Donald Trump

[Womble98]

I don't understand how you go from the US/West is responsible for a lot of evil, and we don't like them to "I'm supporting ISIS who have killed thousands of my fellow Arabs and Muslims, who have blown up people in Pakistan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and a shit ton of other places."

 

[Jockney]

I don't understand how you go from the US/West is responsible for a lot of evil, and we don't like them to "I'm supporting ISIS who have killed thousands of my fellow Arabs and Muslims, who have blown up people in Pakistan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and a shit ton of other places."

it doesn't have to make sense, these are emotional decisions not rational ones and it's not just the west either: it's iraq, syria and iran... in some cases it's the very history of nation-states in the region.

 

[Jockney]

again, i'm surprised the numbers were that low. that is a negligible threat on a global scale, especially considering the phrasing of the question.

 

[Dr Mantis Toboggan]

ahahaha this whole abortion thing is incredible

 

[madvillainy]

Nothing that comes out the man's mouth surprises me now.

 

[mnb089mnb]

ahahaha this whole abortion thing is incredible

Said no one ever

 

[Womble98]

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_xTx1tFtfcibWRROUVwNzhYRFZyQ2lsQWFDNTc5MFN5b2tj/view?pref=2&pli=1

Stumbled across this the other day, things like it are increasingly common in US colleges. Part of the reason Trump is getting support is because he comes out against it.

This article also adequately explains his support http://www.stirjournal.com/2016/04/01/i-know-why-poor-whites-chant-trump-trump-trump/

 

[Jockney]

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_xTx1tFtfcibWRROUVwNzhYRFZyQ2lsQWFDNTc5MFN5b2tj/view?pref=2&pli=1

Stumbled across this the other day, things like it are increasingly common in US colleges. Part of the reason Trump is getting support is because he comes out against it.

This article also adequately explains his support http://www.stirjournal.com/2016/04/01/i-know-why-poor-whites-chant-trump-trump-trump/

Good for University of Arizona students. That sort of solidarity and mobilisation is very encouraging.

 

[Alty]

You see it's hard for me to judge the validity of the concerns raised because the letters are so lacking in specifics, but perhaps that's understandable as they follow up on previous conversations (and media reports, it seems).

However, "DEMANDS" like the following set alarm bells ringing: Implementation of trigger warnings within course material and content - trigger warnings should also be specifically addressed before potentially problematic material, with an alternate assignment offered.

Oh dear.

I also find it rather alarming that African American students and Asia-Pacific students are so intent on having buildings and residence halls just for them.

Surely the most interesting part of university is engaging with new ideas (some of which you might hate) and people from different backgrounds with different perspectives?

 

[Womble98]

Good for University of Arizona students. That sort of solidarity and mobilisation is very encouraging.

Did you read them? One of their demands is cultural competency training.

 

[Jockney]

When you're dealing with institutions that have traditionally ignored minority voices, you don't ask for a little: you demand a lot and work from there.

 

[Womble98]

2. A revision and transparent posting of the consequences and processes for students, faculty, staff

who are found to be involved with microaggressions, aggressions, and hate speech in the

classroom, on campus, and online (via. social media, university affiliated websites, cellular

devices, and emails)

In other words, "fuck free speech".


How can you not see hundreds of parallels with something like 1984 with all this "cultural competency training". It is scary how you think this is a good idea.

 

[Ian_Wrexham]

In other words, "fuck free speech".


How can you not see hundreds of parallels with something like 1984 with all this "cultural competency training". It is scary how you think this is a good idea.

Amazing how you can get from "a revision and transparent posting of the consequences and processes for [anyone] found to be involved with ... hate speech" to "fuck free speech".

It's almost like you see the word "microaggressions" and have an aneurysm or something and just splurge nonsense on a keyboard.

I've not read it for a while, but the thing that will always stay with me about Nineteen Eighty Four was the Party's well-documented, publicly available conflict resolution and disciplinary processes.

"If you want a vision of the future picture a thorough and transparent anti-hate-speech policy stamping on a human face forever".

 

[blade1889]

In other words, "fuck free speech".


How can you not see hundreds of parallels with something like 1984 with all this "cultural competency training". It is scary how you think this is a good idea.

