I've been trying to get our technical writer here fired. She doesn't do anything and knows she'll never get fired. I work in France.

Mizzou Students Complain to Administration About ?Offensive? Sushi Restaurant Logo | Mediaite

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1462195101

^I quit listening after about 25 seconds:

I still hold the door open for people.
Say, please and thank you.
Don't listen Kanye or rap.
Judging from my tax bill the last few years, I'm definitely contributing.

You're a millennial?

Depends on which definition you put weight behind, I've seen the "millennial" go all the way back to my birth year of '82.

Not to mention the "millennials suck for reasons" as I shoot the video from my cellphone in my car.

'82 is not a millennial. We are turning 34 and have jobs...

I didn't get a cell phone until i was in college. I had a freaking pager in HS.

I didn't have a FB account until 2005 when it was opened up to us non-ivy leaguers.


On the cusp, sure. But a millennial I am not. I make Saved by the Bell references at work still... I had to explain to a younger coworker why "I'm so excited, I'm so scared" was funny just the other day.

I wouldn't call myself a milenial by beliefs or actions either. But I'm 10 years younger than you and according to the all knowing Wikipedia were both milenials :)

I didn't have a cell-phone until a had a job. And they gave it to me. Never had any sort of portable comms in college. Managed to survive without them. Never had a pager, mostly because I never worked as a prostitute or a doctor.

Honestly, I can't see any reason for an individual to pay for a cell phone themselves. If the company you work for gives you one, fine. If they don't, then let's be honest, you really don't need it. For a period of several months in 2013, after I'd left Harris but before I joined WPIX, I was without a cell phone entirely. It was quite refreshing.


And I take issue with this Wiki author clumping Gen Y and Gen Wu together, and claiming that GW originates as far back as the 80s. Hell, even late-90s kids barely count. I'm a child of the late 70s, and find myself on the boundary between Gen-X and Gen-Y. Basically at the transition from metal to grunge. Gen Wu, by contrast, are the generation of my children; those who have never known a world without always-on wireless communications. A college freshman of today was in diapers when 9/11 happened, and has no idea why Y2K was such a big concern. That's a millennial.

Never had a pager, cellphone I think my junior of college? Hell I didn't even get a Facebook until 2011/2012.

Excellent SBTB reference.

Dang dude, I'm a '91 and can't really consider myself a "millennial".

Some good news, one college prez is bucking the trend:
University President Defies Trend, Defends Intellectual Diversity | The Weekly Standard

Here's a very interesting thesis.

We have gone from an "honor culture" to a "dignity culture", and this appears to be a shift towards a "victimhood culture"
Where microaggressions really come from: A sociological account | The Righteous Mind

I might consider myself the last pre-millennial. I didn't have a pager in high school or a phone until far after graduation when I purchased one myself. I honestly didn't have video games, and played with bicycles, roller blades and built model cars and shot of estes rockets and played with water, dry ice and plastic bottles. I played outside, with friends, with water guns. Worked on cars THEN gave up the good life to defect and move out of my parent's place after feeling the glass ceiling at dead end county jobs to pursue college on my own.

I guess I became a millennial by racking up tuition debt and not having health insurance for 10 years even though I have two chronic conditions and paid out of pocket to see specialists.

#AmericanDream

Once again I am proud to be an alumni of GMU. We are the most diverse university in VA. With an extremely wide spectrum of students. I saw Obama speak there before he was president and then years later saw libertarian and republican presidential candidates speak. Our econ department makes University of Chicago look liberal, but damn if we would support the rights of anyone to speak freely or chalk up the campus.

Kids today don't even have to buy insurance until they are freaking 25 while still living in their parents basement after receiving their Woman's Studies Bachelors of Arts--the law used to only cover kids under parent's insurance until 18. So it used to be the norm for kids, who don't need insurance, to go without it for the longest time. Now kids today, who paid too much for a shitty education, and live at home with no job, are FORCED until threat of jail to buy the insurance they don't need in order to pay for the others who use it with money they don't have. Plus insurance is more expensive than ever, and eventually all employers are going to stop offering it as an incentive for employment which will make it even more expensive to purchase and since it will be state run, even less useful.

These kids all voted for this too, and will blame the rich, corporations, and republicans when it was the liberals/progressives that they voted for that enslaved them into servitude under the guise of "free" stuff.

