Tag Archives: Roger W. Smith

“The Pit and the Pendulum”

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In my junior year in high school, as one of our first assignments in English class, we read Poe’s “The Pit and the Pendulum.”

I took my homework very seriously and was a highly motivated student — in English for certain. I would go to my bedroom upstairs after dinner and pretty much lock myself in for the rest of the evening.

I read the story. It didn’t scare me. I lay down on my bed (does this sound stupid?) and tried to imagine being the character tortured mentally in the story, with an imagined pendulum swinging overhead:

Looking upward, I surveyed the ceiling of my prison. … In one of its panels a very singular figure riveted my whole attention. It was the painted figure of Time as he is commonly represented, save that, in lieu of a scythe, he held what, at a casual glance, I supposed to be the pictured image of a huge pendulum such as we see on antique clocks. … While I gazed directly upward at it (for its position was immediately over my own) I fancied that I saw it in motion. …

… What I then saw confounded and amazed me. The sweep of the pendulum had increased in extent by nearly a yard. As a natural consequence, its velocity was also much greater. But what mainly disturbed me was the idea that had perceptibly descended. I now observed — with what horror it is needless to say — that its nether extremity was formed of a crescent of glittering steel, about a foot in length from horn to horn; the horns upward, and the under edge evidently as keen as that of a razor.

The story did not have much of an effect on me. In retrospect, I would be inclined to say that Poe the writer never did.

The next day in English class, I raised my hand and said that I had expected Poe’s horror story, to scare me. But it hadn’t.

This was entirely normal, to be expected, our English teacher, Mr. Tighe said. Fiction, he said, is fiction. (This is a paraphrase of what he said.) It’s not supposed to be “real.” We read it from a different, detached perspective.

This seems obvious now, but Mr. Tighe’s observations were very instructive for me at this point in my life, when I was an eager student hoping to be a good student of literature.

 

— posted by Roger W. Smith

    March 2022

selections from Prokofiev’s score for the film Ivan the Terrible

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I have posted her selected tracks from Sergei Prokofiev’s score for Sergei Eisenstein’s film Ivan the Terrible (Russian: Иван Грозный, Ivan Grozniy). The film was released in two parts in 1944 and 1958. Eisenstein died in 1948.

My cherished friend from New York, Bill Dalzell, who introduced me to Ivan the Terrible and many other great films, remarked that Ivan the Terrible — in which, as he would have said, pertaining to his comment, Prokofiev’s music was an important factor (in making what he said true) — is like a Russian Orthodox service: the music, the setting, the scenes (such as the one of Ivan’s coronation) . I think he would have said, especially the music.

 

— posted by Roger W. Smith

   March 2022

 

 

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See also my post:

on aesthetic and cultural appreciation of literature and film; my favorite directors

on aesthetic and cultural appreciation of literature and film; my favorite directors (小津安二郎は日本の映画監督・脚本家)

 

Victor Hugo, “Le Dernier Jour d’un Condamné”

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Hugo, Dernier Jour

the last day of a condemned man – english (2)

 

 

J’ouvris les yeux, je me dressai effaré sur mon séant. En ce moment, par l’étroite et haute fenêtre de ma cellule, je vis au plafond du corridor voisin, seul ciel qu’il me fût donné d’entrevoir ce reflet jaune où des yeux habitués aux ténèbres d’une prison savent si bien reconnaître le soleil. J’aime le soleil. …

I opened my eyes, and sat up startle. At this moment, through the high and narrow window of my cell, I saw on the ceiling of the next corridor (the only firmament I was allowed to see) that yellow reflection by which eyes accustomed to the darkness of a prison recognize sunshine. And oh, how I love sunshine! …

 

“On voit le soleil!”

Fyodor Dostoevsky, letter to his brother Mikhail, December 23,1849 (quoting Hugo; the letter was written on the day of Dostoevsky’s mock execution)

 

See complete French text and English translation as Word documents (posted above).

Plus, the complete audiobook of the original.

 

— posted by Roger W. Smith

    March 2022

 

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Appendix:

Я прошу извинения у моих читателей, что на сей раз вместо «Дневника» в обычной его форме даю лишь повесть. Но я действительно занят был этой повестью большую часть месяца. Во всяком случае прошу снисхождения читателей. Теперь о самом рассказе. Я озаглавил его «фантастическим», тогда как считаю его сам в высшей степени реальным. Но фантастическое тут есть действительно …

Дело в том, что это не рассказ и не записки. Представьте себе мужа, у которого лежит на столе жена, самоубийца, несколько часов перед тем выбросившаяся из окошка. Он в смятении и еще не успел собрать своих мыслей. Он ходит по своим комнатам и старается осмыслить случившееся, «собрать свои мысли в точку». Притом это закоренелый ипохондрик, из тех, что говорят сами с собою. Вот он и говорит сам с собой, рассказывает дело, уясняет себе его. Несмотря на кажущуюся последовательность речи, он несколько раз противуречит себе, и в логике и в чувствах.

