Showing posts with label Jeremy Bentham. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jeremy Bentham. Show all posts

Saturday, October 11, 2008

icemans inheritance

point of order: My folk treated me to sea urchin (raw) and sake all last night - yum.


My first encounter with Anthropology, outside of an old text book my mother had from Tuskegee, was a book written by Michael Bradley called the Iceman’s Inheritance. Written in the 70s, the book provides a terse perspective regarding the Sources of European and Western Man's Racism and Aggression. He suggest that the historical pattern of racist behavior and actions of modern man is the social result of Neanderthal genetic traits of high aggression and emotional instability caused by Ice Age psychosexual maladaptation likely to have been engendered during the second glaciation Diop refers to as Wurm III Glaciation period beginning around 22000 B.C. to 8850 B.C. In summary racism is a result of the genetic psychosexual maladaptation of the Neanderthal – which were only in Europe.

Recently, seeing that we are just a few weeks away from the possibility that Senator Barack Obama, an African American, may be the next president of the United States. This could happen; however, if Bradley’s premise is accurate, it won’t for there may not be enough White voters to vote for him. The reality is that America was founded on racism, especially as directed towards the native inhabitants and the descendants of Africa. I have briefly written about the psychology of racism albeit indirectly via slavery. But I have never had the chance to discuss such from the political possibility of having a person as the president of this United States of America of African lineage.

The irony for me is that the man, who wrote the book I cited prior, has the last name of the effect that will likely occur if Senator Obama is not elected - the Bradley Effect. The Bradley Effect refers occurs when “White voters lie to pollsters about whom they will support because they don't want to appear to be racially biased against Black candidates. It collected its name from former Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley following his 1982 losing bid to win the California governor's race. White voters told pollsters they were voting for Bradley however in the end they did not. In fact weeks before the election, Bradley led his opposition by 14 percentage points.

The Bradley Effect has impacted several races before and it doesn’t necessarily mean that Obama will lose. Virginia Lt. Governor L. Douglas Wilder had a substantial lead over the Republican J. Marshall Coleman, gubernatorial election but only managed to win by four-tenths of one percent. In New York, David Dinkins led Giuliani by 18 percent but only managed to win by less than 2 percent.

I say this because the pictures I have, the one at the top that I ganked from my boy Monroe Anderson and the one below that I ganked from my folk at RBG, say it all. It not only says what many are afraid to announce in public but also how some may see us no matter what our position and actions evince.

Add to this the race baiting tactics of John McCain and his partner in crime Sarah Palin (with her less than inch deep mental capacity) who show they have no class and will do or say anything to get elected, it wont surprise me none if Jones ends up loosing to John McCain. For it may be as Sidney Smith wrote regarding Jeremy Bentham The Book of Fallacies from his unpublished papers “There are a vast number of absurd and mischievous fallacies, which pass readily in the world for sense and virtue, while in truth they tend only to fortify error and encourage crime.” Because if it the race of ones skin that would make one not vote for a person over the substance of their ideas, then such is not only maladaptive and true hatred, but truly the Iceman’s Inheritance. vote