More DeSantis agenda

[Trek53]

He has my vote 

[hntnhole]

On 2/26/2023 at 11:58 AM, tallslenderguy said:

If i moved to Florida, it would primarily be because i'd wanna be regularly seeded by You, and all that that means.

Well, I did say I'd help in any way I can ......... 😈

[Qilly55]

Not for nothing but how about we teach more math, science and english.we are falling way behind in these areas.

And we just keep dividing everything. And cizsing more hate 

 

 

[BlackDude]

What Is Critical Race Theory?

 

And DeSantis has no original ideas or thoughts that resonate with anyone outside of a small echo chamber. Hell, he Barley beat Andrew Gillum.

He’s now put himself in a trick bag, because when/if Trump runs again, he going to whatever base he has. Real recognize real. And when the platinum plated WS credentials on Donald Trump are presented, DeSantis is going to look like the silver plated, attention who’re that he is.  

Edited February 28, 2023 by BlackDude

[topblkmale]

14 hours ago, BlackDude said:

What Is Critical Race Theory?

 

And DeSantis has no original ideas or thoughts that resonate with anyone outside of a small echo chamber. Hell, he Barley beat Andrew Gillum.

He’s now put himself in a trick bag, because when/if Trump runs again, he going to whatever base he has. Real recognize real. And when the platinum plated WS credentials on Donald Trump are presented, DeSantis is going to look like the silver plated, attention who’re that he is.  

I'm also uninformed as to what exactly is Critical Race Theory.

This is what I gathered from Google/Wikipedia:

Critical race theory (CRT) is a cross-disciplinary examination – by social and civil-rights scholars and activists – of how laws, social and political movements, and media shape, and are shaped by, social conceptions of race and ethnicity. Goals include challenging all mainstream and "alternative" views of racism and racial justice, including conservative, liberal, and progressive. The word critical in the name is an academic reference to critical thinking, critical theory, and scholarly criticism, rather than criticizing or blaming people.[1][2]

I'd be interested in doing some further reading on the subject. Maybe someone can recommend a recent book on the topic.

Edited February 28, 2023 by topblkmale
.

[topblkmale]

16 hours ago, Qilly55 said:

Not for nothing but how about we teach more math, science and english.we are falling way behind in these areas.

And we just keep dividing everything. And cizsing more hate 

 

 

Agreed as I do seem to run across many black (Gen Z) who are illiterate. Rarely do I see the same with white or asian of the same age group.

[BootmanLA]

22 hours ago, Qilly55 said:

Not for nothing but how about we teach more math, science and english.we are falling way behind in these areas.

And we just keep dividing everything. And cizsing more hate 

We've been falling behind most developed countries in those areas for more than 40 years - my entire adult life. When I was a teenager the mantra was that the Japanese, particularly, were studying so much harder than our students do that they were going to run the world in short order. Didn't work out that way.

But in any event, one of the reasons we've (on average) been so behind other societies in our educational achievements is the appalling history of segregated (and, for the minority kids, grossly inferior) education in this country. And while "legal" segregation - forcing students into separate schools by race - was struck down, "de facto" segregation has continued apace, aided and abetted by governments that have consciously maintained disparate educational systems, mostly in the name of "local control". What that usually means is that each locality - rich or poor - is expected to pick up most of the cost of educating the students of that locality, and so of course areas with lots of richer (and usually whiter) people can provide much better education for their kids than the poorer (and usually browner/blacker) cities or counties. The state officials can simply say "But we're not discriminating against black students - we're just letting the locals decide how much they want to spend on education."

If you want an example of Critical Race Theory and how it works in reality, in fact, you'd be hard pressed to find a better one than how we've maintained racial disparities in education despite ostensibly making such discrimination illegal.

[BootmanLA]

22 hours ago, Qilly55 said:

Not for nothing but how about we teach more math, science and english.we are falling way behind in these areas.

And we just keep dividing everything. And cizsing more hate 

Also, just for the record: "English" is capitalized when referring to a language. There should be a space after the period, and I have no idea what "cizsing" could possibly mean. Maybe you're trying to give us an example of falling behind in English?

[hntnhole]

On 2/27/2023 at 3:21 PM, JimInWisc said:

I believe because the issues are more pronounced in the south

This ^ is worthy of a bit of a deeper dive.  As a man who lived in Northern Illinois for most of my life, now living in FL these past dozen+ years, I would hazard that in the South, the racism is far more blunt, obvious, and in-your-face.  However, racism runs deeply and silently in the North as well.  Quietly - as on cat's paws - subtly - like a deep, underground river that all drink from in one way or another.  The shame is so deeply buried that most don't recognize that they're as racist as anyone else.  Northerners would not hesitate to deny their racism, which makes it all the more insidious.  But it's there.