Он и оправдывает себя, и обвиняет ее, и пускается в посторонние разъяснения: …. Ряд вызванных им воспоминаний неотразимо приводит его наконец к правде … процесс рассказа продолжается несколько часов, с урывками и перемежками и в форме сбивчивой: то он говорит сам себе, то обращается как бы к невидимому слушателю, к какому-то судье.

… Если б мог подслушать его и всё записать за ним стенограф, то вышло бы несколько шершавее, необделаннее, чем представлено у меня, но, сколько мне кажется, психологический порядок, может быть, и остался бы тот же самый. Вот это предположение о записавшем всё стенографе … и есть то, что я называю в этом рассказе фантастическим. Но отчасти подобное уже на раз допускалось в искусстве: Виктор Гюго, например, в своем шедевре «Последний день приговоренного к смертной казни» употребил почти такой же прием и хоть и не вывел стенографа, но допустил еще большую неправдоподобность, предположив, что приговоренный к казни может (и имеет время) вести записки не только в последний день свой, но даже в последний час и буквально в последнюю минуту. Но не допусти он этой фантазии, не существовало бы и самого произведения — самого реальнейшего и самого правдивейшего произведения из всех им написанных.

 

I apologize to my readers that this time instead of the “Diary” in its usual form I give only a story. But I’ve been really busy with this story for almost a month. In any case, I ask for the indulgence of my readers. Now about the story itself. I have titled it “fantastic” when I myself consider it eminently real. But there really is something fantastic here. …

The fact is that this is not a story and not a note. Imagine a husband whose wife is lying on a table, a suicide who jumped out of a window a few hours earlier. He is confused and has not yet had time to collect his thoughts. He paces in his rooms and tries to comprehend what happened, “to collect his thoughts to a point.” Moreover, he is an inveterate hypochondriac, one of those who talk to themselves. So he talks to himself, tells the story, clarifies it to himself. Despite the apparent consistency of speech, he contradicts himself several times, both in logic and in feelings.

He justifies himself and accuses her, and indulges in extraneous explanations … A series of memories evoked by him irresistibly leads him finally to the truth. … the process of storytelling continues for several hours, with fits and starts, and in a confused form: now he speaks to himself, then he addresses himself, as it were, to an invisible listener, to some kind of judge.

… . If a stenographer could overhear him and write everything down afterwards, it would come out a little more unfinished, less polished than what I have presented, but, as far as it seems to me, the psychological order, perhaps, would remain the same. This assumption about the stenographer who wrote everything down … is what I call fantastic in this story. But in part, something like this has already been seen in art: Victor Hugo, for example, in his masterpiece “The Last Day of a Condemned Man,” used almost the same technique and, although he did not introduce a stenographer, he concocted an even greater improbability, suggesting that the man sentenced to death can (and has time) to keep notes not only on his last day, but even at the last hour and literally at the last minute. But if he did not allow for this fantasy, the work itself would not exist –the most real and most truthful work of all he wrote.

— Dostoevsky, Preface, Кроткий (Krotkiy, “The Meek One”; a short story)

 

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Acknowledgment: I wish to thank Jean-Baptiste Pétillot for assisting me in preparing a transcript of the original.

 

 

“in minute particulars”

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He who would do good to another must do it in Minute Particulars.

— William Blake, Jerusalem

 

Some train of thought today got me to recall a memory that I haven’t recalled for a long time.

I was thinking about people who are self-righteous about rectifying what they see as wrongs, in general.

Amway, the memory is as follows. I will probably be seen as trying to portray myself in a positive light, as a saintly figure. That’s not my wish or intent. It’s just that a certain action I recall seemed relevant and brought to mind the quote from Blake.

And, I do feel that I have a large capacity for empathy, which I undoubtedly got from my mother And that, along with writers such as Blake, the teachings of Christ in the Bible, mostly gotten by me in Sunday school, had a major influence on what I perceive as right or desirable when I am acting at my best.

