Re: 'As a black person it's always racial': Django Unchained star Jamie Foxx explains
Mathematician said:
Get the heck over history!
Why? You seem to have misunderstood my point. If, as you seem to point out below, there are historical patterns of cause and effect, it seems obvious that getting over hisotry is the last thing anyone should or (more to the point) could do. I don't think African Americans look to history and create a cause out of it in the way that, say, a Pictish reconstructionist would decide to hate people from Italy. I think African Americans are aware of history, of course. But history in this case is an accumulation of causes that are not yet done working themselves out, and won't be for some time. To expect otherwise is to misunderstand history.
Mathematician said:
My grandfather served 30 years in the military and hated Japanese because of Pearl Harbor. Obviously, the past is past and we're on good terms with Japan now. In fact, I have more respect for your average Japanese citizen than your average American. I studied four years of Japanese as an undergrad, plus studied physics and taught math in Japan. Their culture puts ours to shame on some key values like respect and responsibility. Some results include Tokyo being perhaps the safest major city in the world and overall the healthiest nation in the world.
This doesn't seem to be an applicable analogy.
Mathematician said:
One disappointment I have as a mathematician is the inability of the majority to recognize patterns or analyze cause/effect.
One disappointment I have as a philosopher is the inability of many people to maintain consistency in their positions...
Mathematician said:
Relating this to the OP, the more people dwell on the past and hold grudges, the less they will achieve.
Again, I think it's got very little to do with holding a grudge. It's got a lot more to do with causes that are historical, and have yet to be worked out. Reference to history is the standard method of finding those causes--the mistake your analysis makes is to confuse the method of finding causes for the causes themselves.
Mathematician said:
In particular, blacks dwell on the slavery many years ago and that's what's impeding their progress.
Nonsense. Subconscious bias (also known as "Unconscious bias" or "Implicit bias") studies establish that racism is alive and well among most people in America. Sociological studies have consistently indicated the same.
Mathematician said:
Instead of turning a hatred for past suffering into excuses to want pity and reimbursement for pain and suffering, it should be redirected to motivate working for success.
It's strange that you make this kind of remark, and then go on to say what you say below. See my comments further down.
Mathematician said:
With regards to the food served, please read the quotes in my signature. Stereotypes are developed based on statistics, not necessarily explicitly counting but perhaps general observations. Food preference is unique to individuals. However, there are many factors, such as ethnicity or wealth, that can be conditioned on since the probability distribution of food preferences can differ noticeably when you partition with respect to these. Take some millionaires and college kids for example. You'll see an expected difference in the preferences between wine or beer and between cheese samples or cheese pizza. Obviously, if your goal is to satisfy your guests then you look to maximize the probability if doing so.
So, you seem to acknowledge that there are properties, which may not perhaps be truly predicated of all individuals in a sample, but will generally be truly predicated in aggregate. How, exactly, you hold that position consistently with your other position (given a good general knowledge of the issues involved) is not clear to me.
Your food example is an example of how cause leads to effect. It's surely not the case that the wealthy individuals you mention look back on the history of wealthy people and rage against any mention of beer because Annheuser Busch (or some such) held them down as slaves, keeping them from their rightfully-earned wine. No, wealthy individuals can afford nice wine, and have time to develop a discriminating palate. That's one
reason they tend to prefer nicer wines. It's also surely not the case that wealthy individuals look back into history and drink wine so as to conform with the customs of their ancestors. They don't hold any grudge against the days when their ancestors drank beer like the rest of us. Rather, they drink wine because their ancestors do or did, and this is what they are taught and what they know. Changing a preference for nice wines into one for cheap beer would take a monumental effort, precisely because of the weight of historical causes and the nature of human beings generally.
