Watts article (Re: NP Genoa)

[Otto]

Thanks Terrance,
I had overseen this essay.

While I think that Boulter is mighty fine in interpreting "The Secret
Integration" I have (of course) trouble with some of his conclusions
concerning his "realist position" vs. "structuralist position" at the end --
especially I don't believe that since 1964 in the question of race relations
in the laws that much has changed as the author asserts. The economical laws
have stayed the same and find their expression in the statistics.

"even if people do not know what things are called, they can still know what
they are. The structuralist position is also unable to account for why we
might want to change juridical structures. If there were not a real state of
affairs separate from its construction in law, we would not be able to see
that laws have changed and reality has stayed the same (as in the case of
the position of African Americans)."
(Joe Boulter, "Children and Slaves in the West": Imagining Fraternity Among
Outlaws in The Secret Integration)
http://www.law.utexas.edu/lpop/etext/okla/boulter24.htm

His textual evidences nevertheless are exquisite. What Pynchon does on p.
190/91 is to show how the adults themselves (by spreading garbage, a
prejudice they normally apply to the blacks) create the chaos they fear
(blacks into their neighbourhood), how White America creates the status quo
out of fear, obeying to the economy that tells them that their houses will
loose value if Blacks move in like the world economy produces the problems
it seeks to overcome by big conferences (which only cost lives and money) by
keeping up the injustice terms of trade under the name of Globalization.

Otto

>
> Again, I suggest Joe Boulter's essay.
>
> http://www.law.utexas.edu/lpop/etext/okla/boulter24.htm
>