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Don’t fall into “the ET trap”
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:category: research
:date: 2005-12-20T00:00:00
:tags: boston, celebrity
There is a trap in thinking about the Boston miracle, and I think that
so far (to the best of my knowledge) all researchers trying to
understand what is (what was?) going on did fall in it. I would call it
“the ET trap” (ET as “The Entertainment Tonight” one of the most stupid
celebrity obsessed shows on the US TV) and it goes like this: “… there
are some interesting people trying to do something interesting (or
merely claiming to do something interesting) and here are the
results—see the heroes who made the change!” Yes, I return still back to
the question, how much actually mattered to the average kid on the
street of Roxbury that Revs. Hammond, Rivers, and Brown had been talking
with officials of the Boston Police Department? And I still cannot find
an explanation, why it would matter that much, especially in the
short-run.
But maybe there is a good very long-term process going on here of the
redefinition of the identity, but that couldn’t make a change so
prominent in so short time.
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