When I was 5 or 6, I told my dad to sell the NES and buy a go-kart.

He obliged.

cash in.

Today's "youth" are not deemed to have an adult level of maturity until 26, but have the right to vote at 18.

Under 26. I disagree with you.

Talk to me again in 3 years :)

* Shrugs

It's not that I don't agree; many kids today just have no fucking ability to persevere. Ask them to do something that's not on a computer and is difficult and watch them shrivel.

But a lot of this inter-generational complaining comes from boomers. Who are the spoiled little rich brats of the greatest generation. They got raised in Levittowns in a world of continuous economic growth where if you put your 40 in each week and played fucking golf with the boss once in awhile you got regular raises and probably a promotion and in the end you got a pension, SS, and have some fun money so you could move to Florida, bitch about people who have lived there longer than you, drive a fuckin beige Camry, and talk about hemorrhoids. A huge portion of these people have seldom worked more than 50 hours a week, have not done manual labor of any real sort in over 30 years, and have not had to fix their own homes or cars since their second kid. These are the people who talked shit about every traditional institution on the map in the 60s, protested wars and big brother, then brought us more wars than ever before and bitch about kids not respecting them and all their hard work.

I have been employed since 16 with a total of 18 months of between jobs, during which I lived on savings. I know many people like this. But I did not walk 87 miles to school wearing a button up shirt and tie so I suck I guess.

'Kids' now are paying easily 4 times what I did to go to school back around Y2K. And often doing it with minimal help from parents IME. I got 500 bucks a month - I was basically rich compared to most of my friends. I had to sell books door to door to get through without what I considered too much debt. And I had it sooo much better than they do now.

Boomers for the most part have 401Ks, IRAs, SS, savings, houses, etc. Many have fucking pensions.

My generation can't even comprehend pensions outside Gov. work. Many of us work our asses off (as I have for the past 6 years) with no 401K, let alone a match from the employer. You do your IRA and if you don't you are fucked. SS is not going to save you even if Bernie get elected and frankly many kids DO get that.

Boomers often had health care coverage from their employer that was either free or close to it, and it basically, you know....worked. Not so much now. And god help you if you have a kid. So with massive price increases in health care cost and the criminalization of not buying a shitty product from a corrupt organization, I'm not super quick to bitch about staying on parent's care until 26.

Forget millennials, fuck boomers. Millennials have their issues as does everyone, but at least the world they bitch and moan about is not one of their own creation.

^
I agree so hard

Pfft. we have it better than any other humans to have ever existed.

So - I was telling my wife my theory that the best ethnic restaurants are hidden in the sleaziest strip malls, when she says to me, "I wish you wouldn't use the word 'ethnic'. It makes me uncomfortable." (Yes, she attended a liberal arts university, but she got a degree in bio-chem, not whale gender studies.)

Now this surprised me because I've never thought about "ethnic" being an offensive term. I generally don't go out of my way to offend people, and if there's a word that's pretty universally considered offensive, and it has some non-offensive alternatives, I use those. "Oriental" is a good example of this - "Asian" works just as well and doesn't rustle any jimmies. On the other hand, I refuse to participate in the pearl-clutching done by those who keep wanting to limit what is acceptable speech. A quick google search reveals that there are (of course) a substantial number of people who are trying to eradicate "ethnic" as an acceptable term, apparently because it implies that Euro-white is normal, and "ethnic" is the foreign other. It seems to be just a rogues gallery of the usual kooks, however.

It seems to me that "ethnic" is a just a derivation of "ethnicity", so if I'm talking about ethnic restaurants, I'm just referring to cuisines from ethnicities other than my own. This seems acceptable and inoffensive to me. If I was Nigerian, American food would be ethnic food.

Anybody else heard that "ethnic" is offensive now? And what the hell am I supposed to say instead? "Foreign restaurants" just sounds weird to me.

People are morons, fuck them.

Hold your frame.

Dann

Not sure where the best place to post this, but here it is.

