Snowflakes in action: the actual reality of "snowflakes" in the world and the consequences

[ZiprHead]

Christian revival at West Virginia school prompts student walkout

Students at a West Virginia public high school were told by their teacher to close their eyes, raise their arms in prayer and give their lives over to Jesus to find purpose and salvation.

www.aol.com

HUNTINGTON, W.Va. (AP) — Between calculus and European history classes at a West Virginia public high school, 16-year-old Cameron Mays and his classmates were told by their teacher to go to an evangelical Christian revival assembly.

When students arrived at the event in the school's auditorium, they were instructed to close their eyes and raise their arms in prayer, Mays said. The teens were asked to give their lives over to Jesus to find purpose and salvation. Those who did not follow the Bible would go to hell when they died, they were told.

The Huntington High School junior sent a text to his father.

“Is this legal?” he asked.

The answer, according to the U.S. Constitution, is no. In fact, the separation of church and state is one of the country’s founding basic tenets, noted Huntington High School senior Max Nibert.

“Just to see that defamed and ignored in such a blatant way, it’s disheartening,” he said.

Nibert and other Huntington students staged a walkout during their homeroom period Wednesday to protest the assembly. More than 100 students left their classrooms chanting, “Separate the church and state" and, “My faith, my choice.”

This is what the conservative really want.

 

[Trausti]

It's not all blacks. It's that we have a large mass of people living in the inner cities that have big problems. As things turned bad the good people mostly fled and any population that suffers heavy emigration turns to shit. This group is very disproportionately black and drags down the average.

'It's not my fault you paid $250,000 and I paid a buck'

Three years ago, Lamar Grace left Detroit for the suburb of Southfield. He got a good deal — a 3,000-square-foot colonial that once was worth $220,000. In foreclosure, he paid $109,000.

www.nbcnews.com

"They don't want to live next door to ghetto folks," he says.

That his neighbors are black, like Grace, is immaterial. Many in the black middle class moved out of Detroit and settled in the northern suburbs years ago; now, due to foreclosures, it is easy to buy or rent houses on the cheap here. The result has been a new, poorer wave of arrivals from the city, and growing tensions between established residents and the newcomers.

"There's a way in which they look down on people moving in from Detroit into houses they bought for much lower prices," says Grace, a 39-year-old telephone company analyst. "I understand you want to keep out the riffraff, but it's not my fault you paid $250,000 and I paid a buck."

The neighbors say there's more to it than that. People like John Clanton, a retired auto worker, say the new arrivals have brought behavior more common in the inner city — increased trash, adults and children on the streets at all times of the night, a disregard for others' property.

 

[Toni]

Once she learned we were not Jewish, more neighborhoods were opened up for available houses.

The behaviour is weird, but will surely be less and less important as people search for their own prospects online.

There was no internet in those days so it was newspaper ads and word of mouth and realtors.

In the US, most people with children look for school district, community amenities and proximity to work, other family members and sometimes church community. If you've lived somewhere for years, you have a better sense of what you want to be near. But we were newbies. Our families didn't live nearby. Our friends were in the suburb where we rented and could not afford to buy.

Within those broad parameters, some people want to be near shopping or want to be able to walk to shops/restaurants, or to be near parks or near a lake or waterfront (more expensive!!) or in a more rural setting, want bigger yards, etc. Some people really want to live where there is a home owner's association. We would never buy where there was a home owner's association. Some people want to live in an area where everyone looks like them: young families, mostly retired people, whatever. Some people prefer diversity. If you've lived somewhere for a while, you get a feel for what you want and like. When I needed to find us a place to live in that metropolitan area, I had ONE weekend to accomplish that. And I did it. We later bought. And then when we moved to our current location, again hundreds of miles away where we had no friends or family nearby--we had one weekend and no internet to help us. I can't believe we did it. But this is a very small city, there's only one school district and there was a very low inventory and again, we didn't have much of a budget.

Next I'll tell you about how we always have to walk 7 miles uphill in a blizzard to buy milk or something.

