You can't make this stuff up.
I'm sure Shamash has knowledge of this type scenario.....
Dutch immigrant kids take to street demanding 'white' classmates
By Charlotte Van Ouwerkerk17 hours ago
Amsterdam (AFP) - Faced with an increasingly segregated education system, Dutch immigrant children have taken to the streets of their ethnically mixed Amsterdam neighbourhood seeking "white" pupils to attend their schools and help their integration.
Around 100 schoolchildren -- Arabs, Turks, Africans, Moroccans -- accompanied by their parents and teachers, wore provocative dazzling white T-shirts emblazoned with "Is this white enough for you?".
Dutch native Annelies, 10, and immigrants' daughter Aminata, 11, have been friends since kindergarten and are also wearing the shirts, which have "All children have the right to integrate" written on the back.
They "want more white children in the school to learn about each other's cultures," said Aminata, her smiling face framed by dangling African braids during Friday's protest......MORE:
http://news.yahoo.com/dutch-immigrant-kids-street-demanding-white-classmates-071506783.html
Wiley, funny but I just saw this yesterday and thought of sending it to you. The comments on the Yahoo article are interesting because many sound so much like what I might say.
ReplyDeleteHa.
And the Dutch are generally a very tolerant people, but even THEY have their limits.
Anyway, I guess it's comforting to know that "magical white kids" are a worldwide phenomenon.
It seems that if you are "white", then everyone wants to be by your side to see if that special "something" we ALL apparently have will rub off.
And, yet, that's NOT seen as "racist" somehow.
I guess as long as you're seen as the "superior race" by other "races", then that doesn't count.
It's only when you see other races as inferior that you're "racist".
I think the European take on what is really going on with their immigrant invasion is interesting, though.
Funny, that no one is asking all these so-called "minorities" (who are actually MAJORITIES in most of the world) aren't working nearly as hard to "assimilate" or "integrate" WESTERNERS into THEIR societies.
Maybe they screwed up and know it.
Or maybe they are just trying to drag everyone down to their level as well.
After all, there are two roads to "equality".
I think I know which one the US is on in their public education.
And it's not the rising tide which raises all boats...
On a somewhat similar topic, I think it is interesting how closely Hong Kong monitors its immigrant population. And they DO NOT just let anyone who drops a baby here immigrate or automatically grant the child citizenship.
ReplyDeleteThat's an old relic of the US constitution regarding slavery which should have been repealed a hundred years ago.
Hong Kong doesn't have NEARLY the illegal immigration problem as the US has. Everyone has ID cards and if you don't, then you don't get squat.
And no one whines about it much, either, except perhaps a few bored, liberal, rich, ex-pat wives with nothing else to do except rally for the "downtrodden" with all the spare time they have (since their live-in foreign domestic helpers who get paid about $500/month do all the work).
Not to say that the situation here (or anywhere else) is perfect, but it's funny how the Chinese don't get called a bunch of racists for trying to keep the Indonesians, Filipinos, and Bangladeshi's from invading Hong Kong (or China) for that matter.
They have to be here to work and have an employer lined up before they get here, or it's just tough. And the same rules apply for us as well.
As for the "magical white kid" syndrome, they have a bit of it here as well.
I can't count the number of times total strangers (usually Chinese) have stopped us to tell us how "beautiful" our daughter is. And, yes, she is, but it's the fact that she's "white" that draws their attention. She's even started to develop a bit of a complex about it (at 5 years old) and asks why so many people are staring at her. We tell her it's because she's so good-looking. We've even gone places like amusement parks and had people take her photo or pose with her.
It's when they get all creepy and follow us around and try to touch her or keep talking to her when she clearly doesn't want the attention that I have to get rude and tell them to stop.
And I have to do that about once a week or so depending on how much we get out and where we go.
It's nteresting how some groups don't want you to see color until it somehow benefits them or fits neatly into their narrative.
ReplyDeleteAs I have said many times about forced integration in the states; the one thing the US government couldn't control is where people chose to live and where they chose to send their kids to school.
Even though my parents couldn't afford to move or send us to private school, I never begrudged those who could move from my neighborhood or stay and go to private school. Afterall, it was the system and government that was screwed up, not my fiends or the kids from different backgrounds. All we wanted to do was go to school and get an education.
Well, it is kind of sad that our own government has destroyed so many otherwise fine and functional communities this way.
ReplyDeleteReally, there is NO WAY we could have stayed behind. The blacks who came into our neighborhoods were just too uncivilized and violent.
I know people who tried for a few years after we left and their lives were ones of CONSTANT vigilance and fear.
