Well here we all are. I must say (in hush demure tones) that I actually think the entirety of your repost is bullshit: straight-up. Definitional and temporal problems of statistical inquiry into th direction of causation aside, the fact remains that African Americans variously defined and enumerated are overly represented in terms of illiteracy, incarceration, infant mortality rates or whatever other statistical/definitional category you care to track vis-a-vis the white population. Now you can pursue several avenues of rejoinders. "You" could as you have retreat into a positivist sanctuary built with the statistical problems of definitional and temporal specificity and causation. You could, look at all the studies and conclude regardless of the temporal and definitional problems that there remains a large residual and attribute that residual to the spurious but nevertheless socially real category of blackness and ascribed traits of that construct. Or you could simply and rightly in my mind conclude that the residual is in fact the product and legacy of racism understood as a form of domination within the broader but no more real context of a hierarchically organized society. We will not get to the end by papering over the real cracks that separate us. Unity cannot be purchased through the implicit or willfull disregard of the political economy that brought us here. I too share your preference for materialist explanations which has nothing to do with a coy seperating out of oneself and a series of "limited" (in terms of understanding) statistical intractabilities (which of course has everthing to do with 1,2,3 below).
Respectfully yours,
Travis
Quoting Wojtek Sokolowski <sokol at jhu.edu>:
> Travis:
> > Sorry to be so blunt Wojtek but you have been bully-boying your way around
> on
> > this one.
>
> So I am not clear enough, huh? OK, then:
>
> There are several issues at stake here:
>
> (i) a scientific determination of the contribution of various factors, such
> as socio-demographic characteristics, institutional behavior, wealth, skills
> etc. to social inequalities in the US;
>
> (ii) popular perceptions of the contributions of the said factors;
>
> (iii) my own cognitive biases in interpreting (i) and (ii) above; and
>
> (iv) my own cognitive biases affecting my attitude toward other people.
>
> RE. (i) I stated that such determination is very difficult, if at all
> possible, and not very useful politically. I did not state the reasons, but
> these include definitional problems , time-sequencing problems (i.e. what
> comes first, what comes next and in what time interval. Which is crucial
> for any cause-effect modeling), measurement problems (many of the said
> factors cannot be measured with reasonable reliability and validity),
> non-linearity (certain effects can be exponentially compound over time),
> temporal inter-correlations (e.g. X affects Y at time T1, but Y affects X
> at time T2) - to name a few. Is that clear enough, or further
> clarifications are needed?
>
> RE (ii) I merely hinted popular interpretations of the causes of social
> inequalities, assuming that these are generally known. These include mainly
> the "personal responsibility" (they are lazy), "human capital" (they are
> lacking skills i.e. too stupid) arguments favored by the right, and the
> variants of racism argument (the top dog(s) makes(s) the underdogs do bad
> things and keep(s) them from getting to the top). As I stated time and
> again on this forum, I find such perceptions (as well as many other popular
> myths) and interesting subject of study of human cognitions, but otherwise
> of little or no value for explaining social behavior and institutions. Is
> that sufficiently clear?
>
> Re (iii) My personal bias is that I favor materialistic explanations of over
> cultural ones, and multi-factor models over single cause explanations.
> That is why I am not a big fan of pop-culture and populist discourse that
> loves simplistic explanations, buzzwords and soundbites.
>
> Re (iv) I strongly dislike people with certain behavioral characteristics
> which include, but are not limited to being violent, rowdy, rude,
> self-righteous or arrogant. I have no sympathy toward such individuals and
> generally avoid them as much as I can. This normally is of little interest
> to anyone but a handful of personal friends and relatives, but sometimes it
> affects my reaction toward other people as well, hence I mentioned that.
> Specifically, it pisses me off when someone tries to portray such behavioral
> characteristics as virtues or excuse them as legitimate reactions. To be
> even more blunt, an asshole is an asshole and those who say otherwise are
> either full of shit, do not know any better, or have some unresolved
> emotional or psychological problems. This, of course has nothing to do
> whatsoever with (i) (ii) or (ii) above, but it does affect my postings to
> this list from time to time. That should be sufficiently clear, no?
>
> Wojtek
>
>
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