Letters to the Editor
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Every So Often...
Something comes along that reminds me how happy I am that I don't live in the United F*cking States of America!
Jeebus people, really!! All the thinly veiled (and overtly) racist bullsh*t posts are leaving me gobsmacked...what is this? the 1920s? I half expect to see posts detailing the latest findings in phrenology and calls for state enforced sterilization programs!
When are you people going to get over race?! Every day I feel more and more blessed that I live in wonderful, multicultural Toronto...you know, where people actually *gasp!* get along??
The colossus, she is crumbling, and all I hear is the empty ravings of madmen.
peace on earth indeed...
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news flash
spanish are good baseball players,blacks are good at boxing and basketball and football,russians make good vodka,french don't like to fight,italians make tasty food,asians like to take pictures and they like electronics and are good at table tennis,muslims like to kill people who don't beleive in their god, whites like to argue that we are all the same.
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wow..twice now!
That I actually agree with something Thrasher said!
"I am always amazed how white folks can remember and value certain aspects of American history and ignore and then tell Blacks folks to get over it.."
bang on man! I had a teacher who once said to me "if you are going to celebrate your nation's exploits then you have to take responsibility for its failures"
that always stuck with me...
cheers!
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Ok then
Let's blame everything for the next 2000 years on whitey. Let's put a hundred year moratorium on any black person being arrested for any crime for any reason whatsoever. Let's give every black person in America 10 million dollars. And open all the jails.
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America's Black Holocaust Museum
Thrasher mentions that there are no holocaust museums to commemorate the violent injustices done to Blacks. I realize that this museum would be better known if it were located in New York or Atlanta, but Milwaukee, Wisconsin, does have a wonderful place, America's Black Holocaust Museum. If you're ever in the Midwest, it would be worth a trip to check it out. The replica slave ship, the area devoted to lynching, and the other artifacts of slavery are chilling. The rest of the changing exhibits are also terrific, though not typically focussed on slavery and lynching but rather on art, photography, crafts, and much more. The museum's founder, James Cameron, was the only known survivor of a lynching and used to tell his story in person to visitors. (You can still see a film about the incident, although Dr. Cameron really made it come to life.) Here's the link: http://www.blackholocaustmuseum.org/
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Ugh
The responses to this cartoon are a thoroughly depressing reminder of the extent of racism still present in this country.
IQ tests have a sketchy history...they have been used to justify all kinds of racism and eugenics. When I taught high school science, I pointed to eugenics as an example of how the scientific method can be perverted in terrible ways (just as religion can). The best refutation I've ever read to all of this bell curve crap is Stephen Jay Gould's The Mismeasure of Man, originally published in 1981.
To those posters whining about how race no longer matters or cherry-picking scientific studies to prove some thesis about black people being stupider than white people, you make me want to throw up. But I'm most angry about the teacher that posted to this thread about how black & latino students are less motivated than white students. When you enter the classroom as a teacher and presume that some children are going to do worse than others, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy, and I don't appreciate you & other educators undermining the future of already-disadvantaged groups in this way. See Pygmalion in the Classroom, the 1968 classic study.
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m-flash: Thanks for the '411' I was referring more to a national museum in D.C.
and I was trying to connect how in this country certain groups get leverage and status simply becuase they are not Black....
Our country plays token lip service to the carnage experienced by Blacks and Native Americans on this soil....That is why the Ruben's work is so powerful and tragic as well..
We are still suffering post trauma damages( Ruben's cartoon reveals some of it) from our country's ugly legacy and many of us are tired and worn operating in this reality but we keep hope alive..
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"By nature liberals are idealistic so they refuse to accept the truth."
So Bush going into Iraq and expecting troops to be greeted as liberators just because Saddam was a "bad man", that's not idealistic?
Giving massive tax cuts to the rich and expecting it to "trickle down" onto the rest of us, that's not idealistic?
Banning gays from getting married in hopes that it will "preserve" straight marriages, that's not idealistic?
You people are a joke!
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Not the smartest bug
Regrettably the race/IQ problem is not confined to USA. Recently Professor James Watson almost had to be smuggled out of UK to avoid the self-righteous fury of the liberal lynch mob, which his recent his utterances on the subject generated. IQ is a measurable population variable like height, weight, shoe-size, nose length, penis length or breast cup size. Some of these variables are more emotive than others. If it were shown that blacks had, say larger feet than Asians, a sensible shoe manufacturer would adjust his output accordingly when selling his wares to black communities. Maybe, ‘one size fits all’ is not a good maxim for either shoe manufacturers or educationalists. Maybe we should try to come to terms with the variables as they are and stop worrying about their causes.
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Come on, let's just come out and say it:
Western Europeans are more intelligent.
That is, as long as "intelligence" is measured by tests that are designed and administered by western Europeans.
The burning question is: how do we as a society deal with this shocking fact? I know that I, for one, will contemplate this issue after I finish wiping my ass with an "IQ" test.
Then again, as long as one can slog one's way through a reading of "My Pet Goat," I don't see why sub-standard "intelligence" should necessarily be an impediment to social achievement.
Maybe an average, garden-variety dumbass could even be president of the United States one day.