posted
These distinctions are generally de facto, though, and not de jure. And they can be overcome. In the same way that little girls can grow up to be engineers and doctors, black boys can grow up to be nurses or stockbrokers. There are more obstacles along these less-traveled lines, but they're not impossible to transcend.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
They may not be impossible to transcend, but the de facto nature of the thing points to systemic problems. If most Black kids do not consider being VP to be one of their realistic options, then there is either something genetically about them which causes them to believe this, or it is because of their environment, or some combination.
Whatever part is secondary to the environment (and I tend to think it is all environment) is something which needs to be acknowledged and addressed. Seeing a majority of a given population behave in a certain way tends to make me consider systemic influences to be more (or, at least, as) influential as individual choices.
Posts: 2919 | Registered: Aug 2004
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And here we reach an impasse: at what point do systemic remedies become preferable to individual ones? Sadly, this answer is often modified not per specific case but by general ideological assumptions.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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See I think there *are* positive role black models out there. Aside from my bf, I know quite a few myself, where I work. A lot of them have been the most understanding to *me* specifically because as a woman in engineering I am in an minority just as small if not smaller than their minority.
I think by showing the kids those people who *have* suceeded, and not branding the sucesses as Uncle Toms and turncoats (especially when they clearly aren't and you have no right to apply or imply indirectly as Irami has a sweeping hurtful lable like that) is how we will start to change the systemic condition. There are more professional and college educated blacks today then there were 40 years ago.
Yeah there is the good and the bad in every group, an interesting example that Steve and I noted recently, is a boy on the OU football team, Adrian Peterson. His father is in jail. The coach when recruiting him used his one visit to visit the father rather than the son. What is worth noting, is that both his father and his mother are college educated. The mother is quite successful in her own right though I forget the profession. But the most interesting thing of all, is the crime the father is in jail for: Money Laundering. A traditionally *white-collar* crime that takes a lot of intelligence. However, this father has stayed involved with his son's life even from jail and been able to influence his son's character for good. I'm not saying that it is good, but I'm saying that even at the worst case, upgrading to white-collar crime because of increased education increases the level of parenting involvement, and produces outstanding children like Adrian (who has immense amounts of character on top of being an oustanding athlete) then the outcome is actually a net positive.
AJ (Note: I'm not saying the ends justify the means, I'm saying that the worst case scenario is still improved from what it was before.)
posted
I like to think that the concept and the goal of real democracy end in a community where people are more concerned with what they are giving to their society than what they are receiving.
Posts: 8504 | Registered: Aug 1999
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quote:Not many people in real life share the interests I have. I spend a lot of my time censoring what I say so others will understand, or sniggering at comments that no one else knows or cares about.
As an aside: I don't have to do that with my close RL friends, but I definitely have to censor practically everything I post here. My situation is the complete reverse of yours, Teshi.
Posts: 10886 | Registered: Feb 2000
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I don't mean censor in a "oops can't say that not appropriate" way, I mean as in a, "can't mention that because no one will get it," type of way. I rarely say anything that needs to be censored in a "can't say it" way anyway.
Of course, there are lots of things that would mean nothing to Jatraqueros, too.
It's a totally different community from my real life, and that's what I enjoy.
Posts: 8473 | Registered: Apr 2003
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Can you add a comma in that sentence somewhere Sara, I had to read it three times before it made sense...
I worry too. But, in addition to the general humanity issues though, I have a personal worry for Steve. What happens if he ends up working construction in a seedier Chicago neigborhood where his skin is too light or too dark or he's the wrong ethnicity altogether...
posted
OCPD= Obsessive Compulsive Post Deletion? You know it is an interesting trait that you and Theca share. I'm chalking it up to an MD quirk. Maybe it's because since you are typing your handwriting is legible?
posted
You know, I really didn't intend this as a bash either against Icarus or against Hatrack in general. I'm sorry that it was taken that way and was taken up by others as a place to bash Hatrack.