One buddy of mine had to carry a pistol all the time and even had imprints of his snub-nose worn into his front jeans pocket. His grandfather had been one of the original ministers of the local Methodist church, and I visited him once back in the old "parsonage" house, where he was basically surrounded by black criminals.
I remember when we used to play in the small park nearby and also with other kids in the neighborhood as we were growing up. Couldn't do that then or now. Too many random shootings in the neighborhood. We did NOT have that happening when we lived there.
This was within 10 years after WE left.
Some of us should get refugee status and "assistance".
The ones who couldn't leave should get "survivors" benefits.
Ha. Like THAT would ever happen...
Wiley, you must have been "commingled" with a different group of kids of "different backgrounds" than we were. Maybe your groups were more equal in some ways. Ours weren't.
ReplyDeleteI don't know why the blacks were so violent and so far behind the other kids academically (my guess is that they were probably averaging around 3 years behind everyone else), but it was a serious problem which was extremely obvious as soon as you entered the local high school (which is where we were all first "mixed").
It must have been tough for those black kids to get to High School and realize how unprepared they were. Their smartest kids were just slightly above average, maybe B students when compared to everyone else.
From what I can tell, this is STILL a problem.
(So what the hell have "educators" been DOING with all that time and money for the last 50 years?)
Our HS was formed from three distinct populations. The whites, the blacks, and the Italians (sort of our "Hispanics" for that time and place).
The Italians had mostly attended Catholic schools, so they knew how to behave and received a slightly BETTER education than the whites had, so were usually fairly decent students.
Also, I knew quite a few from playing Little League baseball, so knew they were fairly decent folks overall (even if they DID say the Lord's Prayer a slightly different way, heh...)
The only blacks I had seen in the area were from the public housing units nearby (that's how it usually starts, isn't it?).
I remember walking by the public housing apartments on the way to Little League after they were first built and wishing WE were living in a "nice" place like that (Yes, we were THAT poor. Public housing looked like a step up to us...).
But within three years, that public housing development was looking like a slum. Something which was hard for me to comprehend. But the occupants just ruined the place on purpose, it seemed.
I couldn't understand, why, for example, NO ONE bothered to cover the graffiti with paint or repair broken windows, or pick up the trash around the place. It wasn't like other "mixed" public housing I had seen which was built some 40 years earlier that I knew about (and where I even had relatives living).
This stuff just seemed like it was built to be destroyed.
Most of the non-blacks, however, were living in modest houses which were at least 50 years old (or older) but which were being relatively well maintained by people who cared (even if, like us, they were renting).
I don't know what kind of fool could have looked at those three groups and have decided that it was a good idea to throw them all together into the same building.
Only someone from the government with an "agenda" and instructions from far away could be so stupid.
In my case, it seemed as if there were a small minority on either side - Blacks and Whites - who caused problems for the rest of us.
DeleteThe other, equally ridiculous problem was that the principals and others in power were scared to death to use any discipline against those who deserved it.
I agree with both those statements. It was surely a small minority that caused most of the problems. But they were very visible and apparently well known (and even "respected") by many.
DeleteThe difference I saw, though, was that the black trouble makers seemed to have greater control over the other blacks (maybe through intimidation?), while the white troublemakers were more or less on their own and NOT seen as "leaders", but more as losers.
Maybe that's not as true today, but that was what I remember.
One of the worst thugs at that high school was a black senior nicknamed "Fish Head". He was the ring leader and was just like those guys you see in movies who could snap his fingers and have a gang surround you ready to beat you down.
None of the white thugs at that time had THAT kind of power, though they probably had to learn how later in order to survive.
I remember quite a few of the white punks getting their tails whipped by better organized black gangs in high school.
Those guys really didn't have a chance because no one had their backs.
Things were so bad that it took me nearly a decade afterwards before I could relax enough around other people in a public bathroom to pee in the urinal without thinking that someone might attack me.
As for the principals and teachers, same here. They did their BEST to ignore the problem. Which only made it worse. Places like bathrooms, playgrounds, and even the cafeterias were like little battlegrounds.
The teachers, of course, had their own separate places to eat and eliminate.
The coaches were probably the worst. They just stayed away from the locker rooms where so much crap happened unless someone was screaming bloody murder.
They didn't really "teach" or "discipline" anything.
They only wanted to deal with the "teams" and not with actual physical education of all the kids.
They were clearly NOT there to help us "build character" through sports and friendly competition.
Heh. Just read this:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.wired.com/2015/05/google-maps-racist/
Google Maps Is Racist Because the Internet Is Racist
Well, at least I'm not alone...
Wiley and all,
ReplyDeleteDo you think I could qualify for "disability" benefits? That seems to be the new trend nowadays.
After all, I am clearly suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from my participation in the US "culture wars" of the late 20th century.
