Re: BELL CURVE CRITIC EXPOSED?
Frosch (dexter@aries.scs.uiuc.edu)
4 Feb 95 03:26:33 GMT
<jerrybro@uclink2.berkeley.edu> writes:
>dexter@aries.scs.uiuc.edu (Frosch) wrote:
>> maybe _you_ think that is what you were doing, but as i note
>> from a different post, you are not even taking into account that
>> the newsgroups to which this is being posted (any of the above)
>> are INTERNATIONAL. to say "black means african-american", with
>> not even a nominal pointer to social context, is a gross failure
>> acknowledge that reality.
>The book under discussion is about American society. For this
>reason, I kept my remarks within that context.
the kindest interpretation i can make of any of your recent
posts, is that you are shooting your mouth off, without thinking
of the implications of what you write, and finding justifications
later when you are called on it. this post does not fall outside
that interpretation.
> "black" does not mean that, it means a
>> range of things in different social contexts, one of which is
>> u.s. society.
>I know that, but I don't know exactly what it means, so I'm not
>going to go around saying "it means all Africans" or any such
>nonsense.
and yet you have no hesitation in saying "black means african-
american", despite the fact that, here, you "don't know what it
means". can you see the idiocy of the statement even without the
qualifier "unless you are hindu"?
> [and you deleted without comment my pointer to the
>> use of "black" in australia, although this directly contradicted
>> claims you made in another post.]
>
>As I recall, I said "maybe they do". I admitted not knowing.
>And, not knowing, I was not ready to say "black refers also
>to Australian aborigines." Then I went on to admit not knowing
>what Dutch and French settlers called their African neighbors.
>By the way, I don't see why I have to include everything you
>write into my post, and then to reply to it. You made a point
>and I deferred to your better knowledge. I'm doing so now
>explicitly, just to make you happy, though given the form of
>your latest post you hardly deserve it IMO:
the form of my latest post has a lot to do with the impression
you are giving of deliberate deception.
and again you are backpedalling. if you intended to say "in
murray's book, "black" refers to african-americans", it would have
been irrelevant what "black" means outside that context, and your
claims of ignorance as to what "black" means elsewhere would have
been completely beside the point.
>> to be brief: bullshit. and bullshit for which you needed to
> ^^^^^^^^
>> delete your original paragraph (and my transliteration) to make
>> the reconstruction halfway plausible.
>This is what I mean. I don't even know what you're talking
>about any more. My original point was that "black" is not
>purely a question of how a person looks, and I thought of
>my Hindu roommate at M.I.T. as someone who might be mistaken
>for "black" because of the way he looked, but who in my
>opinion should not be called "black".
>I'm not sure why you're going out of your way to interpret
>my posts in as unfriendly a way as as possible. Even supposing
>I had thought "Hindu" referred to a race and not to a religion,
>how would that bit of ignorance have affected my point? Not
>at all, I should think. The only reason for bringing it up
>that I can see was to discredit me by showing what an ignorant
>fool I was.
the reason for responding to what _you_ brought up, is that
it is patent nonsense. i know nothing about your roommate at MIT
beyond the fact that his religion is hindu and his skin is dark.
this is the only information you have offered. but you are still
using that information as if that amounted to a designation of
"race". and precisely _that_ is the material of prejudice, of
pre-formed judgments about other people.
annette
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