Here in South Florida, it's easy to make a foul face and turn away as a ratty old pickup with the Stars and Bars flying freely rattles by.  That kind of bold hatred doesn't exist in the North, but the subtle, quiet acceptance of White Privilege surely does.  Thanks for your reply, JimInWisc,

[BlackDude]

2 hours ago, hntnhole said:

This ^ is worthy of a bit of a deeper dive.  As a man who lived in Northern Illinois for most of my life, now living in FL these past dozen+ years, I would hazard that in the South, the racism is far more blunt, obvious, and in-your-face.  However, racism runs deeply and silently in the North as well.  Quietly - as on cat's paws - subtly - like a deep, underground river that all drink from in one way or another.  The shame is so deeply buried that most don't recognize that they're as racist as anyone else.  Northerners would not hesitate to deny their racism, which makes it all the more insidious.  But it's there.

Here in South Florida, it's easy to make a foul face and turn away as a ratty old pickup with the Stars and Bars flying freely rattles by.  That kind of bold hatred doesn't exist in the North, but the subtle, quiet acceptance of White Privilege surely does.  Thanks for your reply, JimInWisc,

Dare I say California is worst than the Midwest.
 

You wouldn’t think so with all of the “diversity,” but a lot of these other minorities from other countries come here and bring their anti-black racism with them. They know racism is ingrained in American culture, and a lot figure hating blacks is the easiest way to assimilate. This is how you get the Geraldo Rivera’s and Dinesh Disusa’s, and Elon Musks.

Equality to them means “treated better than the blacks.” 
 

 

Edited March 1, 2023 by BlackDude

[topblkmale]

4 hours ago, BootmanLA said:

We've been falling behind most developed countries in those areas for more than 40 years - my entire adult life. When I was a teenager the mantra was that the Japanese, particularly, were studying so much harder than our students do that they were going to run the world in short order. Didn't work out that way.

But in any event, one of the reasons we've (on average) been so behind other societies in our educational achievements is the appalling history of segregated (and, for the minority kids, grossly inferior) education in this country. And while "legal" segregation - forcing students into separate schools by race - was struck down, "de facto" segregation has continued apace, aided and abetted by governments that have consciously maintained disparate educational systems, mostly in the name of "local control". What that usually means is that each locality - rich or poor - is expected to pick up most of the cost of educating the students of that locality, and so of course areas with lots of richer (and usually whiter) people can provide much better education for their kids than the poorer (and usually browner/blacker) cities or counties. The state officials can simply say "But we're not discriminating against black students - we're just letting the locals decide how much they want to spend on education."

If you want an example of Critical Race Theory and how it works in reality, in fact, you'd be hard pressed to find a better one than how we've maintained racial disparities in education despite ostensibly making such discrimination illegal.

Are Asians considered minorities or White in your reasonings?

[BootmanLA]

14 hours ago, topblkmale said:

Are Asians considered minorities or White in your reasonings?

Broadly speaking, neither (in this context). By which I mean yes, they are certainly minorities in a general sense, and they have certainly faced their own share of discriminatory treatment over the years. But there are some key differences.

While there has been immigration from black/brown countries in the last century, the vast majority of "Black" (ie African-descended) people in this country descend from slaves, and their ancestors experienced not only slavery itself but the century-plus of de jure discrimination, segregated schools, and the like of which we're all aware (and which DeSantis and his ilk want to erase from public education). While some cities with substantial Asian populations (like San Francisco) did have segregated Asian schools, the percentage of Asians in general in the U.S. was small enough that such measures weren't undertaken in most of the country.

The number of Asians entering the U.S. was sharply restricted for more than half of the 20th century, becoming substantial only in the late 1960's and early 1970's. Most of those arriving kids, then, entered the public school system after integration. Thus they didn't have 200+ years of it being illegal to teach children of their race to read and write (as was the case for Black slaves), nor did they get pigeonholed into poorly funded and operated single-race schools the way Black children were from the end of Reconstruction to the 1960's.

That's not to say Asian children had it easy - children who are in the minority (whether Black, Hispanic, Asian, gay, trans, or whatever) almost inevitably face discrimination and exclusion to some degree. But as someone who was in school in the 1960's and 1970's when Asian students began to arrive in large numbers (especially from SE Asia with the end of the Vietnam conflict), I can remember that white parents both respected Asian families for their dedication to education and feared that Asian kids were going to take over everything because of said dedication. As such, they weren't treated as though they were white - but they also weren't treated as poorly as Black/brown students were. 

[hntnhole]

On 3/1/2023 at 3:31 PM, BootmanLA said:

As such, they weren't treated as though they were white - but they also weren't treated as poorly as Black/brown students were

Well said.  

Example:  When the adventurism of "containment of communism"* ended in SE Asia, the church we virtually grew up in sponsored many families of Laotians to come to our city, jobs, homes were found for them, classes in English were held, and hundreds of families wound up coming to town.  So, kudos to the church for that outreach - it's what the Universal Message is all about.  The "integration" into local society was engineered, and it seemed the "right and proper" thing to do.  The difference was however, a tiny minority of them were actually integrated into the social construct.  My mom taught English classes, yet I have no recollection of ever seeing a Laotian in our home.  Maybe that happened after I went away to school, but ...

