Group Guilt
Written by John (the other John).
I had recently had a debate with some Leftist who was going on about “group guilt” for white people. As part of the debate, she emailed me links to “scholarly articles” (i.e., bull$hit University articles) to try to convince me otherwise. Nevertheless, below is the reply I gave to her:
If any “report” makes a conclusion (regardless whether it is positive or negative) that every single person of an enormous group of people (ex., all white men, all black men, all Muslims, all Hispanics, all Chinese, etc…) has a certain behavioural/ideological trait, then that conclusion is scientifically flawed in the best scenarios, and racist/misantronistic/biased in the worst scenarios. Hence, a finding of group-guilt to all white men is most definitely racialist and/or misantronistic (or just plain masochistic if written by a white male); and it is not actually a valid conclusion if that was the premise from the beginning, and then various partial facts were used to “justify” the pre-determined premise. Which then begs the question of the motivation of the writer to even begin with this premise.
Are you familiar with “due process”? These are substantive and procedural mechanisms in place prior to finding a specific person guilty of a misdeed/crime/etc… There is no such concept of group-guilt (other than decisions made by the worst of tyrants and for those with mob mentality). This study you attached did not question every single white male, nor did it discuss a sizeable sample of white men to reach this conclusion of group-guilt. Thereby making it flawed.
Any privilege that may exist may be a wealth-privilege, which is shared across all nations on the planet, along all racial/ethnic groups (take your pick, Chinese, Arabs, Africans, Europeans, Americans, etc…). But the insinuation that every single white male (whether a welfare recipient, to the unemployed guy, to the plumber, to the CEO) is treated the same, then that study is beyond flawed. But, I am sure that the Professor was equally biased as was the student, thus the student may have received an “A” for the report. Academia at its best.
BTW, if a study supported by cherry-picked facts said “all black men are….[fill in any blank of your choosing]…”, would that go over well? No, because that study would be flawed. The variations and diversity with any group is enormous, so painting a broad brush stroke for every member of a group is a fallacy.
Are you familiar with “due process”? These are substantive and procedural mechanisms in place prior to finding a specific person guilty of a misdeed/crime/etc… There is no such concept of group-guilt (other than decisions made by the worst of tyrants and for those with mob mentality). This study you attached did not question every single white male, nor did it discuss a sizeable sample of white men to reach this conclusion of group-guilt. Thereby making it flawed.
Any privilege that may exist may be a wealth-privilege, which is shared across all nations on the planet, along all racial/ethnic groups (take your pick, Chinese, Arabs, Africans, Europeans, Americans, etc…). But the insinuation that every single white male (whether a welfare recipient, to the unemployed guy, to the plumber, to the CEO) is treated the same, then that study is beyond flawed. But, I am sure that the Professor was equally biased as was the student, thus the student may have received an “A” for the report. Academia at its best.
BTW, if a study supported by cherry-picked facts said “all black men are….[fill in any blank of your choosing]…”, would that go over well? No, because that study would be flawed. The variations and diversity with any group is enormous, so painting a broad brush stroke for every member of a group is a fallacy.
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