MAKKUN, I wanted to respond to your comments. Thanks again for a comprehensive look at the situation
First, I agree that the ?Fixing? thread has failed. We?re still mired in name-calling and explanations of what constitutes a racist. Maybe by the time of the 2008 elections, we?ll have sorted the issue out a little further. And as I said before, I disagree with your interpretation that ?political correctness? has not interfered with the study of race. It has ABSOLUTELY interfered and we?ve seen some examples why right on this thread.
Let?s begin.
Somewhere near the middle of your literature review you start to suspect that there are ?lively discussions? on the concept of race . . . and you begin to wonder ?if it even is an appropriate biological category.?
I would say the following. Go stand in front of your local Walmart and racially classify the first hundred people who walk by you. Keep it simple and use the same definitions used by the Census Bureau. You probably won?t have much problem doing that. We humans find it surprisingly easy to categorize each other.
Now, go home and write a precise definition of each racial group . . . then give it to a friend and have him go back to the Walmart and conduct the same experiment, but this time using your exact definitions. If done correctly and if he sticks precisely to your definitions, what you should find is that it is very difficult to be precise when describing race.
In simple terms, this is the problem engaging scientists. It doesn?t ?invalidate? the concept of race any more than not being able to properly define ?pornography? or “love” mean that they don’t exist.
Moving on . . . after reviewing a paragraph that address the mixing of races, you ask: “Huh, did that last paragraph discuss the possibility that “race” as a taxonomic category is an oversimplification at best?”
No. What it says is that the concept of RACE is imprecise (as in the case of Hispanics) and that when it comes to black Americans, the ?black race? is becoming diluted through the mixing of blacks and whites. This is not unique either to Southern Europeans or American blacks. Whenever populations share a boundary, you always have racial mixing. No doubt the Romans and the Gauls produce many Romanic Gauls and no doubts when the aliens finally get here, we?ll have Alien-Americans.
Moving on, you now appear to be getting more locked into your position. You say: “I can’t decide if “race” as a category does exist or not - neither seem the biologists. This is obviously an ongoing discussion. I find it quite problematic though, to state, as has happened in the two threads on the topic, that there is a clear link between “race” and violence - facing the danger that science might come up with the explanation that “race” as used commonly does not even exist.”
Science has trouble deciding what race is because of mixing and evolution, but that doesn?t mean that race DOES NOT exist. We can speculate that hundreds of years before mass transportation and the colonization of Africa and South America, racial differences were much more distinct.
What this really says is that racial differences are dynamic and evolving.
At this point you begin to think you have discovered the ?smoking gun? . . . and I begin to yawn because I sense that I?m about to get a bucket-full of more of the same one-sided argument about black poverty and inequality. Methinks your smoking gun is a water pistol.
You say:
“Now that indeed sounds like a smoking gun to me: There is evidence of massive social inequality, linked to (perceived) “racial” difference. Now the argument that “non-black” poor people don’t resort to violent crime starts falling apart, when you see the parallels between level of inequality due to perceived “racial” status and delinquency.”
Falls apart how, exactly? Are you saying that poor Hispanics are less sensitive to perceived inequalities or that blacks are hyper-sensitive?
As I discussed late last night on this thread: The numbers of poor whites is double that of blacks and there are just as many poor Hispanics as there are poor blacks. Please explain . . . how is it that poverty affects blacks one way and Hispanics and whites in another way? Why do blacks react to poverty as they do? For example, how many urban riots have poor Hispanic people had in the last 50 years? How about white poor?
Could there perhaps be a problem within the black social group?
In other words . . . are blacks more violent because of poverty . . . or is there something wrong with the black social group that makes them react more violently to their poverty than other groups do?
It appears to me that much of your explanation for what happened in New Orleans can be summed up by this paragraph:
“Neighborhoods plagued by high levels of jobless-ness are more likely to experience low levels of social organization: the two go hand in hand. High rates of jobless-ness trigger other neighborhood problems that undermine social organization, ranging from crime, gang violence, and drug trafficking to family breakups and problems in the organization of family life.”
So . . . let me sum up if I may. You begin by acknowledging that race and racial characteristics MAY BE an issue shaping black culture . . . but then when the literature describes the inexactitude of race, you abandon all faith in that concept and fall back on the usual explanations . . . poverty, disenfranchisement, history of repression etc.
Well . . . . shucks, a great deal of material and at the end your explanation still leaves some very basic questions unanswered:
WHY, IF THE SAME FACTORS ARE AT WORK IN OTHER SOCIAL GROUPS . . . DON?T THEY REACT THE SAME WAY AS THE BLACK COMMUNITY DOES?
COULD THERE BE A PROBLEM WITHIN THE BLACK SOCIAL GROUP?
Although I was reluctant to relate the “race” debate to NO, I would like to point out to the picture that was painted on NO’s development in the last decades, including “white flight” to the suburbs and a ghettoisation in the poor, mainly black neighbourhoods and especially housing projects, creating crime and fostering civil unrest. Give everyone a gun and let them starve a few days, you will get pretty irrational reactions. Is it because “they” are biologically “black”? No, more likely, it is because they are socially declared “black” and actively (see above) kept from the pursuit of happiness. Is that an excuse? No, but it explains pretty much the prevalence of gangsters and the evil deeds they do.
Summary: I accept that there is more violent crime in “black” communities world-wide. But the evidence pointing to a “racial” explanation, especially as “race” as a biological category is far from undisputed, does not convince me so far. It seems more likely that social segregation as a cause for poverty, stressed social coherence and lack of perspective are the main contributing factors to the seemingly clear correlation between being “black” and being violent.
As I stated in the first thread, I think it is a false correlation, and so far adding the “Fixing” to the thread’s title hasn’t helped at all to move the argument into a more rational sphere