Thread by @blackrepublican

The White Supremacist Who Invented Black-on-Black Crime, and The Black Conservative Who Debunked him.

Frederick Ludwig Hoffman vs. Dr. Kelly Miller

#BlackLivesMatter
#TheLilyWhiteMovement
#RaceWars

gutenberg.org/files/31279/31…

“Since it is so likely that [black] children will meet cruel enemies [white supremacist, bigots, and racist] let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage. Otherwise you are making their destiny not brighter but darker.” — C. S. Lewis

"Black children must be allowed to be children, regarded as children, protected as children, and forgiven for mistakes children will make."

In May 1896, Frederick L. Hoffman, a statistician at the Prudential Life Insurance Company, published a 330-page article in the prestigious Publications of the American Economic Association intended to prove—with statistical reliability—that the American Negro was uninsurable.

"Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro was a compilation of statistics, eugenic theory, observation, and speculation, solicited by the Prudential in response to a wave of state legislation banning discrimination against African Americans."

lawbookexchange.com/pages/books/36…

"Race Traits immediately became a key text in one of the central social preoccupations of the turn of the century: the supposed Negro Problem."

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…

"Numerous turn-of-the-century tracts (including Hoffman's) stipulated that minority racial groups were not only biologically inferior but also barriers to progress. Hoffman, a German immigrant, was one of the leading statisticians of his time ...

... and also a strong proponent of racial hierarchy and white supremacy."

cambridge.org/core/journals/…

Scientific Racism, Insurance, and Opposition to the Welfare State: Frederick L. Hoffman's Transatlantic Journey

cambridge.org/core/journals/…

"His application of mathematical tools to a social debate set a precedent for the use of statistics and actuarial science—two fields then in their infancies, which absorbed the biases and errors of their early participants. ....

Hoffman helped found both the National Tuberculosis Association (later the American Lung Association) and the American Cancer Society. How could a person of such significant accomplishment have authored work as fraught with bias as Race Traits?

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…

Historian Nancy Stepan reminds us that, “The scientists who gave scientific racism its credibility and respectability were often first rate scientists struggling to understand what appeared to them to be deeply puzzling problems of biology and human society.”

'Black-on-Black Crime & White Supremacy

"The author, Frederick L. Hoffman, did not use the specific phrase in the book, but promoted "the basic idea that Black people have a special crime problem."

abcn.ws/3gkSFqO

"While the first widespread use of the phrase "Black-on-Black crime" can be traced back to the 1970s, the notion that Black people have inherent, collective proclivities to commit crime against others, including other Black people, goes much further back than that, says historian

... says historian and professor of history, race and public policy at Harvard Kennedy School, Khalil Gibran Muhammad."

"And as one of America's leading statisticians at the time, Hoffman was one of the first to use crime statistics to support what he considered evidence of a Black crime problem."

"The Bureau of Justice Statistics' 2019 crime victimization statistics report shows those who commit violent acts tend to commit them against members of the same race as the offender.

Offenders were white in 62% of violent incidents committed against white victims, Black in 70%.

"Yet, Muhammad said, it's only "Black-on-Black crime" that is put under the microscope and used as an excuse to create more aggressive policing polices and higher rates of incarceration of Black people."

The African American Response to Hoffman: Dr. Kelly Miller

"If all the misdeeds of any people or individual were brought to light, the best of the race would be injured and the rest would be ruined, The Negro should accept the facts with becoming humility,

... and strive to live in closer conformity with the requirements of human and divine law. He does not labor under a destiny of death from which there is no escape. It is a condition and not a theory that confronts him."

"To the Negro I would say, let him not be discouraged at the ugly facts which confront him. The sociologists are flashing the light of scientific inquiry upon him. His faults lie nearer the surface and are more easily detected than those of the white race ...

"Let him not be overwhelmed when all his faults are observed, set in a note book, learned and conned by rote, to be cast into his teeth. If all the ugly facts about any people were brought to light they would furnish an unpleasant record."

Dr. Kelly Miller Dismantling White Supremacy

The author's conclusion will not stand the philosophical tests of a sound theory.

1. It is based upon disputed data. The accuracy of the eleventh census is not acceptable either to the popular or the scientific mind.

