20 Comments
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Sage Alfields's avatar

Loss of social prestige.

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Steve Sailer's avatar

African Americans got more prestigious from 2015 to 2020.

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Sage Alfields's avatar

Did they though? They got attention, sure; but attention for what? Being victims, being incapable of avoiding criminality. Compare pre-BLM Obama, which was untainted with such associations.

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prosa123's avatar

According to his girlfriend Kneeland had a history of mental health issues.

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Josehdgallagher's avatar

I suspect this may primarily be CTE related rather than other sociological factors. Note the recent shooting at Blackstone's NY HQ by a very young football player claiming to have CTE.

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Damon Pace's avatar

A far too easy and lazy response. Every time a football player does something criminal, then CTE is the automatic answer. If CTE was the answer for football players, then we would’ve seen Terry Bradshaw, Chris Collinsworth and Troy Aikman on the crime blotter by now, but we haven’t. After all, based upon your logic, CTE leads players to do criminal acts, right?

Sometimes, these players are as bad people. Just look Antonio Brown, presently with attempted murder charges over his head. This dude has a history of bad behavior, but teams pretty much swept it under the rug until his talent started to fade. Nothing about his behavior has to do with CTE at all. He’s just as asshole.

It has been reported that this young man suffered from mental illness. That seems the most likely answer. Killing oneself after a minor traffic incident involving the police definitely seems like what a crazy person would do.

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air dog's avatar

Easy, lazy, and also wrong. CTE sufficiently advanced to produce such extreme behavior is rare in players as young as 24.

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Barnard's avatar

Exactly right. They have been coddled and showered with attention since 10-12 years old for most of them. It wouldn't apply to this case, but I thought in some others, most notably Junior Seau, the drastic falloff in attention and praise from the public was the biggest factor. Blaming everything on CTE just absolves them of responsibility for their behavior and gives trial lawyers a big target to pursue.

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Kathleen Lowrey's avatar

From what I have read that young man was a heavy marijuana user, which for sure can induce mental illness and paranoid ideation. Self-diagnosis as having CTE from someone who thinks "so I should go shoot some people" vs "so I should get a medical checkup" is not really rock solid even if the pot reports are wrong.

I wonder what the toxicology report from Kneeland will indicate.

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Bill Price's avatar

Same reason their birth rate is down: increased secularism/lower religiosity.

Blacks lagged whites in this trend but they're catching up.

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Grey Squirrel's avatar

Well yeah. It's just like hicklibs following in the footsteps of NYC libs or metal music being big in Japan in the 90s. The SWPL's set the tone and minorities etc follow afterward.

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Arthur Sido's avatar

black social media is a cesspool of wallowing in self-pity, everyone is out to get them, etc. Couple that with their nihilistic "music" and it is no wonder they are depressed.

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John Wheelock's avatar

Pretty depressing, as all I could find was “traffic violation” for why he was pulled over. Also, his father is currently incarcerated and his girlfriend is pregnant.

Ugh. Seems like more of a mental health issue than a gangsta mentality. I think Steve has written in the past about higher rates of paranoia and schizophrenia among Black Americans. Insinuating that the police are always out to get them definitely doesn’t help these matters.

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Ralph L's avatar
1hEdited

Increased pot usage and gambling? Can steroids lead to depression, as some anti-depressants can for some people?

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michael mitchell's avatar

Read the NYT article. There's a story there, somewhere. But the Times totally missed it.

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I thought so's avatar

Internalized black fatigue. They're sick of their own bullshit.

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Erik's avatar

Is it still below the white rate? Perhaps blacks are doing better economically and reaching some level of middle class that is banal and depressing. We assume that doing well economically would make you happier but I have heard that people with more struggles might be less depressed. Perhaps middle class lifestyle gives you too much time to brood and without real problems to distract you, you end up following a chain of logic that leads to the pointlessness of existence.

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Max West's avatar

Here's a theory: Endless stories of their ubiquitous victimhood make the purported victims unhappy. The race narrative began to get louder with Obama, especially near the end of his term Hence the upward curve.

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Kathleen Lowrey's avatar

The very widespread use of marijuana is a giant societal disaster for young people in the U.S. and Canada. I wonder if it plays a role in this unfortunate rise in suicide.

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AnotherDad's avatar

"Discredited theory of eugenics"

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