And, to think we didn't even get any Purple Hearts or Bronze Stars for our wounded and valorous.
My dad served in just about every war we had since WWII, up to and including Vietnam, after which he retired.
I just found his Navy Musters from WWII showing which ships he had served on (one destined for "dangerous waters") and posted them to my Facebook.
My mom divorced him in the 1960's and he went to Vietnam.
We, of course, were drafted into the "culture wars" of Birmingham.
He always told me that he didn't want me to ever have to go to war because it was such a horrible thing and made me promise him that I would not join the military, even though we were basically a "military" family.
My grandmother (on my father's side) even wore army boots. She was a WAC and outranked my dad who never got beyond Sergeant.
But that was definitely a rough life for him. I remember meeting with him once in Birmingham at the old Tutwiler hotel in the late 60's. He was on leave from Vietnam. I blew up a small paper wrapper from one of the bathroom glasses, made a bubble, and popped it. He grabbed us kids and ducked behind the bed and shouted something.
That's real PTSD. My dad had it pretty severely.
The funny thing is that I know people who have gone to Vietnam recently and really liked it. We may take the family there sometimes soon.
I can't say the same about my old neighborhood in Birmingham.
It's still a war zone.
Shamash,
ReplyDeleteThinking of you this Memorial Day.
Alicia
Hey, I was raised an Army brat, so it's a bit of a special day to my family.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was three years old, my folks packed up for Germany (Mannheim, Kaiserslautern and some other place). That would have been around 1960 or so. There were three kids, me and my two younger sisters, who would have been around 1 or 2 years old each. My youngest brother was almost born in Germany, but my folks came back after 3 years in Germany, while my mother was expecting him.
I actually started first grade in an Army school, but had to delay a year when I returned because they had different age requirements back in the US. Probably a good thing, because I can remember being very confused for the few days (or weeks) I went to school there. I was clearly not ready for school.
I still have memories of flying there on an old propeller plane and images in my head of some wacky old woman (probably not THAT old) who kept drinking something out of a flask, I suspect it was liquor or some sort.
It's odd what we can remember from those times.
Altogether, though, we had a pretty good life there as kids. It was a different life, for sure. We lived around people from all over the US, so it wasn't like living in Alabama.
I even had a Boston accent back then due to my dad's influence. We had an old recording of me from Germany where I sounded like a young Kennedy, ha.
I developed a fear of needles, though, that makes me break out in a sweat whenever I get a shot or blood drawn to this day.
At that time, disease was still a problem in Germany and it seems that we had to get shots all the time. Those darned army doctors couldn't tell the difference between a three-year-old and an eighteen year-old recruit, though, and sometimes pushed the needle darned near through my arm, it seemed.
But I may be exaggerating...
I'm probably one of the most vaccinated people on the planet (and STILL no autism, thank you Jenny McCarthy...).
Yeah, this Memorial Day has been one of more "memories" for me than usual.
I guess due to my particular circumstances at this time.
That and thinking of my dad who died at a relatively young age (younger than I am now). Mostly due to drinking. I remember asking him why he re-enlisted for Vietnam and he said it was because the beer was cheap.
Pretty sad, but I don't think he adjusted well to civilian life.
You know, just checking some dates, I think we were in Germany when Elvis was there and when the Berlin Wall was being built. I know my mother was a big Elvis fan, so maybe that's why she was happy to go.
ReplyDeleteShamash,
ReplyDeleteI wish I had something profound to say that was worthy of your father's service and sacrifice that could also comfort you. I'm at a loss of words.
Alicia
Alicia,
ReplyDeleteNot to worry. And not meaning to be a "downer", but I guess that's what "memorial" is about, just remembering.
And it's not like I'm as overcome with this as it may seem from my writing.
(Actually, I've been working more on a router problem I've been having more than anything else...Some wacked-up software reset my DNS settings somehow. Shows where my priorities in life are...)
Ah, you know, it was the life he chose (to a point), given the situation at the time. Probably got caught up in all the excitement of WWII as a youngster. I know he enlisted early, but they let that kind of stuff happen.
I'm sure he saw a lot of crap in his life, but what can anyone really say about it that would make a difference? It pretty much comes with the territory, I guess. A lot of people didn't survive, so I guess there are worse things.
I'm not so sure I need comforting, though.
Really, my life isn't all that bad and there isn't anything I can do about his life or his choices, except maybe not to repeat the bad parts and try to pass whatever "wisdom" I've accumulated on to my kids and do what we can for them.
Here we go again, folks.
ReplyDelete"CMS weighs diversity in upcoming student assignment plan"!
