From: isbell@ai.mit.edu (Charles L Isbell)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.african.american
Subject: Re: peculiar language
Date: 11 Oct 92 17:53:34 GMT
	<1992Oct7.014008.10903@panix.com>
	<1992Oct7.223006.3002@mnemosyne.cs.du.edu>
	<1992Oct10.060010.16733@panix.com>
Organization: MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
In-reply-to: lkk@panix.com's message of 10 Oct 92 06:00:10 GMT

lkk@panix.com (Larry Kolodney) writes:
|aburt@mnemosyne.cs.du.edu (Andrew Burt) writes:
|>In <1992Oct7.014008.10903@panix.com> lkk@panix.com (Larry Kolodney) writes:
|[concerning headline "black named to high court"]
|>>The problem with your analysis is that it is ahistorical.  While you
|>>might like to live in a society in which a person's skin color is no
|>>more relevant than their shoe size, at the moment, you don't.  You
|>>live in a society in which a person's skin color is highly
|>>determinative (although less so than in the past) of their social and
|>>economic class, and of how they are perceived by others.

|>And this is exactly the problem that I am propose to combat.  I *do* want
|>to live in such a society, and I believe one way to advance that cause is
|>to start acting like we do.

|If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.  You don't change society
|by pretending that bad attitudes don't exist.

"...and if a frog had wings he wouldn't bump his ass a-hoppin'"
              - from _Raising Arizonia_

Anyway, Larry's point is well-taken.  We cannot simply pretend that
thigns are not a certain way in the hopes that it will happen.
Indeed, the process is bound to fail if some threshold minority
continues to act as if it is.

|>I am not saying "put history behind us and forget it".  I am saying,
|>put history behind us, and teach it, but make it clear that it's HISTORY.
|>Let's not keep promoting it.  This kind of language promotes the problem.

|How does it promote the problem?  There is an unspoken assumption in
|your position that pointing out that Professor Scott is black is a bad
|thing.  But that just begs the question of why society views Professor
|Scott's skin color as an issue.  If we lived in the egalitarian
|society you promote, it wouldn't matter if Professor Scott's skin
|color was mentioned or not.  

Exactly.

|>>Consequently, Professor Scott's skin color IS newsworthy.  Just as it
|>>was newsworthy when JFK became the first Catholic president, or when
|>>Brandeis the first Jewish Supreme Court justice.

|>I disagree.  Unless skin color affects his qualifications to serve, it
|>isn't an issue.

|"Qualifications to serve" is not the only newsworthy aspect of the
|story in question.  If it was, the article would simply say:
|"Professor Scott appointed to high court based on the following
|qualifications:..."  But it doesn't, it gives you background about
|Professor Scott, including who appointed him, how old he is, how many
|children he has, hobbies perhaps.

|Besides, you're kidding yourself if you think there's some objective
|category of personal attributes called "qualifications to serve."
|Professor Scott's skin color was almost certainly considered by
|whoever appointed him.

More importantly, by showing that he succeeded despite skin color, it
indicates that skin color is *not* the salient issue, moving us closer
to the society the first poster envisions.

|>  It shouldn't be mentioned.  If, because Kennedy was
|>catholic it meant he held certain views, then I would say he should be
|>critiqued based on his views (all of them), not the fact that he was
|>catholic.

|Kennedy's being Catholic was significant because of the long history
|of anti-catholic sentiment in this country.  The fact that he was
|elected president was evidence that anti-catholicism had subsided
|somewhat.  That made it newsworthy, totally apart from any reflection
|it had on Kennedy as a person.

Again, it is also the case that it demonstrates that being Catholic is
not a salient issue for a president.

|>>A more subtle question is: was it bad judgment to put Professor
|>>Scott's race in the headline, or should it have been kept in the text
|>>of the article?

|>Maybe...
|>I would agree that, as a historical aside, it might be ok to note
|>that he's the first judge with dark colored skin -- but only if it makes
|>as much sense to mention that he's the first judge with (say) a size 12 shoe,
|>or some other unimportant but interesting fact.  (One might then argue
|>that if it's irrelevant it should be omitted...)  It keeps propagating
|>the notion that it matters.  It doesn't.

|Yes, it does matter.  It matters as a sybolic issue, and to the extent
|that Professor Scott is culturally black, it also matters because that
|cultural upbrining will inform his jurisprudence.

Agreed.

Furthermore, if there was a cultural more against judges with size 12
shoes, then his having size 12 shoes is newsworthy.

Take a recent example with football.  It has long been the underground
assumption that Blacks didn't/shouldn't/wouldn't quarterback in the
NFL.  More boy from the Redskins turned that around didn't he?  From a
social perspective it certainly *is* relevant that Williams was Black
because it debunked the popular stereotype the first poster would have
us ignore.

|>>...On the

|>To me it seems quite simple:  If, in an ideal world, it would be relevant,
|>then mention it; if not, don't.  After a while of it not being constantly
|>mentioned as a issue, the problem itself might not be there any more.

|This is a curious sociological theory, that all bad attitudes come
|from newspaper headlines.

Well, we aren't in an ideal world, so it seems utterly improper to
pretend that we are.
--
Peace.
                "I tried to get a drink in the terminal bar.  The bartender 
                 asked to see ID.... I was living a nightmare.  I was 
                 stranded in a happy paranoid land where the only people 
                 allowed to drink are people who drive."
                            - Kyle Baker, _Why I Hate Saturn_
                                   -\--/-
    Don't just adopt opinions     |  \/  |       Some of you are homeboys
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