So there is no such a thing as stereotypes on the left?
Besides, what you say depends on who your audience is. It is one thing to criticize pc to a conservative audience, and quite a different thing to crticize it to a left wing audience. Like in that old Soviet joke: An American and a Russian meet in bar and the American brags: "We have true democracy in our country. I can go in front of the White House with a sign 'Impeach the President of the United States' and nothing will happen to me." "Big deal" replies the Russian "I too can go in front of the Kremlin with a sign 'Impeach the President of the United States' and nothing will happen to me."
>2 and 3 seem to contradict each other. One inherits social capital
>through exposure to it growing up - so why can't you say that
>"someone/thing else" is responsible to some degree for one's actions?
>Sure there are individual exceptions, but the central tendency is
>that people tend to stay near the class they were born into.
It is a contradiction only when you take things out of context. It is one thing to emphasize the effect of social institutions and paths in behavioral models. It is quite a different things to reject rationalizations people use to avoid responsibility for their own actions. The fact that in general some of my choices are constrained by external forces, does not mean that (i) all of my choices are constrained or (ii) my choices in a particular situation are constrained.
For example, it is unlikely that anyone on this list will hold any position of real power or influence in this society (e.g. become a politician or a corporate CEO). It is so not because of the lack of talent or necessary diligence among lbo-talkers, but because of political constraints in this country. But it is a quite different thing when a subscriber starts throwing insults at other subscribers under the pretense of frustration with the status quo or ejecting the rules of conducts of the ruling class. As I recall, you unsub such individuals, no?
Besides, when you accept the rationalization exonerating, say, street gang members that "the system made them do it," what stops you from accepting other rationalizations of the same type, say, exonerating a rapist or a wife beater ("she made me do it") or a white male's anger over him not getting a job he "deserves" ("I did not get that job because of the affirmative action."). The logic of rationalization is a slippery slope to bastrardized relativism where where truth is decided by the popularity of the opinion or the celebrity status of the speaker.
wojtek