Why doesn’t someone ask Michelle Obama about her undergraduate experience at Princeton? Also, remember that she has a niece enrolled there right now.
Nice attempt at deflection. Again, why don’t you answer the question that has been posed to you multiple times:
“Would black student groups welcome a speaker to campus who speaks about the very real problems rampant in the black community, including a breakdown of family structures, a low emphasis on education, and an extraordinarily high crime rate?”
Better yet, why don’t they invite one themselves? Seriously, wouldn’t discussing these problems and attempting to find solutions to them be far more useful than worrying about micro-aggressions?
And if the answer is no, why was it acceptable for the Yale Afro-American cultural center to invite a speaker that said 9/11 was caused by Jews?
Oh @hebegebe of course they do.
Any idea how many college speeches were given by Bill Cosby (before the current scandals)? Do you know what he talked about?
Here’s a typical one from Rutgers: http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~schochet/101/Cosby_Speech.htm
(as an aside, it was his moralizing at colleges as a speaker that got him in trouble…look it up, the pound cake speech is an interesting bit of karma).
While the term micro-aggression seems the consensus for describing the grievance of many of the Black students at the
campuses where student group protests have broken out lately, I would not ascribe that term to the whole of the experiences the students have railed against.
There are often instances in the lives of Blacks at every level of life (not restricting it to student life here) where the conversation, and further, the language or tone of the conversation, replete with euphemism and supposed neutral talking points, has been understood to be veiled discussion of our human worth.
The history of our arrival on these shores and subsequent subjugation has had extrapolated from it our inherent lack of worth, a view codified across time in this nation, and, unfortunately a view the vestiges of which are too many.
Often, there is nothing micro- about the aggression.
No more than there is a serious perception of danger when someone stands their ground and, with impunity, sends a young Black life to the grave.
@hebegebe: The final question you ask, about the invitation to campus of someone who says the Jews caused 9/11, is answerable with an “Absolutely not acceptable” response. Not acceptable if Black students do it; not acceptable if any other group of students were to do it. No.
Yes, I thought I knew Bill Cosby well. I enjoyed his work starting with Fat Albert, The Bill Cosby Show, The Cosby Show, and one of my previously favorite comedy routines “Bill Cosby: Himself”. I also knew he was an avid speaker, giving speeches like the one you linked.
I thought he was an admirable role model model for the black community. Even though it was well known that he hung around the Playboy club when he was younger, I would never have dreamed that he would actively hurt women. I ignored the first couple of cases that I heard, but with 20+ women and counting, I have to believe the women now. If what they say is true, he should be be jailed for a long time. I cannot watch any of his material anymore.
The Black community needs more well known role models. The Obamas are outstanding natural role models, emphasizing the importance of education, hard work, and family. Perhaps they will make this an active area of social work after he leaves office. But other Black leaders like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, which did such important work in the 60s, have failed to make the pivot to the most pressing problems of today.
The point is, yes indeed such speakers are invited to speak at colleges, black students not only attend but often black student groups sponsor such speakers. I believe that was the question you asked.
“Would black student groups welcome a speaker to campus who speaks about the very real problems rampant in the black community, including a breakdown of family structures, a low emphasis on education, and an extraordinarily high crime rate?”
Let me answer the question first. Yes.
Your question poses a much bigger problem . It is a huge problem. You are attempting to stereotype all blacks as coming from the ghetto. About 15 per cent of the blacks live in an urban ghetto. The rest DO NOT. Not all black families have a low emphasis on education. Not all blacks come from criminal backgrounds. When blacks show up at college they many times face these stereotyping or profiling patterns. The assumption is they cant handle it. Black culture is something that many of the posters on this forum just don’t understand.
Here are some quotes regarding Princeton about Sotomayor that may help you understand.
“The first day I received in high school a card from Princeton telling me that it was possible that I was going to get in, I was stopped by the school nurse and asked why I was sent a possible and the number one and the number two in the class were not,” she recalls. “Now I didn’t know about affirmative action. But from the tone of her question I understood that she thought there was something wrong with them looking at me and not looking at those other two students,” says Sotomayor. The same is true today she says. “You can’t be a minority in this society without having someone express disapproval about affirmative action.”
“On Sotomayor’s very first day, a Southern girl turned to her and two other Hispanic girls and said how wonderful it was that Princeton had all these strange people.”
"Along with other Hispanic leaders at the university, she filed a complaint with the federal Department of Health, Education, and Welfare accusing Princeton of “an institutional pattern of discrimination” against Puerto Ricans and Chicanos. The letter is full of strong language, alleging a “total absence of regard, concern, and respect for an entire people and their culture” and “an attempt—a successful attempt so far—to relegate an important cultural sector of the population to oblivion.”
"The Daily Princetonian strongly editorialized against Sotomayor’s demand for quotas and timetables. “Affirmative Action should not mean positive efforts to reverse a historical pattern of minority under-representation at the expense of traditional standards of excellence,” it wrote on Feb. 17, 1975. [Emphasis in original]. The editorial page doubted how the school could guarantee proper racial proportions. “In many cases such data simply do not exist,” it noted and even called the HEW’s demand for more minorities on campus as “the arrogance of ignorance.”
I sometimes wonder how much has changed at Princeton
Of course a lot of people disapprove of affirmative action, it is a contentious issue.
From the article 10 myths about affirmative action
"Public opinion polls suggest that most Americans support affirmative action, especially when the polls avoid an all-or-none choice between affirmative action as it currently exists and no affirmative action whatsoever (see Table 1). For example, according to the Pew Research Center (2007, p. 40), 70% of Americans are in favor of “affirmative action programs to help blacks, women and other minorities get better jobs and education.” What the public opposes are quotas, set-asides, and "reverse discrimination
Heck under sorghum’s definition the right to own a semi automatic assault rifle with 10,000 rounds of ammunition while on a terrorist watch list is a contentious issue.
