Marc Faber crosses the imaginary line of political correctness and essentially ends his career.

Marc Faber is a globally known investor and economy watcher.  Recently he made some very broad and sweeping statements about how America is lucky it was colonized by whites instead of blacks.  Mish and many others in the investment community reported on it.  There are a couple of things that I would like to discuss about this.

1) Why did Marc Faber, after all these years of self control on public TV, make these comments now? I'm pretty sure this was not a new idea for him.  I'm pretty sure Marc Faber hasn't changed his views about anything for a very long time.  So why now?  In short, Marc felt that the wet blanket of fake political correctness, which had been hampering him from saying what he really thought all these years, was now weakened enough that he could express his opinion without being punished too badly.  Of course now we see from the broad reaction that he miscalculated, thus ending his tenure on many corporate boards, TV slots, etc.  He's 71 now and well off financially so maybe this is just his way of saying "I have F-U money, so F-U".

2) Were his comments racist?  Well let's first separate insensitivity and bad judgement from racism.  The definition of racism is, "prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one's own race is superior.".  Faber certainly prejudged the black race based on his comments.  He really doesn't know for sure what black founders would have built in the United States.  But the real teeth of racism is in the associated actions of discrimination and antagonism. I don't see Faber trying to suggest that blacks should get special mistreatment.  In other words, I don't see malice.  Where is the line between free speech and something more negative like racism?  In my view, that line is where malice is present.

3) What would an alien scientist say about this?  If an ET alien landed on Earth and was given access to global history what he would see is that the entire world pulled itself up out of the muck over the past 5000 years.  When it comes to advancing the human species nobody needs to mention the achievements of Europeans and Asians. 

But let's be scientists here for a second and not brain washed little politically correct automatons.  What great things have come out of Africa to benefit and move forward our species?  Please don't come up with one or two examples and claim parity.  I'm sure some advancements have come from there.  But BY AND LARGE computers, electronics, chemistry, physics, great works of art, massive efficient construction, crop efficiency, automation, commercial aircraft, robots and AI? 

I could go on and on here.  Africa is not known for any of these things and we are not talking about a new people here.  We are talking about an ancient people who for whatever reason did not step up.  40 years ago China wasn't much better but then Nixon began a program of using Chinese labor to feed western consumption and in the trade the Chinese got access to ALL American technology and, by G-d, they ran with it.  The Chinese have proved they are not a second class race.  But Africa just sits there, barely able to feed itself.  Intelligent people do not overlook facts in the name of political correctness.  This does not mean that all blacks share this African trait.  Not even close.  But that was not the question, was it?  Faber said that if a group of blacks (which would be Africans at the time) had colonized the USA that it would not be as far along now as it is.  Had he inserted the word "likely" I think it would have been a very fair statement from an intellectual honesty perspective.  Insensitive?  Sure.  Unwise?  Absolutely.  But not intellectually wrong.

In my own field of high tech, which has been open to anyone who can do the work for a long time, there are very few blacks.  NOT zero.  Just very few, on the order of 1%.  Is this because whites held them down?  Puhleeeze.  Is it because they didn't have a fair chance?  Well, China was in their shoes 40-50 years ago and now my email shuts down during Chinese Dragon Festival.  In other words, Chinese are now such a big part of high tech that high tech operations move aside for their holiday celebrations.  This is proof that nobody is keeping anyone down.  Those who have not stepped up have not stepped up for their own reasons.  No amount of politically correct whitewash can cover up these facts.