2. It is not based upon a sufficient induction of data. The arguments at most apply to the Negroes in the large cities, who constitute less than 12 per cent of the total population.

3. It does not account for the facts arranged under it as satisfactorily as can be done under a different hypothesis. The author fails to consider that the discouraging facts of observation may be due to the violent upheaval of emancipation and reconstruction, and

..are, therefore, only temporary n their duration.

"I do not know whether the author believes in Providence as a determining factor in society or not. It may not be accounted scientific to take cognizance of any element which cannot be quantified, counted, weighed, or measured."

But I do know that the wisest of our species have always believed that God is the controlling factor in human affairs. The Negro hopes and aspirations are built upon the foundation of this belief. We are told in His word that he visits the sins of the fathers upon the children

.. unto the third and fourth generation. If the Negro, then, will conform his life to the moral and sanitary laws, may not the evil tendencies now observable be eradicated or overcome?"

The first effects of emancipation are always harmful to the moral and physical well-being of the liberated class. The removal of physical restraints, before moral restraints have grown strong enough to take their place,

"The Jews in Egypt labored under circumstances remarkably similar to those of the American Negro. After their emancipation, it required them forty years to make the progress which the scientific process would have required them to make in forty days."

"Luckily for the Hebrews, there were no statisticians in those days. Think of the future which an Egyptian philosopher would have predicted for this people! And yet out of the loins of this race have Sprung the moral and spiritual law-givers of mankind. '

"We should not be discouraged because the Negro does not make a bee-line from Egyptian bondage to the Promised Land beyond the Jordan. He, too, must tarry awhile in the wilderness before he enters upon the full enjoyment of the heritage of freedom."

Dr. Kelly Miller, the black moderate conservative (neither a fan of Dubois or ol' Booker T's) a critic of certain aspects of Harlem Renaissance, a leading intellectual of the early twentieth century. #bhm

A few of the most influential African-American conservative thinkers, mentors, and influencers — Dr. Kelly Miller: Johns Hopkins University's First Black Student

afam.nts.jhu.edu/people/Miller/…

As Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at #HowardUniversity, he is credited with modernizing the classical curriculum at Howard, and strengthening the university's programs in the natural and social sciences.

Miller gained his well-known national importance from his involvement in another movement led by W.E.B. Du Bois.

He showed intellectual leadership during the conflict between the "accommodations" of Booker T. Washington and the "radicalism" of the growing civil rights. Miller was known in two ways to the public.

On African-American education policy, Miller aligned himself with neither the "radicals" — Du Bois and the Niagara Movement — nor the "conservatives" — the followers of Booker T. Washington.

Miller sought a middle way, a comprehensive education system that would provide for "symmetrical development" of African-American citizens by offering both vocational and intellectual instruction.

He believed that blacks should favor free market rather than government or union power, stating:

“The capitalist has but one dominating motive, the production and sale of goods. The race or color of the producer counts but little....” ⁰

“The capitalist stands for an open shop which gives to every man the unhindered right to work according to his ability and skill. In this proposition the capitalist and the Negro are as one.” — Dr. Kelly Miller (scientist)

In Defense of Black Conservatism

Dr. Kelly Miller, Radicals & Conservatives and Other Essays on the Negro in America, 1908

expo98.msu.edu/people/miller.…

The following information is intended for those monsters who use Scientific Racism to wage war on Black bodies: Were Gonna' Tear Your Kingdom Down.

https://twitter.com/blackrepublican/status/1332006260879843330?s=19

If you find yourself applauding Miller, and, yet still not fully embracing him? It's okay. Dr. Miller represents one of the early facets of African American Neo-Conservatism.

He came before Thomas Sowell.

Black Neo-Conservatism often de-emphasizes the indirect impact of The Atlantic slave trade, while zeroing in on and overdramatizing what it sees as a "failure to adopt mainstream middle-class, Anglo-American values and behaviors".

But, what happens when these values are adopted but racial disparities continue? For race conscious black conservatism we've no problem (esp.when evidence/instincts suggest it) saying: This is likely due to White Supremacy -- racialism

Neo Conservatives are more hesitant.