It was a very cold winter night during the period when I was newly married. My wife and I were living on a first floor apartment on the East Side. I was walking home from the 86th Street subway station. It was a ten or fifteen minute walk to our apartment.

I passed a sleeping man on the sidewalk of a side street. He was insufficiently protected against the cold. No blanket. I don’t recall what he was wearing.

I went home. My wife and I had a blanket which I valued highly. It was old. My wife had had it for I know not how long. An old, thick brown blanket. Woolen. It always kept us warm.

I hated to part with it, but I thought to myself, that homeless man needs it. Now. I took the blanket back to the spot where he was sleeping, draped it over him, and left. He didn’t stir.

Something else that may have stirred this memory. Late tonight, I wrapped a blanket around my wife, who was sleeping on the couch. It makes me feel good to do this for her.

 

— Roger W. Smith

   February 16, 2022

new post; Pitirim A. Sorokin, “The Bard of Life (Walt Whitman 1819-1892)”

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On my Sorokin site, I have a new post: an early article that the sociologist and social philosopher Pitirim A. Sorokin wrote about Walt Whitman, which I have translated from the original Russian.

Posted at

Sorokin, “The Bard of Life” (Walt Whitman 1819-1892)

 

— Roger W. Smith

Shostakovich, Symphony No. 4; Шостакович Симфония № 4

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I have known Shostakovich’s Symphony No 4 for a long time. I bought the LP of the first American performance by the Philadelphia Orchestra, conducted by Eugene Ormandy. I listened once or twice; did not really get into the work.

I have been listening to it again and finally appreciate it fully. This includes both the orchestral version and a performance of the symphony, arranged for two pianos, by Maki Namekawa and Dennis Russell Davies. I saw a live performance by Namekawa and Davies at the Morgan Library in New York recently. I purchased the CD. I highly recommend it.

The third (final) movement in the recorded piano version lasts over 30 minutes. It’s amazing.

 

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Wikipedia:

The manuscript score for the Fourth Symphony was lost during World War II. Using the orchestral parts that survived from the 1936 rehearsals, Shostakovich had a two-piano version published in an edition of 300 copies in Moscow in 1946. Shostakovich began considering a performance only after Stalin’s death in 1953 changed the cultural climate in the Soviet Union. He undertook no revisions.

Conductor Kirill Kondrashin led the premiere of the orchestral version on December 30, 1961 with the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra. The first performance outside the USSR took place at the 1962 Edinburgh Festival with the Philharmonia Orchestra under Gennady Rozhdestvensky.

The symphony is strongly influenced by Gustav Mahler, whose music Shostakovich had been closely studying with Ivan Sollertinsky during the preceding ten years. (Friends remembered seeing Mahler’s Seventh Symphony on Shostakovich’s piano at that time.) The duration, the size of the orchestra, the style and range of orchestration, and the recurrent use of “banal” melodic material juxtaposed with more high-minded, even “intellectual” material, all come from Mahler.

 

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From the album notes for the piano version (Supertrain Records):

In the mid-1930s Dmitri Shostakovich was on top of the world artistically. In one fell swoop that all changed when his opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District was condemned in the pages of Pravda, a review likely penned by Stalin himself.* So it came as no surprise that at this time his next major work, his Fourth Symphony, was withdrawn from performance after a number of rehearsals. It was deemed simply too risky and provocative to perform it.

The symphony, a true masterwork and Shostakovich s first large format purely instrumental symphony, lay in obscurity, unperformed for more than a quarter century until after Stalin s death. The original score to Symphony No. 4 was lost and remains unfound. It was only by virtue of having the original orchestral parts from rehearsals and this arrangement for two pianos that Shostakovich made to perform the piece in private for his friends, that the work was able to be reconstructed.

This masterful performance by pianists Maki Namekawa and Dennis Russell Davies brings to light the majesty of this underappreciated work. It is part of a series of recordings the duo has made to explore the musical essence of works more often known in their original versions.

*I wonder if this was true.

