Saturday, July 30, 2005

My stance...

I did say that I would express my opinions about the two things I mentioned in my last post - so here it is!

The first instance involving the policeman annoyed me greatly. It annoyed me because to me it looked like the man was simply stopped because the policeman assumed he was a terrorist because he was a muslim. If that was true then to me it was wrong. Ofcourse there is every chance that I am looking at the situation totally out of context and that I am the one who is actually showing racial tendencies by assuming such a thing - it is just as likely that he was an old man who had just lost something on the train and was simply appealing to the policeman for help. I am quite ashamed to admit that I would assume such a thing. A point to work on...

On the second incident...

"Freedom of speech" and "racial villification" seem to be on either side of a blurry line. I haven't heard the whole story properly and so I don't truely have a stance. If Andrew Fraser says "I have proof that black populations increase crime rates", I want to see that proof. Statistically, his argument seems flawed to me. Sure, you might find a correlation between crime and race, but I am sure the correlation between poverty vs crime and poverty vs race are just as statistically significant. I just want to know if his research took all of that into account. As a former student from Macquarie, what embarasses me more than Andrew Fraser expressing his opinions, is the fact that he would base those opinions on very poorly conducted research!

Andrew Fraser is entitled to his opinion - he is 61 and I can excuse him for having opinions that are different from what most of us beleive in. My opinions differ from my parents! To me it looks like he is using statistics (and a poorly designed experiment) to reinforce his beleifs - this unnecessarily draws the university into the picture because now it looks as if the university is supporting such experimentation when in reality it may not be...

I guess my stance on the issue is still not set simply because I don't think that I know enough about it to say "I believe strongly that...".