Pet Peeve Vol.1...

Hasty Generalization-X is true of A, B and C. Therefore X is true of everything.
Find a commonality in a few things and then generalize to assume that it is also true for all things in the same class.


Generalizations. I hate that. Generalization is the mother of racism, sexism, and any othe ism you can think of.

After chatting with Chance in the my comment section for the past few weeks I've noticed that he is very big on generalizations. I went over to his blog and I noticed that he even tries to use facts to back up his feelings. That's very dangerous and quite honestly I found his blog to be quite offensive. For the life of me I can't understand why he feels the need to break down why African-Americans are this way or that way. We are not all the same.

I also recently had a conversation with a female acquaintance who assumes or generalizes men. Quite irritating. Don't get me wrong she's a nice person but anybody who assumes that every man that she meets is probably on the down low has issues.

Don't get me wrong sometimes generalizations are reasonable. The soundness of a generalization can usually be determined by asking the following questions:

1. Do we have a sufficient number of instances to draw a conclusion?
2. Is the breadth of the conclusion drawn supported by the evidence?
3. Are the terms of the conclusion consistent with the terms of the evidence?

Yall like it when I sound smart don't you?

Anyway if a female were to make the statement that men love sports nobody is going to argue with that. Does every man like sports? No but if we ask our 3 questions we could come to a reasonable generalization that wouldn't offend anybody.

If we suggest that blacks are more prone to violence like our friend Chance suggessts then we have a problem. A major problem. A huge ass problem. He'll tell you it has something to do with African-Americans producing more testoterone than other races and that it is also the reason we're better in sports and why we get irritated quicker than members of other races. And the thing is I'm sure he feels that he's doing some kind of service by writing that for others to see. The problem is your local KKK members and your favorite skinheads live for that type of generalization. He also says black people are overly sexual and if we would control ourselves more we'd have a very powerful race of people. Is that suppose to make us feel better about that racists comment Chance?

We are all individuals. Don't assume things about me based on the black guy that beat you up and took your girl when you were 15. I might take your girl but I'm too pretty to be going around fighting. That was a joke. Sorta.

As for my female friend, who thinks that if she offered sex to 10 men all of them would take her up on the offer, you too are wrong. Men have morals too! Out of 20 or so of my male friends and acquaintances I can only think of 2 that might take a random chick up on an offer of anonymous sex and those are the two that no woman would want to give it up to in the first place.

To make a long story short everybody has different experiences and influences. it would be ridiculous to assume that me and some random black man in Kansas are even remotely alike. I have a twin brother and even we aren't exactly alike because we have different experiences in life. Chance I think you could stand to travel a little more and see the world and meet different people. You are always talking about Cali but your experiences with Crip and Bloods isn't going to be the same with a black man in Atlanta. And for my female friend you're never going to be happy if you continue to think the way you do. You want a special someone and yet you assume we are all the same. Kind of ironic isn't it? Oh well I'm done preaching now. You are all jerks and that's not a generalization!