--- Julio Huato <juliohuato at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> The real issue here is how hard or soft the
> structures are to the
> immediate agency of individuals. What I was trying
> to do with my
> Rawlsian argument was help you sense how hardwired
> the structures that
> constrain the individual choices of Blacks in the
> U.S. really are. An
> average Black child about to be born is at a
> disadvantage from the
> onset compared to an average White child. What bad
> decisions did the
> Black child make to produce that outcome? Or what
> good decisions did
> the White child make to produce that outcome? You
> cannot include the
> decisions of the parents here, because those choices
> already become
> structure for the baby. If your mother didn't take
> care of herself
> during your pregnancy, that may have imposed very
> hard (biological)
> constrains on your individual choices. If your
> parents were poor when
> you were a baby or toddler, your brain got
> "poisoned" and your
> learning skills diminished (according to a recent
> study reported by
> the Financial Times). Etc.
[WS:] I pretty much agree with that - it would be quite foolish not to. After all, there is an element of "structure" even in individual decisions cf. path depedency theory claiming that earlier choices reduce or increase transaction costs for certian choices that follow. For example, if I make a bad choice earlier in life and become a sociologist my later choices are constrained and it is easier for me to end up in a bullshit academic synecure than in a well remunerated corporate job :). Therefore, my inablity to get a corporate job is partially "structural."
Obviously, everyone's position in society is an outcome of structural factors of varying extent - from macro-structural, institutional arrangeemnt to micro-structural ones, such as family or small peer group - as well as individual decisions. Nothing is just structure or just individual choice. Therefore, one needs to look into the interplay of these factors in individual settings instead of making blanket statemens and broad generalizations about large groups.
It is intersting, btw, that the same people can jump between genralizations and specificity, depending what suits their line at the moment - Blacks are cconsidered "in general" when it comes to purported discrimination, e.g. "all blacks are worse off than all whites," but specifically when diffrences in IQ are being considered "e.g. some blacks have higher IQ than some whites." So, when it comes to finger pointing it is all whites who are "more privilged" than all blacks and therfore "guilty", but when it comes to making axcuses it is some blacks being better than some whites and therefore "not guilty" in someone else's blame game.
Such discourse is a form of demagogy or driving mobs to a frenzy by public bashing of unpopular scapegoats, as aptly depicted in the film "Idiocracy" (the "rehabilitation" show). This bascially is a US version bull fights in which crazed mobs derive excitement from watching a popular figure publicly tormenting a doomed "sub-human" creature, be it a cornered animal or a caricatured member of an unpopular minority. Right wing talk shows excel at this game in which hosts act like "toreadores" basking in populist appeal to the crowd and delivering blow after blow to hapless liberals.
The left wing version of that game does pretty much the same thing - they simply look to blame someone else for the bad fortunes of their pet minority. It is a knee jerk reaction - everything that happens to us is someone else's fault, the white man, the capitalists, or other convenient scape goats and thus becomes an opportunity for bashing that particular scape goat. And if someone refuses to go with the show and starts questioning this form of discourse, he becomes the target of similar bashing. Most postings by Cox and Claxton fit that category.
I have to admit that after 10 or so years spent on this list I became very skeptical about the Left, or perhaps its US variety. It looks that a big chunk of the US left may have its own separate ideology, but otherwise shares the deep similarity to the discoruse popular in right wing and religious corners of the US society and their penchant for bombastic demagoguery, finger pointing, scapegoat bashing and self-righteousness.
Wojtek
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