a thing (and from reading about it, it seems undeniable that it is...)
I've talked to some of my African American friends about this (in California now) and it's been pretty illuminating how they tell their kids don't run down the street near stores, keep your hands out of your pockets in the store...lots of stuff I just can't even fathom growing up with. I had two very good friends who were black growing up (in Missouri then) and I don't remember them doing any of that stuff....they came over to my house ALL the time...I didn't care that they were black....... has the world changed for the worse?
What is the solution?
I'm sort of in the middle....I don't believe people are completely a byproduct of their own work ethic/effort (bootstrappers), and I don't believe people are completely a product of their circumstances. We all know plenty of people who have worked hard and failed/ or succeeded, and people that overcome their circumstances/or squandered them. Both conservatives and liberals are wrong on these two issues and the truth is BOTH.
But what do we do about it?
Also looking over the remaining 1950s group demands:
One possibility would be that instead of Mizzou enrolling 10% black students, they just guarantee the top 10% from any high school in Missouri be given admittance and then need based scholarships. Thus the top 10% of an all ~white school and an all ~black school are admitted regardless of common metrics like ACT/SAT....would that be a more "impartial" way of admitting students without resorting to quotas? That seems a better solution.
The faculty issue is WAY harder....I'm on faculty at a "public ivy" and the faculty is QUITE diverse...but the thing is we have faculty from ALL over the world...we pick the best from other institutions and recruit them here...we rarely raise up on own faculty and we really could care less what their race, gender, etc is.
Hiring additional mental health professionals on a college campus is ALWAYS a good idea...but who pays for that? Retention of marginalized students seems likely to improve with additional mental health professionals and a zero tolerance policy on campus....the only problem with zero tolerance is it sometimes gets good people in trouble wrongly. I've seen this twice with our faculty:
1) A teaching case was presented to an entire medical school class of a 25 y/o homosexual black male from Washington D.C who had AIDS.....a student was irate and thought the lecturer inferred all homosexual black men had AIDS....the faculty was dragged through the mud for 6 months and now teaching cases can have no demographic information (the faculty have united against this and refused to teach as we can't educate on risk factors in this way).
2) Another was accused of racism by a young female African American student who was always an hour and a half late and truly sounded like she was high when she'd show up (red eyes and very slow speech)...she complained that this was racist and it wasn't until drug tested the faculty was exonerated from this.
How do you protect both sides? Wolfe was a poor president for lots of reasons and glad to seem him go which meets demands 1 and 2, thinking through the others...they will be VERY difficult to implement in a meaningful and way that is fair to EVERYONE.
I've talked to some of my African American friends about this (in California now) and it's been pretty illuminating how they tell their kids don't run down the street near stores, keep your hands out of your pockets in the store...lots of stuff I just can't even fathom growing up with. I had two very good friends who were black growing up (in Missouri then) and I don't remember them doing any of that stuff....they came over to my house ALL the time...I didn't care that they were black....... has the world changed for the worse?
What is the solution?
I'm sort of in the middle....I don't believe people are completely a byproduct of their own work ethic/effort (bootstrappers), and I don't believe people are completely a product of their circumstances. We all know plenty of people who have worked hard and failed/ or succeeded, and people that overcome their circumstances/or squandered them. Both conservatives and liberals are wrong on these two issues and the truth is BOTH.
But what do we do about it?
Also looking over the remaining 1950s group demands:
One possibility would be that instead of Mizzou enrolling 10% black students, they just guarantee the top 10% from any high school in Missouri be given admittance and then need based scholarships. Thus the top 10% of an all ~white school and an all ~black school are admitted regardless of common metrics like ACT/SAT....would that be a more "impartial" way of admitting students without resorting to quotas? That seems a better solution.
The faculty issue is WAY harder....I'm on faculty at a "public ivy" and the faculty is QUITE diverse...but the thing is we have faculty from ALL over the world...we pick the best from other institutions and recruit them here...we rarely raise up on own faculty and we really could care less what their race, gender, etc is.
Hiring additional mental health professionals on a college campus is ALWAYS a good idea...but who pays for that? Retention of marginalized students seems likely to improve with additional mental health professionals and a zero tolerance policy on campus....the only problem with zero tolerance is it sometimes gets good people in trouble wrongly. I've seen this twice with our faculty:
1) A teaching case was presented to an entire medical school class of a 25 y/o homosexual black male from Washington D.C who had AIDS.....a student was irate and thought the lecturer inferred all homosexual black men had AIDS....the faculty was dragged through the mud for 6 months and now teaching cases can have no demographic information (the faculty have united against this and refused to teach as we can't educate on risk factors in this way).
2) Another was accused of racism by a young female African American student who was always an hour and a half late and truly sounded like she was high when she'd show up (red eyes and very slow speech)...she complained that this was racist and it wasn't until drug tested the faculty was exonerated from this.
How do you protect both sides? Wolfe was a poor president for lots of reasons and glad to seem him go which meets demands 1 and 2, thinking through the others...they will be VERY difficult to implement in a meaningful and way that is fair to EVERYONE.