There were no Af/Am's on the East side of town.  Only Northern Europeans, and their descendants.  All the other racial, socio-economic groups lived on the West side.  The closest I came to "the other" was seeing them out the car window in the event we were going over to the next town about 45 minutes away to visit relatives.  But, that outreach was at least something ....

*addendum: may Robt. McNamara, who begged and cried for forgiveness as he lay dying and received none, be rotting in whatever hell he created for himself.  

[ErosWired]

On 2/27/2023 at 1:20 PM, BootmanLA said:

While the name hasn't changed, southern US history textbooks (and by extension, those used in much of the United States) papered over "slavery as the root cause of the Civil War" for decades. Widely used and approved high school history textbooks taught concepts like "the slaves loved and depended on their masters for protection" and "slavery taught many slaves skills and trades they were able to use to better themselves" and other apologetic horseshit.

And when it comes to the war itself, it was frequently painted as due to some vague concept of "state's rights". What right was in question, for the states? The right of the state's residents to own slaves. What right were the Confederate states most worried about losing? The right to own slaves. What rationale did almost every southern state cite, in their declarations of secession, as the cause for removing themselves from the Union? Preservation of white supremacy and the right to own slaves.

I am surprised that you would subscribe ti something so simplistic as a notion of “The” (singular) cause of the American Civil War. Slavery was unquestionably the malignancy in the American corpus at the time, so badly so that we still haven’t healed from it, but a societal upheaval of such magnitude that it causes individuals with no direct stake in the issues in play to kill their own blood kin speaks to a broader array of passions, motivations, circumstances and individual realities than one single cause.

Bear in mind that there were plenty of white folks in the agrarian south who did not own plantations, or slaves. If they did own land they were just as likely to be dirt farmers out working their own fields, and if they didn’t have the wherewithal to own their own land could easily find themselves sweating in the fields alongside enslaved persons, just getting paid some pittance to do it. Don’t think so? Allow me to introduce you to some of my ancestors.

There is historical record of the response of some white Confederates when asked why they were fighting against Union soldiers who were in the South. Their answer wasn’t “Because you’re trying to free our slaves” - it was “Because you’re down here.” To these people, the proximate, immediate, pressing motivation for war wasn’t the preservation of the slave state, it was stopping an invasion that was killing their people, burning their homes and farms, killing their livestock, and fouling their water.

Yes, at the level of state, of government, of economy, of politics, the question of slavery drove policy. But it wasn’t necessarily what drove the individual to war, and as the saying goes, all politics is local.

It’s worth pointing out, by the way, that Lincoln himself did not place the abolition of slavery as the sine qua non of the War - for him, what mattered was the preservation of the Union. In his August 1862 letter to Horace Greely he wrote: 

If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and  if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that.

(Full disclosure: Among the several hats I’ve worn was one where I spent 20 years as the executive director of a Civil War battlefield preserve.)

As to the brouhaha over CRT, I still can’t figure out why everyone is so worked up. Nobody makes cathode ray tube monitors anymore.

[BlackDude]

1 hour ago, ErosWired said:

I am surprised that you would subscribe ti something so simplistic as a notion of “The” (singular) cause of the American Civil War. Slavery was unquestionably the malignancy in the American corpus at the time, so badly so that we still haven’t healed from it, but a societal upheaval of such magnitude that it causes individuals with no direct stake in the issues in play to kill their own blood kin speaks to a broader array of passions, motivations, circumstances and individual realities than one single cause.

Bear in mind that there were plenty of white folks in the agrarian south who did not own plantations, or slaves. If they did own land they were just as likely to be dirt farmers out working their own fields, and if they didn’t have the wherewithal to own their own land could easily find themselves sweating in the fields alongside enslaved persons, just getting paid some pittance to do it. Don’t think so? Allow me to introduce you to some of my ancestors.

There is historical record of the response of some white Confederates when asked why they were fighting against Union soldiers who were in the South. Their answer wasn’t “Because you’re trying to free our slaves” - it was “Because you’re down here.” To these people, the proximate, immediate, pressing motivation for war wasn’t the preservation of the slave state, it was stopping an invasion that was killing their people, burning their homes and farms, killing their livestock, and fouling their water.

There were no “good guys” in the Civil War. And although I don’t think it was your intent to minimize the impact of slavery on the war, that’s how it came across. EVERYONE in white society benefited from slavery directly or indirectly. It was not the wealth landowners who fought it the war, it was most of the poor. Simply to preserve a society where whiteness was currency and supreme. 

Slaves were not just used by land owners to pick crops. Their labor and bodies were central to the US economy and infrastructure. Not only were they building roads, railways and buildings, slave owners were insuring slaves. Entire insurance companies and banks were built of slave insurance policies. Banks that turned around and gave loans to white citizens and corporations. 

The medical industry was using blacks (free and enslaved)  for experiments, and making profits. 
 

That doesn’t even get into the psychological benefits of slavery for non-whites.