Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Why I no longer like Freakonomics author

This article made me so pissed. Apparently us mixed kids are the worst and most delinquent type of kids there are, we get the good looks from the parents, and the bad behaviors. What one commentator said was so right, how can he even judge what attractiveness is?

So basically this article was how the Freakonomics author wanted to figure us biracial kids out (exclusively black and white mix) and so did a study that found that, and I quote:

Mixed race kids do have one advantage over white and black kids: mixed race kids are much more attractive on average
There are some bad adolescent behaviors that whites do more than blacks (like drinking and smoking), and there are other bad adolescent behaviors that blacks do more than whites (watching TV, fighting, getting sexually transmitted diseases). Mixed-race kids manage to be as bad as whites on the white behaviors and as bad as blacks on the black behaviors. Mixed-race kids act out in almost every way measured in the data set.
What are they talking about?! and I guess the rest of the study was pretty biased. Now, at first I was like, why am I angry, they said that they kids are more beautiful? But honestly:
1. Attractiveness is in the eyes of the beholder, and if they say that mixed kids are prettier, they are claiming they have a right over distinguishing the beauty of the child and can speak for everyone
2. In conjunction with the rest of the "facts" they came up with, this is not a compliment, it is a cold-hearted judgement, looking at us mixed kids as exotic animals that should be studied.

I am so upset, too, because I actually like Freakonomics and always recommended it and claimed how good a book it was whenever it came up. I really respected the author. And then he judges mixed race like THIS? It made me upset!

Side note - not only that but what is that about the "typical" delinquent behaviors of blacks and whites? Way to enforce stereotypes.

No comments:

Post a Comment