To all:
Bob Wildblood (sorry I deleted post prematurely) is correct that
consideration of race can be harmful, and that we are all one species.
Amen. I'd be happy not considering race at all in psychology. The rub,
however, is that many government agencies keep very careful track of
race vis-a-vis educational achievement. We say race doesn't matter. Then
we have data analysts mining for race differences. If you look for
differences, you will find them. (When I teach statistics, I remind
students that virtually all null hypotheses are false, and ALL
correlation coefficients are >0, with a large enough N). Then, to make
matters most bizarre, we consider only environmental explanations for
differences (I can't recall the NYC suburb that was getting along fine
until an educational report showed that blacks and whites sitting
side-by-side differed in educational acheivement. Everyone searched for
a scapegoat, some people starting calling teachers racist. It was ugly.
And it was a pity because everyone was getting along fine previously.
Maybe somebody remembers the name of the suburb).
So, we should either (1) not keep group records at all and treat
everyone as a member of Homo Sapiens, or (2) examine the racial
differences objectively, using the same rules when we evaluate any other
scientific issue (assisted by the wonderful philosophy that differences
are not deficits). I can live with either option. Let's just be
consistent about it.
Unfortunately, we always interpret group differences as bad.
Something in the unconscious minds of teachers must be exorcised if
group differences appear! It is true that if you look at only SATs, it
is a challenge to maintain the "differences are not deficits" attitude.
But it is easier when you consider the full array of human differences.
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John W. Kulig [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Department of Psychology http://oz.plymouth.edu/~kulig
Plymouth State College tel: (603) 535-2468
Plymouth NH USA 03264 fax: (603) 535-2412
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"One word of truth outweighs the whole world."
Russian proverb
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