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December 2, 2006
More on Racism and CitizendiumHere's Gina de Miranda's letter to Larry Sanger and Citizendium. I encourage others to write and express their opinions to Sanger as well.: From: benet_gesserit@sbcglobal.net I read postings by Kali Tal and Florian Cramer that delineated their reasons for withdrawing from your project at Citizendium.org. Then, as is appropriate preparation for determining the merits of their allegations, I went to your site. They appear to have a credible basis for taking you to task for your decision as regards Ethnic groups and women. You, sir, are not trying to put together a project that will add to the wisdom of the world. You are shrinking knowledge and thought to fit within the paradigm of the "PC" academia. I want you to know how that feels. You seem to believe that women have been given equal treatment in academia as regards what is written about them or by them. How did you arrive at this determination? Had you read medical literature, you would have discovered that the relatively recent requirements to include women in FDA studies revealed that men and women metabolize medication very differently. You would have discovered that the knowledge of these differences has changed treatment regimes and made them dependent upon gender. Is that politically correct? I think that it is actually appropriately neutral and efficacious. If you had read literature about women in political science, sociology or half a dozen other disciplines, you would have discovered that women think and act differently from men in a wide variety of ways. Women are geared towards cooperation, fairness and building consensus in group settings. Women bring problem-analysis and problem-solving skills that are different from those of men. By virtue of these differences, the writing, thinking and analyses provide more varied ways of considering any issue. Surely, the significance of these facts is not lost upon a man who prides himself on neutrality. Why on earth would you wish to reduce the richness of thought that different genders and ethnic communities bring to interpretation, analyses and problem-solving? Instead of opening up the process to the vivid panoply of human perspectives that might result in a more robust cogitative activity, you've put blinders on. How sad that we have learned nothing from the last 6 years where US policy was driven by a similar myopia.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ "A brave heart is a powerful weapon" maisoon ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Posted by kalital at December 2, 2006 3:51 PM Trackback PingsTrackBack URL for this entry: CommentsSmall addendum/correction to Gina's letter: I did not withdraw from Citizendium since I haven't been involved in the project, don't support its policies in the first place, and contribute to Wikipedia instead. It doesn't surprise me that a top-down editorial policy is accompanied by conservative editorial politics. It would be nice if more politically critical academics would contribute to bottom-up, open Internet forums and publishing projects. Florian Cramer Posted by: Florian Cramer at December 2, 2006 5:18 PM Hi Kalital, i am a fellow historian and i read your contribution on Citizendium. I have left Citizendium as well, because i didn't agree with Larry Sanger. I warned him that he was too exclusive, but he wouldn't listen and instead told me there was no place for me. I think it is a pity, because i liked the idea of creating a compendium of all knowledge with a good quality instead of the lack of it on Wikipedia. At the moment, i have joined Wikiversity, which could be hope for the future. Perhaps you would like to join the discussion on the Wikiversity Colloquiem. http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Wikiversity:Colloquium Posted by: Daan at December 4, 2006 7:29 PM Post a comment |
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