General US Politics

[Tryhard]

17 minutes ago, Lushen said:

You do realize one of the big issues with our healthcare is the healthcare our veterans (VA) are getting right?  Which is a single payer system...right?  I don't think it's as simple as choosing single payer or not, I think both can work - the issue with our healthcare is democracy.  We have had democrats and republicans fighting over it for years and we've developed a very odd in-between health care system.

considering there's around 40,000+ homeless veterans in the US i'd say you're not doing a great job of taking care of them, but that's another issue. but besides that, how exactly is that a big issue? the point is that I see no reason the united states, the richest country in the world, can't follow the example of other countries who have figured this out with less % GDP cost.

it's a right-wing health care system, the same was pretty much proposed by conservative thinktanks in the past, and Mitt Romney did a similar system in Massachusetts as governor.

Edited August 3, 2017 by Tryhard

[Shoblongoo]

32 minutes ago, Lushen said:

You do realize one of the big issues with our healthcare is the healthcare our veterans (VA) are getting right?  Which is a single payer system...right?  I don't think it's as simple as choosing single payer or not, I think both can work - the issue with our healthcare is democracy.  We have had democrats and republicans fighting over it for years and we've developed a very odd in-between health care system.

As for our schools, you're right we have one of the worst public schools in the country.  Yet...we have some of the best colleges....

best Private Colleges. Our public universities are...well...



Its the exact opposite of how it works in a country like--say--Taiwan. (i.e. one of the best education systems in the world)

Where the public universities are considered the best in the country. Admittance into a school where the government pays for you to study is the highest aspiration of every student; no one from any economic background doubts that if they study hard and ace their  exams and rise to the top of their class, they will have the means to attend the best schools.

And attendance at a private university with outrageous tuition that will put you into debt for the rest of your life, unless you come from a family that can afford to float the bill, is the fallback of students who didn't study hard enough to get into a top-tier public university.

America does it ass-backwards.

You have to fork up $70,000 per year to attend our best universities--the Harvards. The Yales. The Princetons. An education at a top university is as much a luxury to be purchased as an achievement to be earned.

...then the attitude towards Community College is well its a place you go if you don't have the grades or the money to get into an elite university.

Edited August 3, 2017 by Shoblongoo

[Moblin Major General]

3 minutes ago, Shoblongoo said:

America does everything ass-backwards.

Fixed that for you. If another country does it, expect America to do it wrong.

[Lushen]

23 minutes ago, Shoblongoo said:

best Private Colleges. Our public universities are...well...



Its the exact opposite of how it works in a country like--say--Taiwan. (i.e. one of the best education systems in the world)

Where the public universities are considered the best in the country. Admittance into a school where the government pays for you to study is the highest aspiration of every student; no one from any economic background doubts that if they study hard and ace their  exams and rise to the top of their class, they will have the means to attend the best schools.

And attendance at a private university with outrageous tuition that will put you into debt for the rest of your life, unless you come from a family that can afford to float the bill, is the fallback of students who didn't study hard enough to get into a top-tier public university.

America does it ass-backwards.

You have to fork up $70,000 per year to attend our best universities--the Harvards. The Yales. The Princetons. An education at a top university is as much a luxury to be purchased as an achievement to be earned.

...then the attitude towards Community College is well its a place you go if you don't have the grades or the money to get into an elite university.

I don't see anything wrong here.

For those attending business school, communications, etc. I see no problem with the photo you referenced.  Most of their learning happens after college, in the real world.  Even engineering, imo, is best attended at public universities.  I don't think me going to Harvard would have been particularly more contributing from an intellectual perspective.  And for engineers especially, the social skills learned in those kinds of gatherings are way more important than half the curriculum.  

For those who want the 'best' education (I have reserves about the curriculum and babying that goes on at Harvard such as safezones), it's going to cost a lot more money because the professors are going to need a lot more experience, education, and instruments/resources.

