From Ta-Nehisi:
Our problem is this–we have pundits who are geniuses at interpreting numbers, but rank failures at interpreting people. This is how someone looks at you with a straight face and argues that black men will use gay marriage to escape the altar. It’s a notion cultivated by a pundit who’s stared at the numbers for so long that they’ve started confusing them with people.
Man listen: Bring me all the stats you can muster. Bring me your illegitimacy rates, your marriage rates, your crime stats. Bring me your achievement gaps, your IQ chasms, your precisely weighted data. I’ll read it all with you and weep. But if you’re scared to be amongst the community you deign to interpret, I have only a pound and prayer to offer you. This isn’t exclusive to black people. This for “intellectuals” who analyze Iraq from the comforts of Washington think tank, yet wouldn’t know a word of Arabic, but haven’t spent more than a few days in the Middle-East.
via CB.
