Dog Behavior - Malcolm Gladwell on Pit Bulls
One of my favourite writers takes on the issue of stereotyping, comparing the failure of racial profiling to catch bad guys to the recent ban on Pit Bulls here in Ontario. (in The New Yorker, Feb. 6, 2006)
Gladwell is getting at something insidious, a creeping and creepy tendency to not care if methods are based on reason, on facts or even on whether they produce results. It is refreshing to find this presented in a way that is not critically disabling. Gladwell points to things we know about dogs that are dangerous, about who owns them and why they own them, knowledge that can be used to actually solve problems.
'Course not everyone agrees. Some folks in the park think the ban will do more good than harm. We'll have to wait and see what the statistics are a year from now.
Gladwell is getting at something insidious, a creeping and creepy tendency to not care if methods are based on reason, on facts or even on whether they produce results. It is refreshing to find this presented in a way that is not critically disabling. Gladwell points to things we know about dogs that are dangerous, about who owns them and why they own them, knowledge that can be used to actually solve problems.
'Course not everyone agrees. Some folks in the park think the ban will do more good than harm. We'll have to wait and see what the statistics are a year from now.
posted by howboy > link to this post
1 Comments:
Glad had a blog, a good one too.
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