The above is largely accurate, but MLK was actually far more radical…especially in later years than the above or many mainstream popular media/K-12 histories tended to portray him. Here’s an article which discusses this “sanitization” of MLK’s legacy to make him more palatable to mainstream America:
A quote which showed his actions went well beyond fighting for rights that Black Americans were already supposed to have in the Constitution:
Unfortunately for your theory there, I said nothing about “blacks whining” or “being thankful to be part of white America”, not to mention “social justice warriors” or “reverse racism”. That’s what’s on your mind, not mine.
That’s because it’s not a deflection for me. It represents a much stronger truth than the unfortunate “BLM”.
Nope. Whatever the “explanation” was, it was as faulty as the phrase “Black lives matter” was to begin with.
And…nope.
Yes. It would appear you have a very limited ability to parse things outside of a narrow range. Please refrain from restating my views in the future.
Salovey had a great response. Specific things that they’ve done already and things that they plan to do. Much much better and coherent and articulate than either of the Cristakis’s letters.
Seems as though he met all of the demands except the naming of the dorms. He said last week that was not within his power and he left the door open for that to get done. He is not requiring ethnic studies classes but making more available so that is maybe not quite what they wanted.
I liked how it managed to address the specific concerns of the students while integrating most of the proposed initiatives/changes into the fabric of the college as a whole. For example, I appreciated that the four faculty would be hired into the departments that would best suit their particular talents and interests. I also liked the announcement that sensitivity training would start at the top. Good for him!
However, I liked NC’s letter as well. Less specific, for sure, but then he’s not the policy/budget guy. My son’s comment after reading NC’s letter was, 'Well, he definitely knows how to be nurturing."
All in all, I’ve felt proud of the way Yale has handled things. They’ve taken the students’ concerns seriously, addressed them quickly and concretely, and remained mindful of the many other constituents of the college.
For all of the derision we direct at these “protestors”, it’s worth noting that feckless administrators enabled their ascent. Feeble attempts at maintaining the integrity of campus freedom of thought, constant placation, and ultra-progressive policy, let’s just say the chickens are coming home to roost.
You tell someone they’re a victim for years and they’re going to believe it.
I’m very happy with the Yale announcement.
It cements the fact I won’t be sending them an $80 application fee.
Another sheeple magnet bites the dust !
yay !
If Yale is a sheeple magnet, so are probably over 50% of the schools in the country. No ivy is even remotely close to liberal these days except maybe Brown, but they even stay close to the center.
It amazes me that the generation that caused some of the biggest global problems that the future generations will and are dealing with is the one that thinks it’s chalk full of “victimhood” and all of the other coded words that boil down to the single ideas of liberal acceptance is bad and “this generation is terrible and coddled and is too sensitive they should all just grow up”. We have seen many in this thread demonstrate just how out of touch they are. An astounding amount. The disconnect between this community and the reality of the students on here is frankly amazing.
You think that history would teach people that the world has never worked that way and to assume it would be a smart move for a betting man…
Not to mention how parenting directly affects generational cycles and trends.
This issue has devolved, but it is showcasing the larger problem here: a huge disconnect in a world that’s quickly accelerating in one direction: away from the baby boomers, both in social ideologies and in political and economic policies.
The problem encompassing the previously identified problem is that educating an aging generation in a world that has picked up tremendous developmental speed. Teens growing up with access to the vast amount of progressive information and education (such as Tumblr, where many of the terms I see here being laughed at have been for nearly a decade now) are understanding the world in a language and terminology that makes it inaccessible to the average baby boomer unless they do their research to keep up with the times.
My guess is that this problem won’t ever be solved: it’s going to slowly fade along with the generation. But with polarized ends, we are beginning to see the turbulent transitional period. Trump and Sanders are perfect examples: right now, a majority of youth support Sanders while most of the baby boomers that hold claims to all the faults of millennials are looking at Trump. Each seems preposterous to the opposing party for a reason: for the first time we have truly left and right candidates in the primaries gaining traction. The political spectrum is not its usual bell curve. It may not be this election cycle, but in the next few you are going to see a massive shift and a disruptive pattern in the political spectrum essentially until the baby boomers die out. It’s going to create a slew of social organization problems right as the national debt and America’s foreign policy problems come back home to wreak havoc.
All of this isn’t going anywhere really, but I think it’d be interesting to see what the highlighted baby boomers have to say about the direction of society right now beyond “the generation right now sucks and are coddled and hypersensitive” and get down to what is actually happening on the social landscape right now.
In addition to the discrediting acts of looting, burning, and destruction of a supposed minority, when leaders of the BLM movement showed themselves willing to sacrifice truth (objective forensic evidence) and continued to perpetuate a lie in their furious desire to scapegoat an innocent man to pay for the sins of others, they communicated that they do indeed believe black lives matter more.
What some may call sanitized when referring to MLK Jr., I call honest and wise. MLK was a great man of principle and integrity who held himself and his movement to high standards. Furthermore, he was highly effective. BLM has zero in common with him.
As for the younger generation, they are the products of a failed educational system and therefore most are ignorant of history, including the failed history of socialism. They seem to be unaware of even current realities in socialist and formerly socialist nations. In the last Olympics, we were treated to documentaries about talented but very young Russian children who were removed from their parents’ homes in order to eventually make Russia proud, and recently we learned of continued state-sponsored drugging of Russian athletes. The younger generation also seems ignorant of the current failings of health care systems in countries with socialized medicine. First hand, I can tell you that my father-in-law this month was in a medical emergency (he died), but was told the wait for a bed in the public hospital was 3 months. DH’s German bosses confirm the same is true in their nation; they tell him they always pay privately to see doctors, because they can’t wait months for an appointment when they’re sick now. The President of my H’s native country, while considered moderate among his socialist peers, eg. Venezuela’s charming President, he nonetheless arranges for outspoken critics of his administration to disappear. You see, when those who produce are forced to share their hard-earned profits with those who don’t, they become restive and angry. Therefore, they must be suppressed and silenced.
