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From: gcf@mydog.UUCP (Gordon Fitch)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Re: the *isms
Message-ID: <9105050838.1718@mydog.UUCP>
Date: 5 May 91 12:38:37 GMT
References: <14622@ccncsu.ColoState.EDU>
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Well, here's a political, or perhaps moral, question.

farmerl@handel.cs.colostate.edu (lisa ann farmer) writes:
|The point was made that it is useless to say that you aren't *ist, because some
|time in your life you probably had a *ist thought even if it wasn't conscious.
|For example, I have walked around campus at night quite a bit and if I see 
|a male I get a little nervous- hold my keys tighter, etc.  But if I see a black
|male I am more nervous. So I admit that I am racist because the power structure
|has taught me to think that this black man is more dangerous than a white man.  
Suppose, however, it is true that males commit more crimes of
violence against women than females, and that black males commit
more crimes of violence than white males, or at least that we
have been told that this is true, with numbers and graphs in our
newspapers and sociology books.  If the person encountered is a
stranger, we have nothing but these statistics, or our intuition,
to go on.

Is a defensive reaction against such a person, when one is in a
vulnerable situation, racist or sexist?  Or is it simply
rational?  Or both?  (By "defensive reaction" I mean, of course,
nothing that materially harms the other party; Ms. Farmer speaks 
only of covert preparation for flight.)
--
Gordon Fitch | gcf@mydog.uucp | uunet!cmcl2.nyu.edu!panix!mydog!gcf