>Activists work toward the amelioration of bleak conditions for those
>oppressed and exploited.
Anyone makes that claim. It means everything that anyone wants it to mean, that is, nothing in particular.
>Generic lumping, as you call it, is needed to know if conditions are
>improving or worsening. Generic lumping tells us that in April 2002 the
>unemployment rate for black males (over 20) was 9.3 compared to 4.8 for
>white males. Or 37.3 for black males (16-19) compared to 15.3 for the
>same white male age group. It is beneficial for us to know this.
I do not think so. That information is quite useless without controlling for level of education, skills, experience, local labor market conditions and a myriad of other factors that affect employment rates and employment experience. Otherwise, generalizations lead to fallacies, such as "the death rate among hospital patients is higher than that in the population at large, therefore hospitals are detrimental to human health and discriminate against patients."
>Btw, isn't your use of the Polish peasant to make a point a sort of
>generic lump?
Again, I do not think so. I referred to a specific published source that
studied that particular group (Polish immigrants of peasant origins coming
to the US in the beginning of the 20th century, to be exact) and made
specific comments about their adaptation to host society and specific
factors that affected it. I did not talk about Polish peasants in general.
I am a philosophical nominalist, I think generalizations not only obscure reality but often distort and falsify it for the explicit purpose of promoting a religion, an ideology or an intellectual commodity. I also think that the world would be a much better place if many self-styled activists ceased "fighting for the oppressed" and engaged in more productive pursuits instead.
wojtek