Yes. You should judge groups.

Last week, Jon Stewart had a dumb take that was not even intellectually coherent. Very shocking, I know. (<Link here, NSFW> I recommend skipping the video and reading my summary, but you can do as you like.)

Basically, it’s terrible to judge Somali-Americans as a group because of the actions of a few bad Somali-American leaders. However, judging white South Africans by the actions of their ancestors is legitimate. Also, judging anyone who voted for Trump as being an evil white racist or a fool is totally fine. This, according to Jon Stewart, anyway.

It is a common tactic deployed by Muslims and leftists about the problems of Muslim immigrant groups. “Most of them are decent and hard working, and you shouldn’t judge all Muslims by bad examples.” Without any exceptions that I am aware of, these same people judge whites and Israelis as a group.

For example, the woke left used the specific instance of George Floyd’s death as being representative of the attitudes of all whites and white society in general. That individual occurrence in Minneapolis wasn't just one cop behaving badly. It is an emblematic example of racial oppression everywhere. Strangely, this applied even in Britain. Historically. Britain didn’t have chattel slavery or Jim Crow. But they still had BLM riots. Such was the power of George Floyd.

The other most common example by Muslims was found in their response to the October 7th attacks (which was not unlike the reaction to any terrorist attack in general). Islamic apologists say that Israel’s response against Palestine over the October 7th attacks was deeply unfair because it punished all Palestinians for the actions of a radical few. They then want to boycott all of Israel for war crimes.

The left and Muslims don’t actually believe in not judging groups. It’s just that when a group they are advocating for does something bad, they begin to say, “Not all x does y.” While that is technically true, it is used to obfuscate the obvious reality that some groups have strikingly different rates of particular behaviors. Somalis have much higher rates of government fraud, and Pakistani Muslims have much higher rates of rape. Both groups have very high rates of cousin marriage. Importing those groups in masse would simply cause more problems than importing other groups.

Jon Stewart likely knows that importing Somalis has more downsides than importing middle-class Swedes. If he doesn’t, his research team knows it. But the Somali’s are part of his coalition of the oppressed in the leftist imagination, therefore they can’t be judged by the regular moral standards that ‘regular’ groups of people can be judged by.

When Leftists say that you should’t judge groups, ask them if they judge Israelis, Afrikaners, or white Christians in the American South. If that doesn’t work, ask them if they judge Republicans. If they say that being a Republican is being part of an ideology and not an ethnic group, and that Republicans can be held accountable according to the results of that ideology, then ask if Islam should be judged by similar standards.

Likely, it will result in an ad hominem or communist gobbledygook, but it will be a lively conversation.

I find it all quite annoying. These rhetorical flourishes are used to avoid blatant statistical realities that everyone understands. Obviously, people notice that different groups behave differently.

Just a few days ago, as I was completing this essay, Piers Morgan interviewed Nick Fuentes and pretended that he was dumb enough to ignore the entire idea of per capita rates. I’m no Fuentes fan, but Piers Morgan's obstinate refusal to admit transparent realities made Fuentes look sensible.

As Thomas Sowell has noted, one of the most consistent patterns throughout human civilization is that different groups have markedly different patterns of behavior. Pretending that every demographic is the same can work for a while when you live in a neighborhood of upper-middle-class white people with private security, as Piers Morgan does. But in almost every other circumstance, from immigration policy to deciding where to visit in Chicago, pretending that every demographic is the same is the height of foolishness.