The CardBoard
Meanwhile in Missouri - Printable Version

+- The CardBoard (https://thecardboard.org/board)
+-- Forum: C-House! (https://thecardboard.org/board/forum-4.html)
+--- Forum: The CardBoard (https://thecardboard.org/board/forum-5.html)
+--- Thread: Meanwhile in Missouri (/thread-10600.html)

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Re: Meanwhile in Missouri - 82 Card - 11-13-2015

(11-13-2015, 02:06 PM)washingtonismoney link Wrote:13) No one's going to read this post or be convinced, are they?

Well, I was convinced before I read it. I could not have said it as well.

Re: Meanwhile in Missouri - BobK - 11-13-2015

Thanks WIM.  Just outstanding. 

Re: Meanwhile in Missouri - Rally - 11-13-2015

Well put, WIM.  Thanks for the reasoned explanation.

Re: Meanwhile in Missouri - IdCard83 - 11-13-2015

Having read through virtually of this and completely agreeing racism exists I must add some thoughts.  I am white,  About 6'2", blond hair and blue eyed.  I know you're thinking he's had the sweet life  with everything handed to him like a Kennedy or something.  While some of that is true I have always felt most of that (say 50%) was just from going through life being kind and respectful of others and them responding in kind.  I have never, ever been knowingly overtly or covertly treated better because I was white.  In fact, I can say I have been much more maligned and mistreated by others, because I was white than one would expect. Mostly by non-whites, hyper-liberals, and angry feminists.  All that to say there wasn't a "system" doing it, but mean and misguided people.  Especially those suffering from white guilt who think they can undo 200 years of slavery by abusing some oblivious middle class white kid.  Hell, I even had a couple white professors at Stanford treat me snidely and unfairly.  I once had a Hispanic guy threaten to kill me because his sister had been raped by a white guy.  What does that have to do with me? Talk about racist.  Not systemic though.  Point being there can be systemic racism, the most obvious being apartheid and the Jim Crow south.  I have spent a lot of time in the south and the racism I saw was by ignorant, angry whites who were frustrated by their inability to rise above their own position in life.  That is hardly systemic, but just an example of human cruelty and no amount of protesting and legislation will put an end to that. 

Re: Meanwhile in Missouri - CornFed - 11-13-2015

Well, I read it as one who was not convinced.  I would have to acknowledge that it was not immediately transformational, but then you couldn't even convince me that Iowa sucked.  ;)

I would like to seriously thank you for a non-snarky, thoughtful post that provided valuable, credible input for my ongoing mulling.

This is a centuries-old issue.  It has been a global issue.  It is not as though anyone on this board is going to solve it here.  The manifestation of racism in the U.S. is unique to our system overall and to our societal evolution.  Even if there were some point at which all racist acts of any type would suddenly cease to happen, there would nonetheless be a very long period in which the impacts of racism would be felt.  For one thing, horrific damage has been done to the cultures that were most heavily affected.  The psyche of those victims was damaged and this translated into damaged communities.  It seems to me that the reason that minorities are so disproportionately represented in failed communities in the U.S. is that their core beliefs and instincts have been diminished.  There are fewer individuals in those communities who can nurture the hope and optimism necessary to move their lives and the lives of their loved ones in a more positive direction.  This is tragic.

The solution is beyond my personal ken.  But restoring a shared community vision and belief in which personal sacrifice and self-discipline are rewarded more proportionately and effectively must surely be a part of it.  Many people like myself over-estimate the isolated capability of those qualities to overcome the hopelessness and despair so deeply embedded in members of these impoverished communities.  Nonetheless, a large part of the solution seems like it has to come from these communities examining their ethos and buying into a greater, more constructive role for themselves.  Actually, some aspects of what I understand to be the teachings of Malcolm X are critical to those who would strive to lift themselves. 

But we have not had that critical moment when all "incidents" have stopped.  There is perversity in the human spirit in some instances and some people cannot control their baser instincts.  Additionally, we have those who are engaged in, and profit quite handsomely from, the grievance/poverty industry.  These factors make any progress difficult to gauge.  But it seems to me there has been undeniable progress.  Grudging progress and awkward progress.  But this progress can only be nurtured through hope.  Hard to manufacture but critically necessary.

Re: Meanwhile in Missouri - BostonCard - 11-13-2015

Thank you WIM for providing an important message.  Even if you don't agree with WIM's premise, I urge everyone to read his post, to get a broader perspective.