Synopsis of article from a Left-leaning think tank:
To have a 98% success rate of escaping poverty in the USA, there are 3 steps to accomplish:
1) Graduate from high school
2) Get a full time job
3) Do not marry or have children until you attain the age of 21 years

The article can be found here: Three Simple Rules Poor Teens Should Follow to Join the Middle Class | Brookings Institution

Say "Ethnic", and when she says she's offended, ask her what "ethnic" means to her. Then tell her what "ethnic" means to merriam-webster. Finally, let her know that by being offended to the word "ethnic", she is taking the "dignity" away from "ethnic" people. Tell her she is of North American ethnicity, and ask her if that is offensive.

Lastly, people like her are slowly eliminating the English language. It will never stop. Once they eliminate one offensive adjective, they will move on to the next most offensive adjective until there are no adjectives left. It's all because they somehow feel "guilty". Tell her to lose the guilt - she is not guilty - there are no reparations that she has to pay for the relative offenses committed against a group of people by her great grandfather's generation.

Well, she's Norwegian, so her ancestors were busy raping their way down the coast of England. Maybe she can pay reparations to the English.

It's a good start. I would also throw in there "4) after high school, leave your friends and family to get a full time job in another city (where you don't know anyone) more than 150 miles away from where you went to high school." I think poverty is just as much "you" as it is "the people around you".

Unfortunately, "poverty" is also a relative term, if the permanent purchasing power of everyone were to double overnight, then the definitions of "poverty", both social and technical, would be adjusted upward so that it would still encompass a large enough percentage of the population to be dubbed a "problem that we must eradicate".

I suspect that the purchasing power of today's impoverished far exceeds the purchasing power of the upper middle class 100 years ago, yet the relative "impoverishedness" of that individual has somehow increased.

100 Years ago, they complained that they couldn't afford bread, milk, or a simple roof. Today, we give them the bread, milk, and a roof with walls, heat, electricity, phone, etc., and instead, they complain that they can't afford the gold iPhone AND the deductible for their free health insurance.

good + +

A fucking 1 post.

No doubt, we have it so good, I can go down to the wrecker and buy a shitbox car for a few hours pay which is safer, more reliable, has more features and ungodly faster than anything my parents could afford at the peak of their career, and in my world its a 200 dollar shitbox about to be scrapped.

Dann

Adam's rant is relevant to this topic:

All 3 of these things are free of charge in this country. Just requires a little self control.

sing-along time
 

Interesting article.

Two quotes from it stand out in particular, inasmuch as that they seem to exemplify a fundamental, underlying flaw in the thought process.

In one of the campaign posters, a baby with tears rolling down his face says: “I’m twice as likely not to graduate high school because you had me as a teen.” Another shows a girl saying to her mom: “Chances are he won’t stay with you. What happens to me?” Planned Parenthood criticized the ads, displayed in the subway and bus shelters, for ignoring racial and economic factors that contribute to teen pregnancy.

Ignoring racial and economic factors that contribute to teen pregnancy? There's only one factor which contributes to teen pregnancy, and that's sex. Now, I have no illusions about teenagers not having sex, but condoms are handed out for free at pretty much every health clinic in North America, they fit penises of all races, and their existence is not a well-guarded secret.

Other critics say the ads stigmatize teen parents and their children.

Well, duh. Isn't that the whole point? You make teenagers not want to get knocked up by stigmatizing knocked-up teenagers. How can that be hard to understand?

What concerns me is the tacit assumption that the value of not hurting some knocked-up teenager's feelings exceeds that of preventing more teens from getting knocked up. That's a frightening and dangerous philosophy.



Actually, as a professional drunk, I'm offended by ads which stigmatize DUI. Who can I complain to about that?

I also find it interesting that PP objected to an add that advocated not having babies. Isn't not having babies what PP is all about?

*insert no abortions no funding joke*

If everybody stopped conceiving unwanted babies, they'd be out of a job.

Planned Parenthood, by the numbers - CNN.com

Let's take a closer look at what those numbers mean: 3 percent of Planned Parenthood's services are abortion but what about their revenues?

So would they have to shutter all their doors if they stopped performing abortions? Of course not, they get a lot of government grant money. But 10% of all their revenue is...$130 million dollars. Cut that out of their budget and I think we'd see a lot of layoffs at PP. And that's not counting what they make selling Plan B at $50 a pop. So yeah, unwanted conceptions keep a lot of people at PP employed.

And so, your point?

so what? why is the taxpayer money keep this company "afloat"?

$130 million annually could co back into something that effects more than .000001% of the population. Or stay in our own pocketbooks to spend how we choose to spend it.