Am reading 1984 at the minute and that did come into my head with the training every 6 months kind of demands. I guess it depends what constitutes "microaggressions, aggressions, and hate speech" to be fair, if somebody stood up being openly racist (on any public forum from social media to lectures) then they absolutely should be held accountable for example. Free speech shouldn't give people the right to say carte blanche without repercussions.

edit: have only thoroughly read the LGBT+ section but can't see the issue with raising problems and providing solutions, good on them.

 

[Womble98]

Amazing how you can get from "a revision and transparent posting of the consequences and processes for [anyone] found to be involved with ... hate speech" to "fuck free speech".

It's almost like you see the word "microaggressions" and have an aneurysm or something and just splurge nonsense on a keyboard.

I've not read it for a while, but the thing that will always stay with me about Nineteen Eighty Four was the Party's well-documented, publicly available conflict resolution and disciplinary processes.

"If you want a vision of the future picture a thorough and transparent anti-hate-speech policy stamping on a human face forever".

If you read that with any degree of intelligence and reasoning you can see what they want to happen, as has happened at US colleges throughout the country; anyone found guilty of "microaggressions" or whatever will be punished. In other words, your private communications are no longer private, your shared thoughts among friends are no longer permissible if they offend us. In other words, fuck free speech.

I don't quite understand your last point.

Am reading 1984 at the minute and that did come into my head. I guess it depends what constitutes "microaggressions, aggressions, and hate speech" to be fair, if somebody stood up being openly racist (on any public forum from social media to lectures) then they absolutely should be held accountable for example. Free speech shouldn't give people the right to say carte blanche without repercussions.

If someone incites violence then yes, they need repercussions, but the American constitution protects free speech. The thing is "microaggressions" can mean literally anything. This professor was accused of microaggressions because he correct spelling and grammatical errors https://www.insidehighered.com/news...-class-protest-what-they-see-racially-hostile

 

[blade1889]

So is your argument against microagressions or people claiming something to be a microaggression which isn't? Reading your post, to me, it seems more the latter that people are claiming 'microaggression' when one isnt present. People have claimed similar with racism and homophobia etc. but that doesnt decrease the validity that either of those things should be stamped out.

I read up to the bit about capitalising 'Indigenous' on your article and without a better understanding of that issue and why the student think it ought to be capitalised I couldn't possibly comment on the validity of eithers claim.

 

[Womble98]

So is your argument against microagressions or people claiming something to be a microaggression which isn't? Reading your post, to me, it seems more the latter that people are claiming 'microaggression' when one isnt present. People have claimed similar with racism and homophobia etc. but that doesnt decrease the validity that either of those things should be stamped out.

I read up to the bit about capitalising 'Indigenous' on your article and without a better understanding of that issue and why the student think it ought to be capitalised I couldn't possibly comment on the validity of eithers claim.

I think its a bullshit way to say this offends me so it should be banned.

 

[Ian_Wrexham]

If you read that with any degree of intelligence and reasoning you can see what they want to happen, as has happened at US colleges throughout the country; anyone found guilty of "microaggressions" or whatever will be punished. In other words, your private communications are no longer private, your shared thoughts among friends are no longer permissible if they offend us. In other words, fuck free speech.

I don't quite understand your last point.

If someone incites violence then yes, they need repercussions, but the American constitution protects free speech. The thing is "microaggressions" can mean literally anything. This professor was accused of microaggressions because he correct spelling and grammatical errors https://www.insidehighered.com/news...-class-protest-what-they-see-racially-hostile

The American constitution does protect free speech. Contracts of employment don't. The American constitution doesn't dictate what people can and can't be disciplined for at work.

And this demand isn't even for people to face specific sanctions - it's about having a documented process for dealing with them. That's the total opposite of Orwellian - with its arbitrariness and uncertainty. I would go for Brave New World - with its focus on safety, comfort and socially pressured conformism (it's also a much better read IMO).

They're not demanding the university snoop people's private phone-calls or conversations - simply that there is a procedure in place for resolving disputes these sorts of things happen. Having that process and making it transparent seems pretty sensible.

This whole thing is a massive moral panic. Did you actually read the link you posted? Obviously there's far more to it than "correcting grammatical errors" - (that's not true - he was accused of correcting stylistic choices in ways that alter the meaning of the work).