BC

Re: Meanwhile in Missouri - Kathy - 11-13-2015

Mizzou's coach is resigning at season's end.
http://m.columbiatribune.com/news/local/pinkel-announces-resignation-for-health-reasons/article_f8c16311-15f4-5818-96b0-a34897ab000a.html


Re: Meanwhile in Missouri - Mick - 11-13-2015

http://www.mediaite.com/online/mizzou-protesters-literally-segregate-themselves-based-on-race/

Re: Meanwhile in Missouri - terry - 11-13-2015

Thanks, WIM.

Re: Meanwhile in Missouri - Rally - 11-13-2015

I know some of you may not bother to read this because it is from Fox News, and that's fine.  One of the things I find most interesting on Cardboard, other than football, is that there are no "safe spaces."  Lots of divergent opinions and views, even on sports, but few if any seem threatened enough to blow up.  Good for us.  Maybe we are adults.  So, what do you think of these views?

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2015/11/13/safe-spaces-on-college-campuses-run-at-odds-with-first-amendment-say-law/?intcmp=hplnws

Re: Meanwhile in Missouri - BostonCard - 11-13-2015

Building on what WashingtonIsMoney wrote, here are some thoughts.

1) Undeniably things are better now for African Americans than they were two or three generations ago, just like as odious as it was, the Jim Crow era was still an improvement on slavery.

1a) Specifically, legally enshrined racism (Jim Crow laws) is a thing of the past, and, in fact, legal protections against racism have been affirmed by the Supreme Court and enshrined into law (the Civil Rights Act).
1b) Also, overtly racist acts are much less prevalent and not tolerated by polite society.

2) AND/BUT that doesn't mean that racism has been stamped out.  Moreover, there is a tendency to dismiss racist acts (including, if I recall in this thread) as "isolated" or the result of intoxication.  That may be true, but that is little comfort to those on the receiving end of such acts.  And there tends to be a dramatic disagreement as to the prevalence and severity of these sorts of things between those who face them and those who don't.

2a) Moreover, the impact of even an uncommon but heinous slur should not be underestimated.  I am Jewish, and thankfully overtly anti-semitic slurs are rare enough these days that I can count the times I have personally experienced them on one hand.  Yet those experiences have been burned into my mind.  I cannot begin to comprehend what it would be like to run into bigoted comments on a regular basis, and would feel marginalized if otherwise well meaning people sought to dismiss those concerns because they are isolated incidents and it was much worse before.

3) As WIM has noted, overtly racist acts aside, there is a much more pervasive and subtle form of bias (I will call it).  It may not arise from hatred and it may not even be conscious among those of us who perpetrate it (I say us because I don't think anyone is completely immune to the phenomenon as I will point out), but it is still damaging.

3a) I urge everyone here to take the implicit association test (https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatest.html).  It measures not overt racism but unconscious bias that tests the "strength of a person's automatic association between mental representations of objects (concepts) in memory."  These include concepts not just of race, but also sex, weight, and age, and the implicit associations we make with them.

3b) Studies have shown that these unconscious biases have real-world effects.  For example, when prospective employers were sent resumes with African American sounding names, they were much less likely to call the applicant back than when the same resume was sent with a White sounding name (http://www.nber.org/digest/sep03/w9873.html).  African American cab drivers were tipped on average 1/3 less than White cab drivers (http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=401201); interestingly the effect was seen even when the cab rider was Black.  This also occurred in restaurant tipping (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1559-1816.2008.00338.x/abstract).  It occurs in medical decision making as well (http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199902253400806).  I truly believe most physicians go into medicine out of a sincere desire to help people, and obviously we (as a profession) are amongst the most educated Americans, and yet we are still susceptible to the sort of bias I am describing.

3c) It occurs in mentoring (http://www.wsj.com/articles/a-racial-gap-in-mentoring-at-work-1443600872) as well.  As the latter article notes, "It is human nature for people to want to sponsor a “mini-me”—someone who reminds them of themselves—says Tai Green, a spokeswoman for the Center for Talent Innovation, which studies workplace issues. White men, who dominate corporate leadership roles, tend to seek out other white men to sponsor, she says. Meanwhile, women of color in leadership roles often shy away from sponsoring junior talent to avoid accusations of favoritism, she adds."  This means it is a double whammy; not only are there fewer women of color in leadership roles, but they are less likely to mentor aspiring junior executives like them.

