On Sun, 4 May 2003, andie nachgeborenen wrote:
> Miles, we almost certainly cannot change people's mindss abour race with
> science education. For that we need a combination of a change in social
> relations and propaganda, underpinned by a common experience of
> cross-racial struggle agsint common enemies. (Of course one might say
> atht the education provided by that struggle is practical or applied
> science.) But Charles' point was quite different. It concerned how we
> know the truth about races, namely that they're not a biological
> reality. This is a different question from how certain people feel about
> race or anything else. Scientific justification is an objective notion,
> not a subjective feeling of great confidence. There may be nonscientific
> kinds of knowledge -- but not with respect to a biological question. The
> only acceptable answer to the questions, Do races have biological
> reality?, is a scientific one. jks
>
I think it's important to contextualize this. In a society that values science as we do, the only acceptable answer is a scientific one, I agree. But do you really believe that people can only have what they consider biological knowledge if they do science? A great deal of cross-cultural and historical data challenges this. Biological knowledge is common in many societies without scientific activity. If people were taught by tradition and cultural practices that skin color does not reflect important categories, that would be valid knowledge in their society, as assessed by the truth standards in that society.
I stress this point because doing science is neither sufficient nor necessary to eliminate race in human societies, despite CB's claims. I agree that science is a useful rhetorical tool in our society, but it's hardly necessary. Let me control the mass media and parenting practices for a few generations, and race would be gone, even if all the biological research on the myth of race was lost.
Miles