*Originally posted by Biggirl *
**Do you really think everythings A O.K. now? **
No. I hoped I made it clear that my argument was which approach is likely to be more productive.
**So, with this very real disadvantage there is every reason for blacks to not commit crimes, never default on loans and always get the best education they can. As I tell all of my black friends: It has been so for over 300 years in the U.S. You must do 10 times better than whites to look half as good. Stop looking for better treatment. Stop waiting for “the man” to all of a sudden realize how unfair it all is. It ain’t gonna happen. Be especially hard on our brothers and sisters who drop out, commit crimes and default on loans. Every bad thing a black person does is magnified one hundred fold onto every other black person. **
Based on the nature and quality of your posts.biggirl, I would have expected no less.
december replied to MrO: *OK, but how much of what you’re teaching to minority wtudents includes advanced calculus, Shakespeare, nuclear physics, and organic chemistry? *
Errr, december, you do realize that there are probably very few teachers qualified (or needed) to teach advanced calculus, Shakespeare, nuclear physics (! are physics subspecialties ever taught below the advanced-undergraduate level anyway?) and organic chemistry, right?
I don’t mean to be making fun of you here, I know you’re very much in earnest about the importance of improving basic education for minority students. But I just want to gently point out that this sort of thing makes you sound almost like a parody of the “pull-yourself-up-by-your-own-bootstraps” approach to racial problems in America: “forget persistent discrimination, cultural stereotypes, environmental racism, all that stuff, let’s just concentrate on teaching those kids nuclear physics and Shakespeare!” Not terribly realistic. I’ve already agreed with you that it’s not a good idea to get so focused on racism issues that you can’t address any other problems, but as your posts are demonstrating, getting so focused on other problems that you ignore or disparage the serious discussion of racism isn’t very helpful either.
December: I think you are painting yourself into an argument corner. You seem to be advocating that people who hear racist stereotypes not speak out. That the effort would be better spent working on actual solutions. When Mr0 says that he does both, you question his credentials because he doesn’t teach advanced calculus, Shakespeare, nuclear physics, and organic chemistry to black inner city youths?!? Jeez, how many people would fit the ‘qualifications’ that you dictate? I don’t know where you are going with this. Even if MrO against all odds does teach those topics, it sounds like you would further question his credentials by then asking how many of his students are black.
Not realistic? It worked for me, achieving a high level of success in a traditionally anti-Semitic industry.
It worked for my wife, who got a PhD in Bio-Statistics at UC Berkeley at a time when very few women were doing that sort of work. (Her advisor, Betty Scott, was one of the few.)
It worked for my cousin, who gave up her position as an English Professor, went to medical school (perhaps benefiting from affirmative action to get admitted), and is now a physician.
It worked for Mark Kai Kee, who faced the fact that he couldn’t get a job as a chemist during the depression (despite a Stanford degree in chemical Engineering) and become a truly outstanding insurance regulator.
Kimstu, why would think this approach is unrealistic?
Biggirl wrote: As I tell all of my black friends: It has been so for over 300 years in the U.S. You must do 10 times better than whites to look half as good.** My comment meant to suggest that MrO follow her suggestion and set a goal that his minority students do ten times better.
MrO wrote:
(my underline)
IMHO looking at racism has become comfortable and politically correct today. To see examples of uncomfortable issues, consider the ones BBBraised (although I don’t recommend teaching them in school. For one thing, the teacher would get fired.)
And december replied to biggirl: *“So, with this very real disadvantage there is every reason for blacks to not commit crimes, never default on loans and always get the best education they can. As I tell all of my black friends: It has been so for over 300 years in the U.S. You must do 10 times better than whites to look half as good. Stop looking for better treatment. Stop waiting for “the man” to all of a sudden realize how unfair it all is. It ain’t gonna happen. Be especially hard on our brothers and sisters who drop out, commit crimes and default on loans. Every bad thing a black person does is magnified one hundred fold onto every other black person.”
Based on the nature and quality of your posts.biggirl, I would have expected no less.*
Hear, hear. But I just want to stress that it’s not right to congratulate biggirl and other black people on their positive and constructive approach to overcoming racial difficulties, without also acknowledging how appalling it is that those difficulties are still there. Fachrissake, the woman just pointed out in the most matter-of-fact way possible that blacks still have to do ten times better than whites to look half as good, that most white people still don’t recognize how unfair that is, that the misdeeds of individual blacks are still considered to reflect badly on blacks as a group. That’s appalling! That sucks!
