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CDAK

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Posts posted by CDAK

  1. 4 minutes ago, Captainant said:

    Can you copy/paste that article? From the first few paragraphs before the paywall there was no reference to different timelines to return to in-person depending on race. 

    Spoiler

    EVANSTON, Ill.—This summer, school superintendent Devon Horton told the residents of this city north of Chicago that for “oppressed minorities,” the coronavirus was only the latest chapter in their long history of persecution—the pandemic of “inequity and racism and classism” had been holding them down for a lot longer.

    In recognition of the impact of racism, Dr. Horton said, Evanston schools would give students from marginalized groups first priority for seats for in-person learning and all other students would be taught remotely. This is “about equity for Black and brown students, for special education students, for our LGBTQ students,” he said during a public meeting, held via Zoom.

    The comment generated angry letters and death threats from both residents and nonresidents of Evanston, Dr. Horton said in subsequent interviews. He said he reported the threats to police and is considering getting a security detail for members of his staff. He also said that a disproportionate number of Black and Latino students are struggling in school and it is that struggle—not their race—which will get them priority.

    “There’s a big fight to be had and it’s going to be uncomfortable for a while,” he said.

    Evanston is a college town, home to many professors who work at Northwestern University, which hugs the shoreline of Lake Michigan. In 2016, voters supported Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump here by more than 10 to 1. Last year, the city created a first-in-the-nation reparations fund for Black residents.

    Even this city, which has been proactive around the issue of race relations, has been overtaken by demands for change sparked by the May killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer. Protests this summer called for racial equity in general and an end to police brutality against Black people. That public rage has led to a shake-up at schools, which are struggling to accommodate competing demands from teachers, parents and students. Resolutions and curriculum reviews from just a year or two ago, which were designed to recognize the harm done to Black people in America, are no longer considered enough by some. Calls for deliberation have been labeled obstructionist and racist.

    Giving students preferential treatment on the basis of race has faced legal challenges elsewhere, such as in college admissions. Dr. Horton frames the issue as addressing an achievement gap that falls along racial lines in his district. In Evanston, Black and Latino students are about one-third as likely as white students to meet college readiness benchmarks, according to a 2019 Evanston schools report. White families have average household incomes three times that of Black and Latino families here, according to federal data.

    Similar debates are popping up across the country. In July, in the Miami-Dade County Public Schools district in Florida, school board member Marta Perez voted against a proposal to enhance the teaching of antiracism. She said the proposal duplicated a recent effort and was a waste of resources. She called the vote “political grandstanding.” The proposal prompted hundreds of angry emails and letters to board members. It was approved 8-1. Dr. Perez was the lone vote against.

    In June, the school board in Montgomery County, Va., debated a resolution condemning racism against Black people in particular, and urged the community to “stop racial injustice.” Two board members raised concerns that they didn’t have enough time to review the resolution and that it might be exclusionary because it didn’t include other minorities. The measure ultimately passed unanimously but about 200 protesters came to the next school board meeting to make their displeasure with those two members known. Neither board member returned calls seeking comment.

    The difference between past and present calls for racial equity is that advocates, such as in Evanston, are demanding that Americans choose sides: Are you racist or antiracist?

    This concept has roots in critical race theory, which was developed in the 1970s in law schools. Its adherents say that America is fundamentally racist and call for white people to acknowledge the advantages of being born white.

    President Trump recently characterized such new school curricula on race as filled with “hateful lies about this country.” In a tweet last month and again in the recent presidential debate, he condemned critical race theory. Last month, he said he would create a national commission to promote a “pro-American curriculum that celebrates the truth about our nation’s great history.”

    The national conversation in schools around race hasn’t been this pointed since the 1970s, when a series of court orders forced urban school districts around the nation to bus students to integrate schools, said Alvin Tillery Jr., a political scientist at Northwestern University and the director of the school’s center for diversity and democracy. He is also a resident of Evanston.

    Dr. Horton grew up in public housing in Chicago and was helping to lead a school district in Kentucky before he came to Evanston this summer with a mandate from the school board to close the achievement gap between Black and white students. He oversees nearly 8,000 students in prekindergarten through eighth grade.

     

    In July, during a public Zoom meeting, he said that all students would begin the school year online. Later this fall, should conditions permit, a fraction of students would be able to return to the classroom. The rest would continue to take class online.

    After the slew of angry letters aimed at Dr. Horton, the school board responded with an open letter to the community.

