What are the benchmarks for Black Americans to 'overcome'?

[mswas]

@I_Love_Me_Vol.I

Probably. Or at least State. Because the current system where rich districts can pay for well-funded schools (the rich get richer) while poor districts can only afford drastically under-funded schools (the poor get poorer) is not a very good way to provide equal educational opportunities to all students.

I don’t see how it uplifts the poor, only how it brings down the rich. It ensures that people have no say in how their children are educated. So whatever some bureaucrat administrator thinks is best for all children is what they will get. That’s too horrific to contemplate.

[brazil84]

@alexandra

:dubious:. Can you expand on that? Cos I’d assume that evidence for the relationship between smoking and lung cancer is a lot stronger than “this one statistic suggests a causation, and I’m going to argue that this cause is more important than all the other suggested causes”.

Assume all you like, but the factual evidence connnecting smoking and lung cancer can be explained away just as easily as the evidence against the Egalitarian Hypothesis.

For example, suppose it is known that smokers have a higher rate of lung cancer than non-smokers. One could explain this away by saying that the kind of person who engages in smoking is the kind of person who doesn’t care very much about his or her health and therefore will eat less vegetables and take fewer steps to avoid exposure to harmful pollutants.

[curlcoat]

@mswas

I don’t see how it uplifts the poor, only how it brings down the rich. It ensures that people have no say in how their children are educated. So whatever some bureaucrat administrator thinks is best for all children is what they will get. That’s too horrific to contemplate.

Do you have a say now? I have never gotten the impression that anyone other than bureaucrats had a say in what was included in school curriculum.

[EasyPhil]

@mswas

I don’t see how it uplifts the poor, only how it brings down the rich. It ensures that people have no say in how their children are educated. So whatever some bureaucrat administrator thinks is best for all children is what they will get. That’s too horrific to contemplate.

The poor are only poor because someone else has the money not because those that have the money are any better than the people that don’t have it.

[mswas]

@EasyPhil

The poor are only poor because someone else has the money not because those that have the money are any better than the people that don’t have it.

So you don’t believe in self-determination at all? We are all exactly the same interchangeable parts?

[curlcoat]

@EasyPhil

The poor are only poor because someone else has the money not because those that have the money are any better than the people that don’t have it.

So, none of the folks that have money did anything to earn it? And none of the folks that are poor are in any way responsible for that condition?

[Duckster]

My humble thanks to mswas that a comment I made in a different thread would spark its own thread, and a lively one at that. I come into this thread late only because I just found it, and I have really little anything of substance to add to the debate.

I’ve been involved in federal EO programs for more than 20 years now. I still don’t have any answers to the profound questions and I see no light at the end of the tunnel. The feds are making a change in annual “EO” training, changing to encompassing “diversity training” and no longer emphasizing just the seven deadlys (race, color, origin, gender, disability, age, and religion). I completed my annual diversity training today and found it wanting. I expressed my concerns to a Washington, DC-based federal EO official. I was surprised to find my concerns about inconsistencies in the training were already known, but my agency pushed ahead with its flawed training. Now I find out later today that diversity training has its own problems, it’s been known for a while, yet it now serves as the backbone for federal EO training. I have no answers, only more questions.

[mswas]

Duckster You’re welcome, and I am sorry I didn’t reference your post in the OP so you might’ve found it sooner. It was sheer laziness on my part.

Your comments on your EO training are interesting. For my part I think racism will exist for as long as diversity exists. I would argue that we have overcome in as much as there is a fight to overcome. The institutional barriers that hold people back because they are black are pretty much removed, the rest is vestigial. Inner city black schools are not any worse than back country white schools. Basically I would call it like we are in the rebuilding after a ravaging war period. I really hope that Obama brings hope to many young black men and women out there. If it can remove the, “The system is against me.”, idea in their minds, that’s a great victory.

[sethness]

I can think of three indicators:

1. a black president elected, and the announcers completely ignore his race “focusing on the content of his character rather than the color of his skin”. (paraphrasing MLK there!) As you can pro’lly tell, I was deeply disappointed by the election night news coverage, which overwhelmingly focused on this racial “first” rather than focusing on Obama’s plans and promises.

2. jail populations that have the same racial balance as the community which the jails “serve”.

3. economic opportunity / hiring / college admissions that correspond to the racial balance of the most qualified applicants.

[tomndebb]

OK, this is another sethness zombie, but for a race thread it was moderately civil and the majority of posters are still participants, here, so I will leave it open providing I do not find posters picking fights over ancient comments.
[ /Modding ]