Re: Staggering Death rate for black pregnant women

[Wojtek Sokolowski <sokol@xxxxxxx>]

At 11:01 AM 8/28/99 -0400, Andy wrote:
>What's not so easy is figure out why people like you, Wojtek, are bent on
>denying reality. Denying a reality contributes to perpetuating that
>reality--a reality that is as much about privilege as it is about
>disadvantage. I used to be at a complete loss as to how you could
>completely miss the racial stratification the United States. I understood
>then that your extreme subjectivism served as a philosophical blinder
>preventing your from seeing structure. You are, after all, a pretty clever
>idealist. But then you turn around and contradict your social
>constructionism by noting class stratification in terms seemingly grasping
>of its proper ontological status. Now I am not so sure of your idealism.
>You cherry pick your ontologies too obviously these days; the
>inconsistency is revealing. Increasingly I believe you *do* see the deep
>racial stratification of our society, but deny it for ideological
>purposes.
>
>So what's your game, man? What's the motive?


Andy, it's very simple - it is moving away from anecdotes that obscure more
than they can possibly explain and relying on solid empirical evidence
instead.  I am not denying the existence of deep social inequalities as
well as mutliple other social problems in the US - what turns me off is
what the spin doctors of various stripes are making out of them.  It is my
belief that most people who voice various grievances agains those social
problem did not experience those problems themselves or experience them
vicariously - by reading about them in books.  I think that in some cases,
they opportunistically use those vicarious experiences to peddle their own
intelelctual commodities (books, articles, lecures, speeches, etc.), and in
some other cases they view them as a threat to their collective identity -
and thus engage in some form of collective psychotherapy to heel their hurt
feelings.


Thus we have "racism creationism" to heal hurt black identity, "holocaust
creationism" to heal hurt jewsih identity, "reverse discrimination
creationism" to heel the hurt feeling of white underclass, "sexism
creationisn" to heel the hurt feelings of feminist identity, "christian
persecution creationis," and so on and so forth.  I can assure you that as
our fine instituitons of higher learning keep producing new symbol
manipulators, we will hear more and more about these and assorted evils
threating various identities.

To reiterate, I am not denying the existence of social inequalities that
need to be abolished.  My crtique is directed against symbol manipulators
and grievance manufacturers.  We need to distinguish real grievances from
manufactured ones on the pain of losing the remnants of credibility.  As
the spin and psychotherapy industries specializing in making mountains out
of molehills grow, that seems to be a sinsible proposition.

wojtek
>