 

[Trausti]

Christian revival at West Virginia school prompts student walkout

Students at a West Virginia public high school were told by their teacher to close their eyes, raise their arms in prayer and give their lives over to Jesus to find purpose and salvation.

www.aol.com

HUNTINGTON, W.Va. (AP) — Between calculus and European history classes at a West Virginia public high school, 16-year-old Cameron Mays and his classmates were told by their teacher to go to an evangelical Christian revival assembly.

When students arrived at the event in the school's auditorium, they were instructed to close their eyes and raise their arms in prayer, Mays said. The teens were asked to give their lives over to Jesus to find purpose and salvation. Those who did not follow the Bible would go to hell when they died, they were told.

The Huntington High School junior sent a text to his father.

“Is this legal?” he asked.

The answer, according to the U.S. Constitution, is no. In fact, the separation of church and state is one of the country’s founding basic tenets, noted Huntington High School senior Max Nibert.

“Just to see that defamed and ignored in such a blatant way, it’s disheartening,” he said.

Nibert and other Huntington students staged a walkout during their homeroom period Wednesday to protest the assembly. More than 100 students left their classrooms chanting, “Separate the church and state" and, “My faith, my choice.”

This is what the conservative really want.

We should all be against efforts to indoctrinate kids in compulsory schools regardless who is doing it.

 

[Toni]

It's not all blacks. It's that we have a large mass of people living in the inner cities that have big problems. As things turned bad the good people mostly fled and any population that suffers heavy emigration turns to shit. This group is very disproportionately black and drags down the average.

'It's not my fault you paid $250,000 and I paid a buck'

Three years ago, Lamar Grace left Detroit for the suburb of Southfield. He got a good deal — a 3,000-square-foot colonial that once was worth $220,000. In foreclosure, he paid $109,000.

www.nbcnews.com

"They don't want to live next door to ghetto folks," he says.

That his neighbors are black, like Grace, is immaterial. Many in the black middle class moved out of Detroit and settled in the northern suburbs years ago; now, due to foreclosures, it is easy to buy or rent houses on the cheap here. The result has been a new, poorer wave of arrivals from the city, and growing tensions between established residents and the newcomers.

"There's a way in which they look down on people moving in from Detroit into houses they bought for much lower prices," says Grace, a 39-year-old telephone company analyst. "I understand you want to keep out the riffraff, but it's not my fault you paid $250,000 and I paid a buck."

The neighbors say there's more to it than that. People like John Clanton, a retired auto worker, say the new arrivals have brought behavior more common in the inner city — increased trash, adults and children on the streets at all times of the night, a disregard for others' property.

It's really funny how different neighborhoods view different behaviors. And how seldom such expectations are conveyed in any polite, reasonable or welcoming manner. Where we live now, we found out by accident that you learned the name of your child's teacher for the school year by going to the school and looking at the class lists posted on the back doors of the school building. To us, that was bizarre. We always knew our new teacher's name because it was written on our final report card of the year, so the spring of one school year, we knew where we would be the coming year. In our old city, 'good' parents sent home made treats to class. Only 'bad' parents failed to ever send anything or *gasp* sent store bought cookies. In our new town, parents were expressly forbidden from sending homemade treats to school. In our new town, all the children were expected to make home made book covers for all of their text books out of paper bags from the grocery store. We arrived ahead of our moving van and....grocery bags held some of the kids' clothing. The teacher didn't tell us but was furious when we didn't 'know' that was what was expected.

In our old neighborhood, kindergarteners were walked to the school door by their parents, usually mothers. You NEVER allowed your child to go home with another child until you had met and usually had lunch with the other child's mother at least once, if not more. Here? I had a kid ask if he could spend the weekend at our house because his parents were going out of town and his uncle didn't have enough money to feed all the kids in his family in addition to his own. I had never met his parents who would not even pull into the driveway to pick up their kids but waited at the corner and honked the horn. On our street, no one ever plays out in the street but on the cross streets a couple of blocks away, they do.

