Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Con-fusion Ethic: How Whites Use Asians to Further Anti-Black Racism / Oct 05

[Kay Argyle (argyle]

Thank you, Howard.

For centuries people excused anecdotal evidence and faulty reasoning,
unreplicable experiments and even outright fraud, that "proved" that blacks
(which lumped together not merely Bantus and Bush Pigmies but such groups as
Asian Indians, Tasmanians, and Papua New Guineans) were inferior, because
after all they already "knew" it was true -- and therefore racism was
"justified."

Just because you like somebody's conclusion doesn't mean the statistics are
relevant and the logic doesn't resemble swiss cheese.  You can't even say
that it does no harm, because people on the fence will say, "Well, if that's
the best argument they can muster, obviously they don't have a case."

Faulty arguments aside, as the late Stephen Jay Gould pointed out, to
justify racism by the "fact" (whether invented or real) of inferiority is to
confuse science and morality.  A difference may be factual, but what to do
about it is a moral decision. Science can be, and has been, (mis)used to
support everything from denying women a university education, to
mainstreaming severely handicapped children; from clubbing unionizers for
trying to organize, to shooting kulaks for refusing to collectivize; from
driving black-footed ferrets to near-extinction so cattle can be turned into
hamburger, to bombing mink ranches so furry critters aren't turned into fur
coats.

Facts can only prove what is, not that what is, is right.

Kay

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