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Re: Race, Science, & Political Correctness
Orgo_shopping (Orgo_shopping@alias.cyberpass.net)
26 Nov 1996 08:31:16 GMT
In article <57afkl$obc@pelican.unf.edu>, rkephart@osprey.unf.edu says...
>
>Bob Whitaker <bwhit@conterra.com> wrote:
>
>> Anybody your age who doesn't know what Political Correctness is
>> is beyond redemption. Maybe you have so totally accepted it you
>> don't know what it is. I doubt you've ever heard anything else.
>
>The rejection of 18th century taxonomies of humans "races" has nothing
>to do with "political correctness." It is a result of the refinement
>of our knowledge about how life forms, human and otherwise, change thru
>time and also vary over geographical space. This is what science is
>supposed to do for us: help us refine our analytic models of the
>universe.
>
>For the record, the phrase "political correctness" is tossed around
>mostly by right-wingers who use it defelect attention away from the
>discussion of important issues, such as "race", ethnicity, gender,
>sexual preference, and the like. Anything that upsets their world
>view is labeled "politically correct." This is very unfortunate,
>because it gets in the way of our work, part of which is to educate
>people about these issues from an anthropological perspective.
>
>It seems too bad that there appear to be so many people out there
>whose lives only have meaning when they are defined in terms of
>"us (whites)" versus "them (blacks, etc.)". Well, unfortunately for
>all of you, these categories, while socially and culturally "real" and
>important, are not biologically "real". This is what science has
>taught us over the last century or so. It's time to get over it, and
>move on to the really important task, which is understanding why and
>how these sociocultural categories are so important to us, anyway,
>and then helping our society figure out what to do about it.
>
>Ron Kephart
>University of North Florida
You have to ask why? It's made an issue daily by the media! Haven't you ever
noticed that the news is ALWAYS careful to point out the race of the victim and
the perpetrator whenever they're reporting the news? Why, if that's not
supposed to matter? The race stuff is a smoke screen that's put up and
maintained by the rich and powerful and the shadow gov't, those who would keep
us on our knees. They want to inflame the races against each other to divert
our attention away from them. And it has the side benefit of making everyone
willing to accept mor stringent and "marshall like" law to save them from the
fighting and conflict.
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