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Black unemployment: Highest in 27 years

Perhaps this is news to you Henrin - slavery is a historical reality. Bringing it up is not asking for a fight. It is merely introducing a part of the historical record.

So is the Jolly Roger flag but just like bring up slavery to counter my argument it wouldn't do much to reach that goal.
 
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I'll do this short and sweet.....Be it white, black, brown or yellow

Public education is a nanny state institution. You can't **** around that. Prisons are another nanny state institution where we shouldn't be tolerating any bull****, but that's whole other discussion.

Schools are where kids spend 40+ hours a week. Unfortunately in many cases they have a more influential role in child development and socialization than the family does. I think allowing a culture of ignorance to exist and become pervasive in our school system borders on criminal malfeasance on the part of our society. Ignoring kids when they **** up is how we got into this mess in the first place. They are free to pursue happiness when they graduate, get a job and start paying taxes. But while they're on a full ride scholarship to the public school system I want to see kids doing good things that will benefit them, not to mention our society as they transition into adulthood.

I'd like see kids graduate from high school knowing how to read and write at the college level, speak multiple languages in addition to English, understand math up through algebra, and be able to manage their own personal finances. I'd like them to understand civics and history to the point where they become critical thinking, active members of our political system. I'd like them to be able to successfully participate in some sort of extra curricular activity that enriches their childhood experience and teaches them character and maturity. In short, I'd be really happy if an American kid could graduate high school and be prepared to either continue on to college or successfully enter the job market. And I'd like to see a culture within the school system that promotes these behaviors and outcomes. Conversely, I'd also like that culture to be intolerant of behaviors that are detrimental to these goals. A culture were it doesn't seem like a reasonable choice to act like a thug, get your girlfriend pregnant, etc, etc...

Well, IMO, if the school is having the more influential role then the parent isn't doing their job in some sense. The teachers can teach and try to motivate these students, but parents are the only ones allowed to discipline them for lack of effort. I'll teach people fairly, but if a student chooses to slack then I'm not going to slow down for them because it hurts those students who are paying attention and can excel.

If the parents are poor then you'd think they'd emphasize hard study to their kids to get them out of lower-class. My mother had me less than two months after HS graduation and was kicked out of the house by my grandfather. I promise you that getting where I am wasn't luck. I had made my career plans by 14 and stuck to them. Instead of playing Nintendo, I put in extra study time to get ahead.

I want to see the much of what you stated, and it starts with the parents.
 
This is a problem, but even when controlling for educational differences and qualifications, there still exists a discrepancy. It's right there in the OP, if you had read carefully. Racism may or may not explain that difference, but clearly everything you've laid out about education here has already been accounted for.

Research clearly demonstrates that employers are evaluating and rewarding the eduction/cognition combination where education is taken as a rough metric or proxy for cognition, but when the two are isolated from each other and studied separately, the reward for the education with cognitive abilities controlled is minimal. What employers really want is smart workers much more so than educated workers.

That report didn't control for cognition. Education and cognition don't go hand in hand.
 
Research clearly demonstrates that employers are evaluating and rewarding the eduction/cognition combination where education is taken as a rough metric or proxy for cognition, but when the two are isolated from each other and studied separately, the reward for the education with cognitive abilities controlled is minimal. What employers really want is smart workers much more so than educated workers.

That report didn't control for cognition. Education and cognition don't go hand in hand.

I have a Masters Degree in Education and I don't have the slightest idea what the hell you are talking about.
 
Its the stereotypes built into our everyday lives. Don't act like you have never heard them before. Mexican people are illegal immigrants, belong to gangs, steal stuff, and are poor, black people are lazy, have "welfare queen" moms, eat fried chicken and watermelon, white people can't jump, blondes are dumb, etc... the list goes on. They aren't true most the time, but because of the stereotypes built up in American society over the years people more quickly jump to these conclusions.

It's funny that you mention stereotypes, in that stereotypes are the victim of stereotyping, as you've described stereotyping. Do you follow? You claim that stereotype are inaccurate most of the time and people believe the stereotypes. Well, research shows that most stereotypes are true and yet believe believe the opposite of them. From the American Psychological Association comes this research-based textbook:


Stereotype Accuracy: Toward Appreciating Group Differences

Social psychology has been dominated over the past 20 years with a focus on error and bias in social perception. By psychologists and lay people alike, stereotypes are assumed to be bad and inaccurate. The idea that stereotypes may have some degree of accuracy has been seen as anathema, and those raising the question of stereotype accuracy have been viewed as racist, sexist, or worse.

