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From: carnes@gargoyle.UChicago.UUCP (Richard Carnes)
Newsgroups: net.women,net.politics
Subject: Re: Discrimination and Affirmative Action
Message-ID: <509@gargoyle.UChicago.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 25-Jun-85 13:07:03 EDT
Article-I.D.: gargoyle.509
Posted: Tue Jun 25 13:07:03 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 26-Jun-85 07:24:09 EDT
Organization: U. Chicago - Computer Science
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Xref: watmath net.women:6079 net.politics:9580

>Mr. Carnes leaps from prejudice to an intellectual belief in the
>inferiority of another race or sex by acknowledging that he has to 
>treat blacks and women with kid gloves, rather than treating them like
>anyone else.

May I just interject a word into this interesting discussion of my
psychology.  No one said anything about kid gloves.  The point is
that ethnic group or sex is a significant datum about an individual.
Ask a woman or black or Hispanic whether they ever think about being
female or black or Hispanic.  Does it ever cross their minds, do you
suppose?  If so, why should it not cross our minds, and even
influence our actions?

While I'm at it I would like to object once more to the use of the
terms racism and sexism to mean simply prejudice or "thinking of
people as groups" or whatever is the favorite usage of the deep
thinkers at National Review or The Wall Street Journal.  Loose talk
is generally an index of loose thinking.  Many blacks in the US are
for understandable reasons prejudiced against whites -- that's why I
am not given to taking casual strolls through many areas of Chicago's
South Side.  But I have never heard of a black racist in the US,
unless there have been blacks who shared the beliefs of white
racists.  Racism is the belief, held by many honorable and sincere
men such as David Hume, Thomas Jefferson, G.W.F. Hegel, and Louis
Agassiz, that one ethnic group is "by nature" inferior, morally or
intellectually, to another.  This was "respectable" opinion among
many whites in the 19th century.  The scientific evidence for this
belief is nonexistent.    

Richard Carnes, ihnp4!gargoyle!carnes