Hegemonists Just Don't Get It
I was eating dinner at Whole Foods tonight when this 54-year-old white man who works in venture capitalism/pharmaceuticals asked if he could share my table. I said sure. A little later a high school girl (white) solicited our opinion about the recent gender slur that the Harvard president made about women doing more poorly in math and sciences.
The man said he thought the faculty's response was unfortunate because it would prevent any real research in the field of genetic gender capabilities for fear of being politically incorrect. I disagreed and said that any possible outcome from such a study inevitably would lead to no good at all, at best only reinforcing crippling stereotypes. Suppose we find that women are genetically designed to be worse at math (which is itself problematic because then there's no room to say that SOME women are better at math than SOME men)? So fucking what? The solution lies in leveling the field, not in justifying why the status quo is okay even if it isn't fair. I mentioned that for hundreds of years, white people believed that black people were genetically more suited for working in the malarial conditions of the cotton fields. Does this mean that black people should go on picking cotton and contracting malaria? Of course not.
To this the pharmaceuticals man said that we have to be methological in our sciences, and pursue knowledge even if it is socially backward or politically incorrect. I said that was sheer navel gazing; the only person it would benefit is Assistant Professor X who needs to break some ground in order to get tenure, while for the rest of the world, it would accomplish nothing progressive. "You mean socially progressive?" the pharmaceuticals man scoffed. No, asswipe, it isn't intellectually progressive either, since the results are already predetermined: if one begins a study with the assumption that women are worse at math than men, chances are, one will find that women are worse at math than men.
The high-school brat then favored us with her opinion. that everything could be justified by science. Clearly, her PAHS history class hasn't gotten to the chapter on Nazi ideology and rhetoric yet.
Yes, I understand that in theory, science always sounds fine and good. But I happen to know that most Asian people don't give a rat's ass that they're supposed to be good at math and do well in school. It doesn't change the fact that they had to work hard to learn the things they did. Why appeal to "science" (assuming you accept this arbitrary and noncomprehensive gender/racial data collecting as a science) when it yields belittling and demeaning conclusions - and furthermore, when the solutions can be found more effectively elsewhere?
The man said he thought the faculty's response was unfortunate because it would prevent any real research in the field of genetic gender capabilities for fear of being politically incorrect. I disagreed and said that any possible outcome from such a study inevitably would lead to no good at all, at best only reinforcing crippling stereotypes. Suppose we find that women are genetically designed to be worse at math (which is itself problematic because then there's no room to say that SOME women are better at math than SOME men)? So fucking what? The solution lies in leveling the field, not in justifying why the status quo is okay even if it isn't fair. I mentioned that for hundreds of years, white people believed that black people were genetically more suited for working in the malarial conditions of the cotton fields. Does this mean that black people should go on picking cotton and contracting malaria? Of course not.
To this the pharmaceuticals man said that we have to be methological in our sciences, and pursue knowledge even if it is socially backward or politically incorrect. I said that was sheer navel gazing; the only person it would benefit is Assistant Professor X who needs to break some ground in order to get tenure, while for the rest of the world, it would accomplish nothing progressive. "You mean socially progressive?" the pharmaceuticals man scoffed. No, asswipe, it isn't intellectually progressive either, since the results are already predetermined: if one begins a study with the assumption that women are worse at math than men, chances are, one will find that women are worse at math than men.
The high-school brat then favored us with her opinion. that everything could be justified by science. Clearly, her PAHS history class hasn't gotten to the chapter on Nazi ideology and rhetoric yet.
Yes, I understand that in theory, science always sounds fine and good. But I happen to know that most Asian people don't give a rat's ass that they're supposed to be good at math and do well in school. It doesn't change the fact that they had to work hard to learn the things they did. Why appeal to "science" (assuming you accept this arbitrary and noncomprehensive gender/racial data collecting as a science) when it yields belittling and demeaning conclusions - and furthermore, when the solutions can be found more effectively elsewhere?
posted by Rex at 9:07 PM
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