Then for those in the low class, there's really no excuse for not being able to afford community college for 2 years + 2 years to graduate with a bachelors.  It might not be as fun, or as easy, but it is an option for the low class to move up in the world.  (edit: when I say afford, I don't mean pay outright.  I mean unless you are an art major, you're going to pay off your studies very quickly)

 

The only issues I see with our education are:
 - K-12 is way too easy, there's no excuse for not teaching more early on
 - Community colleges are unnecessary and only existent because tuition has increased in public universities ridiculously expensive
 - Trade schools should be regarded much more highly than they are.  Some degrees (like art) should not be taught at 4yr level because they aren't economically justifiable or necessary and the skills taught in trade schools can actually be considerably more useful than the skill taught in public universities.  Yet, they're not regarded as highly.
 - The way grades are distributed in public universities are horrible.  This may only apply to engineering at the college I went to however, where people with chegg accounts had considerably higher grades than those who did the HW themselves.
 - Harvard's "safe-zones" that teach children to continue to act like children

I realize I listed a considerably amount of issues, but our education system really isn't that bad.  The fact is, most people in America study abroad because they think it sounds fun while the rest of the world studies here because our education system actually works.

Edited August 3, 2017 by Lushen

[Moblin Major General]

25 minutes ago, Lushen said:

The fact is, most people in America study abroad because they think it sounds fun while the rest of the world studies here because our education system actually works.

No. They study here because they can take an entrance exam as many times as they need to in order to get the life they want, because a test won't determine the rest of your life like it does in other countries.

[Lord Raven]

6 hours ago, Tryhard said:

I wasn't really saying they would or would not - if he did win the general I'm sure the right wing hysteria machine would come out as always, but I'm not sure that's reliable to say that Sanders policies wouldn't be popular - we know they are. seems there was a decent amount of "never Clintons" too considering 9% of registered Democrats voted for Trump.

also, who are the "fiscal" conservatives and are they actually voting for democrats? there are very few people actually concerned with that and the ones that are, are probably going to vote republican anyway despite the fact that the majority of politics in the US seems to follow a system of socialism for corporations, war and the rich rather than actual fiscal conservatism. the democrats consistently have been choosing to appeal more to the right to try to scoop up "moderate" republicans who still don't vote for them instead of actually trying to at least pretend to appease a progressive base that could be willing to vote for them, and so far it hasn't been working.

...  the Democrats are an economically right-wing party, fiscal conservatism and social liberalism would naturally create a Democratic voter. Especially in a more fiscally conservative country. The older generation of baby boomers would likely vote for someone like Clinton over Sanders.

21 minutes ago, Lushen said:

I don't see anything wrong here.

For those attending business school, communications, etc. I see no problem with the photo you referenced.  Most of their learning happens after college, in the real world.  Even engineering, imo, is best attended at public universities.  I don't think me going to Harvard would have been particularly more contributing from an intellectual perspective.  And for engineers especially, the social skills learned in those kinds of gatherings are way more important than half the curriculum.  

That is indeed an issue with our public schooling. That most of the learning happens in the real world. So basically, we're just saying our degree is "pay for a piece of paper then get a job."

22 minutes ago, Lushen said:

For those who want the 'best' education (I have reserves about the curriculum and babying that goes on at Harvard such as safezones), it's going to cost a lot more money because the professors are going to need a lot more experience, education, and instruments/resources.

Safe zones? the fuck are you talking about? What reserves specifically do you have about the curricula? Oh, anecdotes from right-wing media outlets of some students acting like idiots?

23 minutes ago, Lushen said:

Then for those in the low class, there's really no excuse for not being able to afford community college for 2 years + 2 years to graduate with a bachelors.  It might not be as fun, or as easy, but it is an option for the low class to move up in the world.  (edit: when I say afford, I don't mean pay outright.  I mean unless you are an art major, you're going to pay off your studies very quickly)

That's still at least 30-50k you have to have in the bank (depending on where you transfer), which granted is better than a full 80k or 200k with interest, but it's _a lot_ and you still don't get much of a job out of it. FYI, non-art majors and even science majors can have difficulty paying it off if they don't have the connections or decide to pursue further education.