To be fair, eliminating the less desirable elements of the surplus population as early as possible has a buoyant effect on the economy and the population as a whole. It costs far less to abort someone or prevent their conception in the first place than to deal with them after the fact by giving them WIC / SNAP benefits, a free education, a free criminal trial and incarceration, etc.


Found this article interesting: Why Generation Y Yuppies Are Unhappy

From the point of view of the author, those of us born as early as the late 70s are supposed to be miserable because of unrealistic expectations of success and overvaluation of our own potential.

Not sure about you guys, but I suffer the opposite effect- I can't believe people pay me as much as they do what seems like relatively little actual work.

I'm pretty sure TLP has written on this subject. Also how paying certain people welfare/disability is essentially a version of the same equation - the math says it costs less to just mail them a check than deal with them in other ways. So here's the check.

Why the suburbs are all wrong for my kids

By Erin Mantz May 12

“LOOK. AT. THE. DEER!” I say this to my sons, 11 and 14, as we do our normal weeknight swing down the tree-lined driveway, home from what feels like their 10th basketball practice of the week. But my boys are buried in their iPhones, watching for their friends’ reactions/likes/comments on one of whatever social media apps of the moment.

Amazing things are going on around them – I mean, I am floored, every time, by seeing the deer just calmly hanging out a few feet away, staring right at me, not even running away from our car. But unlike many parents, I don’t think it’s social media that has led to my kids’ indifference. I’ve firmly decided to place the much of the blame squarely on the suburbs. Yes – having my kids grow up in the beautiful, sheltered, suburban world of the suburbs of Maryland is the problem.

I grew up in Chicago, in a vibrant neighborhood where noise was my friend and nobody drove me anywhere. Sounds were all around me, and I walked everywhere, myself, alone. I fell asleep to the din of the Lunt Avenue buses outside my bedroom window, and the chatter of the second-floor neighbors talking with my mom because the windows were open. I woke up to the scent of blueberry muffins baking at Swiss Pastry across the alleyway, and the clanks of the first morning’s game of Kick the Can. From the moment I woke up, I was never lonely or bored. Sounds and people enticed me to go out and explore. Everything was outside, awaiting me.

I felt connected to all the neighborhood kids, shops, workers – even the caretaker of the pond at our beloved Indian Boundary Park, which was just a baseball’s throw away. It was at that pond that I saw my first turtle and discovered how they move and feel.

And that’s what I’m afraid my boys don’t have by living in the suburbs. That feeling of being connected. I bet my boys have never stolen or felt a turtle. They’ve probably watched animal tricks on the Internet, and have likely Googled “turtles” when they needed to learn about them for a school project. My younger son does know the neighborhood kids, but my older one is always out at some structured activity or sports practice he gets to by car.

They don’t have the kind of life where they can walk themselves to activities and chat with store owners along the way. They don’t have to figure out bus numbers and routes or try new things on their own. The suburbs: The planned community where everything is available, by car. With a schedule. With parents in charge.

Sometimes, at night, as I look out our big living room window at the woods behind our house. It’s pretty, but unnerving. It’s too quiet. I’m looking for some activity – even the deer – and waiting for something to happen. The suburbs, with all of their supposed security and conveniences, and book clubs for moms and hectic sports leagues for kids, are pretty lonely.

Do my kids feel the loneliness of the suburbs? I don’t think so. I think it feels like their haven, their home. It’s all they’ve ever known. But when my son has an urgent request for candy or a protractor for homework, the need will pass that night, unfulfilled, unless he can persuade me to drive him to CVS. If we lived in a neighborhood like the one I grew up in, he could walk to the drugstore to get it himself. He’d learn responsibility, independence and redefine initiative.

And as for me, the mom in the suburbs: Sometimes I just don’t feel like driving over to Starbucks to meet a friend for coffee. I yearn for the way it was when I grew up, in that three-story apartment in West Rogers Park, where our French windows stayed open all the time, and my mom could yell up to her friend on the second floor, to come have an iced tea. It’s not just that I’m a mother who wants it to be like it was “back in my day.” I wish for my kids to experience some of the kind of childhood and independence I gained from living in the city.


