Prof corrects minority students’ capitalization accused of racism

The term racist has lost all meaning in my opinion. If you can just use it whenever you want as a minority to get your way when it is being obstructed then it has ceased to be a cry to out injustice and become a tool of racism.

What's even more infuriating is that if you point out the racism of the people yelling racism, you are told that blacks can't be racist or some nonsense like that. It is hypocrisy to the extreme and we need to seriously do something about this. If left unchecked this will tear our country apart with an unprecedented race war. It almost happened with the Zimmerman trial. With a few more stories like the one in the OP popping up, another trial or event similar to the Zimmerman one, could actually spark a race war.

As usual, when you scrub the political slant from this type of post - the actual story is often more complex than "someone corrected my grammar" and thus they are racist. More details on the sit-in can be found at the actual source of the event:

dailybruin.com...

Let's stay above the petty fray ATS.

reply to post by shillrus

Dear shillrus,

Welcome to ATS! Nice to have you here and I hope to run into you some more.

I understand your words "Let's stay above the fray," and I eagerly checked your link to see how completely this silliness could be disregarded. When I got there, I found that no one seemed to know what the fray was about.

Sure, there were the standard comments about "Hostile environment," and all the other phrases that editors always add to these pieces. But there wasn't a complaint about anything. I didn't see the punctuation episode discussed or any other identifiable trigger for the outrage.

Then, I saw it. A link to another article! Surely, that was where all would be revealed. Sure enough, halfway down, we find this.

The majority of complaints brought to the different committees and people involved hiring, advancement and retention disputes.

So minority professors want faster promotions, more protection against dismissal, and the addition of more minority staff.

How do the students get involved in the professor's dispute? I wonder if the teachers discuss it with their students? Is it possible that they encourage the student's belief that people of color are being victimized, and that they must be on constant guard against it? And in the meantime, support the professor's demands?

With respect,
Charles1952

reply to post by shillrus


From the linked report itself:

We recognize that not all of the incidents of perceived discrimination of which faculty members complain will be actionable. Several faculty members referenced the notion of “microaggressions,” which researchers have defined as “subtle verbal and nonverbal insults directed toward non-Whites, often done automatically and unconsciously. They are layered insults based on one’s race, gender, class, sexuality, language, immigrationstatus, phenotype,accent, or surname.”

It is not clear to us whether any workable definition of discriminatory conduct is capable of capturing every such microaggression experienced by a minority faculty member. We also recognize that advancement and tenure decisions are notoriously subjective.

This report is about faculty actions toward each other and vague at best. He said, she said with a big dose of "Well they said it so it must be true." Also it speaks of 2 specific incidents which seem highly subjective and difficult to prove anyway.

Seems more like corporate infighting than racism to me.

Where did this myth come from that a certain group of people are under-privileged because of their skin color? I mean seriously, was it really all the worlds racists working together to stop the sub-saharans from building amazing ancient structures, or did they just never build them in the first place?

Think about it.

Trust me. From my own professional experience I know that if this guy was doing his job, it wasn't just the minority papers seeing the sweet red ink. No one these days seems to know the first thing about how to correctly capitalize and punctuate, and I'm not referring to places like these which are informal. I'm talking about in so-called professional communications where you'd think people would make an effort.

8675309jenny
Where did this myth come from that a certain group of people are under-privileged because of their skin color? I mean seriously, was it really all the worlds racists working together to stop the sub-saharans from building amazing ancient structures, or did they just never build them in the first place?

Think about it.

I think it has less to do with their skin color than it does with their cultures and where they are situated geographically.

Some cultures are set up to prosper no matter where they are or happen to go - think of Asians, Germans, Jews.

Some cultures have a hard time succeeding unless the individuals in those cultures either change cultural practices or adopt new ones.

It's also possible for formerly successful cultures to erode over time and collapse - think Roman culture and now, Western Civilization/American culture.

Those African tribal cultures that once showed promise either died out when the climate changed or trade moved away or they were squashed when the Europeans colonized them or they have failed to change to adapt to the modern world. And while Africa is resource rich, it isn't set up to make exploiting those resources very economically viable, so development hasn't been very easy for the most part further retarding cultural growth and development. Also, when the Europeans carved up Africa, they ignored tribal boundaries, so now you have bitter enemies fighting over artificially drawn countries further retarding growth and development ...

"You're not dumb. He's just a racist!"

The "R word" is the only word that I think can illicit the same internal response of anger and anxiety as the "N word." Today people throw around R with the same flair that white trash throw around N.

When people react this way and it gets this kind of attention....just encourages this behavior.

The Prof should keep on doing his job.

Students do sit-ins over dumb stuff all the time. This is just another pointless one.