    “When you challenge policies and protocols established to ensure an equitable experience for Black and brown students,” the board said in its letter, “you are part of a continuum of resistance to equity and desire to maintain white supremacy.”

    Corinna Raimondo, of Evanston, started a petition to bring all children back to school. It was signed by more than 700 people. Dozens of residents who objected to the petition, in a Facebook chat group for parents of Evanston children, attacked those who support it as privileged, entitled, “opportunity hoarders.”

    Dr. Raimondo, who is a scientist from Italy, an adjunct professor at Northwestern, and a mother of three young children including a son in the first grade, said she didn’t fully appreciate the politics of race when she helped to organize the petition.

    “I’m being told to just shut up,” she said. “I don’t think that is right. Everybody should have the right to express an opinion.”

    Karla Thomas, a Ph.D. student at Northwestern studying education and the mother of two children in Evanston elementary schools, attributes the fight in Evanston to economic insecurity. The pandemic has made even those who otherwise support such measures less willing to embrace changes when so much else looks threatening and uncertain, she said. Ms. Thomas said she believes Black and Latino children need to be prioritized to unwind the impact of structural racism.

    Dr. Horton said antiracism programs in Evanston include training teachers to recognize and close the gap in expectations for white and Black students and to be sensitive to the students’ cultures. As part of this work, he is considering dropping a national math test in sixth grade to determine which students are placed in advanced math classes. Currently, most of those students are wealthy and white, Dr. Horton said. He hasn’t yet determined how placements would be made.

    In addition, he would like to see teachers stop using the completion of homework as a tool to assign grades, since some students have more support than others. When school districts went remote this past spring due to the pandemic, for example, many stopped grading work because they recognized that some students’ homes might not be conducive for schoolwork.

    “We don’t want to penalize students for what their home life might be,” he said.

    Dr. Horton has hired a dean of culture and climate and a diversity hiring specialist for the district. He wants the teaching staff to reflect the demographics of the district, which is about 23% Black and 21% Hispanic. Currently, 13% of the district’s teachers are Black and 9% are Hispanic.

    Every teacher in his district will be required to take antiracist training, he said. The expectation will be that they should teach and grade equitably. Most are now, Dr. Horton said. Teachers who are not hitting the district’s goals will be “coached up,” he said.

    The Evanston teachers union didn’t return calls seeking comment.

    Dr. Horton said he wouldn’t hire a teacher who didn’t support the district’s antiracist agenda and said he doesn’t believe teachers should be licensed by the state if they aren’t trained in antiracism.

    “If you’re not antiracist, we can’t have you in front of our students,” he said.

    Sure, it's in the second paragraph.

  2. 1 hour ago, Captainant said:

    If all you've ever known is privilege, then equality feels like oppression. 

    This is quippy and a good soundbite but I don't think it's reflective of what people are concerned about in K-12 schools.

    Can School be ‘Antiracist’? A New Superintendent in Evanston, Ill., Has a Plan - WSJ

    This school district outside Chicago prioritized in-person learning for black and brown kids, and special ed and LGBTQ+ kids. If you are white and straight, you learn remotely. If you're black or brown, you can come back to school. Is segregating kids by race and allowing them back in person based on their race what equality looks like and white people are just so used to privilege that it feels like oppression?

  3. I'm not insisting that there are "CRT professors." I really don't care. "Professor," "doctor," "cosseted butterfly," whatever term you want to use is fine. This is tangential.

    I thought CRT was prevalent in DEI initiatives, at least at my company. You say, "that's impossible, by definition DEI initiatives cannot be based on CRT." I think you're drawing too fine (and blurry) a distinction. But, I'll use "antiracism" in lieu of CRT going forward when discussing the basis for certain DEI initiatives if that's allowed by the professors.

    8 minutes ago, Pancho said:

    There is no word or language to call this person other than a regular professor (or Dr. ________).  It feels as if you want a one-word description and that's just not the case.  A prof could use CRT for 1 research paper and never use CRT in her/his research ever again.  Would you consider that person a "CRT professor?"

    So yes, you'll need to specifically refer to which prof and which research project they used CRT because there is no 1 size fits all "CRT prof."  That just doesn't exist bro. 

    giphy.gif

     

  4. 10 minutes ago, Pancho said:

    You keep insisting there are CRT profs and I'm telling you no, there are not.  One doesn't "study" CRT per se rather they study how CRT can be applied to social situations to explain what or why.   