 

[Elixir]

I built in the wilderness because I like to not see or hear people and it was cheap land at least compared to where we moved from. But now we’re surrounded. I hear people, vehicles, dogs …
A guy verbally offered seven figures for our place last week and I was sorely tempted. But where to go? Even with that much cash in hand (which I’ve never had), trying to match what this was 20 yeas ago is probably unobtainable. Even when this was wilderness, shopping was less than ten minutes away, and felt like many miles … I’m not happy here any more and don’t know what to do about it.
Somewhere that’s a seven mile walk uphill both ways to civilization actually sounds good, but in a very few years seven miles will be beyond my performance capacity even on level ground.

 

[laughing dog]

Christian revival at West Virginia school prompts student walkout

Students at a West Virginia public high school were told by their teacher to close their eyes, raise their arms in prayer and give their lives over to Jesus to find purpose and salvation.

www.aol.com

HUNTINGTON, W.Va. (AP) — Between calculus and European history classes at a West Virginia public high school, 16-year-old Cameron Mays and his classmates were told by their teacher to go to an evangelical Christian revival assembly.

When students arrived at the event in the school's auditorium, they were instructed to close their eyes and raise their arms in prayer, Mays said. The teens were asked to give their lives over to Jesus to find purpose and salvation. Those who did not follow the Bible would go to hell when they died, they were told.

The Huntington High School junior sent a text to his father.

“Is this legal?” he asked.

The answer, according to the U.S. Constitution, is no. In fact, the separation of church and state is one of the country’s founding basic tenets, noted Huntington High School senior Max Nibert.

“Just to see that defamed and ignored in such a blatant way, it’s disheartening,” he said.

Nibert and other Huntington students staged a walkout during their homeroom period Wednesday to protest the assembly. More than 100 students left their classrooms chanting, “Separate the church and state" and, “My faith, my choice.”

This is what the conservative really want.

We should all be against efforts to indoctrinate kids in compulsory schools regardless who is doing it.

Compulsory schooling of any type is a form of indoctrination.

 

[TomC]

she was a great realtor.

She showed you properties you didn't want, because she thought you were Jewish.

What, exactly, made her better than a realtor who knew enough to talk to you before showing you homes? You could have gotten a more competent realtor, who happened to be a conservative white Christian male, who could walk you through the rest of the process at least as well as yours did. What's so great about her?

You described her technique as redlining. That's extremely racist. Now you are calling her great.

What's up with that?
Tom

 

[Jarhyn]

Christian revival at West Virginia school prompts student walkout

Students at a West Virginia public high school were told by their teacher to close their eyes, raise their arms in prayer and give their lives over to Jesus to find purpose and salvation.

www.aol.com

HUNTINGTON, W.Va. (AP) — Between calculus and European history classes at a West Virginia public high school, 16-year-old Cameron Mays and his classmates were told by their teacher to go to an evangelical Christian revival assembly.

When students arrived at the event in the school's auditorium, they were instructed to close their eyes and raise their arms in prayer, Mays said. The teens were asked to give their lives over to Jesus to find purpose and salvation. Those who did not follow the Bible would go to hell when they died, they were told.

The Huntington High School junior sent a text to his father.

“Is this legal?” he asked.

The answer, according to the U.S. Constitution, is no. In fact, the separation of church and state is one of the country’s founding basic tenets, noted Huntington High School senior Max Nibert.

“Just to see that defamed and ignored in such a blatant way, it’s disheartening,” he said.

Nibert and other Huntington students staged a walkout during their homeroom period Wednesday to protest the assembly. More than 100 students left their classrooms chanting, “Separate the church and state" and, “My faith, my choice.”

This is what the conservative really want.

We should all be against efforts to indoctrinate kids in compulsory schools regardless who is doing it.

Compulsory schooling of any type is a form of indoctrination.

So, in my old D&D group, we discussed one night how language may in fact be the grossest form of indoctrination: you are literally telling someone how to shape their emotions to harbor complex ideas, and in doing so, deciding for them some aspects of that geometry of their ideas that everything else will be based on.

It is encompassing and engrossing.

