Cite.
Cite.
Cite.
Cite.
This is nothing more than the naive rantings of pampered children. They will grow out of it when they hit the real world, or suffer through a lifetime of phantom victimizations that will hinder their ability to realize the promise granted to them by the opportunity to attend such sterling institutions of higher learning. Pathetic.
This is nothing more than denial that racism has any harmful effect and that there is no value in fighting it. Is that what you sincerely believe?
Because you need to get an accurate understanding of a problem before you can solve it and it’s important not to subject anyone to false accusations.
When a problem is as old and pervasive as it is, it’s not really acting in good faith by taking the attitude that the entire problem has to be proven from scratch every damn time.
I thought this was about institutional racism from faculty & administration. Not a generalized argument on why “racism is bad.”
Until I see cites on how the racism of the Brown faculty & administration cause violence and emotional discord, I will continue to see this as someone whining and blithely accusing people of something very serious that they are not guilty of.
I’ve been to numerous college campuses, and am not far removed from my college experience. The college administrations of today go to great pains to work on integration and multi-cultural tolerance. Show me the negligence of Brown, one of the most notoriously liberal schools in the country, and I’ll give this more consideration.
What makes you think that liberalism is some kind of antidote to racism? And what makes you think that people are saying that elite universities are uniquely susceptible to the problems of institutional racism? And if you aren’t willing to accept as credible the experience of those who are in a position to experience racism, then what kind of citation are you willing to accept?
It’s this kind of demand that seems entirely to be in bad faith, that somehow at some point in the last few decades, the institutional and structural racism of our society has somehow been cleansed away and claims of discrimination are so far-fetched that they have to be rigorously proven beyond a reasonable doubt like a criminal prosecution.
I am still waiting for someone to offer up a concrete, substantiated act of racism that we can discuss, as I asked, instead of dancing around the issue and accusing anyone with an opposing view of not understanding. Help us understand. You say we are ignorant. Maybe so - correct the situation, if you can. Someone posted links, but you need to pick one that you think demands action. I’m not going to go through your long list of links.
Here’s an example of something that would be unacceptable. Some black students go to their physics professor with some questions about an assignment, and the professor says, “You know, we’ve had several black students in this course over the years, and they just can’t hack it. I recommend that you change majors to psych or sociology or something softer. It’s really for your own good.” Is anything like that happening? If it is, something ought to be done.
Also, here is what’s wrong with the consumer mentality in college: the customer of a college is not the student. The customer of a college is society. Yale students are going to be making laws that I’ll have to live by So I have a very definite interest in their getting a good education and not having their juvenile hysterias catered to endlessly.
There is another misunderstanding here. Saying that the Yale students, or Harvard Law students, or whoever, are full of crap is not at all the same thing as saying there is no racism at these places. There is racism everywhere - it’s human nature. But the response needs to be proportionate. Microaggressions merit micro-apologies. We are long past the days of fire hoses and dogs keeping black students out of colleges.
This business of wanting statues taken down or buildings renamed is especially misguided. Just because a college named a building after a slaveholder 200 years ago does not mean the college endorses slavery. These activists are surely smart enough to understand that, but they’re pretending not to, in order to magnify the “hurt”. You know, France has a huge monument to Napoleon, who is not exactly a hero to most of Europe. It doesn’t mean they endorse all that Napoleon stood for. It just means he was a historically significant figure. I find this same attitude in many SDMB threads. People are more interested in displaying their personal revulsion toward racism than in actually trying to understand it in a way that might offer a path forward. It’s not just unproductive, it’s boring.
Why would you assume that minorities are any more susceptible to confirmation bias than others?
I have provided cites of literally dozens of people using direct quotes, stating their impressions, and interviews and investigations done by reputable journalists. You simply won’t accept any evidence.
Hillarious! So you acknowledge the information has been presented to you in detail, and that you have no desire to actual read it in order to disabuse yourself of your ignorance, but you still claim you are waiting for evidence?
