Broad brush, dont you think? Dont get me wrong, I think teachers should be held accountable, but I also dont think unions are in direct conflict with the needs of students. This whole notion that unions are evil, again is a conservative talking point. Its just not true. I dont think any teacher should have life tenure, but I also know that there horrible administrators that do horrible things, so the union serves a good purpose. I see right here in my state, that our state board of education could give a rats @#$ about the students. Its all about awarding testing contracts to their cronies without knowing what the tests are even supposed to measure. Charter schools, most, not all of them are a joke with little oversight, at least in my state.
poetsheart, I think you see things very much through a black and white lens. Just from my observation, I think you do not give people the benefit of the doubt, and you assume that what they are saying must be perceived in the worst possible way. I’m not big on the group identity thing, and group blame, I don’t really think that is helpful for figuring out solutions.
And my useless engineering degree really didn’t teach me much more than math skills and problem solving, so perhaps my “wide-eyed expression of incredulity” comes honestly.
One does not need to extend the benefit of the doubt when one has had a pervasive pattern and history of red herring irrelevant remarks to discussions about police brutality and the racist and classist motivations behind them.
In fact, this type of behavior is well-known as a form of ■■■■■■■■ known as “derailing the conversation” as it is meant to distract and divert attention away from the original and main topic of discussion when it happens to be police brutality or anything related to racism, classist prejudice, etc. It’s one reason why there’s little patience for this on some forums/blogs or from people who have had first-hand experiences or sympathize with those who do.
One of the issues I’ve observed from attending HS, hanging out with, and working with engineering/CS majors/graduates is the ones who pooh-poohed or otherwise avoided/disdained core distribution requirements in the humanities/social sciences had serious issues with dealing with human/social problems and issues in the workplace & life whereas those who embraced those core distribution requirements handled them well.
Some of this is showing up in recent controversies regarding hiring and HR practices regarding women and racial minorities.
LOL…Okay. But, you might want to delete some of your posts in order for your indictment of me as racial binary thinker to hold up under scrutiny.
I did not say your engineering degree was “useless” BTW. But, you already knew that too.
“One does not need to extend the benefit of the doubt when one has had a pervasive pattern and history of red herring irrelevant remarks to discussions about police brutality and the racist and classist motivations behind them”
And sometimes people pretend these offending remarks are said in a vacuum, when they are either in response to someone else’s post, or are relevant to the issue at hand. So much easier to dismiss someone’s remarks as red herring and irrelevant, than actually respond or understand why they were said. Just write them off as racists, and dismiss their thoughts as not important. I’m not a big fan of the “ists”, declaring people racists, sexists, whatever. That’s just a way to shut people down, not to continue conversation. I don’t understand why people can’t have civil discussions without getting touchy, offended, and making inaccurate assumptions of people’s motives.
“One of the issues I’ve observed from attending HS, hanging out with, and working with engineering/CS majors/graduates is the ones who pooh-poohed or otherwise avoided/disdained core distribution requirements in the humanities/social sciences had serious issues with dealing with human/social problems and issues in the workplace & life whereas those who embraced those core distribution requirements handled them well.”
I can’t imagine that any core requirements that one took 30 years ago have really helped them much in dealing with human/social problems. Honestly, I remember almost nothing from any class I took in college, but I didn’t have the typical elite education so common here on cc.
“LOL…Okay. But, you might want to delete some of your posts in order for your indictment of me as racial binary thinker to hold up under scrutiny”.
??My miniscule peabrain is still trying to process the post you edited, about masturbatory something or another, and too many other multi-syllable words, that I have no idea of what you’re talking about!
“I did not say your engineering degree was “useless” BTW. But, you already knew that too”
And I didn’t say that you did. That’s what I called it, because it was pretty useless. Differences in perception of what someone is saying, here.
Just because someone feels an issue is relevant to the issue at hand doesn’t mean it is so. Especially if the one bringing up the topic exhibits signs he/she has little/no actual knowledge of the actual issues involved beyond repeating red herring irrelevant remarks and talking points those who have had actual knowledge/first-hand experience have heard too many times from people whose motivation was to divert and derail the conversation from the original topic…especially if it’s related to racism and related issues.
Here’s a couple of articles which discusses this tendency among some:
“Before he fell to his death on a high rise construction site, my Uncle Sonny actually packed up his family of four and moved to Baltimore in order to work that very job in the late sixties. Until that point, he was damned glad to have had it. It wasn’t high paying, but he was able to support his family. I don’t think black men are wired any differently today. I believe there are still a lot of men like my uncle left in Baltimore. Of course, it’s obvious you don’t.”
I am very sorry about your uncle. That must have been incredibly traumatic for his family.
