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Boil it Down and Bring it On
The Basic Overgeneralization Tactic of Racial Division
“You can’t isolate the differences between the classes down to one factor or another. It’s everything.” David Brooks of the New York Times writes. That’s an interesting observation, if entirely vastly overgeneralized. Basically, what he’s saying, it that Everything is different between everything, and that just means nothing is really important or anyone is responsible for everything. What??
Somethings I just really sick of all these overgeneralizations where people are trying to account for a massive phenomenon, but it’s especially atrocious when it comes to race.
I’m not a Twitterer or Instagram, so even though I read more longform type writing, like here on Medium, I must admit that I prefer any concrete observation, based on experience a writer was involved, to illustrate a general point. It grounds me. Yes, one swallow does not a summer make, but examples still make the difference. I used an example to open with of the kind of writing that bothers me, and chose a prominent moderate conservative “intellectual.” Most times talking about politics devolves into these generalized observations that irk me: most of all people over here doing this, but over there on that side they’re doing that.
