Wednesday, January 17, 2007

Stereotypes, Generalizations, and Racism

If you've done any serious thinking at all about topics like stereotypes, generalizations, and racism, you've discovered that there are conceptual-definitional difficulties and complexities at every turn. On analogy, we can empathize with Augustine's confusion about the nature of time. He wrote, "What, then, is time? If no one asks, I know; if I want to explain it to someone who asks me, I do not know" (Confessions XI.17, trans. Maria Boulding, p. 295).

I'm thankful, therefore, for John Piper's most recent exhortations and observations related to stereotypes, generalizations, and racism.