    This is false. Quote my comments insisting there are CRT professors. I'm happy to refer to professors that study how CRT can be applied to social situations with whatever language is appropriate. I still don't know what that is. It seems like there is no shorthand. I have to type "professor who studies how CRT can be applied to social situations" every time I want to reference a professor who is involved with CRT.

  5. 4 hours ago, Pancho said:

    There’s not really such thing as a “CRT professor.”  CRT is just a theory/framework.  There might be a prof who maybe teaches a grad class dissecting CRT and educates how to apply this theory critically, but CRT isn’t a discipline so there are no “CRT professors.”

    You're being coy and pedantic. Is a "professor who studies CRT" acceptable nomenclature? What about a "professor who leverages CRT"? Twice compared it to philosophy and I think? it's fine to say "philosophy professor." But maybe that's incorrect terminology as well.

    In your opinion, is it possible for a DEI initiative to leverage or be based on CRT? Perhaps the answer is "no." Maybe I should have said some DEI initiatives are based on antiracism. That is, I should have used "antiracism" instead of "CRT." 

    3 hours ago, TwiceHorn said:

    OK, based on I guess is fair.  

    I guess I should mention that I was taught torts by an adherent to the Critical Legal Studies movement.  He didn't try to indoctrinate all the students in the class with CLS, but he did bring it up on several occasions.  We were smart enough to understand that it was one of several views on any matter on which it was offered.  A lot of us kind of made fun of him because it was perceived as a fringey, radical school of thought. 

    What it boiled down to was that any slight or perceived inequity in the law was always "traceable" to "the man."  It was too liberal at the time for even liberally oriented students. But it was interesting.  And it made me aware that there are at least potential inequities built into the law and that it often favors the one with the gold, so to speak.

    Exposure of students, at least at the college level, and probably at advanced high school level, to things like CRT or even CLS (which is likely too legally nuanced for anyone but law students) probably isn't going to poison their minds any more than study of Karl Marx.  Or that sex ed is going to turn students into raving sex maniacs (tip, they don't need sex ed for that).

    If people think any sort of critical studies are wrong, they should be willing to hash it out in public fora rather than preempt it altogether.  If you are afraid of what it teaches, then I ask what are you trying to hide?

    I don't like being called "racist" or "white supremacist" anymore than the next whitey, but I have to admit that I have some blind spots and we all do because we can't walk a  mile in another man's shoes.  Those terms are losing some of their poison to me.  The goal of helping to eliminate those racial blind spots is laudable and if teaching the existence and a light overview of CRT helps with that, which I think it does or should, then I am ok with it.

    I feel like you really want to tell stories about Harvard or Penn or whatever school you named earlier and CLS. I actually find the anecdotes somewhat interesting, so please keep posting them. But, I have no idea why you're responding to my post to convey your anecdotes.

    • Hook 'Em 2
  6. 7 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

    I mean, you are aware that UT has been bringing speakers on controversial subjects to campus for, I dunno, a hundred years or so?

    Just like every other such speaker, people can take what they like and leave the rest.  DEI is not some indoctrination camp.

    Yeah, of course. I’m not sure how that’s relevant. I was just trying to answer the question posed to me - what DEI initiative was based on CRT.

  7. 26 minutes ago, Pancho said:

    If I'm writing a research paper and using CRT as a framework, then no, I'm not citing Kendi.  Kendi is more Anti-Racist.  That's not what CRT is analyzing.  With that said, I can see why Kendi was brought in to speak to your company based on his background. 

    Which specific DEI initiatives are based on CRT?  

    Bringing Kendi to talk to us and tell us about his philosophy and how we should adjust our behavior.

    I thought Kendi was a CRT professor. So, a DEI initiative to bring a CRT professor to instruct us on how to behave and his philosophy would be a DEI initiative based on CRT.

    If Kendi is not a CRT professor, great. In that case, I obviously don't understand the difference between antiracism, CRT, and how either one is reflected in DEI initiatives. We recently had a mandatory session on intersectionality that was taught by our HR dept. It seemed very familiar to the tenets of CRT that you and Donkey posted. But maybe there's a distinction that I'm missing. If there were clear distinctions someone could provide, that would probably help. 

  8. 15 minutes ago, Pancho said:

    No, CRT isn't peppered into HR.

    I'm not sure why yall are trying to say CRT is the same as DEI initiatives.  They are not. 