3d) As I posted earlier in this thread, at Missouri, there is a disparity between the racial makeup of the state and the makeup of students in the University.  The disparity between the state's racial makeup and the makeup of faculty in the University is even more striking.  One could understand how an aspiring academic going through the school system might get the impression that there is no meaningful path forward for them in academia.  Ditto in a lot of professions (in medicine, for instance, only 12 Black doctors from Missouri graduated from medical schools in 2014: http://kff.org/other/state-indicator/distribution-by-race-ethnicity/).

3e) One can easily see how these sorts of obstacles can accumulate over a lifetime.  Moreover, even though it is less overt, it can be more insidious.  Imagine you are a young African American job applicant fresh out of college.  50 years ago, you might have submitted a resume and been told "we don't hire your kind here".  That is horrible, but at least it was out in the open, and if it were to happen today, at least there are legal protections against that.  Today, if you are a young African American job applicant fresh out of college with an African American sounding name, submit your resume and don't get a callback, you have no idea whether it's because of implicit bias on the part of the hiring manager, or if you just weren't good enough.  Functionally, there is no difference in the outcome (the African American in question has not gotten the job), so insisting that things are much better today is little solace.

4) If you add in the remnants of slavery and institutionally racist policies that leave many minorities starting out at a disadvantage, it is easier to see how the frustration at the current situation would boil over, especially because well meaning people dismiss the situation as "well, that was in the past; what are we supposed to do about it now".  This is why I'm not entirely unsympathetic to the idea that people who don't support the protesters are contributing to the problem (I don't completely agree with it, but I can see it from their perspective).  At the very least it would help if we all acknowledged that there is a continuing problem, even if we don't agree on the method to address it.

5) For all the reasons above, I am empathetic to the protesters, and I can certainly understand much of the source of anger, even if I cannot possibly do so fully.  And I can understand the frustration with the feeling that administrators are not sensitive to their concerns.

[continued on next post]

BC 

Re: Meanwhile in Missouri - BostonCard - 11-13-2015

6) That doesn't mean that I agree with their proposed remedies.  As WIM is, I am a practical person, and I am not sure that forcing the resignation of the University President will accomplish much. To be honest, here I bring little to the table.  I'm not sure what will work, or how you remedy it.  Fixing legally enforced racism is as "easy" as winning a Supreme Court case.  Societal norms can address overtly racist incidents.  But how do you address unconscious bias, let alone the legacy of slavery, Jim Crow, etc?  On the other hand, bringing attention to the situation, and engendering a discussion like the one on this message board is a positive.  Even if nobody is going to be convinced, hopefully it will engender a more open mind and a broader perspective.

7) To that issue, that is where I lean towards disagreement with the protesters.  I'm a firm believer in free speech and that the best way to deal with offensive or disagreeable speech is with more speech.  It may be less gratifying than "shutting the other side up", but in the long run, I do believe it is more effective.  That's not to say that I am completely unsympathetic.  It seems to me that it is easier to argue for more free speech when you aren't the one who has to endure hurtful speech or offensive Halloween costumes (and it is easier to dismiss that sort of offense if you don't otherwise have to endure the everyday slights and the occasional racist outbursts that I outlined above).  Imagine you are an African American and see someone dress up in blackface for Halloween.  You are in the unenviable position of trying to decide whether to ignore the offense and allow it to fester or confront it (and risk being labeled as the "angry Black man who is overly sensitive to offense") or worse, provoke a fight with a drunk racist idiot.  In that view it is easy to see the appeal of an institutional directive that avoids the conflict by setting out expectations of what is not acceptable in advance.  I agree that the reaction to the Yale situation was likely excessive (after all, the letter did not excuse or endorse racially or culturally insensitive costumes; it merely made the argument that Yale students ought to be trusted to make the right choice themselves and work out conflict, if it happens, between students rather than have directives imposed from above).

8. I don't know where this leads, or if anyone has read this far, and like WIM, I don't expect anyone's mind to have been changed.  But I do hope that it at least provokes some thought.

BC

Re: Meanwhile in Missouri - stupac2 - 11-13-2015

(11-13-2015, 06:03 PM)ferrari link Wrote:I know some of you may not bother to read this because it is from Fox News, and that's fine.  One of the things I find most interesting on Cardboard, other than football, is that there are no "safe spaces."  Lots of divergent opinions and views, even on sports, but few if any seem threatened enough to blow up.  Good for us.  Maybe we are adults.  So, what do you think of these views?

