The MacArthur Genius grants were announced and they’re the usual weird collection of legitimate nice white lady scientists, such as microbe researcher Diane Newman of Caltech, and hilariously shameless race hustlers, such as Genius T. Coates last year and this year, Claudia Rankine, a poetry professor at Pomona College, who won for her collection of microaggressions she and her friends say they have suffered. From the Wikipedia article on her award-winning 2014 book Citizen: An American Lyric:

The book consists of seven chapters interspersed with images and artworks. The first chapter details microagressions that have occurred to Rankine and her friends. The second chapter discusses the YouTube character Hennessy Youngman created by Jayson Musson, and discusses racial incidents in the life of Serena Williams and her public image. The third chapter features more microagressions and the nature of racist language. In the fourth chapter Rankine writes of the transition of sighs into aches, the nature of language, memory, and watching tennis matches in silence. Chapter five is a complex poem on self-identity, interspersed with more microagressions. Chapter six is a series of scripts for “situation videos” created in collaboration with John Lucas on Hurricane Katrina, the shootings of Trayvon Martin and James Craig Anderson, the Jena Six, the 2011 England riots in the wake of the death of Mark Duggan, Stop-and-frisk, Zinedine Zidane’s headbutt of Marco Materazzi in the 2006 FIFA World Cup Final, and the verbal error during Barack Obama’s first inauguration as President of the United States. The seventh chapter ends with “Making Room”, a script for a “public fiction” about finding a seat on the subway, and a list of African-American men involved in recent police shooting incidents that concludes with the phrase “because white men can’t police their imagination black men are dying”. The seventh chapter is a complex meditation on race, the body, language and various incidents in the life of the author.

… These factors, subtly and metaphorically penned in the first paragraph grants these citizens a means to press forward against the subtle microaggressions, which, metaphorically speaking, is a wake for them in the very wake of the book. … The first chapter immediately transfers the reader into a black persona who is quickly becoming invisible by the harassment of microaggressions. The necessity of tolerance ascribed by blacks, that is, in these occurrences even are subjected to children in grade school. Still consistent with second person perspective use of you, the short narration is of a child: “You”, who experiences a microaggression by first a student who is copying her work throughout the school year, and secondly, from Sister Evelyn, who never acknowledges the blatant incidences. “…… The microaggression described here is that, you are unworthy of a genuine acknowledgment of gratitude.

Chapter 3[edit]
This chapter, similar to Chapter 1, is composed of events in the form of micro-aggressions. … This form of micro-aggression reference is common throughout Citizen. …

Rankine refers to her own personal micro-aggressions and others of importance in real world situations that might have seemed flagrant. … Then continues to describe more moments of micro-aggressions. … ‘Did he just say that?’ ‘Did I just hear what I think I heard?’” (Believermag). These questions refer to responses made by Rankine throughout Citizen after instances of microaggressions. The way in which both the black body and the heads hold a history of racism and question instances of microaggressions supports Rankine’s purpose of relating the history of slavery and racism to the present form of racism in the form of microaggressions. …

2014 National Book Critics Circle Award (Poetry) winner[11][12]
2014 National Book Critics Circle Award (Criticism) finalist[11]
2014 California Book Awards Poetry Finalist[13]
2015 PEN Center USA Poetry Award[14]
2015 New York Times Bestseller[15]
2015 Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Poetry[16]
2015 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work in Poetry[17]

From the Steve Harvey radio show:

HILLARY CLINTON: Maybe I can, by speaking directly to white people, say, ‘Look, this is not who we are.’ We have to do everything possible to improve policing, to go right at implicit bias.

A friend told me today about how he first heard the theory that Obama was born in Kenya. It was in January 2008, and a Democratic pollster friend of his, who was in close contact with a well-known 1990s Clinton camp insider (not Sidney Blumenthal), said the word was that Obama wasn’t eligible because he wasn’t born in the United States. My friend expressed shock and skepticism, but was reassured that this was legit.

Thinking about this, I’m starting to wonder whether the birtherism inside Team Clinton in 2008 was less a carefully plotted conspiracy to fool the public and more just wishful thinking. Losing the Iowa Caucus to Obama on January 3, 2008 was a big shock to the Clintonites. Maybe they latched on to birtherism to buoy their spirits? They were looking for a deus ex machina to bail them out of a tight spot.

Much the same was true for Republican birtherism: it was wishful thinking.

As we all know, the Zeroth Amendment to the Bill of Rights, as carved on the Statue of Liberty, is that Americans don’t have the right to borders because that would discriminate against the civil rights of foreigners to immigrate here. The Zeroth Amendment precedes the First Amendment, by the way, so you don’t have the right to protest about it either.

From the Washington Post:

Clinton asks why she isn’t beating Trump by 50 points
By John Wagner September 21 at 6:12 PM

ORLANDO — Hillary Clinton gave voice Wednesday to a question on the minds of many of her fiercest advocates in her race against the controversy-prone Donald Trump: Why isn’t she way, way ahead?

The Democratic nominee raised the issue here during an address via video conference to a gathering in Las Vegas of the Laborers’ International Union of North America.