And to quote the CO folks (who don't have their children enrolled at Charlotte Country Day School):
"This much is certain: CMS must not surrender its campuses to segregated housing patterns. But in an era of increased competition (well, gee-whiz, we wouldn't want THIS from charter schools), it must fight that battle without alienating affluent parents. Let's hope the school board is up to the task".
Lol. I can't make this stuff up.
Ladies and gentlemen, fasten your seat belts!
Alicia
Yeah, I already sprayed my scent on that one...
ReplyDeleteJeez, will they EVER learn? Probably not. At least now there ARE alternatives. And that is the whole point of alternatives. It helps keep
the fools in line.
If NOTHING ELSE, charter schools provide a REAL threat that people WILL walk, simply because they CAN.
Remember how the telephone company used to be before "competition"?
Clunky old black telephones were built to last 50 years and they all came in our favorite color, black. That was what you got because the Ma Bell knew what was best for everyone.
It was like Henry Ford's Model A, only it stayed in production for decades.
(Working for Ma at South Central Bell was my first REAL "adult" job out of college, so I know how they thought back then before the breakup.
I have some stories about THAT, too, involving the once popular tactic of "reverse discrimination" that was going on during those times (late 1970's, early 1980's).
And, now for my RANT!
Basically, any black with any degree could get any job at some companies, just by showing up. They like to claim that this never happened. But it DID happen. Even jobs which were coveted by people with advanced degrees who had been hoping for years to get them.
I know because I met the guy, fresh out of college with absolutely NO COMPUTER EXPERIENCE or education in a "training" class, who, while totally clueless and really not the least bit interested in IT work, got THE JOB as an IBM 370 System Programmer which ALL the experienced guys in my group (some with advanced degrees) had been trying to get for years.
Some thought THEY were being groomed for the position, but I met the guy who got it. And he was a dud. But he was black. And they NEEDED black...
The mentality at the phone company was that they were a "public" utility serving the "public" good and that it was more important to put black people in jobs than to put the best people in jobs.
Regardless of how de-motivating it was to the people who had been working hard in hopes of getting "promoted" into those jobs.
Which is EXACTLY what happened to a LOT of the guys who thought that one of "our" guys (the experienced system "techs" in the data center) would get that promotion to system "programmer".
I just KNEW that my mentor in my job was being groomed for this job, and he thought he was as well...
We ALL saw it as our NEXT step UP in the company after proving our "worth" in the trenches, working all sorts of crazy hours and being "on-call", missing sleep, missing weekends, etc., etc.,
But NO.
None of us were black enough.
It was at that time that I started doing some real serious "career planning" and got my tail out of Ma Bell...
So I only stuck around for little over half-a-year after that before moving away to Houston to join the petrochemical folks as an IT guy.)
Where have all the BOE brains gone, long time passing?
ReplyDeleteWhere have all the BOE brains gone, long time ago?
Where have all the BOE brains gone?
Gone to status quo, everyone.
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Oh, when will they ever learn?
With all the growth and planning in Charlotte over the past 4 decades, CMS is being held primarily responsible for thoughtless housing patterns? Or, did the planning blockheads simply think forced busing would last forever? Ronda Lennon appears to be the only BORG member with a functioning frontal lobe. Someone may want to send her a lobotomy ice pick when she realizes that "diversity" resistance is futile.
ReplyDeleteIt's hopeless, Charlie Brown.
Alicia
I'm just waiting for the "planners" to throw the ultimate stink-bomb and put some subsidized housing in Ballantyne, just to throw a little chaos into the mix in suburbia and put people on the run again.
ReplyDeleteIt's the only real weapon they have left. And I'm sure they'll use it.
They always do when they meet too much "resistance"
It's all for the children, you know.
Kind of like the public pool "wars" they had in the South when I was a kid.
In order to get people to "mix", they built public pools in white neighborhoods and let the floodgates from the surrounding black communities open.
Not so nice for everyone. So some people shut down their pools.
But the Federales intervened to re-open them so that "integration" could continue.
Of course, those pools are now in all-black neighborhoods and no one is calling for their "re-integration".
Not that anyone would go there, but still...
And to this day, some people blame the disproportionate number of black drowning deaths to this "discrimination", despite the fact that a bunch of us white kids didn't have access to public pools, either.
I didn't learn to swim until I was 28 years old.
And that was off a tiny island near the equatorial coast of East Borneo where I finally got enough nerve to put on a snorkel and dunk my head into the knee-deep water until I finally convinced myself that I would float in salt-water instead of drown.
(I have stories about public pools, too...)
Lyrics from a "simpler" time... Disco.
ReplyDeleteDo it!
Do it!
Do it!
Do the Shuffle!
Do the Shuffle!
(repeat, of course...)
Interesting NPR article on the history of public pools and "integration"...