I don’t think black men are wired differently than anyone else is. However, I don’t know that there are still a lot of men like your uncle left in Baltimore, that is, older black men. I am curious as to what you think of this CNN article, if you can take the time to read it. Do you think this is true, and if so, isn’t this a big part of the problem in Baltimore?
http://www.cnn.com/2015/05/02/us/lord-of-the-flies-baltimore/index.html
"I asked 28-year-old Zachary Lewis about the absence of older men. He stood by a makeshift memorial placed at the spot where Freddie Gray, the man whose death ignited the riots, was arrested.
“This is old here,” he said, pointing to himself. “There ain’t no more ‘Old Heads’ anymore, where you been? They got big numbers or they in pine boxes.” In street syntax, that meant long prison sentences or death.
We hear about the absence of black men from families, but what happens when they disappear from an entire community? West Baltimore delivered the answer to that question this week.
It’s no accident that one of the most enduring images from the riot was a young mother spanking her son as she dragged him away from the protests. Where were the men in his life?
As I walked through my old streets, it was filled with nothing but black young women, children and teenage boys. It was as if an alien spaceship had come in the night and spirited all the older black men away."
cobrat, I realize that there are some that think the riots in Baltimore were primarily caused by inequity and action or inaction taken by racist white people, but I disagree. I think it can be boiled down to a police force that has no basic respect for people, and a community overloaded with poverty (primarily caused by the lack of two parent families). Feel free to disagree, but I think it would be hard not to acknowledge that if those two factors weren’t in the mix, those riots would have still happened.
Well, unless one has a cousin, uncle, great grand relative or classmate from prestigious HS or University to lend anecdotal credence to one’s issue.
And in the process, you’re leaving out the cumulative effects of past racist policies such as segregation mandated by the Baltimore city government around a century ago, decades worth of redlining policies by banks and government policies which reinforced segregation policies by not allowing Black citizens to move out of the neighborhood or obtain mortgages at rates comparable to their White counterparts*, how those segregated areas were at best ignored and effectively neglected, and how the policies and attitudes of the city government towards their Black citizens prior to 1968 added to the cumulative tensions which led to the 1968 riots there.
- Some of this is still happening in recent history as illustrated by the housing loan scandal in the '00s when it was found Black applicants...even ones with great credit scores were much more likely to be steered towards higher interest rate loans with pernicious terms than White applicants.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/20/wells-fargo-subprime-fraud_n_905198.html
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/12/01/379332/former-banker-subprime-pushed/
Those of you who are interested in learning more about how mandated segregation doomed Baltimore should take a look at * Not in My Neighborhood* by Anthony Pietila. It is a frightening read. http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2010-03-21/entertainment/bal-ae.bk.neighborhood21mar21_1_blacks-and-jews-rouse-white-woman
John Oliver weighs in, in his usual fashion:
Does anyone know how many people got killed by cops every year? I would assume cops kill people with other race too. It is WRONG for cops to kill any innocent person, regardless of their race. But why we have been focusing on only one race here?
Full disclosure - I got my advanced degree from a HBCU. I KNOW this: while it is more difficult but many people with desire do get themselves out of the situation. I see plenty of single mothers got their advanced degree and go on to better life.
Re Post 413: “Does anyone know how many people got killed by cops every year?”
On May 3rd, John Hinderaker at Powerline wrote about this in a post entitled, “WHY ARE POLICE SHOOTINGS DOMINATING THE NEWS?” It addresses your very question.
@Dad II, Police aren’t safe from other cops.
http://www.denverpost.com/ci_21973902/lakewood-officer-killed-by-friendly-fire-was-always-focused
I’m sure you can guess what the outcome of the incident was?
We can reform the hell out of Police training and recruitment, that’s for sure. For the past two decades or so, there has been an increasing militarization of Police and this mindset affects how the Police are initially trained. Far too many PDs place an emphasis on the breaking down and build em up back up philosophy of the Military, that is completely the wrong way you should train Police Recruits. Cops are not Soldiers, when they do try to act like Soldiers they tend to fail spectacularly aka recently with Ferguson. I’m not advocating for an easier Police Academy, by all means make it stressful and challenging but training cops like you’re sending them to a far off war zone is clearly not working out.
As for recruitment, many PDs recruit from pretty much bottom of the barrel considering how many PDs are having trouble just finding qualified recruits. Upping the standards and starting salaries would be a nice first step in attracting lets say a more desirable recruit pool to the profession, currently the best qualified get picked up by the Feds or the minority of well paying PDs, this leaves those agencies who can’t compete in the salary and benefits arena to recruit from what’s left of the applicant pool.
The third NYPD officer in five months died today after being shot in the face by a thug. Officer Moore was 25 years old.
^^^^ very, very sad. Do these three lost officers include the one that was killed by the man who traveled from Baltimore? We still haven’t heard why the BPD didn’t alert other jurisdictions that a man with a gun, who had committed a crime with that gun, was traveling north by bus.
Yes those two officers, as well.