LogFAQs > #942361702

DuranOfForcena posted...

so is the same argument to be made for the assertion that only whites are taught to value rational thinking? i don't really know, i guess, but if i wasn't white and someone was trying to tell me that my entire race is supposed to not value rational thinking, i would be pretty offended. i don't believe white culture has a monopoly on rational, objective or linear thought and i think it's pretty damn offensive to defend such an assertion.

You think that way, likely because you have grown up in a white, European descended culture that holds rationality as basically the highest human virtue and considers being called non-rational or worse emotional a grave insult. It is possible to order things differently. You can value community above rationality. You can value emotional intelligence above rationality.

For example, in Japanese culture, one of the most cutting insults you can give someone is to say they can't read the room. Thats not nearly as insulting in our culture, but in a culture that places so much of a premium on avoiding conflicts and avoiding standing out, and on unspoken in group dynamics, that's a damning insult. It's basically saying you don't know how to be Japanese.

The same thing is happening here with both punctuality and rationality. You don't realize just how much these things and their importance is culturally dependent because you're fully a product of Western, American, liberal, capitalist culture. This is not to say any of those are bad, other than maybe that last one, but to say if you were from rural Nigeria, you might not place such a premium on these things, and the importance is very much culturally and contextually dependent.


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I gotta be righteous, I gotta be me, I gotta be conscious, I gotta be free, I gotta be able, I gotta attack, I gotta be stable, I gotta be black.