My son’s elementary school had a “self manager” program where kids who were well-behaved got some privileges (pizza party type stuff). First grade, his teacher nominated 4 white kids and one super quiet girl whose family was from the middle east. Those 4, including my son, were almost the only white kids in her class.
Now, I have no doubt there wasn’t anything explicitly racist in her thinking. I suspect she picked the kids whose behavior best matched her idea of what a “good” little kid is like: polite, but not too shy. Energetic, but not boisterous in certain ways. And she may have also had concerns about which parents would complain if they weren’t nominated.*
Shit like that goes a LONG way toward making families feel like the school is or isn’t for them, if that PTA is relevant to them. I picked my son’s school because is is multicultural and progressive, but even there it has been an uphill climb to make sure my kid is even friends with kids of color: the habits and structures that push the little white boys into one friend group are layered and pervasive.
*if anyone is wondering, I did complain that my son WAS nominated. But I am not telling this story to show I am Good White Lady.
I’ll buy that it comes out that way, but around here if the parents say it, they don’t mean it. One of my daughter’s teachers went on about how the local community college was just as good as Harvard. The guidance counselor tried to prevent her from applying to Berkeley half time her senior year because the counselor didn’t want my daughter to be disappointed. She got in.
One of the kids teachers, on parent teacher meeting night, said that the parents who came were the ones who didn’t need to and the parents who didn’t come really should. PTA meetings are easier to go to when one parent (who am I kidding, the mother) stayed home, or a parent could get off from work early to go.
Oh, and apopros of nothing, your posts in this thread have been fantastic.
I say, in effect, not direct quote, ‘some of those single parents were raped’ and you say, in effect, not direct quote, ‘before they can get any help they need to admit it’s their fault for making bad choices.’
Can you really not see any problem there?
Not all of them were raped, of course. Some had kids with a partner who got sent to jail, or who ditched them. People who are going to desert their kids or are likely to wind up in jail do sometimes come with a sign attached. Very often they don’t. And sometimes, even when they do, the people who had children with them have been taught all their lives that this is just what everybody’s like, and one’s choice is to take a partner like that or stay alone, and be scorned for staying alone.
Of people who did poorly in school, some had brain damage from pollutants in their environment; and/or physical and/or psychological damage from trauma in their lives; and/or undiagnosed or untreated learning disabilities; and/or no safe place to study. And/or some had/have parents who were/are functionally illiterate, possibly for some of the above reasons, and who are therefore unable to help them. You want them, before they can get any help, to falsely “admit” that needing help is due to their own “bad choices”.
Saying that people need to “admit” that a situation they’ve been forced into with no choice is their own fault before you’ll provide any help? Yes, I’d call that requiring abasement. You may have a different definition.
If what you mean is that help provided ought to include methods to both identify and make it easier/possible to choose genuinely available options that are likely to lead to better results in the future, I’ve got no problem with that. Say, thorough and accurate sex education starting with about 8 year olds as suitable for their age, including learning about how to identify, get out of, and not cause abusive relationships, and also including free, readily available, and privately available birth control (and menstrual products while we’re at it); combined with providing accessible paths to higher education and to jobs that provide both respect and decent pay. (Of course, that’s going to require changing a lot of jobs that currently get neither respect nor decent pay so that they do so; because we need to have a lot of people doing that work.) Oh yes, and decent food, that children or their parents don’t have to stand in a separate and obvious line to get.
I just messaged that link to you, it was my first attempt at the private message function. I think you click your avatar at the top right of the main screen to view, but I’m not sure,
I tried a few times to post the link, but it always posted the text of that post as well and I couldn’t defeat that function.
The entire conversation is at the end of the Trifecta of Ignorance thread in the Pit
Rape? Rape has a victim, and rape victims have few choices …Is this the kind of honest debate that flies here?
You have people , in this very thread, that will put ZERO responsibility on the people making the choices. To them, they have no choice, and black people have been told this over and over, “poor you, you have no choice in this racist world”
That is the antithesis of acceptance. People know when they make bad choices, usually from the bad outcomes that follow.
You know who doesn’t accept? The people trying to get the vote of the people making those bad choices. If you truly want to help, you have to do both.
Stop excusing the bad choices and work to change that decision making process.
And help designed to fix whatever woes you’re talking about
But the very first and likely easiest step is getting that recognition and then getting the people making those bad decisions to stop… (and this will be incredibly hard in and of itself)
The other step(s) require legislation.
But we can’t even get to the recognition portion due to the people who see this as victim blaming. You can’t really be a “victim” if the resulting outcomes are due (in part or all in some cases) to your own bad decision making.
Yes, I second this request. That is not a helpful attitude, and if at all possible, if there are those on my side that express that attitude, then they need to be educated just as much as those who put the blame squarely and solely on the “black community.”
If you could please cite those you are talking about, it would not only give a shred of validity to your argument, it would also be very beneficial to the betterment of society.
You are right, he couched his words and put zero responsibility on the black community while saying that partly the individuals are to blame. Meanwhile railing to fix society but no mentions of fixing the individual choices or the reasons they continue to make the bad ones.
The black population far exceeds any other demographic is a few categories, those are a lot of "individual’ choices that could use help with a broad brush that affects the entire population. Culture, being a thing since he agreed, plays no part in this I assume? If not, then why does that demographic far exceed the norm in those categories?
I have already agreed that a part of it lies with society. Where is the agreement that blame also lies within these communities?
Well, what you have been saying is that the black community is responsible for black crime, and you never did answer iiandyiiii as to how his wife was responsible, or what she should do differently to prevent black crime.
On the individuals, sure, hold them accountable for their individual actions, while also taking into account that we are all products of our environment, and the environment is one that we have created.
When you want to hold a group of people to blame for the actions of individuals, of course you are going to get push back, because that’s nonsense that unfortunately has too many real world examples of being implemented.
So, yeah, individuals should take responsibility for their actions, but if you want to hold any community responsible, then if you do not include yourself in that community, then you are just taking ZERO responsibility for the harms that your community causes.
It seems like you think the really important thing here is whose fault this is. How much shame should white people feel? How much shame should black people feel?
I have no shame. I do my best, and when I learn better, I do better. I also am not worried about fault or deserves. I worry about problems I can fix and problems I can’t.
It isn’t really about blame, but if you accept NO blame do you really think you believe you made poor decisions? Or would you rather believe that it was all someone else’s fault? I know where I’d lay my money
That doesn’t fly with my kids and it shouldn’t fly anywhere.
And btw, I did answer iiandyiii about his wife.
More Tango
So, it is really about blame then. I’ve made poor decisions. No one is calling on the white community to fix itself due to them. I’ve not been held to account for all of them. And some of them I didn’t learn were bad decisions until after I had made them, making it rather hard to undo without aide of a time machine.
If your best advice is “You shouldn’t have done that”. Then your best advice is best kept to yourself.
Oft times, we are influenced by things outside of our control. That doesn’t absolve one from blame for decisions that they made, but it does put some of the blame for encouraging bad decisions on society, and it also should signal to society that it should stop pushing people to make bad decisions.
Where would yo lay your money, BTW?
Nah, you gave a non answer, and then in the next breathe, blamed her for black on black crime again. You want to have it both ways, and are frustrated that we won’t let you. Sorry, but you just can’t.
You can either blame the individual, or you can blame society. Breaking up society into groups and assigning them to all “fix their own problems” is the opposite of useful advice. You want to blame a particular “community” that has nothing in common with other parts of that community other than having a similar skin color.
