Radio Derb On One Of The Pampered Pets Of Diversity

By John Derbyshire

09/30/2012

Radio Derb is on the air, on iTunes and at Taki’s Magazine, with a full transcript here. We've shifted from a Friday to a Saturday schedule, which has some listeners confused. Sorry about the change.

In one segment of this weeks' broadcast I take on one of the pampered pets of the Diversity cult.

This one’s actually a couple of weeks old. A reader brought it to my attention, though, and I can’t resist it. It’s a rant. I’m going to call it my rant of the week, notwithstanding it really belongs to a different week.

The context here is a bunch of talking heads on MSNBC discussing risk. Someone mentioned the risks that entrepreneurs take. At that point a different talking head, a mulatto lady named Melissa Harris-Perry, slammed her hand on the table and launched into her rant. Listen:

[Audio clip: "What is riskier than living poor in America? Seriously! What in the world is riskier than being a poor person in America?

"I live in a neighborhood where people are shot on my street corner. I live in a neighborhood where people have to figure out how to get their kid into school because maybe it will be a good school and maybe it won’t.

"I am sick of the idea that being wealthy is risky. No! … Being poor is what is risky! We have to create a safety net for poor people. And when we won’t, because they happen to look different from us, it is the pervasive ugliness."]

That naturally excited my curiosity about where, exactly, Ms. Harris-Perry does live, the more so since Obama-booster Chris Matthews told us a few days later that he knows all about the tribulations of black people because he drives past lots of them on his way into work through Washington, D.C. from his million-dollar house in one-percent-black Chevy Chase, Maryland.

Answer: According to an article in the Times-Picayune, April 28th this year, Ms. Harris-Perry lives in Esplanade Ridge, New Orleans, with her husband James and her 9-year-old daughter. The area’s urban all right. Quote from Wikitravel, quote: "Some upper-income neighborhoods are bordered by lower-income neighborhoods and the level of safety can change from block to block," end quote. On the other hand, it’s something of an architectural showcase. Quote from neworleansonline, quote: "Esplanade Avenue is a living gallery of 19th and early 20th century residential architecture. The oak-lined boulevard and surrounding neighborhoods, with proximity to both City Park and Bayou St. John and an excellent stock of historic housing, draw natives and visitors alike to this area." End quote.

So it’s not easy to say how much Ms. Harris-Perry is exaggerating. She must be exaggerating some, as in the Times-Picayune piece we read, quote, "She has come to love the house and especially the Esplanade Ridge neighborhood, where she has gotten to know neighbors and appreciate the architecture. Harris-Perry says that both the backyard and front porch are ideal places to spend leisure time." It doesn’t really sound like she’s ducking bullets there, does it?

And if she was, she'd be criminally negligent towards that 9-year-old daughter. As well as her $750,000 salary from MSNBC, Ms. Harris-Perry makes $200,000 as a professor of Hate Studies at Tulane University. That’s nearly a million dollars a year in salaried income. If, with all that money coming in, the lady deliberately chose to go and live in Crack City, she has some explaining to do to that poor kid.

In a column that got me in a heap of trouble a few months ago I wrote the following, quote: "To be an intelligent, well-socialized black person in present-day U.S. society is a height of felicity rarely before attained by any group of human beings in history." I think Melissa Harris-Perry illustrates the point. Yet still she wants to harangue us about the suffering she endures at the hands of the racist power structure.

Hey, lady, count your blessings: the greatest of which is, that you live in a country where you can make a million dollars a year by guilt-tripping fawning white liberals.

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