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Valid point, but why does insisting on standards so often get derided as "shaking our heads and our fingers at" or some such thing. Perhaps the reluctance of so many adults to do that, at the risk of being derided as a puritan, spoilsport or reactionary, has led to a relaxation of standards.

posted 4 years, 10 months ago
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How exactly would education have made the difference for you? I would imagine the example of your friend would have been a powerful cautionary example.

posted 4 years, 10 months ago
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I disagree that it was the same, even if one's personal experience was similar. Obviously, it has always been more difficult for the person who actually bears the child. Men always had a better chance of avoiding responsibility. However, in cases where it was clear who the father was, there were expectations that have almost entirely vanished, making the mother's position even worse.

posted 4 years, 10 months ago
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I think the sex ed theme is a red herring. Sure, young people need to be educated, but this is fundamentally a behavioral, moral issue. The problem is knowing where babies come from, it's about how sexuality is regarded. In that respect, the shift in attitudes about the uses of sexuality have had a cost.

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Well, one might argue that "history" as distinct from oral folk storytelling and mythologizing is a tradition alien to most non-European inhabitants of North America, so why buy into it?

If you do buy into it, you're making a compromise: which I think is great.

It is certainly healthy to revise historical perspectives as the opportunity arises and as the society becomes enriched by people with other points of view. However, it is important to distinguish between history (interpretation based on facts) and something more like ethnography where one is just focusing on the culture of a group without a rigorous appraisal of what they contributed (or did not contribute) to the general culture as it evolved. History properly privileges certain kinds of events.

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There may be some tenuous continuity between the historical segregation and related atrocities mentioned on the program and the presence of genuine white racists/supremacists in Oregon. However, that has nothing to do with the uncomfortable disjunction between the pretensions and practices of White progressives when it comes to mingling with Blacks.

It would be more reasonable to argue that the Whites merely reflect general prejudices, especially as so many in Portland today come from elsewhere. However, I think it would be more accurate still to say that some discomfort associated with racism is nothing of the kind, it's just people inexperienced in dealing wiith people who look like them. When racial prejudices do exist (especially among late-comers to Oregon) they are not essentially of the past but have to do with current impressions of cultural practices and, unfortunately, social pathologies associated with Blacks.

posted 4 years, 10 months ago
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I met a Black woman from New Jersey who was irritated by people reacting to here with what she took to be feigned politeness, when clearly they were uncomfortable. She didn't insist that they were racist, but she didn't like the insincerity of the way they dealt with her difference.

That kind of thing is almost inevitable where one race is so prevalent.

However, what she endured was very different than negative prejudices. These people were just uncomfortable: they didn't know how to behave, and they were made more uncomfortable by the fact.

I don't know what the commenter means by "...when you dress in all black clothes." That sounds like anarchists. I will say that I am suspicious of people, whatever their race (and they come in all flavors), who affect gangster dress and manners. Whether pretension or real, that style expresses hostility to a common program of civilized life.

posted 4 years, 10 months ago
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If this is the case, then it sounds as if the Downey role is indeed delivering historical context.

Was there something else driving Prof. Miller's indignation, or did he prematurely seize on the instance without checking it out?

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The mere fact that there's a consensus view doesn't amount to tyranny. To say so verges on the hysterical.

posted 4 years, 10 months ago
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Can't there be assimilation without dismissal of different backgrounds? Surely we need to forge unity in order to have harmony rather than a fractured, mutually suspicious society.

I know that I personally am most sensitive to differences of culture first, personality second, and I think all people are like this. Racial stereotyping can override this, of course. But the point is that people are reassured when they share common cultural ground.

posted 4 years, 10 months ago
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