    Is there a clean distinction that you can provide?

    My company's HR/DEI team has brought Dr. Kendi to talk to us twice (virtually). Isn't he a CRT guy? I think my perspective is that DEI initiatives certainly can be based on something other than CRT. But at least some DEI initiatives are based on CRT and are in corporate HR departments.

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  9. 23 minutes ago, DefinitelyNotHollywoodColt said:

    were you not interested in having an honest discussion about wealth disparity between races? i felt like my chart was a pretty good @Johnny Sack summation, no?

    Wealth is built up over time and passed down over generations. Thus, discrimination yesterday can affect wealth today. I think historical discrimination probably plays a decent-sized role in the different wealth outcomes across race. 

    Compare the wealth chart to the income chart. The differences across race are smaller. Whites aren't at the top, either by median income or mean income. Asians are at the top. Thus, I'd expect Asian wealth outcomes to increase year after year.

    I also think the primary reason Asian income outcomes are highest is cultural. I don't think there's systemic discrimination providing Asians a leg-up. But that's what people espousing "all racial group outcomes must be equal" would have you believe.

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  10. 1 minute ago, DefinitelyNotHollywoodColt said:

    your 3 old will spend 90+% of her time communicating with other human beings through a screen, unfortunately.*

    *but i do share your concern regarding stunted interpersonal communication...sadly i just think they have a ton of other stuff working against them there that's much worse.

    That's probably true about the amount of comms via a screen. But language skills and the ability to read non-verbal facial cues is important (maybe just as important) when communicating via a screen for video comms.

  11. I realize it's easy to make fun of adults who will or won't wear a mask or care about whether others do or don't.

    My 3 year old has been wearing a mask for 8 hours a day at preschool for almost a year now. I don't see the mask requirement ending any time soon at her pre school. I worry that prolonged mask wearing will hamper her and other kids linguistic and social developments. Are they learning language just as well? Are they learning to read each others' non-verbal cues just as well? Will they have higher rates of social anxiety? I don't know the answer to these questions and I doubt there are any long term studies on them. But I do hope that the requirement to mask kids in schools and daycares disappears relatively soon as long as our negative health outcomes continue to go trend downward.

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    • Like 2
  12. On 5/16/2021 at 7:16 AM, Bozo_Casanova said:

     

    2) Rising income inequality and wages stagnation encouraged by the tax code, with the middle class taking an decreasing share of productivity gains and 

    #3 is the only one that state/local governments can respond to.
     

    Why can't states and localities respond to #2? They don't have control over the federal tax code but they certainly have control over the state and local tax codes. 

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  13. 1 hour ago, Hagbard Celine said:

    The answer to the title of the thread is this:

    1. Telco, like all extremely large regulated oligopolies in the US, are in deep capture.

    2. Regulatory agency (FCC) fines of anyone or anything, anywhere, at anytime, results in nasty shit like discovery and depositions.

    3. Trillion-dollar problems owned by the captured oligopoly then become exposed, and keeping the sheeple, kettles, and aqqy inoculated from reality becomes difficult.

    4. Thus, there can be no legal actions.

    5. Therefore, there can be no fines.

    6. Abracadabra.

    Praise Bob.

    Praise the Laser Projekt.

    I didn't realize you were a "sheeple" and "msm" cover-up guy. I don't even know what a "kettle" is but I assume it's more evidence that you're a lunatic. On the off chance that you do have some semblance of mental faculties, however unlikely, you're very wrong about the lack of legal actions and discovery. Robocalling is an absolute hotbed of litigation. There have been literally tens of thousands of depositions, thousands of legal actions, and a plethora of discovery under the TCPA over the last 15 years or so.

  14. 30 minutes ago, Captainant said:

    I think you're missing a bit with your framing. It's not that the major carriers WANT robocalling to continue, but they lack the will to spend the money to modernize their systems to mitigate the problem. It's not that robocalls are some great unknowable problem to solve, it's that the entities who operate the systems don't want to solve it. 

    Disagree that I’m misframing. A few posters indicated that it was easy to identify and fine the companies making robocalls. We just need bigger fines and to get the FCC out of the clutches of the companies making robocalls. (Chicken, brisket, and XYZ). This is wrong and I pointed it out. People can sue directly for big damages. The FCC has no involvement in the suits. The robocallers are not easy to identify and fine.
     