 

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Reviews (of the Namekawa-Davies CD), Amazon.com:

Rachmaninov penned two formats of his Symphonic Dances: full orchestra and dual pianos. Shostakovich fortunately did likewise for his Symphony No. 4 of 1936 because the piano score survived Stalin and World War II while the complete orchestral score was lost. Indeed, other than the privately held printed copies of the piano version, only various orchestral parts for the rehearsal were located. (The work was obliged to be withdrawn from concert performance, as the abstract and angry, gloomy symphony would have displeased Soviet authorities, and it was officially banned in 1948.) The reconstructed orchestration eventually had its debut in 1961 in Moscow. This two-piano arrangement offers a new perspective to the Symphony; its different quality of sound allows increased focus on developmental detail and its raw emotional power. Its three movements of 72 minutes begins with Shostakovich phrasing and rhythm already established in his earlier patriotic symphonies. This first extended section goes through an exploration of dark corners of society. The grand sweep and introspective journey of Mahler was much on his mind as Shostakovich prepared the work, but his was filled with angst and not a hint of eventual glory or divine surrender. (His popular extroverted Symphony No. 5 redeemed his political reputation.) The even longer third movement, following a funeral march, is resolute with a pounding series of triplet chords that lead to further somewhat militaristic adventures, with trumpet calls. The positive and defiant dancing spirit continues to a climax of sustained bell-like chords as storm waves upon cliffs. The Shadow soon engulfs the proponent as the symphony softens and fades. The pianists for this important release are conductor Dennis Russell Davies and his wife Maki Namekawa, who deliver a gripping performance. The listener will hear Shostakovich with new ears.

* * *

This piano duo captures all the intensity, renegade spirit, and cumulative power of this great work.

* * *

It’s amazing how two pianos can sound so symphonic. It genuinely channeled the many orchestral versions I’ve heard. You can hear Shostakovich’s compositional genius at work even in this (two) piano “reduction.”

* * *

Shostakovich dealt with a great deal of adversity as a result of wars, the revolution, and Stalinism. That is sad but it makes for some really amazing stories. So it is with this symphony.

It was composed in 1936 and would mark the entry of more post-romantic elements into the composer’s work which gives it a Mahler-like cast at times. Unfortunately the politics resulted in the composer withdrawing the symphony. During WWII the score was lost and reconstructed from surviving orchestral parts and the present two piano transcription by the composer. The world premiere occurred in 1961 under Kiril Kondrashin.

It is the two piano “reduction” which is featured here. Reduction refers to the transcription of the piece for two pianos but the grand symphonic nature shines through with amazing lucidity. Of course this is as much due to the skill of the transcription but also of the artists. If you have never heard a great transcription this will amaze you.

Davies and Namekawa have established quite a name for themselves as a duo piano team. Davies, the long established conductor and his life partner Namekawa, herself a dazzling pianist have collaborated for some time now as a duo and this recording is testament to what they can do. Here they joyfully share their interests and insights on this masterpiece. Even if you have and know the orchestral version you will want to hear this.

There are three movements here. The outer movements are long extended compositions with a small(but amazing) interlude in between. This is not the Shostakovich of the famed fifth h symphony. Rather it is a sort of transitional piece between the student work of the first symphony and the social realism of the second and third symphonies. While deeply intelligent the work has no intended program and one could almost pass this off stylistically as a lost Mahler work.

Fear not, though, the composer’s fingerprint is here. After all this is his fourth essay in the symphony genre. Unfortunately a perfect storm of politics conspired to almost destroy this work. Fortunately both this reduction and the reconstruction make the work available. It is especially curious for the Shostakovich enthusiast to listen to this work and imagine the care that must have been taken to avoid being associated with non-state-approved music. It’s a good example of how politics places additional meaning on a piece of music that originally had none.

 

— posted by Roger W. Smith

   February 2022

This is going too far.

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‘Google’s Inclusive Language Police’ – WSJ 1-21-2022

 

“Many colorful phrases — the very thing that makes language vivid and enjoyable — too often now are perceived as dangerous, and excising them risks diminishing the possibilities of communication. Few of us would want to read a novel devoid of colorful wording.” — Lawrence Krauss, The Wall Street Journal, January 21, 2022

 

The language police are at it again.

They have — to sort off with a sort of non sequitur — no joie de vivre. (I doubt that they know what it means.)

Think of words like cold fish, clock watcher, and dead drop, which are not on their prohibited list. Our language is full of idioms, slang, and clichés that are pungent and descriptive and just plain fun. The way good language in a work of fiction or poetry can wake you up.

Black box is now banned? Really? It means a flight recorder on an aircraft. We all read about the search for the black box when there is a plane crash. The box is black, and such a device could have been called just about anything. But black box is descriptive, with the adjective black pulling a lot of the weight. There is something comforting or reassuring about having words that fit certain situations that everyone understands. Now, if the language police have their way, we will have to come up with a new term, which will create at least temporary confusion. Yes, the boxes are black, but does black have any external (meaning, connotation as opposed to denotation) implications?