Some things we indoctrinate on others. Usually these things include all the stuff that someone NEEDS to have been indoctrinated so as to be at all functional as a person.

 

[laughing dog]

Christian revival at West Virginia school prompts student walkout

Students at a West Virginia public high school were told by their teacher to close their eyes, raise their arms in prayer and give their lives over to Jesus to find purpose and salvation.

www.aol.com

HUNTINGTON, W.Va. (AP) — Between calculus and European history classes at a West Virginia public high school, 16-year-old Cameron Mays and his classmates were told by their teacher to go to an evangelical Christian revival assembly.

When students arrived at the event in the school's auditorium, they were instructed to close their eyes and raise their arms in prayer, Mays said. The teens were asked to give their lives over to Jesus to find purpose and salvation. Those who did not follow the Bible would go to hell when they died, they were told.

The Huntington High School junior sent a text to his father.

“Is this legal?” he asked.

The answer, according to the U.S. Constitution, is no. In fact, the separation of church and state is one of the country’s founding basic tenets, noted Huntington High School senior Max Nibert.

“Just to see that defamed and ignored in such a blatant way, it’s disheartening,” he said.

Nibert and other Huntington students staged a walkout during their homeroom period Wednesday to protest the assembly. More than 100 students left their classrooms chanting, “Separate the church and state" and, “My faith, my choice.”

This is what the conservative really want.

We should all be against efforts to indoctrinate kids in compulsory schools regardless who is doing it.

Compulsory schooling of any type is a form of indoctrination.

So, in my old D&D group, we discussed one night how language may in fact be the grossest form of indoctrination: you are literally telling someone how to shape their emotions to harbor complex ideas, and in doing so, deciding for them some aspects of that geometry of their ideas that everything else will be based on.

It is encompassing and engrossing.

Some things we indoctrinate on others. Usually these things include all the stuff that someone NEEDS to have been indoctrinated so as to be at all functional as a person.

Indoctrination may be good or bad, depending on the circumstances.

 

[Jarhyn]

she was a great realtor.

She showed you properties you didn't want, because she thought you were Jewish.

What, exactly, made her better than a realtor who knew enough to talk to you before showing you homes? You could have gotten a more competent realtor, who happened to be a conservative white Christian male, who could walk you through the rest of the process at least as well as yours did. What's so great about her?

You described her technique as redlining. That's extremely racist. Now you are calling her great.

What's up with that?
Tom

It's entirely possible to be great at a job and do terrible, or at least fairly shitty things with that job.

Would you like to hear a ridiculous and hyperbolic example?

 

[Jarhyn]

Christian revival at West Virginia school prompts student walkout

Students at a West Virginia public high school were told by their teacher to close their eyes, raise their arms in prayer and give their lives over to Jesus to find purpose and salvation.

www.aol.com

HUNTINGTON, W.Va. (AP) — Between calculus and European history classes at a West Virginia public high school, 16-year-old Cameron Mays and his classmates were told by their teacher to go to an evangelical Christian revival assembly.

When students arrived at the event in the school's auditorium, they were instructed to close their eyes and raise their arms in prayer, Mays said. The teens were asked to give their lives over to Jesus to find purpose and salvation. Those who did not follow the Bible would go to hell when they died, they were told.

The Huntington High School junior sent a text to his father.

“Is this legal?” he asked.

The answer, according to the U.S. Constitution, is no. In fact, the separation of church and state is one of the country’s founding basic tenets, noted Huntington High School senior Max Nibert.

“Just to see that defamed and ignored in such a blatant way, it’s disheartening,” he said.

Nibert and other Huntington students staged a walkout during their homeroom period Wednesday to protest the assembly. More than 100 students left their classrooms chanting, “Separate the church and state" and, “My faith, my choice.”

This is what the conservative really want.

We should all be against efforts to indoctrinate kids in compulsory schools regardless who is doing it.

Compulsory schooling of any type is a form of indoctrination.

So, in my old D&D group, we discussed one night how language may in fact be the grossest form of indoctrination: you are literally telling someone how to shape their emotions to harbor complex ideas, and in doing so, deciding for them some aspects of that geometry of their ideas that everything else will be based on.

