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["Don Rua" <drua AT fullseven.com>]

Subject: Re: NYTimes article: He-Mails, She-Mails: Where Sender Meets Gender
From: "Diana Duncan"
Date: Fri, 18 May 2001 09:36:05 -0400
X-Message-Number: 1

"Our differences should be celebrated and
accepted, not analyzed."


Regarding the above statement:  It's something I've heard on many issues
affecting schools, 'diversity training', and many other topical issues
lately...

My question is this: How can we celebrate or accept people's differences, if
we are discouraged from analytically assessing the validity of their
existence?  Do a study on whether one race has certain cerebral evolution
and brain chemistry particulars to better grasp spatial relationships, and
people cry racism.  Or a study on whether left handed people have
significantly larger vocabularies than right handed people, and critics
point to individual exceptions as a refute. It's all about the pursuit of
knowledge.  The only issue should be the quality of the research, not the
interest in understanding and answering hypotheses.

It is distressing that the masses sometimes seem to hunger for
generalizations, for the purpose of classifying and simplifying thought, but
there is a productive use of science and research into human differences.
If a serious and significant difference can be found, we can learn from it,
take the best of each 'group' and educate ourselves as a species.  If one
race/gender/group is smarter or more creative or more intuitive, we must
first be able to point to quality evidence, then we can ask they great
question 'why'? Perhaps one group lived on a certain diet for centuries, or
taught their children with certain techniques, or lived under certain
societal oppressions so long lasting and pervasive that it's seems
inseparable from their original thought.

The fields of psychology and sociology have a long, long way to go, and are
veritable babies compared to medicine, engineering, and chemistry.  But,
look at the potential, to understand ourselves, to take the best of what
man/woman can be and give the choice to new generations to use or discard
those options.  But first, we must know, we must ask, we must pursue
knowledge.  The 'we're all different individuals' mantra is quite true on so
many levels, but I've often seen it used as a means to avoid further
investigation and understanding.  On some level, I think people are afraid
to find out these truths, afraid that as humans we are ethically and
intellectually immature for such knowledge, that it will be used by the
Hitler's and KKK of the world.  However, reason and thought are our greatest
tools, and precisely the ones that dictators try to remove.  How's that for
short, functional, and laden with crass masculine insults?  Probably not
enough inflective questions though, ya think?

don