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Re: Social Engineering (was: Different patriarchy Model)
Calvin Bruce Ostrum (cbo@csri.toronto.edu)
9 Jan 95 11:19:21 GMT
In article <3epmkiINN6me@hpsdlmf7.sdd.hp.com>,
Gerold Firl <geroldf@sdd.hp.com> wrote:
[quoting Saunders who is quoting Firl]
| >>I think that the incarceration rate disparity between blacks and other
| >>races in america is a good indication that black culture has been less
| >>successful at socialising individuals than other american racial
| >>subcultures.
|
| >While there may be *some truth to the core of what you say, that American
| >black culture has developed along some maladapted lines in some ways,
| >your simplification of issues such as three strikes which have
| >really easy and obvious confounding factors, shows up your ulterior
| >pure racist motivations.
|
| If by "racist" you mean that I'm prepared to acknowledge that differences
| exist between races, then yes; but I use a more restricted definition. To
| me, a racist is one who adheres to a belief in a rigid distinction between
| races, generally imputing a value-judgement of superior/inferior between
| them, and which also exagerates the extent of the genuine differences which
| do exist. I don't have any "ulterior pure racist motivations" of this sort,
| though I do believe that the various races of man have some variation in
| their physical characteristics.
I presume you are saying that there are more members of the "black race"
in prison than there are members of the "white race". Now, I've
noticed that in the past, you have maintained that "race" is a scientific
category, based on something or other to do with genetics, and not a
social category. So either there is some kind of equivocation above, or you
have access to some statistics that most of us lack, statistics about
this "scientific" definition of race and how it relates to incarceration
rates.
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Calvin Ostrum cbo@cs.toronto.edu
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It is a far, far better thing to have a firm anchor in nonsense than
to put out on the troubled seas of thought. -- John Kenneth Galbraith
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