We should not just pass over those issues with a shrug as we commend biggirl for her gutsiness in being willing to recognize the disadvantages of racism as one of the facts of life and to struggle to succeed in spite of them. It is horrible, disgraceful, an eternal shame that blacks are still disadvantaged by racism to this extent in our society. Solving our race problems will take more than just letting blacks work to overcome those disadvantages while whites pat them on the back for “refusing to fixate on racism” and “letting go of their victim status.” It will also require lots of serious and honest discussions about the persistence of racism, and serious efforts by whites to diminish persistent racism and its effects. That’s why, IMHO, we shouldn’t try to shut down or deflect discussions about racism by telling people that they really ought to be working on other solutions to racial problems instead. We have to keep on trying to do both.
Please pardon the brief hijack - but can one of the posters recommend a good reference work for the Tulsa Race Riots for me? I plan a little reading to fight my own ignorance. Thanks!
I’ll second that- I’ve heard of the riots through articles, and I’m aware of a recent book on the subject which was well received, but I don’t remember the title.
(Not the answer you wanted, eh, seawitch? )
(BTW, did you get your username from the seawitch in the Donald Duck/Carl Barks comics?)
deep sigh But we’re not talking about giving a pre-game pep talk, december. We’re talking about addressing a very profound and complex set of social problems concerning race. We don’t have to select one simple aspect of these problems to focus on to the exclusion of all others. I really don’t understand why you continue to think we should.
Of course, the problem with that analogy, of course, is that it’s at half time when the teams already seen the referees spending all of their time looking at our team to call fouls, they’ve sent 30% of our best players to the bench for infractions that the other team has also committed, the opponents have access to a jacuzi and other equipment, we have none, their staff is paid better, and there’s more of them etc etc etc.
The better analogy would be what do you tell a player who says, “Coach, I am thinking about quiting the team, because the referees are unfair. I am tired of our 2W-10L seasons. Can’t you at least make a complaint about the refs?”
No complaining about the referees. There’s no problem with them. Did you forget the two wins we have? Maybe you guys aren’t giving a 1000%/
I’ll log a complaint about the referees, but in the meantime I want you to play your heart out.
The second one. If you tell them the first one they will be more psyched, untill the game actually starts and they see the unfairness. Then they will probably give up because of unrealistic expectations. The second team will be prepared and do much better.
“Coach, the referees were biased assholes in our first two games, but we’ve had different, unbiased referees for the past ten. We’re 3-9 now, but let’s blame the referees from the first two games as the reason that we’re not getting into the playoffs.”
Bab my friend, read the links I provided throught this thread. Then come back here and tell me the playing field has been even lo these past ten years.
Being 58 years old, I tend to be more aware of the gains. Of coure we all know about voting rights, employment and housing rights, college admissions, antidiscrimination laws in employment, etc. Here are some more personal wrongs that were fixed within my lifetime.
When my friend Patti was a girl, an orchestra would only accept a woman harpist, so she became a harpist.
My older brother (if I had one) couldn’t have gotten my entry level job, because that company wasn’t hiring Jews then for professional work (nor Blacks, Asians, Italians, women, etc.) I believe this was typical of most (but not all) financial institutions prior to the early 1960s.
Similarly, my wife applied for an actuarial job in 1964, with a Math honors degree from Wellesley and having passed one Actuarial exam. Her letter didn’t even generate a response.
Most private clubs excluded women and minorities, including those where business was done. I was told about an embarrassment in 1971 or '72, where the one woman in a business group was refused entrance to the club dining room in San Francisco.
When I was a Berkeley math grad student, the only female professor was Julia Robinson. She was a fine mathematician, but woulnd’t have had her job had she not been married to prestigious mathematician RAphael Robinson. It was years later that this department finally opened up to women. (They did have a Black faculty member, David Blackwell.)
Of course it’s unfair to have any degree of inequality. Still, IMHO the gains in my lifetime far outweigh the remainging inequalities.
This would sit so much better with me if you did not go around quoting statistics that “prove” that blacks are less smart, less creditworthy and more criminal-minded than your average American citizen.
It is infuriating to me to see how blacks are responsible for 40% of all violent crime in the U.S. when these numbers are based on an extremely disproportionate stop and searches, charged with more severe crimes for the same offense and serve much, much more time than their white countrymen. Even after every trustworthy independant study shows that crime breaks down pretty much evenly over racial lines and in fact correlate much more strongly socio-economically than racially.
I get absolutley livid when told that blacks are shown to be less creditworthy when it has been proven that banks use methods to purposely cause high default rates in minority neighborhoods.
And, if you will excuse my French, it drives me fucking nuts when people flash statistics that show that blacks are just plain stupider than whites when in my very own state of New York, the City of New York generates about 5% more in revenue than it receives from the state. Even though city schools actually need it more for basic things like infrastructure.
But I should just grit my teeth, pull myself up by my boostraps and stop complaining so much.
In all honesty december, I don’t care how much better it has gotten in your lifetime, it’s my and my children’s lifetime I worry about.
)