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candle: i have no problem at all with questioning method. when i initially responded to your post, i noted that it was a drag that the whole thing has not yet been released...before i did that i spent quite a bit of time trawling about to see if it had been released elsewhere (like via the mcarthur) but saw nada. i did get to check out the authors of the report a bit and would suggest that you do the same. in the absence of the whole thing this is about as good as one can get in terms of markers that the methodology is likely to be legit. not necessarily perfect, but legit.
your main point is to the side of objections about method, however---it's more about sociological approaches in general and the objection comes down to: it's difficult to account for particularities in an aggregating or statistically based approach. to which one can only say...well sure. but that's not an objection against any particular social-scientific approach because it can apply to any of them. the anecdotal gets left out. that doesnt invalidate anything. it's merely a state of affairs.
structural problems, like the explanations for the stagnation of african-american wealth under 30 years of conservative economic domination, are simply the weight of history and actions shaped by that weight. the lack of access to credit and to opportunities to own and operate businesses that had been visited upon african americans out of "custom" continue to impact on the distribution of wealth. these are not magical or "extra-cultural" matters. they are institutional effects that have to be confronted in order to be reversed. nothing about conservative-dominated social policy or thinking about social policy gets anyone anywhere near doing that. and the evidence in this brief simply points out that there are consequences which follow from that, and that these consequences are kinda ugly. and big. hard to ignore. you know.
the basis for the critique
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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