On 4 Nov 2002, don allen wrote: > Psychological Science CoverThanks Beth. This is a great answer to an > ill-conceived question.
I too thank Beth for her initiative. But since this post from Don is unfortunately polemical, I reply in the same way. It continues to puzzle me why some insist that only the "right" questions are acceptable, for example, that rather than asking about cover art we should be asking about content. Why must it be either this or that? Why not both? What's a delete key for anyway? Yet there are always members of the relevancy and suitability police who feel it their duty to tell us when a question is "ill-conceived". For the record, the question we ended up discussing was not "Why was this racist textbook cover chosen?" but "How do textbook publishers go about choosing their cover art? I find nothing racist in the illustration of three female athletes at the finish of a race, with the white competitor winning. But it does strike me as a curious choice for a textbook of introductory psychology and I do not find the response from the editor of Norton reassuring. In fact, he says nothing other than the usual blather about how great Norton is and "We chose it because we thought it was neat", a rather uninformative response. Now you may believe that this was the only reason, but I think it more likely that those "large number of eyes" at Norton chose it for reasons that they would prefer not to make public. My original post on the topic noted my own eye-opening introduction to the cynicism of those in the business of marketing textbooks. My guess is that the strange and unscientific entity called the focus group played a large role in the selection of that particular illustration. The question remains: why that cover for that textbook, when I can think of so many others more reflective of the subject matter contained within. And while we're talking about ill-conceived, does anyone else find it inappropriate to imply that because the cover was designed by an African-American, it is self-evident that it cannot then be misguided or racist? Stephen ______________________________________________________________ Stephen L. Black, Ph.D. tel: (819) 822-9600 ext 2470 Department of Psychology fax: (819) 822-9661 Bishop's University e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Lennoxville, QC J1M 1Z7 Canada Dept web page at http://www.ubishops.ca/ccc/div/soc/psy TIPS discussion list for psychology teachers at http://www.frostburg.edu/dept/psyc/southerly/tips _________________________________________________________ --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
