Cultural racism

Yoshie Furuhashi furuhashi.1 at osu.edu
Sat May 30 18:41:10 PDT 1998


Katha wrote:
>I think the book did a great
>deal to legitimize white people's not-quite-articulate suspicion that
>black people are just dumber than whites.

Though I agree with Katha that Charles Murray, etc. did a great job legitimating white common sense,I think that many--if not all--white people had and have been quite articulate about their conviction that they are smarter than blacks + Latinos, with or without help from the dismal 'IQ' debate. Whenever they've voiced their opposition to affirmative action, they have been very vocal about how they resent 'unqualified' blacks + Latinos taking places of 'more qualified' whites. The word 'unqualified' is very interesting, in that it places no explicit emphasis on either culture or nature and yet racial hierarchy of 'merit' is made clear by it. Further, the words 'qualified' and 'unqualified' also allow whites to express a sense of their own entitlement as opposed to a feeling that blacks + Latinos are interlopers.

Yoshie



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