Quote:
Originally posted by Dan_ref
Oh, for Pete's sake, Dan, just because I'm being simplistic doesn't mean you can be. There isn't A black culture or A white culture, just as there isn't AN American culture. There are tendencies and they are real. Would you be happier if I called them sub-cultures or communities?
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Nope.
I would be happier if you just didn't make overly broad and simplistic statements that paint entire swaths of people with the same brush.
That would make me happy.
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Okay, bad wording. I really didn't get enough sleep last night for reasons having to do with various diseases, drugs, and a certain 6-year-old. So if I sound a little crusty here, it's just an exaggeration of the impatience I start to feel when someone doesn't understand what I'm trying to say. I'm not talking about "broad swaths of individuals." You know as well as I do that "society", "culture", "structure" or whatever you call it exists separate from any individual or even separate from many individuals. There are certain statements that can be made that lump people together into a group, but don't stereotype the individual. To use a very large example, Suppose you see someone at the dinner table who holds his fork in one hand, his knife in the other, and never puts either down during the meal. He pushes his food onto the back of the fork to convey it to his mouth, and he cuts his meat without switching the fork from one hand to the other. You would suspect that this person was European. Does that mean that everyone in Europe eats like this? Of course not. But there is a cultural tendency that way. Americans handle their utensils differently. All Americans? Naturally not. But the tendency is there. That's the kind of principle I'm applying when I talk about black culture and white culture. Can we agree on the principle of cultural trends, even if we might disagree about what the content of tjpse trends are?