It’s not just helicopter parenting, structured play dates and social media that have made their lives seemingly easier, or perhaps if not easier, lazier. It’s living in the burbs. I want my boys to experience how the little things in everyday life don’t always come so easy. I remember my mom searching for a parking spot on the street, carrying groceries way farther than across a porch, of trusting me to walk alone every day, make friends with the drugstore owner and actually talk to strangers.

I’m not saying that I wish I was a mom carrying groceries for blocks and blocks. I think that’s what I wanted to avoid when we first moved to the suburbs. I wanted the ease and convenience of a driveway, a front porch. But now all I feel is an anemic lifestyle. Car to gym to home to school to home to work to office to store to home again. Then the evening carpools start. For the kids, and I guess, for me, there’s no grit, no problem-solving necessary to get from Point A to Point B. And that’s what I’m afraid my children aren’t learning by living in this supposed utopia — a way of life that fosters self-reliance and problem-solving.

Why not just leave? Well, I can’t … literally and logistically. Legally, I’m divorced and couldn’t go even if I wanted to. But even if I could go, I wouldn’t want to uproot my boys now, to take them away from their dad, school and sports teams, and this neighborhood they consider home. They’re living their version of childhood, and they think this suburban one is just fine. But will they one day look back on this childhood with a misty eye, like I think of mine? Will I?

The irony is, I created this situation. As much as I loved my childhood as a kid, once I was in my 20s, I envisioned having kids of my own and giving them a “nicer” and safer life. I wanted to grow up and get a comfortable house for my family with the extras that I never had. A real rec room. A yard. Space.

I got married. I got the big house. I gave them a back yard and better schools and safer streets. The idea that all the stability I thought suburban life would bring them, and me, seems almost silly now.

I am restless here, and now there’s a longing for what I’ve lost, and for what they’ll never have – the buzz outside the windows, the sense of being part of something you don’t have to pay or try out for to join, expressions on real faces when they share exciting news with friends, not emojis from miles away.

I’d gladly give back their hoverboard and Xbox, Instagram accounts and carpools for a place and time that’s more of the childhood I had. Some would argue I had less. But I was happy. And decades later, sounds of the city still comfort me. Even when I don’t hear them, I can remember.

What will my sons remember? I don’t think it will be a sense of excitement, wondering who is outside, or which random people they will meet on their walk to school. They won’t learn how to make nice with shopkeepers or smell the bakery as they walk past. But perhaps they’ll remember the safety and predictability of the suburbs. And for them, if not me, maybe that’s enough.

Erin Mantz is a writer, marketing professional and mother of two boys.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...bs-make-me-sad

$130 million is what they take in each year charging for abortions - they get half a bil from the government. Honestly, I don't think PP should get a dime of taxpayer money. If people really support what they do, then I'm sure that private contributions will make up that $528 million a year difference. (Yeah, right.)

But my cynical side thinks that that PP is simply a way for the government to deniably subsidize eugenics; white women with good jobs from good families are not PP's primary clients. Their abortion clients are majority poor, and blacks are vastly overrepresented.

Of course, "The government is participating in population control of poor blacks," is the kind of talk that causes riots and people to be shot at dawn. So we dress it up in a frilly hat and look the other way.

And before somebody starts claiming that government dollars don't directly finance abortions due to the Hyde Amendment,

To say nothing of the fact that half a billion dollars a year of government money allow PP to keep their doors open and continue to perform these procedures, whether that money directly funds them or not.

Final warning: respond to Braineack's troll-baiting about planned parenthood and the government conspiracy which supports it elsewhere.

It's completely fair, but there's still a high number of the population that simply don't want their earned dollars to contribute to abortions.

I'm pro-choice, but I don't want the gov't to fund PP.

how was it baiting, i was trying to actually have a conversation instead of just posting pictures/videos with analysis or context.

I even went as far as just looking up their annual report to actually see the breakdown for myself:

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1463397589

Brain, we already had this conversation. I stopped trying to have serious discussion in your cop thread, and you promised to stop dragging politics into my GenWu thread.

Actually I promised to stop "just posting lots of little videos without any sort of scholarly analysis or context", because "this thread is for studied analysis, not cute little videos".

People were talking PP, and I wanted to toss in some .02; my mistake.

I'm sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo ooooo sorry to derail your discussion little pansies. Carry on.

I'm afraid to post this here, Joe might ban me.

