from 190.6 to 746.8.

The murder rate had increased from 4.9 to 9.5.

Blacks had (and have) a murder rate that was (and is) about eight times the white rate.

In 1944 Gunnar Myrdal, who a Swedish academic who later won the Nobel Prize in economics, had published An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy. This was cited by Supreme Court justices in the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision which found school segregation un Constitutional. It became an inspiration for the civil rights movement.

In this book Dr. Myrdal acknowledged inferior black performance in school, and high rates of black crime and illegitimacy. However, he claimed that these were caused by racial discrimination. He argued that when racial discrimination came to an end most blacks would behave and perform as well as most whites.

By the time Jared Taylor wrote Paved With Good Intentions, this had not happened. Black academic performance had not improved. Black moral behavior had become much worse. In short, blacks had given credence to arguments that had been presented against the civil rights movement.

Since 1991 the overall crime rate has declined in the United States, and the black crime rate has declined with it. There have not been any significant black ghetto riots since the Rodney King riots of 1992. These facts give Jared Taylor's message less urgency than it had in 1991. Nevertheless, it remains true that black rates of crime and illegitimacy far exceed corresponding rates among whites, and Orientals.

In Paved With Good Intentions Jared Taylor draws attention to the fact that although Oriental immigrants usually experienced more severe discrimination and prejudice than white immigrants, Orientals usually behave and perform better than whites, and consequently far better than blacks. He should have pointed out that Jewish immigrants also faced discrimination and prejudice, and that their intellectual performance currently exceeds even that of Orientals.

The failure of No Child Left Behind has drawn attention to the fact that black academic performance has hardly improved at all since 1964, although much more money is being spent on public school education, including public school education for blacks.

One factor that makes blacks politically vulnerable, and which increases the appeal of messages like Jared Taylor's, is that economic growth for most Americans has slowed to a crawl. Before the civil rights movement there was plenty of unskilled work to do in the United States. Most blacks were willing to do it. During the civil rights movement the U.S. economy had been growing dramatically since the inauguration of Franklin Roosevelt in 1933. The growth had been broadly based. One did not need a genius level IQ and several college degrees from elite universities to take part in it. This economic growth put most whites in a generous mood.

This is no longer the case. Many whites who are angry about declining living standards would rather direct their anger at non whites than at the rich whites who have been getting richer.