25 minutes ago, Lushen said:

 - K-12 is way too easy, there's no excuse for not teaching more early on

The disparity in this is beyond me. K-12 are too easy depending on your district. It's difficult to generalize, but I can guarantee you that people that lived in my county and a few of the neighboring counties in the US have had much difficulty in our public high schools. That's exactly the issue; the equality of opportunity is not there throughout the country. It has nothing to do with "too easy."

26 minutes ago, Lushen said:

 - Trade schools should be regarded much more highly than they are.  Some degrees (like art) should not be taught at 4yr level because they aren't economically justifiable or necessary and the skills taught in trade schools can actually be considerably more useful than the skill taught in public universities.  Yet, they're not regarded as highly.

You can find plenty of articles that show the value of having an arts or liberal arts degree. There's no reason to shut them down when they've been historically in colleges.

28 minutes ago, Lushen said:

 - The way grades are distributed in public universities are horrible.  This may only apply to engineering at the college I went to however, where people with chegg accounts had considerably higher grades than those who did the HW themselves.

This is extremely variable and dependent on teachers. Lack of standardized curricula is an issue in public universities, because I've never seen people with chegg accounts getting better grades than people without on account of the fact that they didn't nail the exams. I've also had many classes where HW was only 10% of the grade, so... Also I've lectured a class and made HW 6.7% of the grade, where the exams were a conglomeration of concepts they learned in class rather than rehashed homework problems.

30 minutes ago, Lushen said:

 - Harvard's "safe-zones" that teach children to continue to act like children

what the fuck are people talking about with this?

31 minutes ago, Lushen said:

I realize I listed a considerably amount of issues, but our education system really isn't that bad.

Yes, it is.

[Lushen]

1 hour ago, Hylian Air Force said:

No. They study here because they can take an entrance exam as many times as they need to in order to get the life they want, because a test won't determine the rest of your life like it does in other countries.

Entrance exams are part of our educational system...yes? 

1 hour ago, Lord Raven said:

Safe zones? the fuck are you talking about? What reserves specifically do you have about the curricula? Oh, anecdotes from right-wing media outlets of some students acting like idiots?

what the fuck are people talking about with this?

Wow, you really only hear left media reports.  https://www.harvardindependent.com/2016/09/safe-spaces-campus/

Safe zones are completely ridiculous.  There is no logical explanation for telling 18 year olds who are old enough to serve in our military and develop PTSD that they have a place where they can hide themselves from free speech they find harmful.  Guess what?  When they graduate, there are no safe spaces.  We give our children safe spaces, not our college students.  As I said, it's teaching children to continue to act like children.  It is not a right-wing media ideology, no one should be pat on the back because they don't like how a Republican won the election (Safe Zones started shortly after Trump's election).   This is not just another Fox News overstatement, I would literally not hire someone if they told me they went to safe spaces during their time in school.  It shows a serious lack in self confidence and maturity.  They should learn how to behave as mature adults.  They say that Harvard's high pass rates is because they are very selective, not because of handholidng, yet they are doing some serious handholding here.

1 hour ago, Lord Raven said:

The disparity in this is beyond me. K-12 are too easy depending on your district. It's difficult to generalize, but I can guarantee you that people that lived in my county and a few of the neighboring counties in the US have had much difficulty in our public high schools. That's exactly the issue; the equality of opportunity is not there throughout the country. It has nothing to do with "too easy."

