Tbh hasn’t really bothered me for years. I’ve got plenty in my life to make me happy, and truth be told, most of my relatives aren’t people I enjoy being around anyways. Id imagine they’re the same
I still see a lot of them every other Xmas/Thanksgiving/etc. Plus my kids are pretty cute so almost everyone is civil most of the time
My sister straight up won’t talk to me unless we’re at a family function. She dotes on my kids like they’re cutest kids ever.
I don’t have a grudge against my family. The luxury of seeing both sides of the fence allows me to understand they’re just super ignorant on most topics.
Shit I still do 5ish family members taxes each go around. It’s always funny to see people be so grudgingly grateful when that college edgamacation kicks in
I said something critical about my SIL 23 years ago. She won’t talk to me to this day (including family functions).
While I am admittedly obnoxious I try to treat everyone with respect. My sister is mentally unstable (like medicated and with two “attempts” in the past 5 years), so I find some small solace in the fact she’s the only person who won’t talk to me.
That’s some serious perseverance. It’s hard to know what motivates people, but you have to wonder if she’s ever said something that she regretted, has ever said something unkind about someone else. Maybe she isn’t very introspective, but usually thinking about my own flaws makes me want to forgive if I’ve felt hurt.
Maybe it’s a compliment to you that she cares enough to hold a grudge. Usually someone we don’t respect or care about has very little ability to really hurt us. We tend to care more about the opinions of people we like or respect.
I will say, my parents have had a difficult time with a daughter-in-law. I decided that I was going to do everything I could to find things to like or love about her, mostly because I really love my brother. It’s a pretty terrible thing to have your wife not like your parents, or know that your parents don’t like your wife. I didn’t want to add to it by being the sister that doesn’t like the person my brother loves. We have a good relationship, so I think I’ve succeeded there. And I do genuinely like her. Hopefully I can be this wise when it comes to whoever my kids bring into the family. I am going to do everything I can to love them like my own kids.
@ Forgiveness. Today at church I heard a true story about a couple who lost their 4-year-old in a tragic car accident. The little boy was crossing the street on his bike, when a teenager who lived a couple of blocks over made a left hand turn, didn’t see him, and slowly rolled over their son. That couple went over to that young man and his parents the next day, embraced him and told him they knew it was just a terrible accident, and they forgave him immediately. Lots of tears all around. This happened in 2008, and since that time they’ve been a part of that young man’s life, attended special events, milestones in his life. I mean, think about what a gift that was to all of them, and what it could have been like had they carried a grudge.
Back to topic.
@libanbolt, Kanye tweets aside, there are some respected Black conservatives or libertarians that you could read, or follow on youtube. Would you ask a Shia to help you understand what Sunnis believe, or to tell you about Sunnis? Yeah, the same holds here. Not that it isn’t worthwhile to hear all sides, but I would never ask a Catholic to help me understand how Evangelicals think. And I wouldn’t ask a Republican to teach me about how Democrats think.
At Black conservatives and libertarians. If you have no experience, maybe try Thomas Sowell. Also Jason L. Riley, Shelby Steele, Larry Elder. Those are just a few that come to my mind.
I haven’t read all the way through this thread, but I like many of the Kanye tweets I read. He sounds a bit like a classical liberal in the ones where he talks about free speech and freedom of thought, “wrong think.” Also, his thoughts about not living in the past or letting a victim mentalitiy paralyze you? These are things we hear from successful people who get out of the ghetto, from Black fathers, and often from Black pastors. For me, the left’s strong reaction is ironic, in that they’re making his point for him. An intolerance of political diversity.
@ Cultural shifts. These things do change. There’s certainly a growing number of gay libertarians.
I think some of his New Yorker tweets are brilliant. If you didn’t see them, he tweeted about free speech and freedom of thought earlier last week, then he tweeted some cartoons from the New Yorker, some of them with the exact captions like this one. If the left is outraged over that kind of thing, then they’ve forgotten some of their once core values.
@ Ways to help Blacks
“American adults who followed these three simple rules, only about 2 percent are in poverty and nearly 75 percent have joined the middle class (defined as earning around $55,000 or more per year).” - Brookings
This is true regardless of race. And you will find the exact same situation in the UK with multi-generational poverty but in poor White people. London also had riots, similar to urban riots here with people setting fires and breaking windows and looting. London also has a problem with urban violence among a small sector of the population, but they have mostly young poor urban White men stabbing other young poor White men.
Let me just add a note about school choice and charter schools. Black and Hispanic parents who live in poor school districts have LONG been advocates of school choice. They have the most to gain from being able to put their kids in better schools. Corey Booker, Hilary Clinton, Elizabeth Warren… All of these people were advocates for school choice in recent years. I had really hoped it would become a nonpartisan issue. I think we have the teacher’s unions to blame. They give HUGE money to the Dem party and to the NAACP.