Topic for another thread, but while I agree that the Yale protesters were fighting about something real and worthwhile (and that the free speech framing was BS and an attempt at redirection away from issues of racism and diversity), I don’t buy the generational story re progressivism. While I’d love to believe that the more you know, the more progressive you get (and that successive generations will always know more), what I see, in part, is a situation where people’s analytical capacities can’t keep up with the barrage of information thrown at them and where what information is being circulated by whom and why is increasingly obscured. Then there’s another level in which “solutions” become largely rhetorical or affiliational (say the right thing, choose the right side) rather than practical (analyze what’s wrong and why; fix what’s obviously broken; assess whether your solution worked ). And part of this is the sort of “short attention span theater” that social media promotes. Increasingly, what I see is a kind of point-and-click advocacy that encourages people who know very little about an issue to take a stand based on one-sided information – and then move on, feeling like they’ve done their part.
Again, I don’t think that’s what happened at Yale (or Mizzou) which seemed pretty clearly to be a situation where a series of lived experiences (and marginalization or denials thereof) piled up to a point where the frustration and disappointment was overwhelming and a small but symbolic act triggered a crisis.
Lets me see if I understand the point of post #1407 and 1408…
Things suck, and will not get better till all of the old folks die off (the sooner the better) and the highly educated, very progressive young folks take over? They know how to use Tumblr!
The french Reign of Terror called, they want their Robespierre back…
I have been imagining them as the grandchildren of the 60’s activists.
Our kids make me optimistic for the future.
The USA is the result of a revolution. I am having trouble with all these French Revolution comparisons in the media.
from wikipedia because I don’t have time to look up a lot of better links and I know some here really don’t like these French Revolution side tracks, though I don’t mind at all.
It does make you start to wonder who’s “overly sensitive” when being yelled/sworn at by a student is analogized to being beheaded.
I agree with the first part, but would suggest it will “fade” much faster.
Progressivism is great for colleges kids (Bernie’s stronghold); many who have never held a job in their lives. But, the luster starts to fade once one gets a job and starts paying taxes, and tried to buy a car, house, start a family. This is no different than the boomers’ pov on life in the 60’s and 70’s.
It will be interesting to see how the millenials vote this time around. Eight years ago, college kids voted for the incumbent, 2:1, which by the way, was more like 3:1 or 4:1 on those (supposed) non-liberal Ivy campuses. However, since that time, these kids have graduate into a sucky job market. Will they give the Prez a pass on the economy and support Hillary 2:1, or start to think that perhaps progressivism sometimes results in slower growth – and thus, jobs, and look at alternatives.
In any event, college kids tend to liberal: “nothing to see here.” College grads become older and less liberal. Well, Doh!
(hopefully, I kept this as non-political as possible.)
^This. Also, I’ve found it interesting that so many overlook the way that NC reacted to the girl yelling at him. It didn’t shut him down or terrorize him,; it looks like he just saw it as an example of free expression. People get heated up and lose their tempers sometimes in the open exchange of ideas. The real problem here, as I see it, is the mean-spirited overgeneralizations about “snowflakes,” affirmative action, privileged whiners, reigns of terror, etc. being wrought from one small, very human moment–all written from protected, anonymous nests.
I give our kids a lot of credit for getting out there and saying their piece n the midst of such hooded, threatening language. They have their less than admirable moments, but I notice that if you give them a week, they generally self-correct their own excesses (Check out today’s YDN editorial page for examples). Good on them.
Meanwhile, student protesters at Stanford have received notice that they are in violation of campus policy and should be prepared to face the consequences of their actions.
One thing that keeps me on this board is reading all the very different perspectives.
In my bubble, people typically become more radical as they age. This has been fascinating to me with regard to friends in their 80s and some making it to 90. They are all reading Ta-Nehisi Coates and nodding along. They all campaigned for same sex marriage. They aren’t worried about what bathrooms anyone uses.
Oddly enough, from my point of view, this is closer to the truth than I am often willing to admit. I grew up in a small southern town that was real close 50/50 racial split. I heard lots of things come out of my grandparents mouth disparaging “those people”, heard similar from my dad and his friends. But when I went to school, in the early years of integration, I could see that “the other side” really was not the same as what I heard at home. These were kids I played with at school. All through school this bugged me. The saddest part was that in high school, part of “the other side” started to become more of an enemy out of sheer bias on both sides. Most likely reason is that what they heard at home started to become reality, and any relationship they had formed with me started to become secondary. Worse, is that I had a hard time separating what I heard at home from reality, after all, my family wouldn’t be wrong, right?
So with my own kids, I have done everything in my power to keep general discussion of “those people” from happening, and try to turn it to “that person.” Only a generation that really grew up without being pre-programmed at home has any chance of putting this issue behind us. I truly hope that is the generation of my kids, because my generation sure wont pull it off.
NOTE: to those that want to parse the crap out of what I just said, please hesitate. There are no code words here, but it is intentionally race agnostic. This is nothing more than the writing of a middle age guy who has dealt with race issues just about his whole life, and has somewhat fatalistically come to the conclusion that all I can personally do about it is keep it from getting worse.