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Re: BELL CURVE CRITIC EXPOSED?
S. LaBonne (labonnes@csc.albany.edu)
3 Feb 1995 15:04:08 GMT
In article <3gs786$b3g@nyx10.cs.du.edu>, M <anon1167@nyx10.cs.du.edu> wrote:
>Steve, although you raise several good points, you may be onshaky ground
>here. Becuase our classificantion schemes based on characteristics have
>not done well does not mean that race makes no biological sense. It
>could just be that , so far, we have not come up with the right
>characteristeics. It could be that a more "biological" approach (focused
>on genes and gene products, say) could produce a meaningful, biological
>framework for race. Because we dont have it now, does not mean that it
>does not exist.
In my judgment as a scientist, the failure of the manifold and strenuous
attempts to define "races" strongly suggests that the concept itself is
bankrupt. Normally a line of work is given up after such a long history
of repeated and devastating failure- unless, of course, there is an
_ideological_ axe to be ground. I put to you the question I have put
to others: why so you consider the project of defining "races" to be
so important that the quest _must_ be continued despite evidently
unpromising prospects? I genuinely do not understand this, and I wish
someone could explain it to me.
--
Steve LaBonne *********************** (labonnes@csc.albany.edu)
"It can never be satisfied, the mind, never." - Wallace Stevens
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