Pretty good discussion on the bathroom issue here at 53:00:



I think that's a fair discussion for this thread... his final comments at 2:13:00 are a good quick food for through as well. Even calls out Joe's BFF: Bill Nye the Sketchy-Science Guy.

The New Language of Protest

Story by Teddy Amenabar Published on May 19, 2016


As what some societal observers call a “new civil rights movement” begins, U.S. colleges and universities are faced with reconciling differences of opinion on a broadening set of issues: racial equality, sexual assault, Middle East policy, LGBT advocacy, mental health awareness and more. At the same time, they must reconcile increasing differences in background and culture as schools become ever more diverse.

Amid the volatile protests and debates on campuses this year, students at Princeton University called for rechristening Wilson College, named after the president who supported racial segregation. Students at Yale University forced the resignation of a professor who objected to strict limits on Halloween costumes. And at the University of Missouri, what started as a protest over racism expanded into a controversy about press freedom.

Just as the social turmoil of the 1960s generated new vocabulary — turn-on, sit-in, sexism — this latest wave of activism and upheaval is adding to our lexicon, with terms such as safe space, trigger warning, microaggression and cultural appropriation, which we explore here. We asked student leaders and activists from local universities to define these terms for us and to elaborate based on their own thoughts and experiences.

Many students believe these concepts foster inclusion, increase sensitivity and set up parameters in which difficult conversations can occur and marginalized voices can be heard. But critics, both on campus and off, call the concepts limiting, unrealistic, even un-American. They argue that creating safe spaces and using trigger warnings, for example, serve only to stifle free speech, coddle students and ignore both history and the reality found off campus.

The student leaders and activists we talked to have a ready answer to that last point. “I don’t think it’s outrageous for me to want my campus to be better than the world around it,” says Sasha Gilthorpe, outgoing student government president at American University. “I don’t think that makes me a stupid, naive child. I think that makes me a good person.”


Cultural appropriation

Naomi Zeigler: I see cultural appropriation as kind of taking different aspects of certain people’s culture without proper respect

Fadumo Osman: When I wear my traditional clothing I’m a foreigner and I’m criminalized for it, but when you wear it you make money off of it, and it’s cute.

Roquel Crutcher: Recently, braids are a thing, and that to me is cultural appropriation because I spent my entire life wanting to look like a white person, basically, and then the one moment where I do decide that I actually like the way that I look, it was kind of taken away from me. It’s just kind of hurtful, because the reason we wear braids is completely different from the reason white women wear braids, and it just takes away from the culture and from the fact that sometimes cultures don’t have a choice.

Meri Salem: These people have historically been marginalized and have been shamed for what they’re wearing or what they’re doing with their hair, etc., and now companies are profiting from it. But that profit isn’t changing the situation of the people who are still marginalized.



Microaggression

Zeigler: Microaggressions are words or actions that people say kind of without thinking of them that end up being offensive to certain communities. … A lot of times people will say, “Oh, you’re so busy and you’re so high-achieving because you’re Asian,” and that’s not really any of the reason. … And an interesting facet of it, too, is I’m adopted and my family — apart from my younger sister, who’s also adopted — is white. So there’s nothing there if we want to say it’s a cultural thing that’s really making me a quote-unquote better Asian.

Crutcher: People ask me to touch my hair. That’s a microaggression. The idea that my hair is something that is different and it doesn’t make much sense to you, so I have to, like, give you my head for you to experiment with is kind of degrading.

Liam Baronofsky: One microaggression is like one paper cut, so it’s something small but it hurts the person at the core of their identity level. But it happens so often, you come home every day with like 15 paper cuts … and it really hurts.

Zanib Cheema: Sometimes they’ll just stick my face on something… They were doing a university life presentation… and they had one slide and the title was “diversity,” and the face was me. That’s it … I’m not the only person, you know, it’s not just about me. There are so many minority groups; you can’t just put one title to it.



Safe space

Osman: A place where usually people who are marginalized to some degree can come together and communicate and dialogue and unpack their experiences.

Nick Webb: Sometimes I feel the white population can be left out of these conversations. … You can’t build and create equality without having everyone involved in the conversation.