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2015/11/13/safe-spaces-on-college-campuses-run-at-odds-with-first-amendment-say-law/?intcmp=hplnws

Without looking into it much I think that the idea of a public space being declared "safe" is on its face ridiculous. If you want to be in a safe space, go somewhere private. Maybe there's more to this than that, but I'm too tired to look into it now.

Re: Meanwhile in Missouri - Mick - 11-13-2015

(11-13-2015, 06:03 PM)ferrari link Wrote:One of the things I find most interesting on Cardboard, other than football, is that there are no "safe spaces."  Lots of divergent opinions and views, even on sports, but few if any seem threatened enough to blow up.  Good for us.  Maybe we are adults.  So, what do you think of these views?

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2015/11/13/safe-spaces-on-college-campuses-run-at-odds-with-first-amendment-say-law/?intcmp=hplnws

To me, this is hilarious.  The very definition of "safe space" in this context means "places where open communication is restricted to that which is pleasing to the listener."  So, yeah...Safe spaces, by definition, are at odds with the First Amendment.

Re: Meanwhile in Missouri - Rally - 11-13-2015

BC, yes I read all of it.  It is well thought out and presented.  I would like to add some.

As a society we have eliminated most if not all institutional racism.  But the rest of it takes generations.  On all sides.  There will, probably, always be idiots who raise the next generation of idiots.  No laws will eradicate that, short of eugenics.  My grandparents came over on the boat in the teens.  My grandfather looked very Italian . . . Dark skin, big nose, close set eyes, black hair; my grandmother, from the same small village, was a blue eyed pale skinned blonde.  As am I.  Thanks to them and my father my only accent is SoCal.  Yet one day, in Kentucky, my brother and I (he has the dark skin, eyes and hair) came across a gang of idiots who tried to beat us up for three reasons only:  we were from California, we were Catholic, and we had an Italian surname.  What law is going to prevent that?  If it were today should we organize a protest at City Hall?  Call for the Mayor's resignation?  Attack the police for not being on that dirt road?  Nothing compared to the experiences of blacks, but vaguely similar in tone.  It takes a long time to breed out idiocy.

a Princeton freshman comments on the Christakises - Mick - 11-13-2015

http://dailyprincetonian.com/opinion/2015/11/in-the-defense-of-the-christakises/

Re: a Princeton freshman comments on the Christakises - Rally - 11-13-2015

(11-13-2015, 08:05 PM)Mick link Wrote:http://dailyprincetonian.com/opinion/2015/11/in-the-defense-of-the-christakises/

Exactly.

Re: Meanwhile in Missouri - deepred - 11-13-2015

Another casualty
http://claremontindependent.com/dean-spellman-resigns-following-student-protest/

Re: Meanwhile in Missouri - needle - 11-14-2015

I'd like to share, of all things, a 2013 movie review that I found deeply moving on the topic of black perspectives on life in America today:

Wesley Morris, who is black, reviewed Fruitvale Station, a 2013 movie about an incident I'm sure many remember, the shooting death of Oscar Grant, an unarmed young black man by a BART police officer, Johannes Mehserle, who said he accidentally used his gun when he meant to use is Taser.

Morris tied the movie and its depiction of the last day of Grant's life to the unrest following the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin.

No excerpt is going to do Morris' writing justice, so I highly recommend you read the whole thing:

http://grantland.com/features/fruitvale-station-trayvon-martin/

Here's one excerpt:

Quote: The collective reaction to the Zimmerman verdict is striking. These protests and demonstrations aren’t directed solely at another race, at white people (black people know Zimmerman is also half-Peruvian and that the president is half-white). The outrage is directed at a system that’s demonstrably harmful to non-white people. It’s the institutions and all they’ve wrought that people are sick of. We don’t yet live in the world the Supreme Court thought we did when it struck down parts of the Voting Rights Act and weakened the case for affirmative action. More than ever, we live in a time of racism without racists, just racist laws, racist policies, and racist ideas.


Re: Meanwhile in Missouri - Mick - 11-14-2015

http://nypost.com/2015/11/13/sorry-kids-a-real-movement-needs-more-than-hurt-feelings/