In Defense of Prejudice by Jonathan Rauch Essay

In Defense of Prejudice by Jonathan Rauch - Essay Example The essay "In Defense of Prejudice by Jonathan Rauch" discusses the article, written by Jonathan Rauch. He was born 1960 in Phoenix, Arizona. After his graduation from Yale University, Rauch started work at the Winston-Salem Journal in North Carolina, for the National Journal magazine, and ultimately as a self-employed writer.A criticizer of U.S. government civic policy in general, Rauch has followed homosexual-related subjects as an explicitly homosexual author since 1991, and is a keen supporter of same-sex matrimony. The author, being a Jew and a homosexual has clearly been exposed to bias in the past, which makes his writing-piece all the more influential. The article is not coming from a disgruntled individual on the top of the social ladder, it is written by the kind of individual who believes that hate-crime regulations are meant to safeguard. Rauch initiates by asserting that bias is an inevitable aspect of humankind, that "Homosapiens is a tribal species for whom "us versus them" comes naturally and must be continually pushed back." This intolerant nature he says is accountable for small factions being battered, as what is inexplicable is naturally dreaded, he senses that this nature is an inherent component of civilization, "for as thickheaded and wayward an animal as us, the realistic question is how to make the best of prejudice, not how to eradicate it." So how to make the better and the most of prejudice? Rauch proposes that to disapprove prejudice only makes it stronger., and lashes out against those "crusaders for sweetness and light" whom he tags as "purists." He asserts that in the purist’s effort to eliminate cruel words from general use they have lent a type of "shamanistic" supremacy to them, as however the words could now cause corporal destruction. He quotes a sample of the use of the word "nigger" by Charles Lawrence in 1990; "The experience of being called 'nigger,' 'spic,' 'Jap,' or 'kike' is like receiving a slap in the face," In their benevolent effort to defend the purists have become authoritarian in substance, like the church in its effort to terminate McCarthyites and heretics trying to abolish communalism the purists have gone way too far. The philology used by the purists takes on a terrifyingly acquainted attitude. In his assessment it is not only for ease and parity that prejudice must be demolished, it is for the very protection of the individuals. It advances a whole new logic of earnestness to the purist’

DQ5 Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 2

DQ5 - Essay Example If the data has some extreme values, then median becomes the most accurate measure of central tendency. However, one weakness of median is that it cannot be applied to raw-data and the data has to arranged in ascending or descending order. This indicates that this measure is time consuming and when data is very large it is very difficult to first arrange it in ascending order and then arrive at median. Mode is considered appropriate for nominal data and can be calculated very easily by observation. There are no calculations required when computing mode and hence it is very quick. The only disadvantage with mode is that it gives the least accurate answer and hence people do not use it despite it being the easiest measure of center or central tendency. Measures of dispersion describe the spread of data. Some of these measures include range, variance and standard deviation. It includes measures such as range, standard deviation and variance. The advantage of range is that it is very simple and tells you the spread of data. However, since it is dependent on just two values, the answer is not the fairest representation of the distribution. Another very important measure of dispersion is standard deviation. Since it includes all the values of the observation it is most likely to give a good and accurate answer. But, as the numbers are squared in computing standard deviation, the extreme values get more weightage and answer is distorted. Similarly, variance is another good measure as it includes all the values in a observation. The only weakness of variance is that it is very time consuming as each observation has to be squared. The number of observations that fall into a particular class is call the frequency or count of that class. Frequency distribution is a table that lists all class and their frequencies in a systemized manner. This table tells us at a glance that how many times a particular observation has been seen in our