The former secretary of state ticked off her pro-union positions, including investing in infrastructure, raising the minimum wage and supporting collective bargaining.

“Having said all this, ‘Why aren’t I 50 points ahead?’ you might ask?” Clinton said.

From the WSJ tonight:

Man Shot, State of Emergency Declared as Charlotte Protests Continue
Protests erupted after a fatal police shooting of Keith Lamont Scott on Tuesday; officials say he was armed
Protesters were heard yelling ‘Black lives matter’ and ‘Hands up, don’t shoot’ on Tuesday.

By VALERIE BAUERLEIN and CAMERON MCWHIRTER
September 22, 2016
1096 COMMENTS
CHARLOTTE, N.C.—A person was shot and an officer was injured during a second night of protests following the fatal police shooting of a black man the day before.

The protester was shot by a civilian downtown just after 8 p.m., according to the city of Charlotte. The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department “did not fire the shot,” the city said in a tweet. After first saying that the man had been killed, officials said in a corrected tweet that he is on life support and in critical condition. City officials also confirmed that a police officer had been transported to a hospital for injuries.

The evening began peacefully with a vigil at a 6-acre downtown park. But as some protesters left the park and marched through the streets, they faced off with police in riot gear, holding their hands in the air, chanting, “Hands up, don’t shoot.” Others approached the officers’ face masks, saying, “Why do you keep killing us?”

Shortly thereafter, protesters confronted police downtown and appeared to throw water bottles and chase police cars. Police responded with tear gas. When a man fell in the street, it was initially unclear whether he had been shot by police or someone in the crowd.

Violent protests continued toward midnight Wednesday in the central business district, a few yards from the Ritz-Carlton hotel that is host to many Bank of America Corp. and Wells Fargo & Co. executives, whose skyscrapers are nearby, and a block from the arena where basketball legend Michael Jordan’s Charlotte Hornets play. Windows at restaurants and major hotels were smashed, and police in riot gear sought to regain control of the streets.

The bus and streetcar station a few blocks away closed early, a rare event in a city which the mayor has said takes pride in its ability to talk through problems in “the Charlotte way.”

Commenter Artichoke writes:

This Charlotte protest crosses a couple unusual lines:

1. It wasn’t in the “hood” but in downtown. I believe this was also true of the Albuquerque contretemps within the past year, but usually they burn down their own stuff, their own weave.

2. It was semi-military. Controlling a highway, keeping the police back by erecting their own barricades against the police. This evening the police were forced to retreat.

From my column this week in Taki’s Magazine, “Hillary Held Hostage,” written Monday night:

Black riots, like the one in Milwaukee last month following a black cop shooting a black criminal, aren’t good for Hillary either. But the long hot summer of 2016 is finally cooling off as autumn begins. The BLM leadership and the media presumably have been notified to go easy on the outrage over any incidents of cops shooting blacks, like the latest in Tulsa, until after the election.

Still, the kind of blacks who might riot don’t read The New York Times and think the BLM top leadership are a bunch of careerist weirdos playing at being black. Thus, stoking black rage isn’t something that can necessarily be shut down when it’s tactically inconvenient for the Democrats.

Well, the Long Hot Summer of 2016 didn’t end fast enough for Hillary.

Damn Global Warming.

From the New York Times:

Immigration Reform: Disparate Ideas, Disparate Futures
Eduardo Porter
ECONOMIC SCENE SEPT. 20, 2016

Under Mr. Trump’s anti-immigrant proposals, the American population would probably shrink to 323 million by 2024, about one million fewer people than today and 22 million fewer people than the Census Bureau’s projections for eight years from now.

There is another side to the story, too: With Hillary Clinton as the next president, the population of the United States is more likely to increase to 360 million in 2024, from 324 million today.

Of course, these disparate futures, estimated by Joseph Chamie, a demographer who once headed the United Nations Population Division, rely on a few assumptions. Mr. Trump would expel 11 million immigrants who are illegally in the country; Mrs. Clinton would legalize them. Future migration in a Trumpian America would fall to zero but would rise if Mrs. Clinton were president, as many newly legalized residents brought their families along.

The gap — 37 million people, more than a tenth of the population — underscores how powerfully immigration policy will shape the future of the United States.

I know we aren’t supposed to use analogies when thinking about immigration policy, because analogies are conducive to rational thought, while immigration policy is supposed to be decided based solely upon schmaltz. Still, immigration policy can be compared to college admissions policies. Trump says America should have an Ivy League admissions policy, while Hillary says America deserves a community college admissions policy.

In my new Taki’s Magazine column, “Hillary Held Hostage,” I point out that Hillary has put herself at the mercy of events by her refusal to moderate her pro-BLM and pro-Muslim immigration stances.

Tonight, events don’t seem to be flowing in Hillary’s favor in Charlotte in the key battleground state of North Carolina. Or then again maybe Hillary knows best and this kind of looting will turn out her black base?

From my column in Taki’s Magazine:

Hillary Held Hostage
by Steve Sailer
September 21, 2016

As demonstrated by a weekend of immigrant Muslim terrorism in Minnesota, New York, and New Jersey, Mrs. Clinton has left herself a hostage to fortune. While still the overdog in the campaign, her repeatedly passing up opportunities to pivot away from the Establishment’s extremist conventional wisdom on border security, Donald Trump’s best issue, has left her at the mercy of events.

