[PEN-L:11427] Re: Re: Capitalist development

["Charles Brown" <CharlesB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I wouldn't say Europeans are morally superior or that they are smarter based on genes or biological inheritance. But I would say that in the current era, the Europeans have developed certain areas of science and other thinking better than other parts of the world. This is not white supremacy. The leading intellectual achievements in human history have occurred in different groups at different times. There is nothing racist about acknowledging that Europe has led in a number of areas in the current period. This does not mean even that Europe made all of the smartness advances in this period. It does not even mean that this smartness has not been mixed with some serious dumbness, when we consider the whole picture. But there must be some way to note the leaps of Europe compared to elsewhere in this era. For one thing, only by acknowledging that , can we begin to throw out the bathwater and not the baby of European advances today and in this historical epoch.

Charles Brown

Workers of the West , it's our turn.

>>> Jim Devine <jdevine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> 09/21/99 01:19PM >>>
> No amount of empirical refutations will convince those who think
otherwise that 'non-Europeans' were and are not inferior to 'Europeans.'<

is there anyone on pen-l who thinks that non-Europeans are inferior to
Europeans? (I'd like an electronic show of hands.) Yoshie, do you think
that there are people like that on pen-l?

I don't think anyone was arguing that Europeans are or were superior
(though maybe I don't read his or her messages, due to the Eudora filters I
use). That isn't and shouldn't be what the discussion is about.


Jim Devine jdevine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx & http://clawww.lmu.edu/~JDevine