An extreme specimen of Homo negrothugathletensis

Jonathan J. writes:

The story of football player Maurice Clarett is a perfect example of the thug life of continous dsyfunction you have been writing about.

LA replies:

With the exception that Clarett seems to have straightened himself out after serving in prison for planning a murder. But can we really believe that he read Tolstoy, Confucius, and Forbes when he was in prison? It sounds like the familiar lie about black “honor students” that Tom Wolfe skewered in Bonfire of the Vanities.

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LA writes:

For those who did not get it, Homo negrothugathletensis is a rough pun on Homo neanderthalensis

December 14

M. Jose writes:

Technically, shouldn’t it be Homo sapiens negrothugathletensis, seeing as Neanderthals are now regarded as a subspecies rather than as a separate species? ;)

LA replies:

That was the way I originally posted it, but it was unwieldy in the three-word form, so I changed it to two words.

Of course, certain overwrought parties will see my mere use of the two-word form instead of the three-word form as proof that I am reading a certain group out of a certain species.

LA continues:

On the isssue of Neanderthals, I do not accept the recent twist in hominid taxonomy, contradicting the previous long-held view, which says that Neanderthals are Homo sapiens. Clearly that is wrong. Their skull is too different—dramatically, fundamentally different—from ours. They are a obviously a different being from us. I think that the re-classification of Neanderthals as part of Homo sapiens is largely an expression of egalitarian ideology, as so many of the “findings” in the very degraded sciences are nowadays.

Max P. writes:

After reading the article about the former Ohio State football player Maurice Clarett, I researched his biography on Wikipedia. I found this passage interesting:

Maurice Clarett is the son of Myke Clarett Sr. and Michelle Renee Clarett (now divorced). His father is a businessman, who once worked as a Regional Representative for the Secretary of State in Ohio. His mother worked as a senior administrator for the Youngstown City Clerk of Court.

How could this man have been such a thug? His father is described a businessman who worked for the Ohio Secretary of State, and his mother worked for the city court. This means he was middle to upper middle class. Yet by his own accounts, he was constantly in trouble with the law, did not attend classes in high school and took basket weaving type courses in college.

Now I know being middle class doesn’t protect one from problems such as drug addiction. But I thought middle class families at least instilled a drive for education in their children. Granted he seems to have found this drive now if one can believe he read all those books in prison. But the whole point of moving up the social economic ladder is to provide your children with the resources and example to do the same.

I wonder if he is typical of the black middle class. If he is it defeats the whole point of affirmative action that by elevating blacks up to the middle class we can break the cycle of dysfunction. For our sake, I hope his case is an aberration.

LA replies:

It’s hardly an aberration. Just this week we have this Woodard fellow who came from a well-to-do background and became a criminal and was assassinated by other criminals.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at December 13, 2012 06:22 PM | Send