Robin Rice said (5/5/99 12:09 pm)
>Racism is about explaining human behavior based on racial
>determination, not just observing differences in groups of people.
>Getting beyond a racist explanation for variations leads to more
>complex and interesting questions such as the effects of racial
>discrimination, poverty, deprivation, inequality, etc. on groups of
>people.
But somehow causing interesting sets of questions to vanish. Vygotsky,
who suggested that language acted as a means of transmission within
cultures of aquired cognitive skills (and some interesting research tends
to bear this position out) was suppressed by the soviets for three
decades because his theories led to the idea of culturally specific
cognitive tools.
There seems to be no justification for either position above. Each seems
to preclude the investigation of the other. 'Getting beyond' suggests
that looking at racial differences in behaviour and, more interesting,
cognition is somehow an inferior line of research.
My trouble is that the minute someone says don't look in there, there's
nothing to see, I look....
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_/_/_/ _/_/ _/_/_/ _/ Ronan M Conroy
_/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ Lecturer in Biostatistics
_/_/_/ _/ _/_/_/ _/ Royal College of Surgeons
_/ _/ _/ _/ _/ Dublin 2, Ireland
_/ _/ _/_/ _/_/_/ _/ voice +353 1 402 2431
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I'm not an outlier; I just haven't found my distribution yet
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