<<Les wrote:
>I didn't say this. My only mention of caste was when I said that Japan's
>burakumin were "a caste-like group."
>
>In the US context, I talked about class, race and power, not caste.
So then what is the basis of the comparison between the burakumin and racialized American minorities? Are the same structures or factors at play in their substandard test scores?
If we can find an outcaste in each and every society which scores one standard deviation below the national average and then prove that no one thinks some of these outcaste groups are racially inferior to the majority group, then what will we have proven?
That in none of the cases is heritable racial inferiority the reason for the test score gap?
I certainly don't see this as the strongest argument against racism, though it seems to me the one favored by American sociologists. Mr Casey concluded his second post with a seemingly impregnable argument from bioanthropology. Funny is it not that Cavalli Sforza has found that Gobineau's children are the most racially admixed of all?
So what does this comparison prove? That there is a universal caste structure or hierarchy in terms of which all societies are organized? What are the features of this universal structure? Why do all societies have it?
Warm regards, Jan>>
What you have me saying in this post is not what I said, or meant. Not sure if it's you or me, but I guess I'll go back to being a passive observer.
Warm regards, Les