“A hostile campus climate has been the norm for Students of Color in this class throughout the quarter as our epistemological and methodological commitments have been repeatedly questioned by our classmates and our instructor,” wrote the group in a statement to the college.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Oh man, LOL that's a good one.

I'm university educated and I had no idea what "epistemological" means. But then again, I went to school to be an engineer and actually CONTRIBUTE something to the world, rather than seek some bull*hit degree in something like the study of how knowledge reflects the understanding & influence of the angle of how the sun shines out of my ass....

Haha, the world is headed straight to hell.

reply to post by charles1952


Thanks for the welcome. You have made some valid inquiries which I hope we see answered as this issue plays out over the next several months. My guess is that there is indeed a complex set of issues that impact both the faculty and students - whether or not they are valid concerns remains to be seen. At the very least, it is better to have these types of issues brought out into the open for discussion in lieu of letting them fester to the detriment of everyone. As always, open communication is key and oft a great deterrent to avoidable escalation.

reply to post by Bassago


The article is obviously a bit slanted. However, by my obervations, I believe this to be a true phenomena. Perpetual victims are perpetually seeking new reaons to "feel" victimized. In this case, I believe they are being victimized, but not by who they suppose. Who is it then you ask? By their own community leaders and their coddling ilk who seek to lower performance standards for simply having evolved in different places on earth. The fact that they can't see it, means their education has failed them thus far.

Can we agree that activist clubs at any university are a joke? What happened to joining clubs centered around your area of study? Math club, astronomy club, etc. Now you have all these wannabe grass-root activists (read: leftist militants) engaging in political clubs who aren't even taking political science courses.

I blame the local Board of Education and Deans for not being more precise in their language for charter acceptance for clubs. As an example, LGBT clubs are by their nature discriminatory against heterosexuals as their purpose isn't to be entirely inclusive rather, it's to further the agenda of a minority and not the academic interests of the entire student body.

Public funding supports the use of university facilities, so I believe it's an abuse to use them for such a narrow, specific purpose. I don't believe "Call 2 Action" is a 501(c)3, so I should hope students aren't using university facilities for the purposes of furthering a for profit companies political agenda. More importantly, what kind of example does a protest which substantially disrupts the educational environment of other students serve?

Asktheanimals

BASSPLYR
epistemology and methodology

It was a sesquipedalian extravaganza extrapolating mouthfuls of meaningless dichotomous diatribe to excuse their extracurricular extroversion.
know what I'm saying?

I had to google sesquipedalian, well done.

Mon1k3r
I say let the stupid be stupid, the reactionary the reactionary. If you ever find yourself in a situation where everyone else just makes you look good because they're so bad, what's wrong with that? If the idiots run the show, then you can just play dumb, take good notes, and one day replace them with yourself.

Stupid doesn't hurt you until someone hurts you with it.

It's his job to correct papers. And you can't just pass them by with an A when they're not up to par.

Diabolical
I blame the parents with how ignorant children and teenagers are today. Even at the school I go to, you have black kids always bringing up race and staring you down like it is your fault. I did nothing to you. And I always have to keep my mouth shut as to not start a riot. Lovely, isn't it. That people in society still can not get along with one another.

Oh, because they voted for poison number A, not poison number B, during the time they kids were in grade school?

Give it up!

Its the education system thats at fault, ie...trace back to the Poison elected.

Blaming the people and those without power, in this world, is sin. You answer for it in the end, because it shows you don't care about people and have no understanding and empathy.

Its never the people's fault, even if they down right break and commit crimes, these asshat evil doers should not be traumatizing them and poking them with sticks, they should be working together for a wonderful abundant and advanced world. But they think their job is to poke you with a stick until you break, and then hand you over to their dark hat friends.

Unity_99
Its never the people's fault, even if they down right break and commit crimes

All credibility lost.

DerbyGawker

Unity_99
Its never the people's fault, even if they down right break and commit crimes

All credibility lost.

Really, anyone who thinks otherwise in this world, doesn't understand it. And I've been siding with humanity all my life and posting. I consider it a crime against humanity to not have understanding and compassion for all people here and point the blame where it rightfully belongs ,and Love, Heal and Help all the children of earth.

Anyone who breaks and commits crimes in an inner city, after living in trauma conditions when the whole economic and world structure is an artificial chess game played out by negative ETS and their minions (our PTB, ritual murderers) to harm souls, but the ones we can blame are the human leaders, who are supposed to serve the people, AND who had really good genetics, educations, opportunities, but alas, are more insane than any human anywhere.

Those who dig holes for people to fall in are 100% guilty. Not their intended victims. The value of earth school is lost because its broken.

reply to post by Unity_99


People are ultimately responsible for their own actions.