TBH if you think racist speech is only an issue when it goes as far as incitement to violence, we're probably not going to find any common ground.

The statement accuses “the professor” (it does not identify Rust by name) of correcting “perceived grammatical choices that in actuality reflect ideologies” and “repeatedly questioning the value of our work on social identity and the related dynamics of oppression, power and privilege.”

a student who chose to capitalize the first letter in the word “Indigenous” in her research papers saw it changed to a lowercase throughout. Watson said that correction disregarded the writer's scholarly advocacy and had other "ideological implications."

Watson said Rust’s class was chosen not to single him out as a particularly intolerant professor but rather as an exemplary of a larger campus culture of intolerance that also impacts faculty of color.

 

[Jockney]

Mor Don, TFF and now 1FF ban posters for hate speech, too. In fact, you'd be hard pressed to find an organisation that doesn't discipline its members or employees for hate speech, public or private.

 

[Womble98]

The American constitution does protect free speech. Contracts of employment don't. The American constitution doesn't dictate what people can and can't be disciplined for at work.

And this demand isn't even for people to face specific sanctions - it's about having a documented process for dealing with them. That's the total opposite of Orwellian - with its arbitrariness and uncertainty. I would go for Brave New World - with its focus on safety, comfort and socially pressured conformism (it's also a much better read IMO).

They're not demanding the university snoop people's private phone-calls or conversations - simply that there is a procedure in place for resolving disputes these sorts of things happen. Having that process and making it transparent seems pretty sensible.

This whole thing is a massive moral panic. Did you actually read the link you posted? Obviously there's far more to it than "correcting grammatical errors" - (that's not true - he was accused of correcting stylistic choices in ways that alter the meaning of the work).

TBH if you think racist speech is only an issue when it goes as far as incitement to violence, we're probably not going to find any common ground.

I think only speech which incites violence should be criminalised, that isn't the same as saying all other speech is great.

I don't think you are showing any awareness of the context of what these demands are in. Things like cultural competency training and the private communications aren't simply about stopping racist speech, they are about stopping any speech they don't like. It is an attitude that only their view is acceptable. The thing about a "microaggression" is that they next to impossible to having a procedure to deal with them, as they are by their nature arbitrary, subjective and ultimately a made-up excuse to complain about something they don't like.

 

[Womble98]

Mor Don, TFF and now 1FF ban posters for hate speech, too. In fact, you'd be hard pressed to find an organisation that doesn't discipline its members or employees for hate speech, public or private.

But luckily they don't for microaggressions or that other made up bullshit, because then I think most of us would be banned.

 

[blade1889]

So should we just call things racist, homophobic etc. instead? Really doesn't make much difference barring my understanding that microaggression is a word to describe and achnowledge actions that people may not realise are harmful and as such the stronger discriminatory words are less appropriate. I mean we could surely cal the microaggression of not recognising someone's cultural views that indigenous should be capitalised racist, could we not?

 

[Womble98]

So should we just call things racist, homophobic etc. instead? Really doesn't make much difference barring my understanding that microaggression is a word to describe and achnowledge actions that people may not realise are harmful and as such the stronger discriminatory words are less appropriate. I mean we could surely cal the microaggression of not recognising someone's cultural views that indigenous should be capitalised racist, could we not?

Or we could stop being offending by things that aren't actually offensive, and start focusing on fixing the bigger problems of the day, not the capitalisation of letters.

 

[Ian_Wrexham]

Or we could stop being offending by things that aren't actually offensive, and start focusing on fixing the bigger problems of the day, not the capitalisation of letters.

same could be said of anyone worked up about students demanding safe spaces and trigger warnings tbf

 

[Womble98]

same could be said of anyone worked up about students demanding safe spaces and trigger warnings tbf

No, because safe spaces where viewpoints arent allowed to be freely shared impede on others in a genuine way. One side wants free expression, the others want limited and controlled expression.

 

[blade1889]

Or we could stop being offending by things that aren't actually offensive, and start focusing on fixing the bigger problems of the day, not the capitalisation of letters.

Or we could acknowledge that culture and someone's individuality is a very personal thing and that this professor (who I am assuming is not an Indigenous person) had no right to tell someone the correct/incorrect way to observe that culture. By marking the capitalization as incorrect this professor was doing just that and there is absolutely nothing wrong in pointing that out, a quick google suggests there is no set rule on capitalization, even in academic literature and therefore a standpoint that capitalization is absolutely incorrect is in fact, incorrect.

