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White supremacists are rallying to John Derbyshire's side, but not without reservations. Derbyshire was fired from the National Review this weekend for writing a racist essay in another magazine, after years of defining exactly how racist a writer could be and still get published in a prestigious magazine. Perhaps Derbyshire was surprised by his dismissal, given that the National Review has recently published Victor Davis Hanson wondering why Trayvon Marton could use the N-word freely but George Zimmerman was attacked for allegedly saying "coon," Jonah Goldberg writing that prominent black leaders couldn't understand the lives of regular black folks as well as he could, and Heather Mac Donald statistically proving that white racism is no longer a problem because hardly any white people murder black people any more. But the folks at American Renaissance, a white supremacist magazine, are not surprised Derbyshire is out the door. The truth -- racists' idea of the truth, that is -- is dangerous, they say. We are glad that on this tiny point -- writing really racist stuff will cost you your job -- they are right.
Derbyshire's essay was an imaginary talk with his children about the dangers of large groups of black people, the intellectual and cultural inferiority of blacks, black people's hatred of whites, and the public relations benefits of having one smart black friend. American Renaissance's Jared Taylor writes that Derbyshire "committed the usual crime of pointing out something that is not only true but that everyone knows to be true." There is a terrible double standard, Taylor says, because it's OK to say bad things about whites but not about blacks. (Taylor quotes someone "demanding 'the abolition of the white race,'" but provides no link or citation for who said it.) "What people like John Derbyshire say is different. He must be fired, silenced, and disgraced because everyone—from the mooncalves at Huffington Post to the 'conservatives' at National Review—lives by the very rules Mr. Derbyshire put into print… There is nothing cowards and hypocrites hate more than brave men who live by their convictions."