What about blacklist? Canceling this word does a disservice to history. Blacklist is a term that immediately bring to mind the 50s and McCarthyism. And it has nothing to do with race. Lack of regard for history? The language police could care less.

They are ignorant, fanatical ideologies whose incursions on our everyday speech and the language used in journalism and writing amount to an assault on the language.

 

— Roger W. Smith

  January 2022

Pitirim A. Sorokin: “the fact of stratification is universal”

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Please note my post

“the fact of stratification is universal”

on my Sorokin site

“the fact of stratification is universal”

Sorokin’s observations have important implications.

 

— Roger W. Smith

January 2022

“Opinions are not the rules for actions.”

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If a picture is drawn of a tree whose title is nevertheless, “A Fish,” only one insane may say, “This is a picture of a fish.” Unfortunately, in social sciences such insane statements are still very numerous. Authors still do not understand that the labels and the real situation, the speech reactions of a man and his real behavior may be quite different. If in a constitution is written “all men are equal,” they often conclude that in such a society the equality is realized. If a man abundantly produces sonorous phrases, then for this reason he is judged as “open-minded,” “progressive,” “protector of the laboring classes” and so on, regardless of his real behavior. For the same reason, the periods of Revolution are styled as periods of progress and so forth. Such “thinkers” do not see what was clear for [Pierre] Bayle several centuries ago [in his Pensées Diverses sur l’Occasion de la Comète]. “Opinions (speech reactions and labels) are not the rules for actions, and men do not follow them in their conduct,” says Bayle. … [The Christians are those who, being smitten on the right cheek, turn to the offender their left one. I wish I could see such Christians. These examples show that between the labels and the real situation may be the greatest discrepancy. This is one reason for not relying on labels and speech reactions in the description of social phenomena.

— Pitirim A. Sorokin, Social Mobility

So wrote Sorokin in 1927. I find his words very true today.

 

— Roger W. Smith

specious reasoning

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In an exchange on Facebook about my post

Harvard does not discriminate against Asian-Americans (except that it does).

Harvard does not discriminate against Asian-Americans (except that it does).

the following points were made.

 

PETE SMITH (my brother)

If you ran a college and accepted applicants only on test scores and extracurricular activities and grades and references, without any consideration of ethnicity, and it turned out that the incoming class was going to be 95% Asian, or 95% white Christians, or some other clear imbalance that doesn’t begin to resemble the general population (as with the classes when we were in college), would you be OK with this?

 

ROGER SMITH

I think it is a fault or defect in argumentation to hinge your point or rebuttal on the most extreme cases. It is unlikely that such an imbalance is going to happen today, or can be foreseen under your scenario. I don’t know about the case of, say, Southern Baptist colleges, historically black colleges, or Yeshiva University. But my post focuses on what I see as principle and what I regard as a commitment to educational excellence. From my perspective and experience, and based on what I have read in the press.

I don’t think that educators should be counting heads. It is not their job, as I see it — they should not have to worry about this unless clear patterns of discrimination can be shown. I also feel that it is wholly commendable for university officials to be trying to encourage and recruit qualified students from groups not well represented or from abroad. And if the university feels sports are important, I think it’s okay to admit athletes using athletics as one criterion; or talented musicians for the music department; and so forth That’s a kind of diversity I would endorse.

 

PETE SMITH

But not ethnic diversity? Gender diversity? Income diversity? Are these less important than having the right combination of musicians and basketball players? What if these groups are not “well represented”?

 

ROGER SMITH

It’s not that there is a “right” combination of musicians or basketball players. It’s just that if a school has a music department, it wants some music majors. This should be a matter of common sense and it does not affect policy questions.

If it is going to have sports teams (at my school, sports were deemphasized), it needs some athletes. And it wants some English, French, and bio majors; physics and math majors and premeds; future businessmen and businesswomen if it has a business major or perhaps wants students studying economics; and so on. (Rensselaer Polytech and Julliard are different in this respect.)

 

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I keep running this discussion through my mind, and similar ones and thoughts I have had about such issues ever since racial preferences in college (and elite secondary school) admissions became an issue. And about broader issues involving race, gender, and so on in the workplace and in matters affecting public policy.

In the Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court decision (1896), the Court ruled that racial segregation laws did not violate the U.S. Constitution as long as facilities are equal — the infamous “separate but equal doctrine.” It was a bit of specious reasoning that violates the fundamental principles of fairness and law.

