Rand Rover: I’m a tax lawyer.
Everyone else: Yeah, right. Prove it.
Rand Rover: How can you morons not take me seriously?!?! (several lines of insults about “liberal douches” ensue)
A few posts later:
Rand Rover: I’m a chess expert.
Everyone else: Yeah, right. Prove it.
Rand Rover: How can you morons not know I’m kidding?!?! (several lines of insults about “liberal douches” ensue)
That’s about the shittiest summary of the situation possible, which is all I ever expect from you.
Rand Did you find anybody in this thread/on this board who actually believes what you write? It does not seem so. Shouldn’t this make you think? Of all the feedback you got, how much was positive and how much was negative?
Oh, I forgot, we are all peasants. That must be it.
People. Why do you do this to me? You know how I hate standing up for Rand Rover.
The chess thing was a throw away, akin to, “Oh yeah, well my dad could beat up your dad.”
Give it a fucking rest. There are better arguments to debate him over.
It’s more than that. It proves that his arguments are … bullshit. Not just this one, this is just an example.
He may be a dick, but he’s still allowed to joke around, isn’t he?
Rand –
Even if you don’t believe the cites offered above prove that there are salubrious effects from black role model teachers, they certainly make it an arguable point – that is, it’s not unreasonable for someone else to reach the opposite conclusion. In light of that, I don’t see how your continued support of the pitting of LHOD is sustainable. It’s possible he’s wrong, but his position isn’t per se unreasonable.
Are you willing to withdraw it?
flonks:
To be ruthlesslly fair, no, it doesn’t. He provides evidence that he is, as a person, an asshole. The weakness of his arguments is not dependent upon his being an asshole, that is a seperate matter altogether. There are people here who are perfectly capable of offering cogent and well reasoned arguments, but are nonetheless assholes. There is a vast gulf between “I’m right, you’re wrong” and “I’m right, and you are an idiot”.
This is the pit. And, as Bricker said above, and as I said before, this whole thread is ridiculous. LHOD might be wrong (which I do not think, btw), but he is far from being unreasonable. Pitting him for a difference in opinions is ridiculous, it shows a lack of culture, a lack of class.
This is not GD. This is not a discussion on whether LHOD is right or not. The fact that LHOD is pitted is part of this discussion, which implies that the discussion on whether RR is an asshole is part of the discussion.
At least that’s how I see it.
No. As I’ve said throughout, I think it takes more to advocate racial discrimination than some vague feeling (albeit mildly supported by some not-quite-on-point studies) that the racial discrimination would produce benefits for one segment of the population. See my “proves too much” argument above. I also object to the paternalism.
If I said that killing 10 percent of the children born each year in the US (randomly selected)would cause life on the planet to be a veritable utopia, and I had some vague studies to support the idea, would you not support a thread pitting me for that belief?
If you advocated the death of all the arrogant assholes of this world, I wouldn’t take that as Pit-worthy, I would take it as a suicide note. And I would alert the proper authorities, if I were not real busy, at the moment.
I don’t believe a word of that.
Fine. You said it but you didn’t mean it. Had you owned up to that in the beginning … nevermind.
Now how about you respond to Miller’s post. Or were you kidding about that, too?
Is encouraging black male high school students to become go to college to become teachers “racial discrimination”? I’m thinking that’s what needs to be done. You have to give people an incentive to start along a career path pretty early if you want to pursue the career. The requirements have become pretty rigorous, and you can’t just wake up one day and decide to become a teacher. I don’t have a cite handy, but just from what I’ve seen, I’m guessing black men just do not going into teaching in proportion with their representation in the population at large. If you are a black male teacher, you probably have your pick of jobs, which may or may not be discrimination, but that’s beside the point. The point is, do you think offering incentives to lure black teenagers into teacher preparatory programs as undergrads is racist? If not, then I’m not sure what your bitch is here. You can’t employ racially discriminatory hiring policies to hire black teachers who simply do not exist to be hired, and that’s the main problem with the lack of black male teachers.
God, do I hate hyperbolic, inane, and inappropriate analogies. They are the bane of rational argument.
