--- Charles Brown <charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> wrote:
> CB: So, you think that it's just an accident of
> history that Black
> people, on average, make more bad choices and have
> more bad parental
> influences than white people, given the objective
> facts of the
> differences in quantity and quality of life between
> Whites and Blacks
> over many generations ? You are too smart for that,
> and so it means you
> are just being dishonest, intellectually dishonest.
> Do you really
> maintain that the difference in life expectancy of
> Whites and Blacks is
> due to differences in individual choice or parental
> influence ? I don't
> believe you think that. Or the differences in
> proportions of people in
> prison ?
>
> How is it that so many more bad individual choices
> accumulate among
> Black people than among White people.
[WS:] Quite honestly, Charles, I think that the problems affecting Black communities seem to increase as racism in the US decreases. If your claimed connection between racism and social problems were true, we would see more of the latter in the heights of the racist oppresion, not less.
What is more there are multiple causes for life outcomes. Take for example life expectancy - there are differences between lifer expectancy bwteen ethnic groups, so you need to comapre life expectancy of the same group under different social conditions (e.g. Blacks in US and Africa). What is more, life expectncy is affected by things like diet choices or habits, which in turn are affecxted by culture. Smoking or poor diet would certainly reduce life expectancy, but both smoking and diet are affected by culture inthis country rather than by "structural" factor. Nobody or nothing forces people to smoke or bans them from buying healthy food.
So I would be intelelctually dishonest by simply disregarding these multiple influences and instead blaming everything on a single general factor.
Wojtek
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