Saturday, July 12, 2008

SHAMblog: An unconvincing 'mallrat'-ionale?

Steve Salerno, author of the book SHAM (on my "to read" list), gives an excellent example of the technique of Substitution. On reading his entire post you'll see he discusses the unquestioned and unconscious bias against teenagers. This particular case was about a ban on teenagers hanging about a shopping mall at particular times. He shows the uncritical bias with a substitution:
...suppose we replace the word "teens" with the word "Hispanics" (or even, say, "Hispanic teens"). Suppose mall management had asked its security people for an assessment of who was causing the most trouble, and the security people replied, "That's easy: It's the Latinos." ...If a mall tried to do that, would the media report the event uncritically ...[o]r would the reporting sound a distinct note of outrage and indignation?
Read Steve's entire post: SHAMblog: An unconvincing 'mallrat'-ionale?