    I don’t know the technical infrastructure solution. I won’t dispute that piece but it’s a different argument from what I responded to.

  15. 33 minutes ago, XYZ said:

    The carriers’ concern seems very legitimate??? Who gives a shit? What, AT&T is very worried that somebody in America is not gonna get the call from a relative in India? So all of us have to suffer this every day so that some dude can get his call? You seem dense, and I’m going to reiterate my position one last time. When I say that the regulatory bodies in the USA (in this case the FCC) are captured by corporate America, I don’t mean some shitty robocalling company in India. I mean AT&T, Verizon, etc. Why does the FCC listen to them instead of to us? Why is it that when there’s a conflict of interest between corporate America and the people of this country, corporate America ALWAYS fucking wins?

    You are letting your politics prevent you from understanding the issue. Corporate America, at least the ones with money that lobby the government, is not interested in spoofing numbers and making robocalls. 
     

    You can sue any company that robocalls you directly. You are entitled to $500 or $1500 per robocall. Numerous attorneys will help you. The FCC has no involvement in the lawsuit. 
     

    You may not care about people being able to receive calls from relatives and friends in India, the Philippines, etc. But a lot of Americans do care about being able to communicate with family and friends over there.

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  16. 1 minute ago, Brisketexan said:


    There’s a very simple solution: massive fines of the businesses using these robocallers. Most of the calls are soliciting on behalf of an actual auto warranty seller, an actual local duct cleaner, etc.

    Prove that a sale originated from an illegal robocall, $100,000 fine. Second offense? $500k. Third? $1 million. And keep going up.

    Those outfits will drop robocalling like that.

    The TCPA has been around for years. Consumers can sue companies directly. There is a private right of action and high statutory damages. There are thousands of plaintiffs' attorneys who specialize in suing companies that get on the wrong side of the TCPA.

    If there is an actual company selling auto warranties and they have agents spoofing numbers to robocall people, those people can sue directly and there are attorneys incentivized to help them. 

  17. 18 minutes ago, XYZ said:

    Thanks, the carriers concern seems very legitimate. The rule requires foreign carriers, such as carriers in India, to better block robocalls to the U.S. The U.S. carriers say some foreign carriers, such as those in India, don't have the capacity to identify and block robocalls to the U.S. The result would be blocking too many calls from India. So Americans' relatives in India would have a tough time calling their family in the U.S. The FCC can't increase Indian carriers' ability to stop robocalls via fiat.

    If you think corporate America has captured the FCC to allow it to continue to make robocalls as you indicated earlier, you're delusional. Corporate America is not interested in spoofing numbers and robocalling people to scam them about auto warranties, pretending to be the IRS or SSA, etc. The people making these calls are not corporations lobbying government officials. They are crooks without FCC connections. 

  18. 1 hour ago, crash_davis said:

    It would be easy as fuck to punish the companies, so why aren't we doing it?

    It's actually not easy.

    22 minutes ago, XYZ said:

    Because the regulatory agencies in this country have been captured by corporate America. It doesn’t mean anything to, for example, the FCC, if you get a million spam calls a day.

    This is not why robocalls are a problem. 

    The robocalls are coming from fly-by-night companies, foreign scammers, and other neer-do-wells. It's difficult to identify and fine these people. Starbucks, Chase, Amazon, etc. have no interest in robocalling you about auto warranties. Think about what these calls are about - auto warranties and other bullshit scams. They come from spoofed numbers. Microsoft is not spoofing its number to robocall you about buying an Xbox.

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  19. 1 hour ago, MNLonghornFUKM said:


    You actually believe all of the bullshit you just typed? Are faucis people 16-17 years old? Besides, 4/15 was a month ago. “Probably a little more than half” is a very disconcerting answer for a vaccine that’s been available to adults since freaking February

    His post is reasonable. I live in Washington state. I became eligible 4/15. Every appointment within a 75 mile radius from me was booked within a second on 4/15. The earliest appointment I was able to get was 4/25. Had to drive about 30 mins to get it. Getting the second shot next week.

    Getting a shot before mid to late April was difficult for people in some states, unless they lied about their eligibility.

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  20. 20 minutes ago, MC Fresh Breath said:

    Sounds like that might have been it for Gilbert.  He shows promise.  

    Agreed. I thought he looked decent and showed potential. Gave up a couple of homers which will make his stat line look rough. But his pitches looked lively and he was all over the strike zone.

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