You do realize our own Chief Pedant, a former educator, has written things like what’s written above almost verbatim on this very message board. Or how about when James Watson opined that we should be gloomy about Africa’s potential because Black people are stupid, something he thinks, “people who have to deal with black employees” know is obviously true. Or this survey of women and under-represented minority chemists and chemical engineers which found “40 percent reported that they had been subjected to discouragement at one point in their STEM education and career” and that “for 60 percent of respondents, college was where most of that attempted dissuasion occurred and college professors were often the source”.
Yes, see above.
No, not really. Again, you re clearly out of your depth on this issue. Students are treated more like customers because there is a market for their tuition dollars. The market creates the competition, and there is little you can do about that.
Please point to a disproportionate response in your mind? Most of these people are NOT being fired or reprimanded for microaggressions; they are getting whacked because they double down on their ignorance and refuse to do their job properly.
Again, you are missing the point. Most likely because you refuse to actually read anything to dispel your ignorance. The issue is that having something named after you is generally considered an honor and an endorsement of your achievements and character. Does it means the cosign everything you did? No, but it does mean the defining moments of your life should be supportable.
The issue is the choices to name many of these places were made in the past through a lens that was often considered racist and bigoted even by the standards of their time. Keeping the name when we know those things AND see how it offends many people is just an meaningless and cruel act of defiance often cheered by people who have no stake in the matter. Few people give a crap when buildings are renamed for some billionaire who donates a lot of money, yet they are up in arms which something named after an awful racist garbage human being is renamed almost solely because they don’t like the people making the argument.
Things aren’t named in perpetuity, and the “history” argument is complete bullshit. No one in their right mind would name a building after Osama Bin Laden, or Assad, or Hitler, or any other number of historically important figures because we acknowledge that their place in history should be noted and studied, but not idolized by naming things in their honor.
Example please? More importantly, do you think you are doing that same?
The point of the OP is that in the news I’m seeing large, aggressive protests against racism at the Ivy League and a few other super-elite schools. Supposedly, according to the protesters, it’s so bad that their health has collapsed and violence is occurring. With the exception of Mizzou, I’ve read of no comparable protests at other schools.
Some posters have offered possible explanations, but none that seem to account for the contrast of large, almost violent protests at the Ivies and nearly nothing elsewhere.
I’ve addressed this earlier. This is the Straight Dope Message Board. The Straight Dope exists to figure out what claims are backed by facts and what aren’t. If we do so for questions about vaccines or the age of the earth or planes on treadmills, why not for claims that liberal university administrations are totally racist? Isn’t that the Straight Dope way?
Earlier I posted this:
Suppose there was a rich, white man with a large following, loudly proclaiming that he felt white people were having their lives ruined by Mexicans and other racial minorities. Let’s call this purely hypothetical person “Donald Trump”. How should we respond to this person? By automatically basing policy on the feelings of Donald Trump and his followers? Or by caring about what the actual facts are?
This shows the fallacy of telling us to “accept the experience of those who are in a position to experience racism”. Anyone can claim to have been the victim of racism. Donald Trump is no less or more positioned to experience it than anyone else. If we accept all claimed experiences without proof, could the result be anything but a farce?
Lastly I will point out that there are plenty of racial minorities on Ivy League campuses who aren’t joining the three-ring circus. The article I linked to about Brown University quotes a black professor who’s been there a long time, dismissing the “absurd” accusations of racism. Surely his experience should be accepted as credible.
It’s not simply a yes/no question. Exactly who should be held responsible in exactly what sort of way is a critical question.
It’s not a question of who is more. If the Prosecution is biased then that’s a problem all by itself.
Treating non-explicit racism as if it is a criminal charge that must be defended is not a path that’s likely to lead to any positive result.
But neither will treating non-existent racism as though it is always “non-explicit” racism.
By that I don’t mean that racism is non-existent in society at large or at any given university, but any given individual is entitled to the presumption of innocence.
Most white people are brought up with a steady diet of “don’t be racist” and make an effort to be civil toward black people. Racists are the exceptions who need to be rooted out.
Even if I were to go along with the idea that colleges hiring more minority staff members might be helpful, those paying the price would be the better-qualified yet by-and-large non-racist candidates, while while the actual racists will go unpunished.