In Grutter v. Bollinger (2003), the Supreme Court’s ruling was again based on specious reasoning that supposedly upholds the concept of race blind admissions policies (affirms the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause) while holding that an admissions process that favors “underrepresented minority groups” does not violate the law so long as it takes into account other factors evaluated on an individual basis for every applicant. The Court held that the Equal Protection Clause did not prohibit the University of Michigan’ Law School’s narrowly tailored use of race in admissions decisions to further a compelling interest in obtaining the educational benefits that flow from a diverse student body.

Something that has occurred to me in articulating points I made in my post and similar ones is a sort of philosophical question. Is race a “thing”? Regarding the concept of race and government mandated racial categories (used for demographic purposes and to examine compliance with rules and guidelines), I wrote in a previous blog:

the absurdity of racial categorizations (a glaring example

the absurdity of racial categorizations (a glaring example)

There is such diversity in ethic groupings that it seems nonsensical to me to sort them into ironclad groupings. The groupings were made up by someone or other who manufactured them out of thin air, bureaucrats; they ignore many ethnic groups and sort them almost willy-nilly.

When (as I assert above) admitting an entering class, it makes sense to ensure that there is diversity among the academic disciplines (majors) of students. A candidate for admission is qualified and interested in pursuing a career in music. This is something tangible and specific that it makes sense to take into account — provided that the student’s qualifications are valid. It’s a fact, and a meaningful one.

You would not want an entering class with no music or art majors (or any other pertinent example), if your school has a music department and (probably) a student orchestra.

But what makes two candidates from different racial or ethnic (or religious, for that matter) groups fundamentally different, in the case of an admissions committee considering the applications of each candidate? Assuming the race of the student is known, why should it be a positive or negative factor (admission wise)? Which group of groups has more or less to contribute? Which individual students? How can this be determined?

 

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Justice Sandra Day O’Connor:

Diversity is a compelling interest that can justify the narrowly tailored use of race when public universities select applicants for admission. In this case, the Law School’s (Defendant) admissions program bears the hallmarks of a narrowly tailored plan. Truly individualized consideration demands that race be used in a flexible, non-mechanical way. It follows from this mandate that universities cannot establish quotas for members of certain racial groups or put members of those groups on separate admission tracks. Universities also cannot insulate applicants who belong to certain racial or ethnic groups from the competition for admission. However … universities can consider race or ethnicity more flexibly as a plus factor in the context of individualized consideration of each and every applicant.

And so on.

This is the same tortured, specious reasoning. It says that discrimination in the admissions process is not being condoned — it is not okay — it’s against the law! Except that it is okay. To ensure a diverse student body. Well, we are very much the same, fundamentally, all of us, or we should think this way. (All men are created equal.)

Discrimination (as the term implies) involves non-acceptance of this principle. When I discriminate, I choose between groups. Some groups are superior and some inferior. The inferior groups and persons are not entitled to the same rights and privileges as the superior ones. So Plessy v. Ferguson held — except that they didn’t exactly. They got around this by saying that all persons would be treated the same under the doctrine of separate but equal.

And (Grutter v. Bollinger), while the Constitution and acts of Congress prohibit discrimination, it’s okay under some conditions. In giving consideration to the race of an applicant. This is actually specious, Plessy v. Ferguson style reasoning. But, you see, it’s not discrimination; it’s the promotion of diversity, which sounds good, as an abstraction. Except that people aren’t abstractions. They are all equal, in principle. And different, naturally, in actuality (different inherited characteristics and differences manifested as people grow and change over the course of a life).

We do come from different racial and ethnic backgrounds, but in what sense does that make us different? In a meaningful way? It does make us different experientially. But this can’t be quantified and it is meaningless to try. In practice, we should treat everyone the same. It’s nonsensical to look at another person and expect them to be the same as you, and wrong to make the differences matter from a legal or moral point of view.

Am I too idealistic? Blind to actual disparities and social realities? Well, I submit my reasoning — sophisticated or unsophisticated as it may be — for consideration vis-à-vis the tortuous process by which the courts arrive at decisions and officials implement policy. A music major is different from a computer science major. A school can and should keep track of how many of each it has. You can’t quantify what a student from one race or another may or not add to a school’s educational environment, or take away from it, using race as a metric. And while there is clearly such a thing as broad groupings according to the type of categories an Ancestry.com DNA test will identify, in individual cases (as a tool of differentiation among individuals) they are meaningless; and by the way, the categories used by the government and organizations for counting purposes are crude and inaccurate for descriptive or classification purposes.

 

— Roger W. Smith

   January 2022