^^^ omg, now that is ridiculous. I am sure another study could find the opposite. Eggs are good for you, eggs are now bad for you, eggs are good for you again. It’s like this thread, round and round and round. Some study can be found to fit any cause or ill-attitude o’ the day.
However, Fryer’s study also indicates that police are more likely to use non-lethal force against black people than white people for given types of encounters (and with much larger sample sizes than for lethal force).
It is likely that this larger incidence non-lethal force creates more of the negative personal experiences with police among black people. This may be the much bigger factor in creating and maintaining distrust between black people and police, even if officer involved shootings get most of the media attention.
I’m interested in your reaction to The Atlantic article.
Now, I don’t know if it is true or not. Or how big an issue it is.
But why would you say it is “ridiculous” that schools that are in prestigious areas, with families and kids focused on getting into top colleges would potentially be inflating grades in a way that schools in a different area may not?
It certainly recasts the old trope of the white kid with a 4.0 who didn’t get in while the minority kid with a 3.5 did. Maybe the white kid and the minority kid worked just as hard, were just as smart and dedicated. But maybe the school the white kid attended practiced grade inflation. So now…the two kids are actually on par academically when adjusted for grade inflation.
Certainly an interesting discussion to be had.
More from The Atlantic article:
"These findings are troubling, but not surprising, said Richard Weissbourd, the director of the Human Development and Psychology program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. “To be attractive to parents,” private schools in particular, Weissbourd said, “need to be able to tout how many of their students went to selective colleges. So they’re incentivized to give better grades.”
The same concern about college admission drives parents of students in suburban schools to pressure principals and teachers, he said. “It becomes very high maintenance for schools to deal with aggressive parents. So that can also push grades up.”
Then the cycle repeats.
“This is one of those things that works like a contagion,” Weissbourd said. “If you’re an independent school or a suburban school and you’re giving Bs and the school in the next community is giving A-minuses, you start to feel like those kids are going to get a leg up. So you start giving out A-minuses.”
Perhaps a diversity workshop that is less personalized might be disguised as an evaluation of monuments or statues being proposed to be installed in prominent places on campus. For example:
- Commemoration of Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho victory at the Battle of the Greasy Grass, with Crazy Horse standing over dead George Custer.
- A former slave with broken chains tearing up a Confederate flag over a dead Confederate soldier.
- Nat Turner.
After the expected arguments, ask people to observe how their roles may differ from when other controversial monuments or statues are concerned…
A few pages back:
"The issue for me is that kids are repeatedly whacked over the head with this stuff. "
Probably because it is quite evident that they need reminding.
"What is likely to get a more favorable reaction from a white person from a lower middle or lower SES background, who probably spent more of his/her life in a penalty box than anything privileged or advantaged?
a. “You may not know it, but you have various types of ‘white privilege’ versus a black person, who commonly faces more suspicion as a potential criminal by police and people who call the police, …”
b. “You may not know it, but do you realize that a black person suffers ‘penalties’ or ‘anti-privileges’, such as commonly facing more suspicion as a potential criminal by police and people who call the police, …”"
Hasn’t option B been discussed for literally decades now? Talk about ad nauseam (and justifiably) but it sure hasn’t moved the needle much in terms of race and discrimination in this country, IMO. B definitely doesn’t seem to work. Even on this thread we have to discuss in 2017 whether POC face a negative bias with law enforcement. Any person of color knows this is true, any white person who has a family member who is brown knows this is true, any LEO of color will tell you this is true as they themselves experience it when out of uniform.
“Maybe some history lessons from a generation or two earlier rather than a “walk”. I’ve soaked up a lot of stories from my “privileged” family history and send them my kid’s way.”
Another thing that has happened for generations. It’s not a bad thing mind you but only scratches the surface as it does not address or acknowledge biases and discrimination in the here and now.
On the other hand, option A which seems to be getting more common these days seems to be working opposite to the intended effect.
Perhaps it just means that it is hard to reduce racism, but easy to increase racism (even unintentionally).
“option A which seems to be getting more common these days seems to be working opposite to the intended effect”
I’ve scene evidence it works for many but not perhaps for those that might need it most. There are, for sure, students and others who have approached such exercises with an open mind and have walked away with more awareness as evidenced by several posts here, also echoed in my own mind by examples of many people I know. It has created new dialogue and a new way of talking about the issues surrounding race and discrimination in this country. Obviously, we see here it isn’t resulting in a positive exchange for 100% of the people. Sometimes I wonder if it is a 2 steps forward, 1 step back chapter of history. It’s hard for me to fathom making actual strides in something so deeply engrained and widespread as systemic racism and bias in this country without it causes some strife and pushback. Is change ever easy?
I would like to see a thread naming the colleges and universities that are engaging in orientation exercises such as the one described in this post. It’s just more information and why not be open about it if the schools are proud of their efforts and actions?
But the questions and issues in the exercise were not all to do with systemic racism and bias, right? In fact, many of them involve things that are more difficult to talk about in the public square.
That is true @sylvan8798, at least we assume so but OP’s details are sketchy. Broader discussions about other forms of privilege - socioeconomic, disabilities, etc. are all welcome and further discussions about tangential issues, in my own personal viewpoint. Not sure what you mean by “things that are more difficult to talk about in the public square”, @sylvan8798?
@CValle - as an AP teacher in an upper middle class suburban HS, I can tell you pressure for grade inflation, by parents and administrators, is very very real. The school one district over was recently honored by being named “#____ in the nation”. The very next day, a meeting was held to talk about what we can do to ensure that we are on a par with said school… and the fact that the average GPA was higher at that school than ours absolutely came up.
As for which schools have these workshops, I hope most do!
While I don’t know exactly what happened in the OP’s workshop, facilitated discussions to get people from different backgrounds to talk are good things. The point is to listen! But if nobody speaks, there’s nothing to hear.
This is one of those situations in which there are many truths. We need forums to hear them and try to understand them, not debate them.
Diversity efforts fall short if they are simply about getting different kinds of kids on campus. There is much more richness is they can learn from each other. In many cases, what has come out of these exercises has benefited everyone. For example, at several schools who heard that kids with less money frequently could not afford events on campus, a “student activity fee” was added to every student’s bill (and included in FA need calculations ) so that all on campus programming could be free for everyone. This worked better for everyone. Students attended more events (including ones they weren’t sure they’d like ) and community life was more vibrant.
MODERATOR’S NOTE: This thread is going around in circles, so I am closing it.