ReplyDeletePlunging Into Public Pools Contentious Past
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=10407533
Oddly enough, it was the Yankees who first "segregated" the public pools along racial lines, not the Rebels...
Funny how that happened.
Of course, coming from a "mixed" family myself, I use the terms "Yankee" and "Rebel" somewhat facetiously.
ReplyDeleteMy dad, of course was the Yankee, coming from Connecticut and Massachusetts mostly (which resulted in me sounding like a Kennedy as a child). My mom was the Rebel, born and raised in Birmingham.
We lived in Birmingham and my dad was constantly picking up black hitchhikers when he'd see them walking along the road. That was quite a shock to them, as I recall, but no one ever bugged my dad about it, that's just the way he was.
Interesting to me, though, that so many of the white "Freedom Rider" types were from places like Boston.
It seems that kids from Hahvahd just had to come down to mess with the local yokels, which brought back images of "carpetbaggers" from decades earlier to many of those yokels. Not a good idea.
And, yet, these typical country club liberals couldn't see the problems in their own back yards.
And they didn't have the guts to clean up their own backyards first or offer THEIR children or neighbors to the "cause". It's much better to annoy others first.
(A bit like our local newspaper editorial staff, eh?)
So I remember being quite pleased when what was "good for the goose" was unleashed on the gander.
It seems that de-segregation in good old "liberal" Boston was probably just as nasty as anything that went on in the South.
The main difference is that it wasn't a bunch of carpetbaggers behind it. It was their own policies coming home to roost.
So it was quite entertaining to watch Boston "de-segregate" in the late 70's. Probably set a couple of Kennedys spinning in their graves.
For ’tis the sport to have the engineer hoist with his own petard...
I've said it before, the one thing government and LEAs could never do is tell people where to live and where to send their kids to school, private, charter or home school.
ReplyDeleteIt's amazing that the continued liberal, bullshit talking points about diversity and segregation is still being used in CMS even though Blacks are now leaving the system.
CMS was about 42% Black and now it's 40%. Of course Whites have dropped below 30%.
There are 26 letters in the alphabet, two plus two equals four, George Washington was our first President, for action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Those things are the same whether a school is 90% minority or 2% minority.
Stop with the social engineering that has been an epic failure for over 50 years.
Shamash,
ReplyDeleteCharlotte never experienced the type of forced busing riots Boston did nor did it experience the type of white flight Boston did. I'm curious to read the NPR article.
My Yale educated brother (who has his children enrolled in one of the top public school systems in the country with taxes to prove it) and I had one of our usual discussions on race and Southern public schools again this past weekend. He still doesn't get it because he has no personal experience or reference to get it. I can assure you there's no way on God's green earth he would ever send his own children to a school located in West Charlotte despite all his liberal talking-point nonsense nor would he and his wife ever tolerate the constant upheaval associated with the social engineering "experts". On the topic of "Equity", my father (a retired public school superintendent with a PhD from Columbia University) made the argument that poor rural white kids now perform as poorly as poor urban black kids (before going on to discuss the history of spelling and the fact Shakespeare's own spelling was highly inconsistent in addition to his own name being spelled numerous ways which makes me question the "racist" nature of spelling bees which a disproportionate number of Indian American's win).
Alicia
I think the history of language is very interesting.
DeleteOne of my favorites, of course, is the history of "swear" words. A LOT of them are simply considered "vulgar" because they were based on German/Old English instead of the "higher" Latin words.
Just think of how many "vulgar" words we find quite acceptable in Latin.
Fornicate, Defecate, Urinate, etc., etc.
Now look at the "swear" versions and they are almost ALL Germanic or Old English (or even Nordic) in origin.
One theory I have heard (and think just might be true) is that the spread of Christianity (and Roman/Latin influence) were at least partially behind this attempt to make those old pagan words from conquered people be "vulgar".
So I consider it part of MY "cultural heritage" to use obscene language as I see fit.
So there!
Spelling is a fun part, too. Noah Webster really did a number on us all in the US when he tried to "simplify" British spelling for the masses.
Also interesting is the evolution of English names as people moved around. A lot of times the spelling was changed simply because of regional mispronunciations due to spelling. So, someone from Scotland who was tired of having their name mispronounced by someone in England would just change the spelling to the way the English pronounced it.
One set of my ancestors were named McBain, but their names got translated to Bean for the English pronunciation. It's just another reason English language spelling is so difficult.
As to why the Indians seem to be so good at it, I can only go back to my first job in a Houston engineering company where a significant percentage of the engineers were either Indian or Chinese.
Many Indians had really complicated names when their languages were transcribed into English (like Mukhapadhya and Subramanian, which are also spelled different ways), so I think they just grow up with odd spelling and find it easier to memorize all the weird variations.