Stereotype Accuracy breaks this taboo by presenting research related to stereotype accuracy, arguing that understanding stereotype accuracy is crucial to both social psychology and to its applications (e.g., to improving intergroup relations). The goals of this volume are to reduce commonplace errors in modern social science by challenging the off-hand and undocumented claims appearing in the scholarly literature that stereotypes are "typically" inaccurate, resistant to change, overgeneralized, exaggerated, and generally destructive.
 
So is the Jolly Roger flag but just like bring up slavery to counter my argument it wouldn't do much to reach that goal.

And this statement from you does not even approach the logic of using that flag.
 
I have a Masters Degree in Education and I don't have the slightest idea what the hell you are talking about.

Your statement speaks volumes.
 
Your statement speaks volumes.

Yes it does. It says very loudly that you do not know what you are talking about and its all double talk and has less utilitarian value than a bag of manure.

But then , what else is new?
 
If the average black man portrayed in the media is a "bonafide thug," and one is bombarded with these media messages on a daily basis, you might just fail to hire a black guy because those TV messages are operating in the back of your mind on a subconscious level, and I wouldn't even blame you!

I don't know what TV and other media you're exposed to but from where I sit I see the very opposite process - media is making blacks into brilliant surgeons, chiefs of staff of surgical units, wise police chiefs, learned judges, brilliant defense lawyers, etc. That is the all-pervasive media message.
 
I think our culture, too often, values looks over substance, making it easier for us to quickly judge people based on how they look/dress rather than what really matters, a lot of the time.

Can't let this slide.....

You have a kid that shows up to school wearing a Mohawk haircut that's been dyed green. No big deal right? Kids will be kids and all of that. Except for the fact that by allowing that sort of behavior at school, you've told him and everyone else that it's "normal" and by normalizing that admittedly harmless behavior now it seems reasonable to show up at say, ...a job interview with the same look. So by allowing a counter culture haircut, in effect you've maybe set that kid up for failure later in life.
 
I don't know what TV and other media you're exposed to but from where I sit I see the very opposite process - media is making blacks into brilliant surgeons, chiefs of staff of surgical units, wise police chiefs, learned judges, brilliant defense lawyers, etc. That is the all-pervasive media message.

the implication from your criticism being obvious - that there simply are no black surgeons, no black chief os staffs of surgical units, no black police chiefs who are wise, no black learned judges, no black brilliant defense lawyers, etc.

Do ever tire of this garbage?

And that is not a serious question.
 
Can't let this slide.....

You have a kid that shows up to school wearing a Mohawk haircut that's been dyed green. No big deal right? Kids will be kids and all of that. Except for the fact that by allowing that sort of behavior at school, you've told him and everyone else that it's "normal" and by normalizing that admittedly harmless behavior now it seems reasonable to show up at say, ...a job interview with the same look. So by allowing a counter culture haircut, in effect you've maybe set that kid up for failure later in life.

I taught kids for 33 years. I learned its far more important what is inside a kids had than what is on top of it. But thats just me I suppose.
 
Yes it does. It says very loudly that you do not know what you are talking about and its all double talk and has less utilitarian value than a bag of manure.

But then , what else is new?

Pity you can't answer the question though. Instead, you attack the questioner and portray yourself as the martyr. Looks like political lockstep with the left to me.
 
I don't believe that. There's more blacks in college than in jail.

Different stereotypes apply to women than to men.


More black US men 'in jail than college'

There are more black men in jail in the United States than there are in higher education, a new study has found.

The report, by the Washington-based Justice Policy Institute, says the number of black men behind bars has grown by more than five times in the past 20 years.

According to the study, there were 791,600 black men imprisoned in America in the year 2000, compared to 603,032 enrolled in college or university.​
 
Different stereotypes apply to women than to men.


More black US men 'in jail than college'

There are more black men in jail in the United States than there are in higher education, a new study has found.

The report, by the Washington-based Justice Policy Institute, says the number of black men behind bars has grown by more than five times in the past 20 years.

According to the study, there were 791,600 black men imprisoned in America in the year 2000, compared to 603,032 enrolled in college or university.​

your information is dated.

More black men in jail or college? An old “fact” revisited – Martin's Gumbo Ya-Ya
 
Well, IMO, if the school is having the more influential role then the parent isn't doing their job in some sense. The teachers can teach and try to motivate these students, but parents are the only ones allowed to discipline them for lack of effort. I'll teach people fairly, but if a student chooses to slack then I'm not going to slow down for them because it hurts those students who are paying attention and can excel.

If the parents are poor then you'd think they'd emphasize hard study to their kids to get them out of lower-class. My mother had me less than two months after HS graduation and was kicked out of the house by my grandfather. I promise you that getting where I am wasn't luck. I had made my career plans by 14 and stuck to them. Instead of playing Nintendo, I put in extra study time to get ahead.

