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  • From: Clansgian AT wmconnect.com
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] Not so fast
  • Date: Mon, 26 Apr 2010 13:25:42 EDT



> >As much as you can generalize about any community,

Yes, it means I'm using reason and logic instead of being lost in a PC fog.
For instance I generalize that in the Hispanic community (around here, but
I'd not expect it to be much different elsewhere), the odds are very
overwhelming that any individual I encounter speaks Spanish. Here among a
perponderance of red haired, light skinned, blue and green eyed Celtic
descendents,
when I meet someone dark skinned and black eyed named Ramirez, I ASSUME
they probably speak Spanish.

Turns out I'm right about 100% of the time.

Likewise that person is likely Catholic. However unfair an assumption it
might seem to anyone in a PC fog, most, by far most, of the Hispanic
population is Catholic.

Further, because this is a person of a Hispanic culture, I ASSUME that if
the first thing said is not "Good Day" or "Good Afternoon" or the equivalent,
it conveys a message of unfriendliness or irritation (while in the
pervailing anglo culture it does not). So I am careful not to ommit it.

Sure there are probably Hispanics right here who do not speak Spanish, are
not Cahtolic, and would never notice if the obligitory greeting were
dispensed with. But they would be the rare exception.

The devoted PCist wants us to view every individual as if they had just
risen out of the sea on the half-shell like Botticelli's Venus. Real people
are not like that. They come with language, religion, and culture. What
passes for a resistence of stereotyping and "generalization" is really an
attitude that the other person's culture does not matter .... or even that it
does not exist. That itself is the ultimate generalization.

Yes, I generalize. It's because life and existence are made up of patterns
and commonalities. As much as we might want to pretend that it isn't so
and lose ourselves in a comfortable PC fog, it is none the less reality. I
generalize because I am not an idiot and I want to both get along with the
wider world and enjoy its verities and varieties to the fullest.</HTML>




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