That, and their parents usually value academic achievement. And that's one fairly obvious way to shine at an early age.
Just my opinion.
Also, you might find this Economist opinion piece interesting...
Deletehttp://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2015/02/johnson-language-anxieties
It contains this gem:
Delete“By commiyxtion and mellyng, furst wiþ Danes and afterward wiþ Normans, in menye þe contray longage ys apeyred and som useþ strange wlaffyng chyteryng, harryng, and garryng grisbyttyng.”
Wiley,
ReplyDeleteThe more I hear about the "diversity" BS, I have to ask myself "Who really WANTS this?".
I know that when Brown v. Board passed, a lot of blacks and especially black educators felt that everything would eventually be fine, but they were primarily thinking about access to equal funding, which, while sometimes promised, was NEVER delivered under segregation.
The reality of the situation turned out to be much different than they had imagined it would be, though.
Equal funding was not the only problem and whatever the problem IS, money alone (along with new classrooms, textbooks, etc., etc.) is not correcting it. Even though that is what many blacks, especially educators, thought was THE main issue before Brown v Board.
I really CANNOT in this day and age imagine that there are actually black parents or students sitting around thinking "Wow, what we REALLY need is a bunch of white (or Hispanic) kids in our school to make it really great".
I mean, how ridiculous does that sound? Especially when everyone KNOWS there are just so many other things parents, teachers, and students can do to improve their education.
I really think it is something that is being imposed on EVERYONE - at least all the "little" people - from a group (or groups) of people who just seem to think they know what's better for everyone else (even if it isn't what they choose for themselves, their friends, or their family).
The other thing is that in a day and age when everyone is supposed to be somewhat "colorblind", how stupid is it to think that any realistic "diversity" can be based primarily on skin color?
And substituting SES for race is just about as stupid, because having money doesn't guarantee any real kind of "diversity", either. There are rich and poor idiots, dolts, morons, fools, etc., etc., so what's the point of diversifying into THAT?
Well, that and the fact that you will NEVER get access to the upper economic strata in public schools anyway.
Those kids are most likely in private school. And they aren't necessarily clamoring to be around poor people, either.
So, if the rich really ARE different from you and me, we'll NEVER see it...
If economic "diversity" was really so great, wouldn't rich people be paying poor people just to hang out with them?
So, it must be a one-way street they're talking about, or you'd see a bigger demand from the upper-crust. But they know better, so there isn't.
They live in their white enclaves, send their kids to private school, and
wax poetic about "diversity" in everyone else's lives.
It's just all so ridiculous.
But the "elite" have the bully pulpit and tell the rest of us what we should do that they will NEVER do.
And so it goes...
Look at Baltimore. Need I say more?
DeleteBe careful what you wish for, you just may get it.
The only one "who got it" was the single mother of six smacking her son in the head for being out there throwing rocks at the police.
Perhaps the BOE and educrats should be smacked in the head - figuratively speaking...
Sadly, though, I think the mom in Baltimore was more concerned that her kid would get killed by cops than she was in instilling any particular respect for law or civil behavior.
DeleteIt's pretty bad to me that we have to use fear to keep people in line.
I'm pretty sure that doesn't work too well. But I guess it is better than the chaos we'd have without it.
Still, it would be better if people could just see how much better their lives would be if they just learned how to play well together.
It starts at an early age.
I know because my kids would probably revert to animalistic behavior if I didn't try to steer them into a better way to handle things.
It's not always easy, either, so I can fully understand how and why kids fall through the cracks.
Not excusing it, though, because I think it's a parent's primary purpose to instill these kinds of skills into their kids. And it's probably harder now than it has ever been with all the crazy influences out there.
Letting kids raise themselves or be raised by an uncaring, stoned, drunk or stupid parent(s)/guardian(s) is almost criminal.
Alicia,
ReplyDeleteReading some of the Taylor Batten stuff lately had me thinking and I was wondering why I have such a bad taste in my mouth about his writings.
Then I realized that I'm just getting a real sense of deja vu all over again from that guy. It reminds me of all the crap written in the papers about Birmingham while it was clearly going down the toilet.
Anyway, one of the big newspaper guys in Birmingham at the time was the editor, Clarke Stallworth. He had a reputation as big liberal and a strong "anti-Klan" guy. So the Birmingham News took a typical liberal slant for the times.
I knew people who cursed the Birmingham news and its editorial slant about as much as I see people do the CO today. At the time I was a kid and didn't understand, but now I think I do understand more.
Funny thing is that later in life I just happened to attend the same private college as his daughter, Carol. (And I think I'm just starting to connect the dots a bit better nowadays between what people say and what they do.)