I want to see the much of what you stated, and it starts with the parents.

Yes, ideally the parents should be the ultimate motivators and disciplinarians of their children. And poor parents do have a greater incentive to take this role seriously, stressing the value of education to their children and being active in their academic lives, so that they can also have a better life when their child becomes a successful and wealthy doctor/engineer etc. This attitude is prevalent among many immigrant families I know, and it is admirable -- they enter the U.S poor and become comfortably upper-middle class in 20-30 years simply by drilling the value of education into their children and refusing to accept less than excellent grades on their report cards.
But this culture, of utmost appreciation for education, doesn't exist among African American families. Most black children are now raised by single mothers who are often too busy trying to make ends meet for themselves and their children to pay attention to how their children are getting along in school. Even in two parent households, it is often the case that one parent has to work two jobs to meet the needs of the family and has no time to monitor their children. For this reason, so many black children don't get the support they need at home in order to succeed in school and are more likely to be influenced by negative peer pressure. This is where schools should step in. Instead of condemning black parents for being absent from their children's educational development, we would better off looking at where schools can fill that void. One program, KIPP, has made strides in this regard. With longer school days and significant teacher involvement in student's lives, they've increased test scores and college attendance rates in some low-income communities. Expanding this sort of service to more at-risk students would present some major challenges, especially in the current public education environment. But we can at least learn a thing or two from programs like KIPP and work through those some of those challenges, thus creating a more positive, productive culture among future black adults instead of vilifying their parents for their shortcomings.
 
I'd like see kids graduate from high school knowing how to read and write at the college level, speak multiple languages in addition to English, understand math up through algebra, and be able to manage their own personal finances. I'd like them to understand civics and history to the point where they become critical thinking, active members of our political system. I'd like them to be able to successfully participate in some sort of extra curricular activity that enriches their childhood experience and teaches them character and maturity. In short, I'd be really happy if an American kid could graduate high school and be prepared to either continue on to college or successfully enter the job market. And I'd like to see a culture within the school system that promotes these behaviors and outcomes. Conversely, I'd also like that culture to be intolerant of behaviors that are detrimental to these goals. A culture were it doesn't seem like a reasonable choice to act like a thug, get your girlfriend pregnant, etc, etc...

It won't happen. Everyone is not like you. Half the nation has an IQ below 98. Many quite far below 98. You're setting your expectations based on your life and what you see in the social circles you travel through. Most people's social circles are bounded by IQ, that is they don't interact much with people 2o point above and 20 points below their own IQ.
 
Can't let this slide.....

You have a kid that shows up to school wearing a Mohawk haircut that's been dyed green. No big deal right? Kids will be kids and all of that. Except for the fact that by allowing that sort of behavior at school, you've told him and everyone else that it's "normal" and by normalizing that admittedly harmless behavior now it seems reasonable to show up at say, ...a job interview with the same look. So by allowing a counter culture haircut, in effect you've maybe set that kid up for failure later in life.

All of this may be true. Nothing here, however, contradicts what i've stated in my post - which is that social norms and social expectations too often focus on the surface, rather than on the substance. I'm not encouraging an employer to hire someone regardless of how he or she dresses (although ideally i believe how someone looks should be irrelevant to their job performance). I was merely making an observation.
 
your information is dated.]

A one year blip. That's fine. Notice how close the numbers are. Whether it's "more" or "less" is not as important as the fact that the two categories are fluctuating around parity. It's the parity balance that speaks volumes. Things are not suddenly brighter if the year to year numbers slip and suddenly there are 1,234 more black men in college than in prison at any given moment.

What happens when you look at the numbers of college graduates versus ex-cons in the total black male population? This takes the analysis away from a momentary snapshot in time and looks at life histories.

The stereotype is not inaccurate.
 
Pity you can't answer the question though. Instead, you attack the questioner and portray yourself as the martyr. Looks like political lockstep with the left to me.



the real pity is that just because you prostrate yourself before the same altar as River - you dare not tell him that his comments are just so much double talk and malarkey.
 
