Blogwatch
Posted by Sappho on August 8th, 2008 filed in Blogwatch
I won’t be doing Friday Random Ten today, because I have to do some preparation for a furniture delivery from my mother-in-law, and iTunes runs a bit slow on this particular computer. Instead, here are a few links (and I’ll do an African ingenuity blogwatch for you tomorrow).
The Russian Judge, the Sexual Harassment Case, and Some Questions.
You’re Checked Out, But Your Brain Is Tuned In. About the science of boredom.
Girls closing math gap?: Troubles with intelligence #1. A really detailed post on the topic.
In three months, these laws will change (or not). On upcoming ballot initiatives in several states, “that would produce changes in laws related to sexuality and gender.”
Lambeth Press Reports: A Blessing or a Bane?
All those other people are so much more prejudiced than me department: You know, I realize that there are still more people out there with creepy distate for “miscegenation” than I’d like there to be. But one can take fear of those prejudiced souls too far. When someone suggests as a disadvantage to a Sebellius vice presidential candidacy that seeing her on the platform with Obama would trigger deep-seated fears about miscegenation, I have to say, you’re suggesting people so worried about the scary sexual black man that they’d be triggered by seeing him on a stage with a woman nearly fifteen years his senior? Really? There are a lot of these people? And they were going to vote for Obama? (Link via The XX Factor.)
August 8th, 2008 at 8:15 pm
This whole “deep-seated fears ” thing is starting to bother me – that suggests it’s something innate, or nearly so, as if it had deep roots in evol psych. But is there any evidence that interracial pairing is objectionable to most or even many human beings, other than a transient cultural construct? It seems to me the stringent rules around it in some cultures – religious restrictions, for example – suggest that in fact it’s not something that would otherwise come naturally to many.
Things that are “deep-rooted” are hard to leave behind, maybe can’t be helped, and I don’t really thinks that true of the whole black man, white woman thing. Transient cultural constructs, even long-lasting ones, can become things of the past pretty quickly, when related aspects of the culture change. Didn’t 99% of us get over this back when those Benneton ads were everywhere?
August 8th, 2008 at 8:17 pm
What I mean to say is, “deep seated fears” is just a fig leaf for racism, plain and simple, and people shouldn’t be let off the hook for feeling that way.