Fighting racism in our society is not about identifying individual allegations against suspected racists and then proving a charge of racism against that individual. We live in a racist society. Period. It’s less racist than it once was, but it’s still racist.
The task before us is to identify how to do things like make people aware of how racism manifests itself, how it affects people, and how to ameliorate such manifestations and effects. It’s about giving the victims of racism the opportunity to identify racism and deal with such sources of racism.
It’s not about proving that particular individuals are racist. It’s not. It’s just not. Because everyone is racist. It needs no proof. And every time you insist that that’s what we have to do, you’re changing the subject, derailing the discussion, and preventing things from getting better. What it needs is action to discourage it, oppose it, lessen it, and ameliorate its effects.
Racism just is. We know it is. You know it and I know it and everyone with half a brain knows it. It’s not our job to prove it’s there every damn time.
Please. This is the Straight Dope. We question things. We look at the evidence. We do not just say “It needs no proof” or say that everyone who disagrees with a proposition is stupid.
Obviously not everyone agrees with propositions like “everyone is racist”. Obviously that sort of dogmatic belief is common on the left, but not elsewhere. Obviously it does need proof, if you expect to convince anyone that it’s true.
Being allowed to wander around in blackface/redface/yellowface at Halloween is not “walking in someone else’s shoes” .
Didn’t say they were, but that’s still no reason to discount them.
Not quite in so many words, no.
So do perceptions.
Facts aren’t a counter to perceptions, especially subjective feelings like the impact of microagressions on minority students that actually can’t be quantified, only listened to and considered.
Oral Roberts University has one set of faith-based arguments, and the Ivy Leagues have another.
‘This university is a hotbed of racism! I don’t have to prove it - just hand over the money!’
Good luck with that.
Regards,
Shodan
“Good luck with that”? Did you not read the cites about the hundreds of millions of dollars used to investigate and reduce racism through these institutions? Even if your incredibly warped understanding of what’s happening were correct, it’d seem like they’re having fucking awesome luck with that “handing over the money” bit.
They are, which is unfortunate. Once they get out into the real world, I suspect they are in for a rude shock.
"So what are your qualifications for this job, Mr. Smith?
I have an encyclopedic knowledge of Third World lesbian writings, and somebody rode past me in a pick up truck and yelled “N*gger”.
That’s good - how are you with chemistry, or accounting, or C++?"
Regards,
Shodan
Ideally liberal arts majors learn better reasoning skills than to apply for a job programming the accounts payable database for Dow Chemical.
I’m reminded of a story from a writing professor, about the time that the lit grad department did an exchange program with the chemistry grad department. After a couple of weeks, he said, the chemistry profs were coming agog to the lit profs: “Your students are so smart, in a couple of weeks they’re better than our own students are!” Which was nonsense, of course–but the lit students were so much better at communicating what they understood (and presumably glossing over what they didn’t understand) that they created the illusion of hypercompetence.
That said, if your sole measure of college success is the lifetime earnings of graduates with a specific measure, then it’s likely you’ll find culture studies departments are failures. I’m not convinced that’s the only, or even the primary, measure of whether a college major is worthwhile.
I was fortunate enough to go to a top school (notsostealth brag - Stanford), and have lectured at the local University of California school and the local community college.
At Stanford, very few students worked while going to school. Nobody commuted, as housing was available for undergrads for the entire time. Class enrollments were available - yes, taking a certain prof might be tough - but nobody delayed graduation due to not being able to enroll in required courses. That means that you have the time to protest, in addition to the support of faculty who also feel that there are problems.
At the local community college there is no housing. The students issues are focused more on parking and class availability. They are not going to be spending their time protesting racism when they are just trying to get the classes they need, get to that class, and then get home and to their part-time job.
Is there racism at the community college? Probably, as the community college reflects society.
The Ivy Leaguers protest because they can, and because they are smart enough to dig into some of the information. They are still extremely privileged, extremely lucky (if their family makes less than $125k then Stanford tuition is free, while if they are at the community college they still have to pay), and that makes their protesting less than effective once they are off the campus.