It is encompassing and engrossing.

Some things we indoctrinate on others. Usually these things include all the stuff that someone NEEDS to have been indoctrinated so as to be at all functional as a person.

Indoctrination may be good or bad, depending on the circumstances.

What makes something good or bad is generally going to cleave on "mutually compatible self-actualization."

You can't have much self if you do not even know the tools to operate the "pool of all information of self", and it's not like you can't reform your use of language so it's not like it breaks compatibility with anything in particular.

 

[Toni]

she was a great realtor.

She showed you properties you didn't want, because she thought you were Jewish.

What, exactly, made her better than a realtor who knew enough to talk to you before showing you homes? You could have gotten a more competent realtor, who happened to be a conservative white Christian male, who could walk you through the rest of the process at least as well as yours did. What's so great about her?

You described her technique as redlining. That's extremely racist. Now you are calling her great.

What's up with that?
Tom

No, she narrowed the search area much smaller than what we cared about because she thought we were Jewish. She did talk to us and she knew that we wanted a good school district (which also meant family friendly neighborhood), 3 bed 1 1/2 bathrooms that we could afford on the same side of the city where we were renting. She mentioned a few neighborhoods, we said great, we took a look, put a bid down on a cute house and were outbid, during all of this, of course, having lots of conversations and she said something about us being Jewish and we said we aren't and .....more neighborhoods to look at. Where we bought our house, there were at least 3 Jewish families that I remember, at least a couple of Korean Americans and some Arabs and a couple of black people. It's been a while since we lived there but I was happy to have that much diversity.

All salespeople make assumptions about clients about things they know to be true (what size house we wanted, our budget, which side of the metropolitan area) and things they assume. She assumed we'd want to be in a Jewish neighborhood. We didn't care about that but if we had been Jewish, we might have. If I had a big cross around my neck, she might have mentioned this area had great schools and a very nice Catholic school system. If I mentioned a dog, she would have asked if we wanted a fenced in yard. If I were in a wheelchair, she would have asked about accessibility needs.

So I mentioned that I had traveled alone with 2 kids to this city where we were moving to meet a friend's sister who was putting us up and showing us around/helping us find a rental. I was traveling without my husband, just me and the kids. I was dressed like most grad students/wives of grad students/mothers of little children: Jeans, t-shirt, sneakers. In line at the airport, I was chatting with the nicely dressed gentleman ahead of us in line (pre 9-11). We lived and were moving from a city that was a popular tourist destination and I was telling him how to ride the subway, what to be sure to see, to not try to drive, etc. He suddenly remembered he hadn't asked me why I had been visiting the city we were leaving. I told him we were getting ready to move to (Expensive Suburb--we rented on the cheap side of town) and his eyes got very big and he reached into his pocket and handed me his card: he sold furniture at the nicest place in the area. Which we could not afford or close to it. But at first, he assumed I had no money (good assumption) based on how I was dressed: harried mom with not much money. When he learned where we were going to live, he assumed we had big $$. Which unfortunately was far from true.

People make assumptions all the time.

 

[Politesse]

You misunderstand my point.

You're still trying to prescribe a preventative as a treatment.

No, in fact, preventatives are prescribed as preventatives. I do not understand why this is somehow confusing to you.

 

[TomC]

No, she narrowed the search area much smaller than what we cared about because she thought

You brought her up as an example of redlining. Something we both agree is a bad thing.

Now you're calling her great.

I've got a pretty firm opinion about the dichotomy in your opinion on whether she's a redlining racist or great. But I'll just ask. Why?
Tom

 

[laughing dog]

No, she narrowed the search area much smaller than what we cared about because she thought

You brought her up as an example of redlining. Something we both agree is a bad thing.

Now you're calling her great.

I've got a pretty firm opinion about the dichotomy in your opinion on whether she's a redlining racist or great. But I'll just ask. Why?
Tom

I do not believe Toni called her realtor a "redlining racist", so it appears you are pursuing a straw man.

