You're the only person in this conversation who seems to get it, and I just want you to know how thankful I am that you haven't been afraid to express these thoughts. I think that you're right, that the person you've been replying to is wrong, and it's incredibly frustrating that this conversation has to happen. But thank you for being that voice.
>If you want a better internet, you might stop and think about the fact that it is built by people and people need to eat. De facto expecting slave labor from some people and then designing an internet where those people can hijack your search results to try to eat gets you this.
People don't/can't pay for things anymore because trillions of dollars have been siphoned out of the holdings of the middle and working classes over the past 50 years. If not for piracy and subscription services, the music and film industries would have collapsed years ago. If you made people pay for the things they used to, they... wouldn't. Because they can't.
>Who aren’t Africans, but for the most part are of mixed background of Africans and Europeans in the last 500 years.
Again, broad pronouncements like this square... strangely... with my skin color and facial features. I think you'll find it a hard sell to much of this country, within and without the scientific community, that black African-Americans are not... you know, African. To an extent. For different reasons, depending on who you ask, of course.
>Which is why it’s odd anyone is getting defensive about it.
Assuming that you're an American, the notion that you don't understand the defensiveness strains credulity. It validates quite a bit more in the eyes of some.
I understood what you said. This post is simply a reiteration of statements I've already addressed. If you did not mean to make racially-charged statements, you should reassess how you talk about your views in the future, because - and I am telling you this as someone who is taking your stated aim on your word, against my better judgment - what you said sounds racist. Full stop.
>Considering how much worse off African Americans are socio-economically, on average, than white Americans, it's a no-brainer that their kids end up worse off on average as well.
It's worse than that. There's something about the American system which forces black families to be not just stagnant economically, but often to move backwards (at least in the transition from Boomer/Gen X to later generations). Both of my grandfathers provided a strikingly middle class life for their families, leaving the military after WWII for decent careers: one as a stable, unionized factory employee, the other as a nuclear physicist. All of their children went to college. Both of my parents hold advanced degrees. Even still, they face financial difficulties that their white peers don't seem to, and my generation of siblings and cousins, while along a spectrum of affluence, seems to have inherited a magnified version of their parents' diminished prospects relative to their achievement. On average, the families that were middle class mid-century are now working class, even with degrees.
And we're outliers, in terms of educational attainment in the black community heretofore. That's changing, but to what ends, when black professionals must have a more advanced degree to be considered for the same job as a white applicant with a less advanced degree? When our houses are worth $50k less, our access to credit is restricted, our tax burden relative to income tends to be higher, and we are actively sought out for discrimination by many bedrock institutions of American life? It's not a level playing field.
>The idea in education is that everyone is intellectually equal. Therefore the racial achievement gap in mathematics is due to racism. The solution is to change things.
I'm at a loss as to how you might construe these statements, which you presented as wrongheaded (i.e., that you believe the inverse of each), to not imply that you believe that the "cognitive capabilities of students of color" are lesser, considering the nature of the racial achievement gap (an aspect of the conversation which you broached). Either you simply do not remember what you stated earlier, or you're lying. This is clearly a reference to students of color, at the very least. I just want to establish the high probability that you are being disingenuous.
>Do you have any evidence that the vast majority of people can learn calculus in a timely manner?
Assuming that most people can learn at a 5th grade level, and that, as suggested several times in the comments, this lecture could be broken up into multiple days worth of dynamic, interactive instruction, rather than being presented as a blitzkrieg 20-minute lecture:
This is not conclusive, of course. But you asked for any evidence, and I think a reasonable person arguing in good faith would conclude that it suffices. You've shown evidence to be otherwise, so I don't expect you to agree, but I would be happy to be wrong for once in this conversation, on this matter.
It was not the fact that they were black. It was the fact that, as a black student, I was not subject to the same warped expectations that I found common while taking higher-level courses under some of my white teachers. Not every white teacher was like this; however, I did notice, particularly in my AP courses, that many were less supportive and understanding of black students who hit periods of difficulty, and more disciplinarian in their regard. I'm unconvinced that American pedagogy in general has shaken off the inclination to view students of color as un-growing children to be trained and tamed, rather than growing thinkers to be taught and empowered.