I really am very interested in the dynamics of this forum. I see web interactions as an important new way that people can communicate and the formation and maintainence of communities like this forum are fascinating to me. In this context, it would be counterproductive for me to judge either the community or the people in it.
The idea that Hatrack contains superior (usually more intelligent) people than those the posters know in real life - I just realized, is it my use of "real life" that makes this sound like an attack? I didn't mean it that way. It was just supposed to be a description of non-internet relations and I really don't like using MeatSpace or any of the other terms that I could think of for this. Certainly, while I see internet interactions as being different from non-internet ones (with some significant things missing but also some added), I think it'd be a mistake to designate them as "not real". - seems to me to be a common thing for people to say. I don't share this perspective, but then I'm also not exactly prominent in the community nor am I engaged in it anyway near the same degree as many of the people here. So I was looking for people's thoughts on this idea and how it affected their relationship to the community.
There's myriad ways to figure out if something is "important" to a person's conceptions. Two ways I think would be useful here are how high it would be on a list of ways you think about or would describe Hatrack and how agitated you would be in the face of contradiction (maybe broken down into subcategories of more superficial contradictions like someone saying that people here aren't really all that smart or funny and more substantive ones like being shown reliable evidence that Hatrackers aren't really superior in these things).
The question of superiority seems to me to be a very important one because membership and participation here are the pretty much solely the result of people's choice to do this as opposed to other things. I'm very interested both in this choice and in the conceptual causes and effects of this choice. I was hoping to get people talking about it from the angle of perceieved superiorty, not to judge, but to explore.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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I didn't so much think your intent was to insult me or make me look bad, and I'm sorry if I overreacted. What annoyed me, though, was that that quote was taken out of context, and I thought that the context was crucial to the meaning of it. This was from a thread where a poster had humbly admitted to a somewhat provincial outlook before beginning a contentious thread, and I was being sympathetic/understanding about that, and pointing out why it was worth it to move past that. The very sentence before the one you quoted is, I think, key:
quote: It can be pretty eye-opening, but once you get over thinking you have to out-knowledge or out-smart everybody, it can make for some pretty rewarding interaction.
and immediately after what you quoted:
quote: It's worth getting used to.
The sentences you quoted, therefore, were less about superiority than they were about what I find rewarding about being here at all.
So again, my response to you is that I believe it's the opposite: rather than it being important to me to believe anything in particular about hatrack, it is the diversity of good stuff here that keeps me coming back. And that's why I've never gotten hooked on a forum that didn't have some connection to the people I know from here.
The other thing is that the internet makes it possible for people who are outside the norm to find more people like them. That can be a negative: pedophiles creating networks, or merely socially inadequate people finding a substitute for getting out of doors. It can also be, if not positive, then at least neutral. In Hatrack, I find people who understand without my explaining things that other people could not, no matter how hard I tried to explain.
Which seems contradictory. I am simultaneously claiming that I find greater diversity in Hatrack, and people who are like me. Paradoxically, both are true.
Posts: 13680 | Registered: Mar 2002
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posted
What I like about Hatrack (and I say this as a new member) is the type of people I find here. I have a fair amount of friends and I wouldn't qualify another of them as being "dumb" or "average"...I go to a good school and there are lots of smart people there. But the majority of the people that I know are not readers. They don't read for pleasure, they don't own books, and they don't appreciate such things. That's something that I have always wanted more in my friends. It's not to say that I don't enjoy the friends I have, because I do. I dearly love them. I also really enjoy being able to discuss books and writing, and I don't have converstions about such things with IRL friends, except for...well, Hobbes. :-) I also really enjoy the kinds of conversations about other things that tend to sprout among book-lovers that are not book-related. It's not at all that I don't enjoy my other friends; they're great. I like them for who they are, and I like interactions with Hatrackers, and I don't think either is necessarily better than the other. Just different.
