Letters to the Editor
Allene Swienckowski
Published Letters: 192 Editor's Choice: 10
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Science and Racism
[Read the article: We're prejudiced, now what?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I am not convinced that the science of the fMRI has proven that racism isn't a learned process. Despite the fact that one of the scientists was able to prove that certain tested three year olds exhbited race identification tendencies, reasons for children of this age group being able to identify a specific race can be explained by purely environmental factors. A few questions spring forth...were any of the subjects of bi-racial descent? Were any of the three years olds raised in households were people of other races visited regularly and were these people embraced (emotionally accepted) by their parents?
Personal experience points to the fact that my youngest daughter was under the impression, at the age of three, that all people start off white like her dad. In my daughter's unformed intelligence, as people got older, like my parents and myself(although I am four years younger than my husband), all white people turn black.
My daughter was also exposed to Chinese, Korean and Japanese students on a daily basis and she never developed a "difference identity" with any race.
The science of fMRI is a handy tool when working with maladies of the brain but being able to use fMRI's to define purely social ills is something that I think that the science can't begin to explain or equivocate.
If in fact the science can demonstrate that prejudice is an "innate" part of being human, then the science has to also take into account that they are people and situations where children grow-up relatively free of fear or and hatred of others because of their environment. A glaring fact in the United States even today is that few people have open-ended realtionships with people from different races. You just can't watch Bill Cosby on televisions once a week and start to feel that black people are okay!
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Senator Clinton on Torture
[Read the article: What Hillary won't say about torture]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Senator Clinton is a master politician. Her inability to clearly state her opposition to significant national issues are the very reasons that I find it impossible to vote for her to be the next president of the United States. Understandibly, the next leader of our country will have to be able to be a consumate statesman/stateswoman but in order to have our country recognized as a trustworthy interantional leader in the eyes of the rest of the world, we must have leaders that are strong and unwavering in their convictions about what is morally and politically right. Senator Clinton seems to be unable to join to the two objectives in an effective way that would ensure the quality of her leadership capabilities.
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Mirror Neurons
[Read the article: I feel your pain]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I think that it would be more interesting to try and understand why certain human beings don't have empathy towards others. I think the psychologist would find it difficult not to admit that the firing or neurons, whether one or a thousand firings at a time do so as a chemical response to something either physical or emotional.
As a speculation as to why the author of this piece did not offer help to the crying young woman on the train: perhaps he/she felt that his compassion would have been rejected by a total stranger or perhaps his language skills in the crying woman's native tongue were deficit or any number of reasons why an empathetic person doesn't stop to lend assistance. The point is is that the young woman's feelings were transmitted and she obviously wasn't transmitting what she needed to help her to feel better at the moment.
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Democrats and the Bush Team
[Read the article: Schumer: Arrogance or impotence?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The slam against Schumer and Feinstein is appropriate without a doubt but what about the democrats almost unilaterally waffling on debating the merits of impeaching Dick Cheney? What could be more important than the democratic party going after this lawless administration? It is clear that the democratic party has not only failed the people who voted them into office to defeat the Republican agenda and to return a scintilla of credibility back to our government, instead the democrats have floundered and folded at every turn except to in the end vote to support the Bush agenda.
Schumer and Feinstein are just the tip of the iceberg in the democratic henhouse. Feinstein has either lost her ability to read or she dozed off during Mukasey's testimony in order for her to assert that Mukasey would not support waterboarding or torture if appointed. She also managed to ignore the thousands of letters from her constituents requesting her to decline Mukasey's appointment.
The two party system has died. We should all demand a public ceremony to publically acknowledge its demise.