Yes, ideally the parents should be the ultimate motivators and disciplinarians of their children. And poor parents do have a greater incentive to take this role seriously, stressing the value of education to their children and being active in their academic lives, so that they can also have a better life when their child becomes a successful and wealthy doctor/engineer etc. This attitude is prevalent among many immigrant families I know, and it is admirable -- they enter the U.S poor and become comfortably upper-middle class in 20-30 years simply by drilling the value of education into their children and refusing to accept less than excellent grades on their report cards.
But this culture, of utmost appreciation for education, doesn't exist among African American families. Most black children are now raised by single mothers who are often too busy trying to make ends meet for themselves and their children to pay attention to how their children are getting along in school. Even in two parent households, it is often the case that one parent has to work two jobs to meet the needs of the family and has no time to monitor their children. For this reason, so many black children don't get the support they need at home in order to succeed in school and are more likely to be influenced by negative peer pressure. This is where schools should step in. Instead of condemning black parents for being absent from their children's educational development, we would better off looking at where schools can fill that void. One program, KIPP, has made strides in this regard. With longer school days and significant teacher involvement in student's lives, they've increased test scores and college attendance rates in some low-income communities. Expanding this sort of service to more at-risk students would present some major challenges, especially in the current public education environment. But we can at least learn a thing or two from programs like KIPP and work through those some of those challenges, thus creating a more positive, productive culture among future black adults instead of vilifying their parents for their shortcomings.

I don't buy that the parents see their kids so little that they can't emphasize education.
 
EDIT: Also when one looks at education, we must look at the a phenomenon which has been called "The Dumbing Down of America" (Commentary: The dumbing down of America | McClatchy) (The Dumbing-Down of America - HUMAN EVENTS) (The Dumbing Down of America | Common Dreams) which efffects all people as it leaves kids memorizing facts and regurgitating them on paper and the kids then think that they are smart. The game has been changed from one of actual knowledge to one of memorization. If you can memorize the most information and regurgitate it the correct way, then you are considered "smart." However, many of these kids that can do that cannot think independently or critically.

I think that your comment is quite interesting. It would be good if we could develop the skills that you mention but the problem is that schools don't know how to teach independent thinking and critical thinking. Secondly, when we analyze how critical thinking actually operates we find that much of it is based on analytic reasoning where "fact" are compared and differences spotted. For this to occur one needs a solid base of knowledge, you know, those memorized facts. Here's an example - memorize your times tables. Once you've got them committed to memory then you are equipped to detect patterns and tricks which allow you to extend your knowledge beyond what you've memorized. If you know your #10 times table then you'll have no problem with the #100 times table and the #1,000 times table. If you don't know your #10 times table, then you're going to stumble around trying to do multiplication calculations based on 100 and 1,000.
 
the real pity is that just because you prostrate yourself before the same altar as River - you dare not tell him that his comments are just so much double talk and malarkey.

Hmmmm....Our public education system aka "government schools" is nothing more than a shifty pyramid scheme bent on Marxist socialization.

The only tangible things that are accomplished in K-12 today is teaching kids how to vote for democrats and fornicate with one another. I guess in some places they still teach kids how to play sports, but to my mind that's not remotely enough to redeem the evils of the system.

Double talk and malarkey??
 
It's funny that you mention stereotypes, in that stereotypes are the victim of stereotyping, as you've described stereotyping. Do you follow? You claim that stereotype are inaccurate most of the time and people believe the stereotypes. Well, research shows that most stereotypes are true and yet believe believe the opposite of them. From the American Psychological Association comes this research-based textbook:
Stereotype Accuracy: Toward Appreciating Group Differences

Social psychology has been dominated over the past 20 years with a focus on error and bias in social perception. By psychologists and lay people alike, stereotypes are assumed to be bad and inaccurate. The idea that stereotypes may have some degree of accuracy has been seen as anathema, and those raising the question of stereotype accuracy have been viewed as racist, sexist, or worse.

Stereotype Accuracy breaks this taboo by presenting research related to stereotype accuracy, arguing that understanding stereotype accuracy is crucial to both social psychology and to its applications (e.g., to improving intergroup relations). The goals of this volume are to reduce commonplace errors in modern social science by challenging the off-hand and undocumented claims appearing in the scholarly literature that stereotypes are "typically" inaccurate, resistant to change, overgeneralized, exaggerated, and generally destructive.

Yes, I follow what you are saying. However, whether a stereotype is accurate or not does not really affect my argument. There are more negative stereotypes put forth about blacks and some other minorities in America than whites, and I think that contributes to blacks having a lower amount of success in the Labor markets. Personally, I think that using stereotypes accuracy as a way to defend the status quo would be incorrect. While you could say that SOME stereotypes are accurate on the average, and some are more accurate than others, you also have to take into account that with these broad generalities there is a high degree of variability. Lets say for arguements sake, and this is pure speculation, that the reason for the stereotype of most blacks being lazy is really because most of them really are lazy, and this means that they SHOULD have more people unemployed, this is unacceptable to me because this stereotype while accurate of the group would lack any sort of precision if you applied it to an individual. One black person could be living as a bum on the street on food stamps while one could be president of the country. Its really a case of accuracy vs. precision.
 
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