This just caught my eye in a news feed. In thinking about the ideas of
"'under'development," it's pretty obvious that there are at least some
people who think this way (subconsciously) if someone's willing to go
out there and say it in such obvious terms:
..... The 79-year-old geneticist reopened the explosive debate about
race and science in a newspaper interview in which he said Western
policies towards African countries were wrongly based on an
assumption that black people were as clever as their white
counterparts when "testing" suggested the contrary. He claimed genes
responsible for creating differences in human intelligence could be
found within a decade...... (link:
http://news.independent.co.uk/sci_tech/article3067222.ece)
Three thoughts:
1) This is an awesome moment for interdisciplinarity... any bio or psych
people want to speak to this, it's potential "validity" and the thought
processes that might make this seen as "ok" in their field?
2) How does this affect your interpretation of Prashad and the idea of
capitalism/development/culture and their intersections? Can it be
(mis?)understood that people of color/Third World people are too
"stupid" to be successful capitalists? What tools/methods does Prashad
use to counteract this effect? If he doesn't, is it a result of the
books intended audience?
3) Given Prashad's odd romaticization of (cultural) hybridity in the
Third World, is there any significance to corporal hybridity
(miscegenation) in the countries he lists on p84? What is he saying
about it, and in what ways does idea of intelligence, its relationship
to "development" (and, by extension the global capitalist
market/system), and ambiguous bodies/cultures affect your understanding
of it? Do economic realities reflect a hierarchy of cultures? ie, white
countries are the whitest, culturally mixed countries are next, and
monoracial people of color nations are the poorest? What about in terms
of government stability and social services/resources available to its
people?
(I'm having a moment in life where I'm taking note to appreciate
people/spaces in my life. I love you guys, and this class. I'm
extraordinarily grateful that Peter has made it available to us, and I'm
grateful that you're all such great people and in my life, even if only
for an hour a week!)
<3
-Danni
_______________________________________________
Mellon Myers Undegraduate Fellowship Program at Macalester (http://macmmuf.org)
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