I knew Carol because my girlfriend at the time was a music major and knew this girl who she said was nice, but really socially awkward and didn't have many friends, so she kinda felt a little sorry for her and wanted to hang out with her a bit because she felt like she was a bit sheltered.
My girlfriend was a bit of a wild child sent to Birmingham in hopes of keeping her out of "trouble" like she had had at her boarding school in Switzerland, so this was an odd pairing, for sure.
Anyway, I actually went to the Stallingworth's house out in some ritzy satellite city of Birmingham (I think Vestavia Hills) where this sheltered child lived. And it was downright creepy. Her mom was the most protective helicopter mom I had ever seen. The poor girl was so shy she could barely talk with us and her mom was always around like she was a chaperone.
I found out that her mom drove her to school to attend each class and would wait for her to finish and take her back home, so she almost had no contact with any of the other students at school.
Her mom, Anne Nall Stallworth, was also a published novelist, so I guess it's fair to consider these people "elite".
(I'm just finding out some of this stuff as I research a bit into some of the odd people I remember knowing, it's interesting to me now to know what some of these people I've met over the years were all about)
And by this time, the girl was a Sophomore or Junior and almost no one knew her.
Oddly enough, there is a little blurb about "mom" as an author here:
http://www.newsouthbooks.com/bkpgs/detailauthor.php?author_id=4180
"Anne Nall Stallworth was born and brought up in Birmingham, Alabama, where she still lives with her husband, Clarke Stallworth, Jr. She has lived deeply committed to equal rights and opportunities for women. "
And yet she was one of the worst helicopter moms I've EVER MET. And she hardly let her own daughter live her own life. But, in public, she's "deeply committed to equal rights and opportunities for women".
Except her daughter, of course... Poor thing.
So I think this colors my impression of Batten just a bit. Maybe he's like that, maybe not. But I do have to wonder.
And what I wonder is just how many of these "country club" liberals are like this.
Anyway, my point being that here was this typical "elite" liberal family, dad the big anti-racist, liberal newspaper editor, mom a big womens libber novelist, both living in a wealthy white enclave, driving their precious little girl back and forth to college so she had no social life and
ReplyDeletebiggest crime of all...
Mom drove a freakin' AMC PACER...
Ha, almost too funny to me.
Hell, they could have easily afforded a Volvo.
Man, that Stallworth woman wrote some weird-sounding Southern Gothic stuff. I wonder how much of it is semi-autobiographical...
ReplyDeleteSome creepy sounding, inbred stuff, knowing her and her daughter.
Published in 1972, about the time her daughter would have been in her mid-teens.
Wish I'd known about it then...
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/anne-nall-stallworth-2/this-time-next-year/
"A gentle, backroads story of an adolescent year in the South of the '30's -- in which a young girl's capacity to love softens the downward path of her parents. Florrie, 15, lives with her father, an unsuccessful tenant farmer, and mother Julia -- generous, untidily appealing, proud, plotting for a move to town, a house with a basement and a furnace, and maybe the good times."
It was a dark and stormy night...
Wiley and Shamash,
ReplyDeleteOf course this is the same brother who had an issue early on in his career over Xerox promoting a black woman over him in their patent department. The politically correct woman Xerox promoted was put in charge of managing an entire department of lawyers without the minor nuisance of holding a law degree. Having been set up to fail, she didn't last long. Kind of like colleges that have much lower standards for minority candidates before letting them flunk out.
Alicia
I have no idea what happened with OUR Affirmative Action System Programmer, but I suspect that he didn't last long in THAT position.
DeleteThat doesn't mean that they didn't find something better for him to do, like MANAGE a group of system programmers after proving that he had no clue what he was doing.
It wouldn't surprise me.
Of course, this isn't the only example I've seen of corporate incompetence. But it was the first one which affected me and the people I worked with directly.
And, trust me, it was a complete slap in the face and a great de-moralizer for our group as well as a few others who had looked up to the system programming job as their next step up.
Anyway, it was enough to make me re-think what I was doing there, and I went on to a much more interesting work (and life in general) in and around Houston, where I lived for pretty much the next 20 years or so.
Speaking of setting people up to fail…
ReplyDeleteI have about 9 - 11 students (out of 34 students between two classes) that the Great State of NC is deliberately setting up to fail on next week's EOG math test. Three are EC students, two were retained last year, and the rest are severely deficient in the basic skills they need to perform on "grade level". However, instead of meeting my student's "individual needs" WHERE THEY ARE I'm expected to teach them material they can't grasp in order to be considered an "effective" teacher. I'm not allowed to test students at a 3rd or 4th grade level in 5th grade. Instead, the Great State of NC has decided that it's far better to allow these students to repeatedly fail YEAR AFTER YEAR than it is to have them performing something well at a lower level. I'm going flaming Rebel next year because I care far more about my students than I care about some damn politician in Raleigh and the stupidity surrounding school letter grades that the Great State of NC has mandated. "Individual Needs". What a crappola load of BS.