Trump is not a deep reader, but he has watched a whole lot of television news over the decades and appears to have a pretty accurate sense of the rhythm of events, of how often bad things are likely to happen. He has positioned himself on the issues to benefit from incidents like this weekend’s that, while they can’t be predicted exactly, can be foreseen statistically. With 48 days left until the election, that’s plenty of time for various more bad news that will hurt Hillary.

Meanwhile, Trump has triangulated in Hillary’s direction on her women’s issues like maternity leave, while nimbly staying strong on his core issue of borders. Trump understands not just Will Rogers’ Law of Holes, but also its counterpart: If you find yourself in a goldmine, don’t stop digging.

Hillary, though, has been stuck in a rut on borders, and just keeps digging.

Why is open borders looking more and more like the ditch she’s choosing to die in?

Read the whole thing there.

If you go to Google and type in American inventors you get back from Google pictures of the top American inventors of all time.

The #1 American inventor of all time is Lewis Howard Latimer, who, I just learned, worked with both Edison and Bell.

Thomas Edison is in 6th place and a well-tanned Alexander Graham Bell in 9th place, with ten black inventors rounding out the top dozen.

In the second dozen, Samuel Morse is 19th, Eli Whitney 20th, and Ben Franklin 23rd. Everybody else is black.

The Wright Brothers don’t make the top 50 American inventors, according to Google.

Thanks to John Rivers’ Twitter account for this.

In contrast, if I Google Scottish inventors, I get:

If I type in French inventors, I get:

Presumably, Google must get a lot of requests for “African American inventors” and assumes that’s what you really meant when you ask for “American inventors.” After all, what kind of sick Nazi do you have to be to be interested in your fellow Americans irrespective of race? That’s racist!

This phenomenon appears to be tied into propagandizing schoolchildren in K-12. For example, if I Google American psychologists, a subject only of interest to college and above, I get a pretty reasonable list with William James at #1:

On the other hand, American mathematicians, which is more of a K-12 school report topic than psychologists, is pretty silly:

(On the other hand, #10 David Blackwell, a Berkeley statistician, is fairly legit.)

One interesting thing is that Hispanics and Asians are completely shut out of this phenomenon.

Microsoft’s Bing is similar but slightly less absurd with Edison edging out George Washington Carver for the top spot, and Latimer coming behind Franklin and Bell, with Tesla making the top dozen.

On Bing, Bill Gates is #22, behind Steve Jobs at #19 (Woz doesn’t make the top 50). Hedy Lamarr is #28. Bing’s list is more fun than Google’s, which is mostly just depressing.

Similarly, here’s Google’s American scientists:

And here’s Bing’s American scientists:

So, Bing’s list is once again less dismal. I don’t mind a sprinkling of Diversity Tokens, but when there’s no room for Oppenheimer or Feynman on Google’s Top Fifty (#8 and #17, respectively, on Bing’s list) because of all the black obscurities, well, that’s just stupid and boring.

If you type black inventors into Google, you get:

If you type white inventors into Google, you get:

If you type inventors into Google, you don’t get any pictures, you just get:

On the other hand, Google’s Mexican outlet, Google.mx gives you a much more plausible list of “inventor americano:”

The Mexican Top 50 American inventors includes 46 white men, two blacks, and two white women.

The 18th Century inventor John Fitch who is #12 on the Mexican list is an ancestor of 20th Century inventor John Fitch, inventor of those garbage cans filled with increasing amounts of sand that keep you from crashing into bridge abutments, who I’ve written about before. He was motivated to come up with his innovation when competing in the 1955 24 Hours at Le Mans auto race when his partner’s Mercedes sports car flew off the track at 150 mph and into the stands killing 83 spectators.

Fitch tested his invention by repeatedly crashing into his trash cans at speeds up to 70 mph.

But perhaps an even more awesome safety inventor than Fitch was Col. Dr. John Paul Stapp, the rocket sled guy who made himself into a human crash test dummy to discover how pilots could survive partial crashes and bailing out.

He decelerated from 632 mph to 0 mph in about a second, proving to aircraft designers that humans, if properly secured, could withstand much rougher landing than had been assumed.

After he retired from the military, Colonel Stapp campaigned to get American motorists to wear seatbelts.

Seatbelts were considered unmanly. My father, for example, didn’t start wearing a seatbelt until his 80s. There was a widespread belief that your best bet was to be “thrown clear” of the crash. (Indeed, Fitch’s partner was thrown clear at Le Mans, but, perhaps unsurprisingly, didn’t survive the landing.)

Colonel Doctor Stapp, however, who had volunteered for his own craziest tests, couldn’t be accused of unmanliness, so his campaign was influential.

It took human beings a long time to figure out it was a good idea to invent safety devices. Perhaps school children in the future will be taught the extraordinary stories of Fitch and Stapp.

But probably not, because who has room for guys who have saved maybe 100,000+ lives between them by risking their own lives to survive high speed crashes when there is diversity to celebrate?