I’d blame people like myself. I made it out of a bad school district area (worst in the area for me) to one of the best.
I wouldn’t vote to integrate the local metro with my daughter’s school if you paid me to
You can probably relax, pfury. Most Black and Hispanic parents want better school where they’re at, close to their homes, rather than long bus rides into other areas.
For some facts. Black students are 16% of the US student population, but they make up 27% of Charter school students, with waiting lists of thousands of kids. Inner city charter schools are often predominantly Black and Hispanic kids, often at the same school site as the regular school.
Building schools is expensive, so there’s often a charter wing, or a floor of the school that is a charter. The teacher’s unions have no issue with this so long as they can control the charter, the jobs are all unionized. This should tell you something.
“In poll after poll, dating back decades, no group champions school choice with more vigor than low-income black parents, who back charters at a ratio of nearly 2 to 1. High-performing charter-school networks are attempting to meet the demand in states such as California, New York, Tennessee, Massachusetts, Illinois, Louisiana and elsewhere—only to have groups like the NAACP use the racial makeup of some charters against them.” By that, they mean that the teacher’s unions have often criticized them for not having more White students. Unreal. WSJ article below.
For anyone who wants to look deeper at the research. Numerous studies have shown that Black and Hispanic kids in charter schools do better, even when these places are assigned randomly by lottery, and the charter school is located on the same campus, in the same neighborhood.
This issue has long been an area of interest for me.
For anyone who is interested, I put up a couple of links and a fantastic podcast in our old Education thread, with Black educators talking about their success starting charter schools in their communities. This was all happening long before the issue got associated with the GOP or Betsy DeVos.
Eh if school choice was to become a reality, no amount of implementation difference is going to save the 20-30k value drop my house sees nearly immediately.
What does the functional difference between the ciriculum become? Do they change up the whole structure even when on site?
Yes. Exactly. There’s more freedom to choose texts and curriculum. They may accelerate some subjects.
Does a barrier to implement across the rest of the school exist beyond the teachers union?
Charters have freedom to choose texts and curriculum. They may have a longer school day, or even a longer school year with fewer vacation days. They may accelerate or emphasize different areas. It’s complicated. There is some variation from state to state as to how they are regulated. There are different kinds of charters. Some are union run. Generally, they are a public school without tuition. BUT they tend to look more like a private school in terms of flexibility, ability to choose quality staff and get rid of poor teachers, if there’s no union. In CA at least, there are lotteries to get in, and kids are selected at random.
This may help.
I don’t really have much to say against what I’ve read about charter schools. They seem like a pretty sound concept. And if nothing else it forces the system to pay teachers more as the average skill requirement has to increase.
My concern is about the scalability. Obviously some of the “charter school esque” things like mostly parental transportation, parental volunteer hours, and typically no sports would immediately vanish.
What happens to the ability to operate as a charter school when you eliminate the cost savings measures that matter most while also increasing the cost of teachers? Also being required to accept disabled/challenged/etc kids nationwide would mean supporting the ABILITY to take in these kids. It seems like a lot of costs to bump up in a system that already burns through cash.
Can’t argue with results though. Maybe we just siphon some bloated defense spending to supplement the increase
Speaking as a person who lived on a reservation, all the do-gooder programs from “pro-black” Democrats are about as useful as the do-gooder stuff they did to us natives.
All that crap does is breed dependence, ignorance, and fear. It’s by design. LBJ started that stuff. He’s the biggest racist to have even sat in the White House in modern times.
It destroys the family, ambition, and the will to make oneself better.
It’s not pro-black. It’s pro-enslavement.
You can tell what Democrats think of blacks by how they treated Kayne – they called him “crazy,” attacked his character, “Uncle Tom,” and dismiss him as a loon.
Heck, there’s even a fellow rapper who has called on the crips to kill Kayne for the sin of freethinking.
They consider blacks their property. And they get upset when you leave.
Hmmmm, do these charter schools weed out the worst students?
If all inner city schools were charter schools, we’d be back to square one.
Why don’t public schools just implement what works at charters? Like better curriculum, separating handicapped and troubled students, different hours etc…?
I’d imagine because the law says they can’t.
Therein lies the problem. The department of education, which has never educated one child… sets policy. The laws need changed.
When they post up those stats that the US is far behind most other industrialized nations in education… the Japanese don’t even let you go to high school if you perform poorly in 8th grade testing. You go to a technical program instead.
In the meantime we have to “mainstream” everyone and can’t boot kids that have no desire to learn. We have functionally illiterate and handicapped kids blended into our standardized test scores. Well of course we’re going to look worse.