 

[Toni]

No, she narrowed the search area much smaller than what we cared about because she thought

You brought her up as an example of redlining. Something we both agree is a bad thing.

Now you're calling her great.

I've got a pretty firm opinion about the dichotomy in your opinion on whether she's a redlining racist or great. But I'll just ask. Why?
Tom

I think that she, like most of us, had some preconceived notions about what we would want—based on her perceptions. That happened to be wrong.

I can think she did a great job for us, even as I recognized that she was directing us according to her perceptions. Just as I can greatly admire my father’s good qualities and acknowledge his bigotries. None of us are all good or all bad.

That said, I definitely recognize how very very benign that redlining was. It is very very very easy to see how benign assumptions we all make about people we see every day. Sales people make assessments about what their clients want and need. Really good ones will direct you to something you had not realized you needed or wanted until they showed it to you.

Note: When we were moving from that house to where we now live, our neighbors across the street told us they not to sell to a black family or an Arab family. We told them we were selling to whoever made the best offer.

 

[ZiprHead]

No, she narrowed the search area much smaller than what we cared about because she thought

You brought her up as an example of redlining. Something we both agree is a bad thing.

Now you're calling her great.

I've got a pretty firm opinion about the dichotomy in your opinion on whether she's a redlining racist or great. But I'll just ask. Why?
Tom

I do not believe Toni called her realtor a "redlining racist", so it appears you are pursuing a straw man.

I agree. I think she said something to the effect that redlining was going on, not that her realtor was a participant.

 

[Elixir]

Can anyone even imagine a black man or woman running for President with the credentials of Donald Trump?

His Flatulence didn't run on credentials in the first place, the comparison is meaningless.

I disagree. His credentials were more phony than a three dollar bill, but they were printed nicely in big bold type, and repeated ad nauseum.
* Great dealmaker
* Very Big Brain
* Patriotic, even hugs flags
* The best people
* Unbelievably rich billionaire
... and the one that wasn't phony:
* Well known white supremacist sympathizer

 

[Hermit]

If the fact that the real median household income for blacks has been half that of the real median household income for non-Hispanic whites for at least the past six decades is not due to racism, what is it due to? Something wrong with blacks?

Correlation does not prove causation!

The top line on that chart has no apparent racial cause but has obvious cultural causes. Why do you assume the other lines must be racially caused?

Oh. Blacks are culturally inferior. I wonder why. Nothing to do with slavery, redlining or any other treatment meted out to them by whites, to be sure. Of course not. That's just correlation, right?

It's not all blacks. It's that we have a large mass of people living in the inner cities that have big problems. As things turned bad the good people mostly fled and any population that suffers heavy emigration turns to shit. This group is very disproportionately black and drags down the average.

Of course averages are dragged down by the bottom income earners, but that applies equally to all ethnicities. So, the question remains: Why has the real median household income for blacks been roughly half that of the real median household income for non-Hispanic whites for at least the past six decades? Inner city dwelling alone does not answer this, and it certainly does not explain this discrepancy:

Besides, you need to explain why so many blacks tend live in the inner cities rather than the suburbs in the first place. Part of the answer is historical. I suggest you watch the first eight and a half minutes of this video:



Yes, yes, I know; Those explicitly racist restrictions documented here are a thing of the past. As is systematic racism. But they are still acted on. Trayvon Martin is just the very tip of the iceberg. So are the articles in the media and the Youtube clips of suburban people loudly and forcefully telling blacks to get out of their nice, clean neighbourhood because blacks just don't belong there. Systematic racism has gone, but endemic racism does the job just about as well.

At one point three of our four immediate neighbors were black--and none of them had the cultural problems I'm talking about. (Since then one couple has moved to California, one moved to a one-story, then a nursing home, then the grave, the last moved to assisted living, her mind was going and we have lost touch.)

Nice anecdote. Reminds me of people claiming that racism no longer exists because Obama. And my dad was not racist because one of his best friends was a Jew.

My dad in 1945:

No, being an officer in the Wehrmacht did not make him an anti-Semite. Being raised in the Third Reich did. It takes a village...