Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
> On Wed, 05 May 2010 18:33:46 -0700, Patrick Elliott wrote:

> > On the other hand, the ideological reasons many have for keeping it are
> > as bad, or worse. There was even some clown a while back teaching
> > "diversity" at colleges, who had the gall to claim that you couldn't
> > expect Black people to be on time, because there was something inherent
> > in the "race" that made them always late, so you had to "work around"
> > this issue, if you wanted to properly deal with and implement
> > "diversity". He was a) also black, and b) completely serious about it,
> > and had a whole host of other "traits" he tried to claim other people
> > have, based on their race, and you had to adjust schedules, rules,
> > policies, etc., not to be inclusive of different ideas (what most people
> > call "diversity" in businesses, and which can sometimes be just as
> > stupid), but different "races".
> > 
> > As far as I know, the bozo is still wandering around the country side
> > babbling this BS at colleges.

> It sounds like this bozo may be projecting cultural norms on an ethnic 
> group.  For example, I note that often when I schedule an appointment 
> with people in some countries in Africa (I have no idea what the person's 
> race is because I don't speak on the phone with them, see them, or 
> communicate in any way other than e-mail and chat typically), they may 
> arrive at the online session as much as an hour late.  But I think that 
> is largely a cultural thing, due to poor transportation infrastructure or 
> other similar reasons that are environmental.

> I guess what I may be trying to say is that this bozo has reasons for 
> thinking what he does, but he's applying poor logic and attributing 
> racial reasons rather than cultural or other environmental factors.

  It often seems that when someone claims some "race" (eg. "blacks") to
be in some way inferior to another (in practice exclusively "whites"),
it always causes huge controversy, but when it happens the other way
around, people seldom even notice, and if they do, they usually don't
care much, even though technically there's no difference.

  For example some years ago there was, I think, some kind of
multiculturalism / tolerance / anti-racism theme in some school here
in Finland (I think it was a secondary school, or the likes). One
task given to students was to write an essay on the subject. The best
essays were published on the website of the school.

  One of the essays had a rather peculiar sentence in it. Otherwise it
was typical text on this subject that you can expect from a person in
his early teens or such, and in fact this one sentence was likewise as
well. However, the contents of the sentence were rather peculiar in that
it stated how black people are generally better at sports than white people
(and this was written explicitly as an argument of why racist people are
so wrong in claiming that black people are inferior to white people).

  Apparently this didn't catch anybody's eye, as it was published in the
website as one of the best exemplars of student essays. The teacher who
read and evaluated the essay didn't seem to think anything special about it.

  Now, imagine that the sentence would have been reversed, in other words,
claiming that white people are in some thing better than black people.
Imagine the commotion and controversy.

  I think this example is rather telling. And it certainly isn't the only
example of such things.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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