This contributed to my later success, but it generally would not - and, to my recollection, doesn't - explain the massive jump in grade. The main difference was a more conscientious teacher and an environment that facilitated better study habits. The second time, unlike the first, I was not forced to fight my teacher's low expectations and lack of support in addition to learning the material.
I disagree that "too many" people are going to college. That's a canard which defends the artificial exclusivity of education. The vast majority of people are capable of learning algebra, and geometry, and calculus, and in a timely manner, when empowered by conscientious and effective instruction. It is also true that many students - particularly black and Latino students - are place in the contradictory situation of urgently needing a credential that they were not trained correctly to earn. This has nothing to do with their capability, and everything to do with the dysfunctional system that their intellectual growth is beholden to.
So while I appreciate the sympathetic elements of your reply, I have to point out that the root of your argument is a baseless suspicion of the cognitive capabilities of students of color. Yes, requiring knowledge that has been systematically denied, effectively on the basis of race, in order to obtain a credential that is necessary to earn a dignified living, is a form of racism. And we will need to "change things" to fix that.
>The idea in education is that everyone is intellectually equal. Therefore the racial achievement gap in mathematics is due to racism. The solution is to change things.
If we're going to go there: I went from being a straight-A math student in Pre-Calculus to a C (verging on D) student in my AP Calculus course in high school. In college, I retook Calculus and aced it, receiving one of the highest final scores in the class. The first course was taught by a black woman. The second was taught by a white man. The last was taught by a black man. I am a black man.
People in this conversation are frequently quick to dismiss the value of anti-racist (and, for that matter, anti-sexist) policy and execution in STEM pedagogy. They lean on and extrapolate erroneously from the notion of many great mathematical thinkers' probable hereditary advantages to a general, in-born hierarchy of fitness for STEM thinking. Coincidentally, this shields them from tough conversations regarding their own fitness to teach, and especially to teach children whose backgrounds they cannot or will not find sympathy and empathy for. I will admit that the solution is not so simple as my anecdote might suggest, but the implied path shares character with the correct one, in recognizing the farcical nature of assuming that the status quo - especially in this country - is a product of actual potential playing out as it must necessarily so, and not of history overshadowing even the best of intentions (though they are usually less than that).
They're ads that aren't clearly identified as ads, and they've covered most of the frontpage. That's not journalism, and if any major newspaper did this, it would be outrageous.
At the end, the author muses that he is too close, temporally, to the end of the Bush administration to determine how Polybius' thoughts on the political role of religion held true for it. It's been 12 and a half years since this was published, so I wondered if perhaps anyone thinks we might have an answer to this conundrum.
I'm still not convinced of the wisdom of carrying water for these things which ultimately triggered catastrophe, through the backlash to their excesses. It's not a matter of there being no virtue in one side and no fault in the other; it's a matter of honoring the ambivalence so that one isn't caught off guard by earnest dissent. If your story is, "The evil authoritarians who destroyed my life, specifically, ruined everything," you're missing the military-industrial complex for the SCUDs; and there is an executive somewhere very happy about that, and also very happy to elevate your narrative which pretends that he doesn't exist.
My concern is that pride in the "greatness" of what civilization has become blinds people to the discontent which could rock everything we hold dear. Again.
$FOO is bad because $FOO's faults have tended to create anti-$FOO people.
Further: these faults also tend to drive anti-$FOO people to violence - often not even simply as a matter of course, but as an explicit strategy. In almost every case, the first to violence is $FOO. $FOO then encourages violence from the other side, to legitimize a crackdown. When anti-$FOO survives this crackdown, their behavior has been altered forever by their initial experience with $FOO.
There is a reason that my issue with the essay is presented as one that maps to rhetorical phenomena similar to the one specifically in question. It's because the central issue is the repetition - the ubiquity - of Capitalism and Western imperialism's apparent innocence in regards to suffering in the world that it largely shaped. No story that perpetuates this falsehood can be called beautiful; it can't be called truth, or even helpful. Every story like this recreates it's own cruel circumstances for posterity. And to say so is the opposite of tunnel vision; it's to acknowledge on multiple levels that meaning is half-formed without consideration of context, even if that context damns one's sentiments.
>Meanwhile, how dare you, who wrote what you wrote demand that others read your comment carefully and generously for nuance...
Because.
I may be a hypocrite, but I'm not wrong.
And in any case, our circumstances are different: I'm not misrepresenting her words; you're misrepresenting mine.