stereotypes

Wojtek Sokolowski sokol at jhu.edu
Wed May 30 12:49:02 PDT 2001


At 03:18 PM 5/30/01 -0400, you wrote:
>Wojtek Sokolowski wrote:
>
>> That is, who tells certain people
>>that they should drop out of school, put baggy clothes on, start listening
>>to (c)rap musing and doing drugs, and what does he do to enforce it?
>
>You referring to white suburban teenagers?

Teenagers in general, which is based in a great part on my personal experience. My kid did the exact same thing in HS, excepet that he is now in a private college whilst some of his HS friends are flipping burgers or pushing drugs. What made the difference was that my kid was endowed with certain amount of 'social capital' through his upbringing, whereas his friends were not.

But to be sure, the point I tried to make in my response to Kelley had to do with stereotypes, namely the liberal sterotype of 'victimization.' This means a bunch of hoodlums or loosers blaming anyone/anthing other than themselves for their own actions or failures. This pisses me off royally, partly because it was quite widely spread in my old country (blaming "communism" for anything from being an unpublished writer to a drug addict), and partly because it tends to be the 'received wisdom' of many liberals in this country. Call it perversive, but I derive a great pleasure from shitting on party lines and altars.

wojtek



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