Just because you, I, or the person sat next to me view different issues as important and/or more important than others does not mean that issues that may be 'minor' to you or I should not be brought up.

 

[Womble98]

Or we could acknowledge that culture and someone's individuality is a very personal thing and that this professor (who I am assuming is not an Indigenous person) had no right to tell someone the correct/incorrect way to observe that culture. By marking the capitalization as incorrect this professor was doing just that and there is absolutely nothing wrong in pointing that out, a quick google suggests there is no set rule on capitalization, even in academic literature and therefore a standpoint that capitalization is absolutely incorrect is in fact, incorrect.

Just because you, I, or the person sat next to me view different issues as important and/or more important than others does not mean that issues that may be 'minor' to you or I should not be brought up.

Indigenous is not a proper noun. There is not an Indigenous people, there are people who are indigenous to an area, i.e., the Sioux tribe were indigenous to North America.

How is that insulting to a person's culture? Spelling indigenous with an upper case letter isn't acknowledging your culture, it is grammatically wrong. If I was to start spelling things differently and say that it was because of my "individuality" which was a very personal thing, I would be laughed out the seminar room.

Microaggressions are nothing more than semantics, tiny nit-picks where people are choosing to be offended because of the power it brings them.

 

[blade1889]

Indigenous is not a proper noun. There is not an Indigenous people, there are people who are indigenous to an area, i.e., the Sioux tribe were indigenous to North America.

How is that insulting to a person's culture? Spelling indigenous with an upper case letter isn't acknowledging your culture, it is grammatically wrong. If I was to start spelling things differently and say that it was because of my "individuality" which was a very personal thing, I would be laughed out the seminar room.

Microaggressions are nothing more than semantics, tiny nit-picks where people are choosing to be offended because of the power it brings them.

It would depend on the individuality. Saying 'blue' should be capitalised, then yeah, whatever. Something with a cultural association is far more relevant

http://indigenousfoundations.arts.ubc.ca/home/identity/terminology.html

There is no official consensus on when to capitalize certain terms. Some people consider capitalization a sign of respect to the people you are referring to. Therefore, it may not be necessary to capitalize when using the term as an adjective and not in direct reference to a population. (For example, consider, “She is a native to the area” to “She is Native American” or even, “She is Native.”)

Perhaps the term with the most definite capitalization “rule” is “Indian,” as it is a legal entity enforced by the Canadian government.

Ultimately, style guides have not created strict guidelines. As a result, you may find variation depending on your resources. Oftentimes, authors will explain their decision in a preface or a footnote.

So the professor enforcing his 'style' when there are no 'strict guidelines' is wrong.

http://www.onlinegrammar.com.au/indigenous-or-indigenous/

Admittedly in Australia as opposed to the US but again noting how there are people using the capitalization as a mark of respect and that it is a choice with no right or wrong

http://www.btb.termiumplus.gc.ca/tcdnstyl-chap?lang=eng&lettr=chap_catlog&info0=14

Note also that the terms used to designate the Indigenous peoples of Canada have undergone considerable change in recent years. Although the Canadian Constitution Act, 1982, uses the term aboriginal peoples in the lower case, the words Aboriginal, Indigenous and Native have since come to be capitalized when used in the Canadian context. The terms currently preferred are the following:
•Aboriginal people(s)
•Native people(s)
•Indigenous people(s)
•First people(s)

Example of Indigenous being capitalized in Canada



So as far as I can tell it depends on your stand-point. If the lecturer had written something and not capitalised it the students, as far as my understanding goes, could have no complaint. And likewise if the students capitalize indigenous the lecturer should not be marking it as incorrect. I have to admit to not being well researched in this, but I choose to leave it up to the 'official consensus' who I assume are more researched than you or I to make the decision and it would appear that that consensus is that it is an individuals choice. Not the lecturers to mark wrong.

 

[Womble98]

I think it a childish and foolish thing to get caught up on, one that college students should be above.

 

[blade1889]

I think it a childish and foolish thing to get caught up on, one that college students should be above.

The first person to get caught up on it was the lecturer by changing every single capitalization to lower case, not the students.