Withcraft and Races

Rakesh Bhandari bhandari at phoenix.Princeton.EDU
Tue Mar 7 15:07:15 PST 2000


Justin, reasoned argument would not allow one to premise an argument on the possibility of a "race" with a "heritable" disadvantage in "intelligence". How many times does a Albert Jacquard, Lewontin, Gould, Arthur Fine, Stephen Rose and Sahotra Sarkar have to explain the pitfalls in these concepts in this context before we cease to use them? They are ill defined and inapplicable concepts in terms of current scientific knowledge (which may not have been the case with witchcraft, so in this case we need not rely on due process arguments--don't reallly get Gordon's pt here). How you turn my argument around into a call for unreasoned, passionate polemic quite surprises me. I don't equate science or reason with philosophical games on the basis of such nonsense concepts. I don't think one sacrifices scientific legitimacy by refusing to accept the possibility of inherently inferior races in intelligence to then determine what kind of discrimination or affirmative action would be justified.

Perhaps you hadn't studied above authors and others to make these points on the basis of sound scientific knowledge, and this is what dispirited your listeners who were in real need of such clarification. Too bad you seem unable to have provided it. You know, even if you could still justify affirmative action and non discrimination (in addition to a non gassing and sterilization policy), your kind of argument does not remove the badge of inferiority a racialized minority is forced to wear simply through continuing suspicion that Levin and others may be correct.

And the very fact that you were not willing to rest your argument with the nonsense of the premises and assumptions (which you may have explained well) may well have implied to the audience you were not sure of your argument and therefore had to supplement it so you could win the debate--which is what it was for you, a debate.

Big deal, we get affirmative action, some may have thought, even though we may be racially inferior. And you wonder why some were angry, though you probably did not notice those who went despondent after the emotional violence of the evening.

Yours, Rakesh



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