Alicia
This comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteThis must be how it starts, I guess. I always wondered how people managed to get from grade to grade without knowing the basics. I knew about social promotion, but it's totally ridiculous to try to teach kids way above their heads.
DeleteI know this from my experience as test "proctor" for the illiterate black basketball players in my ninth grade History class. There is NO WAY those kids should have been in that class.
They needed to be in remedial reading, going through their Dick and Jane books or something more their level.
They couldn't even follow an "oral" presentation from the teacher because they did not understand the words she was using. I figured that out just from giving them "oral" exams. Most of the time they didn't even know what the question meant. It was like giving the test to a first or second grader.
And I WAS NOT a "trained" teacher, so I'm sure teachers should have picked up on this little problem.
I suspect that what the school was doing was just keeping their bodies in school until they were "legally" allowed to quit at 16 or whatever the law was at that time.
Really, though, they quit school around the second grade, but no one seemed to notice or care.
Student Assignment Office Brain
ReplyDelete* (sung to the "Scarecrow" tune)
While we waste away the hours, in CMS' Ivory Tower
Discussing the inane….
And our heads we are a scratch' while
our thoughts are busy hatchin'
If we only had a brain.
Won't unravel assignment riddles for all you individ'les
confused or from state Maine….
With the thoughts we've been thinkin'
Ya'll might think we've been out drinkn'
If we only had a brain.
* (minor 'Dark and Stormy Night' key change…)
We're perplexed why forced busing failed before
But we will plow forth more fur sure
If affluent families leave who cares?
Our jobs our secure so GO, who cares!
* (back to major 'Happy' key change)
We would not be just nuffin' were our heads not full of stuffn'
And our smarts born from bird brain…
We will dance and be merry, cause Scott McCully is a ding-a-derry,
If we only had a brain!
Alicia
Oh, this needs to be posted on the CO...
DeleteMaybe that's what we should do, compose parodies and put them out there.
Maybe we can become ghost writers for Michael Collin's Charlotte Squawks.
I had an entire puppet show with songs for each school board member a few years ago. Tom Tate's theme song was "One Toke Over the Line, Sweet Jesus". Trent Merchant's theme song was "Preppy Pimp". Larry Gavreau's theme song was "I Don't Give a Damn About My Bad Reputation".
DeleteOops..
ReplyDelete'Dark and Stormy Night' key change stanza….
We're perplexed why forced busing failed before
But we will plow forth more fur sure
If affluent families leave who cares?
Our jobs are secure so GO ha, there!
White White Baby (Vanilla White)
ReplyDeleteYo, CMS, let's kick em!
White White Baby, White White Baby
All right stop, shut up and listen
White is needed for our latest mission
Let's just grab a hold of them tightly
Move them around daily and nightly
Will it ever stop? Yo, I don't know
Turn off the lights, at the end of the show
They're the cure for a school full of vandals
Sit them down and make them burn the candles
White White Baby Vanilla, White White Baby Vanilla
White White Baby Vanilla, White White Baby Vanilla
Lordy, does it EVER stop?
ReplyDeleteLook at the latest "blame Whitey" excuse...
I figured if I read this, there would be SOME REASON to blame white people:
http://www.charlotteobserver.com/living/health-family/article22701435.html
"In North Carolina, prostate cancer attacks black men at a startling rate "
Research, including studies in North Carolina, has shown that black men tend to mistrust the medical establishment – in part a legacy of a notorious, four-decade study performed on black men at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. Federal researchers there infected hundreds with syphilis from 1932 to 1972 and watched to see what the disease would do to them.
-----------------
Well, hell, black men were also less likely to believe that we actually landed a man on the moon right after it happened, too. But that didn't make them right.
So why should they believe what doctors tell them about prostate cancer?
And why is it all whitey's fault that they just can't handle the facts?
Where's the "research" in North Carolina that shows that these same men are just flat out ignorant about a lot of OTHER stuff, too?
No one wants to touch that one.
Gawd, this will NEVER end, will it?
Maybe it has SOMETHING to do with their generally deficient educations.
I wonder how well these "cancer deniers" read.
But, no, it has more to do with those Tuskegee experiments than their lack of knowledge in general.
I guess people just cannot (or will not) see the connection between general education (especially in science) and a "health crisis" like this.
Ahhhh.....Larry Gauvreau, Kaye McGarry, Vilma Leake and George Dunlap....
ReplyDeleteGood times, good times.