Crutcher: When I wake up, I think about the fact that I’m black, I have to think about my hair, I have to think about my edges, I have to think about how I look … whether or not I look too this or too that, and that’s something that I get tired of doing sometimes. And so it makes me feel good to know if I can go somewhere and just be me without having to worry about changing who I am — that’s a safe space.

Cheema: You’re trying to create an environment which promotes people to feel comfortable enough to talk about things that typically won’t be spoken about … where people can speak up, where they feel like nothing that’s going to be said is going to be taken out and used against them.



Trigger warning

Zeigler: It’s not a form of censorship, it’s just kind of a heads-up, like, “This is coming and we want you to be engaged, so we want to tell you this is here.” I welcome free speech, and I welcome speech that I don’t agree with, stuff that can be controversial. But at the same time I’m a real fan of empathy, and I think that’s what trigger warnings teach us.

Sasha Gilthorpe: A trigger is a psychological thing. Our generation hasn’t invented triggers, we are working to address the fact that there are people whose experiences exclude them from parts of our conversation. … You have to do something to be make sure that everybody can be educated; they can’t do the work and they can’t participate if you don’t create the conditions where everybody can participate.

Cheema: We have something called Take Back the Night. It’s basically like a protest rally that takes place on campus. We give a trigger warning before that because we have survivors who come up to the stand, and they talk about their specific experience in which they were sexually harassed and they go into a lot of detail. So it’s very vivid, it’s very real. … So we give a trigger warning then.

Salem: You don’t have to be tied to any one political identity to believe that people who have gone through post-traumatic stress deserve the right to acknowledge whether they want to participate.




Responding to the charge that they are coddled

Crutcher: Another thing that bothers me as a black woman is the idea that it’s my responsibility to educate people about these things. … You’ve been completely ignorant to my identity, and I’ve been forced my entire life to learn about yours. So I feel like it’s not too much for me to ask for you to learn that on your own. … Or for the administration, who is having all these kids come together who look differently, who act differently, to try to explain to them what those identities are and what they mean.

Osman: The questions get tiring, but they’re not malicious. There’s a difference between someone saying, “Hey, why do you wear that on your head?” as opposed to someone saying, “You’re a terrorist.” It’s tiring, but I think it’s needed.

Salem: If we’re in the classroom… I expect the professor to have some type of role in directing the conversation. We’re not seeing that in classrooms. Instead you’re trying to have people say their feelings but not necessarily have an academic perspective.

Zeigler: I like to think that people are good — we’ve just been socialized to do bad things, to have a mind-set that’s discriminatory, that’s problematic. But I like to think that most people want to be better.

Peters: Our society is changing. We’re broadening the scope of what it means to be a man, to be a woman, to be a person.






The new vocabulary of protest: What students mean by terms like ?safe space? | The Washington Post

Roquel Crutcher seems to have some fairly deep-rooted issued regarding her hair.


Lame pun intentional.



I wonder- do college kids eat ramen noodles any more? Because that's cultural appropriation.

So, I wonder . . . is using a computer cultural appropriation? How about wearing a coat or shoes? What about flying in an airplane or paddling a kayak?

Throughout human history when people are exposed to ideas/habits/devices that are useful to them, they start to use them too. Other species also do this, but the effectiveness with which human beings can learn and adapt is the reason we "rule" the Earth (was "rule" a microagression)?

If cultural appropriation is really a thing . . . does that mean Muslims should not be allowed on commercial aircraft -- since that is clearly a White Christian invention? Should White Christians not be allowed to use gunpowder -- invented by the Chinese? Maybe all cultures should just revert to being stone-aged tribes restricted to their ancestral localities? If so, what would be the appropriate point in ancestral time?

Beyond whether college kids still eat ramen noodles, do college kids learn anything anymore? Or is that blatant cultural appropriation? I wouldn't hire any of the above people . . . they're useless to me and society in general.

As a counterpoint, my youngest is currently attending Texas A&M in the honors genetics and microbiology program. She's doing great, working hard and learning a lot. There are a few of these types of "people" there too, but the smart kids just roll their eyes and get on with their work. Is the real issue not that there is a giant generational gap, but rather that the jerks have a much louder bullhorn and public forum through social media? I've often lamented how the 24 hour "news" sources, that are really opinion outlets, cause people to be more divided and ignorant of truth even though we have so much more real information available to us than at any other time in human history.

White man speak with forked tongue