Posts: 119 | Registered: Oct 2004
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posted
You know, there are a number of things I love about Hatrack. I love that it brings me into contact with intelligent, articulate people who hold opinions that are diametrically opposed to my own. My friends in real life are as on par, intelligence-wise, with the brightest people here, but there is much less diversity of opinion among them--all of them, in terms of their politics and stances on religion, are one flavor or another of Tom Davidson, more or less. Here I'm brought into contact with people, equally intelligent and articulate, that hold a much broader spectrum of opinions/worldviews/etc.
I love the warmth of this place, the community. I typically don't wade into the hug threads and such, but I have come to care deeply about a large number of people here, and feel richer for having known them.
I love the range of ages that are present, and wish that it were broader.
I'm sure there's more, but I want to go and do something else now. Posts: 16059 | Registered: Aug 2000
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posted
How detailed do you want, Icarus? Very briefly, I'd contrast them as follows:
OCD is a mental disorder in which thoughts become fixated (i.e., obsessions) and rituals are devised to ameliorate the stress associated with the obsessions (i.e., compulsions). People with OCD generally understand that the obsessions are not rational, are troubled by them, and may have perfectly normal interpersonal behavior outside of the disorder itself.
In contrast, OCPD is a personality disorder, which means it permeates the entirity of how those affected relate to other people and the world at large. There is no "normal interpersonal behavior outside of the disorder itself," because there is no "outside of the disorder." People with OCPD are generally rigid, inflexible, autocratic, self-righteous, and not at all troubled by their behavior or beliefs, as these seem perfectly correct to them.
With OCD, it is the person affected who is troubled by it. With OCPD, it's everyone else that has to deal with the person affected that is troubled by it.
There's more at the link above, but that is the basics.
[ December 30, 2004, 08:47 PM: Message edited by: Sara Sasse ]
Posts: 2919 | Registered: Aug 2004
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posted
Man, I hated it when they discontinued the Strawberry-Kiwi TomDavidsons. Those were the best!
Posts: 16059 | Registered: Aug 2000
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I know the conversation has moved on, but I wanted to say that I think of Hatrack as my water cooler conversation. I have an office at home and an office at church, and either way there's no one else in the building (or there wasn't until Bob moved and set up his office at my house.) If I saw people during the day, it's because I was doing home, nursing home, or hospital visits, or counseling. None of which compare AT ALL to discussions with friends or colleagues. So I come here. It's not as good as going out with friends, but it's a lifesaver when you work mainly alone.
Posts: 9866 | Registered: Apr 2002
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I totally understand that one, dkw. I was a self-employed accountant for nine years, and now I'm a stay at home writer/lazy person who plays on the internet all day. Posts: 8355 | Registered: Apr 2003
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Mr Squicky, I think that is what people thought, that you were implying that Hatrack was only superior to some people because of failings in their RL...that Hatrack was somehow "less real" than off-line, which belittled those of us who HAVE met other Hatrackers IRL. I have never felt comfortable meeting anyone other than Hatrackers from on-line...and there are a few Hatrackers that I have no desire to meet. I don't like them, and don't really want to meet them.
I do think that I find a lot more people here that I can relate to than in a bar somewhere, or even in my college classes. There are some idiots (IMO), but that is fine....I can always ignore them, like I usually do IRL. On average though I think that a lot of Hatrackers ARE above average, and I enjoy the fact that I don't have to stop every 5 seconds to explain what I mean, or to justify my interest in some things. I do that a lot IRL, because most people just don't "get" it.
I keep weird hours so Hatrack suits me to a T, for some of the very reasons that Irami mentioned. I DO find it funny that on one hand he is denigrating us by saying that Hatrack is the intellectual equalivilent of cow tipping, and on the other hand he claims to enjoy posting here and getting any sort of response to it.
So much for being a snob....his boots are as full of cow patties as anyones are....
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