DeLaSalle Shame

[ResurgetCineribus]

Well you don't have much of a perception of what racism is to a non-white person if you have never spent a single second of your life as a non-white person. Men have little perception of sexism from a woman's vantage point. Rich people, who have never been poor, have little perception of classism from a poor person's vantage point. And a white person, who has never lived as a person of color, has little perception of racism from a POC's vantage point.

People have a capacity for empathy. Sure a white person doesn't really know what a black person goes through, but by that same logic neither does a black person know what another black person goes through. In your eyes we are all islands incapable of understanding any other shoreline but our own. A very pessimistic stance to take, and one I don't think is worth the heartburn.

[iheartthed]

People have a capacity for empathy. Sure a white person doesn't really know what a black person goes through, but by that same logic neither does a black person know what another black person goes through. In your eyes we are all islands incapable of understanding any other shoreline but our own. A very pessimistic stance to take, and one I don't think is worth the heartburn.

No, I am not saying that a white person is incapable of empathy for what a black person might be enduring through an act of racism. A man can empathize with a woman who is going through a menstrual cycle, but no natural born male will ever know what a menstrual cycle feels like.

My point is that bartock's statement was extremely presumptuous. He's not acknowledging that he might have a huge blind spot on matters of race, which was the main point of antagonast's original statement.

[bartock]

You and most other folks in this thread. Which brings me back to my original point.

You are stereotyping and judging someone you know nothing about, the fact of which also brings you back to your original point.

[bartock]

Well you don't have much of a perception of what racism is to a non-white person if you have never spent a single second of your life as a non-white person. Men have little perception of sexism from a woman's vantage point. Rich people, who have never been poor, have little perception of classism from a poor person's vantage point. And a white person, who has never lived as a person of color, has little perception of racism from a POC's vantage point.

To me, this is one of the dumbest things I've ever read. But, to your position, some idiot just tried to justify calling me racist. So, I guess between you and that, you two will feel fine. Good for you two, keep the synergy up. I'll sleep fine.

[bartock]

No, I am not saying that a white person is incapable of empathy for what a black person might be enduring through an act of racism. A man can empathize with a woman who is going through a menstrual cycle, but no natural born male will ever know what a menstrual cycle feels like.

My point is that bartock's statement was extremely presumptuous. He's not acknowledging that he might have a huge blind spot on matters of race, which was the main point of antagonast's original statement.

I find it ironic that my sarcastic response to others' presumptions become mine.

[Crumbled_pavement]

You would think a Catholic school would have a higher moral code than these expressions.

Why would you think that?

[Stinger4me]

I graduated from DLS in '65. The school back then was different. There weren't more than 8-10 lay teachers in the school, the remainder were the "black robed brothers" and many were older. You could count on a higher form of discipline from the FSC guys. I doubt they would have tolerated this behavior from the student body. Many of today's parents are the yuppies and even though the boys are at DLS they probably put up with more shit from the kids. Just my $.02 worth!

[iheartthed]

Not to reignite the flames, but this was just way too relevant to not add it to this discussion:

Indeed, if you do not know that Martin’s race [[and more to the point, Zimmerman’s racism) is central to the former’s death at the hands of the latter, it may well be that you are incapable of ever comprehending even the most obvious manifestations of this nation’s longstanding racial drama. Worse still, it may suggest that you are so bereft of empathy as to render you morally and emotionally dangerous to decent people.

And by empathy here, I don’t mean merely the ability to feel for the family of this murdered child. I’m guessing most all can manage that much. Rather, I refer to the kind of empathy too rarely attainable, by whites in particular, in the case of black folks who insist, based on their entire life experience and the insight gained from that experience, that their rights to life and liberty are too often subject to the capricious whims of those with less melanin than they, and for reasons owing explicitly to the color of their skin.

Empathy — real empathy, not the situational and utterly phony kind that most any of us can muster when social convention calls for it — requires that one be able to place oneself in the shoes of another, and to consider the world as they must consider it. It requires that we be able to suspend our own culturally-ingrained disbelief long enough to explore the possibility that perhaps the world doesn’t work as we would have it, but rather as others have long insisted it did.

http://www.timwise.org/2012/03/trayv...ss-in-america/

I'm not the biggest Tim Wise fan but he's spot on right there.

[swingline]

A shameful display from a highly regarded Catholic school. It will be interesting to see if there is a public response.

http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20120313/OPINION03/203130328/Detroit-King-s-comfortable-win-turns-uncomfortable?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|FRONTPAGE

It appears that DeLaSalle stepped up to repair some of the damage caused by its students' poor display a couple of weeks ago. Participating in an event at MLK HS rather than just issuing some sort of written apology was a good call. Well done. http://www.detroitnews.com/article/2...ON03/203280348