One of those rare as hen’s teeth black male teachers is the brother of a friend of mine. And, like all teachers, he had to complete a Bachelors in Education and pass his licensing test. To get promoted and paid more, he had to complete his Masters.
It is probably true that he will always be in demand for certain schools, but there is also a downside to it. He isn’t in demand at all at other schools. Districts want him in their disadvantaged neighborhoods - he has really had to fight to stay in the type of school he wants to teach in - a racially diverse middle class school.
Granted I’m no mind reader–but all the same, I don’t think Rand is being honest with himself or with us about the reason for the pitting. In the related thread, I explicitly said I wouldn’t argue with him, and I think that was too much for him to bear. I think that’s why he’s so pissed, and the whole comparisons to Jim Crow (and now to mass infanticide) are rationalizations for that, so he doesn’t have to admit that it’s such a blow to him that I wouldn’t talk to him.
If he’d pitted me directly for that–if he’d said, “LHOD, stop being a passive-aggressive asshole,”–that’d be a fair cop. In fact, it might still be. So lemme finish by addressing Rand:
Dude. If you’ll stop being such a prick; if you’ll read what I’m saying and think about it and interpret it generously rather than meanly; if you’ll forbear from analogies until you’ve slept on the question of, “Is this fair, or is this bombastic rhetoric?” and come up with a good answer; if you’ll behave like a decent human being engaged in civil discourse, then I’ll talk with you. Because you may be able to argue your side of the issue, and I’m happy to admit there’s more than one way to see this issue.
But I repeat that I have no desire to engage with someone on the Internet who’s acting like an asshole. If that’s your bag, enjoy it, but you’ll get no satisfaction from me. And if you think I’m acting like an asshole, so be it.
I hadn’t even thought about that. I encountered zero black men among the hundreds of students in the teaching programs I attended. My first year of teaching we had a group of beginning teachers organized by the district that met monthly to discuss various things (disciplinary techniques, how to assess students, how to prepare for our end-of-year interview, etc.). There was one black man in the group, a guy from Haiti who talked about how calm our local housing projects were compared to where he grew up, since the armed gangs weren’t riding around in jeeps with the weapons pointed at the locals. And he taught at our local school for kids with behavior problems.
It never even occurred to me that this might not be his first choice of places to teach: it may be that the powers-that-be said, “Ooh, a black man applying for a job in our district? Let’s put him where the most troubled black boys are, so they’ll have a role model!”
That’s a definite downside to what I’m thinking. It also illustrates exactly how much what I’m suggesting isn’t properly characterized as an affirmative action program.
Exactly. In order to get the teaching job, you have to qualify to be a teacher, which in NYS requires you to get a bachelors, Masters, and pass all the tests in a reasonable time frame. I don’t think LHOD was advocating for lowering standards for black males so that more of them could become teachers. Thus, we’re talking about qualified people here, competing for jobs in schools where there are lots of African American students. If there were black male teachers in proportion to the black male students in the school, I think that would be sufficient to satisfy LHOD’s need for role models, and I’m not sure what’s so racist about that.
In my rather middle class, majority white district, we bend over backwards to hire and retain black teachers and administrators. I think it really depends on the philosophy of the district in question. The school where I taught previous to my current job, there was literally one black student per grade level, and maybe 2 black faculty members in the school. Where I work now, I’d say about 15-20% of the population is black, and the district explicitly WANTS more black teachers, but still, 2 black teachers, 1 black administrator for about 700 students with a faculty of about 50. The demand is there, but the supply is not.
Just like your OP in the thread I’m pitting you for, you’ve got it all wrong (and need to get over yourself). I’m not mad that you won’t debate me. On the contrary, I think you are a despicable person (because of, as I’ve explained, your paternalistic views toward black boys and your willingness to support racial discrimination for flimsy reasons) and therefore am not interested in the BS you’d spew if you chose to defend your position (I read enough of it in the GD thread).
Bricker, now that I’ve explained for the 100th tiime that this thread is about more than just the merits of LHOD’s position that black male teachers act as role models to black male students, are you willing to withdraw your request for me to withdraw the complaint in the OP?