Thursday, May 10, 2007

Lest you think I'm turning liberal...

I am studying for my American Social Problems final right now. Can I tell you how much this book frustrates me? It is written with an incredible liberal slant! Any time the current President is mentioned, it is quickly followed up with an explanation of how he is wrong- SEVERAL times throughout the book! Bush's Faith-Based Initiatives is brutally attacked, while every other governmental policy on poverty and aid is left untouched. I understand that the authors may not feel that FBI is best, but is a college textbook the place for that? They even slammed him for getting into Yale on his family connections, because he doesn't support affirmative action but was a recipeient of it. I think the authors of this book forget that the government did not have a policy in force to REQUIRE Yale to let him in. Ugh.

It also manipulates statistics. Here's one example: The text pointed out how 73% of characters on prime time network television shows are white- what an outrage! However, in doing research for the subsequent paper on racism I had to write, I realized that 74% of Americans ARE white! Is that racism, or simply an adequate representation?

I suppose that being a sociology major I'm asking for it...

ETA: I just read that what matters is not whether you are male or female, but where you individually choose to live on the "gender continuum"...

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