You don’t seem to be getting the hang of the debate thing.
If you asked me the Pew question as it was written, I too would be in favor of affirmative action. For example, I am all for outreach programs that start in grade school to help students lagging behind. In particular, I am really in favor of universities or other groups targeting under represented minorities and explaining to them that they can earn the right to attend this college, explaining the path to getting there including providing a financial plan, and for providing supplemental teaching to help them achieve their full potential.
What I am against is race-based affirmative action in college, although I am again fine with class based affirmative action. Coincidentally, there is an article in the NY Times today about the Abigail Fisher case (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/10/us/politics/supreme-court-to-revisit-case-that-may-alter-affirmative-action.html).
The NY Times is left-leaning, and its readership even more so. But take a look at the comments and you will find limited support for affirmative action as it is practiced at the University of Texas.
Tiger1307, a lot has changed at Princeton since 1975. Sotomayor herself is an avid Princeton booster - I have heard her speak at Princeton and she speaks fondly of her experiences. Yes, she helped file a lawsuit to prod the University into hiring more Latinos and admitting a more diverse student body, but she also worked directly with the administration to bring about such changes. She was passionate about her causes and she convinced many at the university to make changes - for example, her thesis advisor says she persuaded him to create a seminar on Puerto Rican history and politics and Bill Bowen, the President of Princeton at the time, says that she was a valuable and respectful participant in discussions about issues.
In spite of your user name, I don’t believe that you or your children have attended Princeton - am I correct?
When I was a college student I often skipped a particular class which I found interminably boring and beyond my ability to fathom as purposeful in an undergraduate curriculum. I made it for every test and turned in every paper, but made few of the classes. One day when the professor was handing papers back, she glowed when she called my name, the paper, she said, being an exemplary show of a student’s grasp of the material, and engagement with the themes the course explored.
When I stood up and walked forward to accept the test, the professor’s face instantly changed. She glowered at me, looked at the paper in her hand, her mouth flew open, and she asked incredulously if I was so-named student. Her eyebrows nearly jumped off of her face, and her voice box out of her throat. She told me to stay after class for a moment to speak with me.
I was informed after class that there was no way she could believe that I could possibly have written the paper, nor any of the other that she had logged under the same name, and so for the final I would have to sit next to her desk (like a 3rd grader) and complete it.
I arrived late for the final, with twenty-five minutes to complete a comparative analysis of some crap, and I chose to weave the historical growth and development of some ( IIRC ) constructs of societal order, some Freudian concepts and the interactions and dynamics of characters in a certain Eugene O’Neill play.
She was miffed as she could be with me, but gave me an A for the final. (I think - can’t remember correctly because…) She called me on the phone in my dorm one evening soon after to let me know that as she was one of the professors who sat on the panel to judge student papers for publication, she had also read my end of term paper for the core curriculum course that made most of us wanted to die before having to finish. She had voted, along with the other professors, for the university to publish my paper in a bound volume to be permanently housed at the university library. She had called to congratulate me, and was very proud of me.
I wanted to spit into the phone, but said thank you.
My history with this professor being a long one (joy), she once returned a paper to me that on which she’d written " ‘A’ - Wonderful! " She told me to write another paper, and directed me to explore something of her choosing in the content area. (I learned later that none of the other Black students in the class had done well on the first paper.)
When I went to her and balked at having to write an additional paper, she interrupted me, pursed her lips and said, “Look, if you need remedial help, maybe this is not the right place for you.” I had actually never heard the word remedial before that moment, and faced with the energy coming off of her I did not know what to make of her response. When I could think straight, I replayed the moment, realized what she meant and was deeply hurt.
The other kids were ready to rally around me at this moment, and the slight to me, but I told them I would deal with it on my own. I was really hurt, though. For weeks. I had never been spoken to that way before, and had never perceived that others might receive me through a prism in which they failed to actually see me.
Jarring, disjointed, alienated from a reality I thought I was comfortably familiar with, properly a resident of, are not even near-approximates to explain the impact of these contacts with that professor.
@midatlmom me or my children have not attended. One of my kids got in but after we made a couple of visits there they decided they didnt want to go there. I think Princeton is a really great school. It has an excellent reputation and is well respected. It is referred to as the conservative ivy and that is not everyones cup of tea
I don’t blame her for being p-o’ed that you repeatedly skipped class. I don’t get that, myself. It was a privilege to go to school; I never missed a single class til spring quarter senior year when I’d already fulfilled all requirements and had a surgical procedure done. Your story loses its punch with the habitual skipping.
@waiting2exhale one of my kids had an almost identical experience to what you describe above. I just think there are a lot of petty and superficial people out there
Because you were the student who skipped every class and treated it with contempt?
@sorghum waiting2exhale did not treat it with contempt This is just anecdotal evidence of bias in play at school. It is obvios that going to the class would not have improved their grade.
Waiting was the one treated with contempt!!
Going to class, even for a student who will get an A, is away to participate and improve the classroom experience for everyone. Not going is disrespectful to the teacher and the rest of the class. The anecdote would work better if it didn’t have a giant hole in the logic.
@sorghum lots of classes nowadays are non participation settings. i.e. lecture only or you can watch online. Some schools even allow taking two classes at the same time. Look at cs50 at Harvard e.g.which allows two classes at the same time There is no logical foundation for the premise that not going to class is disrespectful to the teacher and the rest of the class. That is your personal belief . It is not everyones. It is not mine. There is no hole in the logic