Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!daemon
From: travis@douglass.cs.columbia.edu (Travis Lee Winfrey)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: understanding from the outside
Message-ID: <12870@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU>
Date: 18 Jul 89 21:44:04 GMT
Sender: ambar@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU
Reply-To: travis@douglass.cs.columbia.edu (Travis Lee Winfrey)
Organization: Columbia University
Lines: 31
Approved: ambar@bloom-beacon.mit.edu

Well, so far the discussion in soc.feminism has been dominated by men.
In light of that, I was wondering if anyone would like to comment on the
following quotation, which was from the preface to a book on the nature
of the Black community.  The context was a defense of the author's
(Carol Stack) methods of investigation.  She quotes another work by
Joyce Ladner.

    It has been argued that the relationship between the researcher and
    his subjects, by definition, resembles that of the oppressor and the
    oppressed, because it is the oppressor who defines the problem, the
    nature of the research and, to some extent, the quality of the
    interaction between him and his subjects.  This inability to
    understand and research the fundamental problem -- neo-colonialism
    -- prevents most social researchers from being able accurately to
    observe and analyze black life and culture and the impact racism and
    oppression has had upon Blacks.
	-- Joyce Ladner, Tomorrow's Tomorrow, 1971, p. 6
	   found in All Our Kin, Carol B. Stack, 1974, Harper & Row: NY

So, given the preponderance of white men in this forum, is it possible
that actual communication here will never be more than rudimentary?
after the endless, tedious discussions of Affirmative Action and, most
recently, the raging flames in soc.women of how Alice Walker is really
the anti-Christ, I tend to lose hope.  after all, it seems that a large
number of positions can be predetermined by simply noting whose ox gets
gored.  White men -- no different than anyone else -- will vigorously
attack any perceived assaults on them.

t

Arpa:	travis@cs.columbia.edu	Usenet: rutgers!columbia!travis