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Rushton/Race/Etc.
Susan Love Brown (SL_BROWN@ACC.FAU.EDU)
Tue, 1 Nov 1994 20:34:24 -0400
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Date: Mon, 31 Oct 1994 10:02:34 -0400 (EDT)
From: SL_BROWN@ACC.FAU.EDU
Subject: RUSHTON'S FACTS
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Just a few points of interest in response to Rushton's latest post:
1. I saw a documentary recently about the problem of prostitution and
AIDS in Thailand. It is running rampant. In fact, this documentary
also mentioned that any young girls suspected of carrying HIV are
killed at the border when attempting to return to Burma.
2. Is Rushton familiar with the work of U.S. sociologists, which has
shown that the U.S. legal system is biased toward minorities. That
is, minorities are more likely to be convicted and receive longer
sentences than whites because of biases built into our legal system.
(I think Donald Black is a key person in researching this.) In other
words, Rushton's figures may reflect the very bias of the system.
More blacks are convicted and serve longer sentences, because they do
not have access to good attorneys and are not entrenched in the
political system in the way that whites are. Therefore, the
statistics will be distorted. Whites could be committing as many
crimes, but this would not be reflected in the statistics. Also,
Rushton doesn't seem to look at so-called "white collar" crime. Black
drug dealers are rarely in business for themselves; they represent the
lower eschelon of a business controlled by others, including white
bankers who launder money. However, these facts never show up in the
statistics.
3. The differences between black and white IQs seems to be a well
established fact. However, has anyone done a breakdown of white IQs
by ethnic group? When these numbers are broken down by distinct
groups, what happens (this for blacks as well as whites). Do ALL
Asians do well, or do some Asians do better than others? In other
words, aggregate groups based on white, black, and Asian don't seem to
be specific enough or even useful. What are the details? Why
wouldn't studies like this be done on specific populations rather than
such amorphous aggregations as race?
4. Caribbean nations have a problem with crime, because of the move
from rural to urban areas in search of work. This is true in most
third-world countries.
5. My local newspaper, the SUN-SENTINEL ran an article last week
informing us that crime in medieval England was pretty bad. The town
of Oxford (yes, the site of the famous university) had a higher
homicide rate than in New York City today. Is Rushton really looking
at crime statistics over long periods of time, or is he arbitrarily
focusing on a short period of time in which tremendous social
dislocations have been going on in the world -- the end of colonialism
and the attempt of these nations to recover from its effects.
Enough said.
Susan Love Brown
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