Steven Goldberg

Latest by Steven Goldberg in Chronicles

• Vital Signs

  July 1996

  Truth and Consequences

  Dead white males did not invent the rules of science; they discovered them. These rules enable science, and science alone, to make successful prediction.

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  January 1995

  Black Murder

  Black survival requires that the black majority not be destroyed by a black minority, and it makes no sense for whites to let a sense of guilt—whether justified or not no longer matters—lead them to blame such depradations on an "American tradition of violence" of which there is little evidence. False explanations seldom lead to solutions.

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• Vital Signs

  March 1991

  Sociology and Common Sense

  The "Common-Sense Sociology Test" made its first appearance in the mid-1960's. The test is now a familiar fixture in introductory sociology courses and textbooks, but in the beginning its exciting novelty instantly captured the hearts and minds of graduate students and young professors facing their first lecture halls—lecture halls filled with a student skepticism that is now only a memory.

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• Vital Signs

  July 1989

  The Fallacy of Descriptivism

  People with more than a passing interest in words fall into two groups: prescriptivist and descriptivist. The prescriptivist believes that there is an ideal of correctness in the use of words, shifting and temporally-based as it ultimately may be.

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• Vital Signs

  April 1989

  Defining Life

  The morality of abortion is entirely a matter of definition: is the fetus a person or not? The definition—whether derived from millennia of religious tradition or from individual analysis and subjective choice—both generates and justifies the intense emotions that are given free rein when fact is irrelevant.

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• Reviews

  December 1988

  Common Sense

  Over in my philosophy department they used to shake their heads and smile. They didn't actually pat me on the head or anything; professors don't do that.

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• Cultural Revolutions

  May 1988

  "Decrying Racism"

  In the recent firing of "Jimmy the Greek," CBS explained its action in a "terse statement," decrying racism. (What they meant by this is anyone's guess. I ban the word racism in my introductory sociology class, not because there are no barriers to black advancement but because the word itself is a barrier to the serious thought that is required in any struggle against injustice.)

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  July 1987

  Why I Am Not 'Conservative'

  Like most sociologists, I am conservative in the sense that I believe in the existence of barely perceived social mechanisms—mechanisms that satisfy the deep physiological, psychological, and cultural needs.

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  June 1987

  Politics of Weakness

  In the 1980's the doctrine of sexual equality is increasingly being misapplied. The current discussion of women's sports provides a graphic illustration. The central premise of the sexual egalitarian is simple: It is unjust to reward or support a woman less than a man, when the woman performs on the same level.

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  November 1986

  The Truth in Stereotypes

  The stereotype is in disrepute. The word is often defined in purely negative terms. Some definitions construe the stereotype as necessarily possessing the negative charge that does, indeed, energize many stereotypes.

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