After completing my bachelors degree, everything I learned in HS seems completely trivial.  Not only that, but half the stuff I learned in Physics (such as everything about electrical circuits) was completely wrong or oversimplified to the point where it was actually a bad way to think about it.  And all I remember doing in HS was pulling out my HW the 5 minutes before class and scribbling down random crap before the bell rings so I can turn it in and get my A.  My county was not 'easy', it would probably be considered 'average'.  When I got to college, there was an adaption period where I had to learn that the HW couldn't be done in 5 minutes.  This may be a difference in personal experience between you and I, because I went on to engineering where I learned to forget everything I knew about math and science because it was wrong.  Between that and reading/writing/english/art/PE being worthless to me, pretty much all of HS was a waste of time - all I really needed to learn was Geometry and Algebra which I could have in half a year.

1 hour ago, Lord Raven said:

This is extremely variable and dependent on teachers. Lack of standardized curricula is an issue in public universities, because I've never seen people with chegg accounts getting better grades than people without on account of the fact that they didn't nail the exams. I've also had many classes where HW was only 10% of the grade, so... Also I've lectured a class and made HW 6.7% of the grade, where the exams were a conglomeration of concepts they learned in class rather than rehashed homework problems.

 

This is also another case of difference between us in personal experience.  Engineering is a lot more cheggable.  I imagine in political science you do a lot of projects like writing papers and such.  But in engineering, we do a lot of complex math and science problems out of textbooks.  HW grades range from 20-30% consistently.  This might sound like a large portion, but the other issue with public schools in engineering is all the curves teachers apply to test grades.  Pretty much, we get a test with stuff we've never seen before, we all get ~60-70% average, and the teacher bumps us all up to ~80%.  So, everyone gets the same test grades that make up 70% of your grade while 30% of your grade is HW.  Considering the HW sometimes takes 6+hrs (I usually stayed up past 3:00am doing HW twice a week the first two years), it is very difficult to get it all done, let alone make sure it is all correct.  It is not expected for people to get 100s on all these HW's, they're too difficult.  Then you have people who knock it out in 20 minutes because they copy chegg solutions and change them a bit so teachers can't tell.  The worst thing that happens if they get caught is a zero on that particular HW problem in which case they still end up getting a better grade than honest students because they get 100s on all the ones they don't get caught on.  The only other thing my grade was ever based on was projects, which resulted in everyone getting ~90% because the teacher couldn't figure out how to grade them objectively.  

College professors are LAZY.  I had one guy literally hide in his office.  Like he would see people coming towards his office and he would start fast-walking to his office, close the door, and when people knocked he wouldn't answer.  Tenured and been teaching for his whole life...of course.

The few professors I had that were really good - that I learned a lot from, were the ones who openly mocked the 'standards' people tell them to live up to.  This even happened i HS, where my chemistry teacher made fun of the person reviewing his performance to her face because she was telling him he wasn't interacting with both sides of the class equally.  Most of these teachers were fired because they didn't follow the procedures the school told them to.

I could write a whole report on how flawed our education system is, but it's not the economics, it's the teachers, the tenure, and the people in charge of the individual colleges.  

1 hour ago, Lord Raven said:

You can find plenty of articles that show the value of having an arts or liberal arts degree. There's no reason to shut them down when they've been historically in colleges.

I never said to shut them down?  I said that sometimes people spend 20-40k they don't have on loans so they can get a history major and then they don't know what to know what to with it so they complain about how they have to be a teacher.  My HS councilor was awesome, when I told her I liked history when she was asking me what I wanted to do later in life, she told me that was stupid and I shouldn't do it because it won't pay off and I'd have to be a teacher.  Best councilor ever!  Today, she would probably be fired for that.... There's nothing wrong with going to school so you can do something you love, but understand that sometimes that means you won't make as much money.  This doesn't mean we should make it free for them.

ALSO, you either misquoted or didn't understand what I was saying.  The part you quoted was about trade schools, not bachelors.  I love trade schools for liberal arts.  I think that should be the standard.  I was saying trade schools for liberal arts should be more highly regarded and bachelors less.  Reasons being
1.  Trade schools are more economical which mirrors the less economical outcome of people receiving these degrees
2.  Hands on work associated with trade schools is more useful than textbook knowledge when it comes to most liberal arts (excluding history)

1 hour ago, Lord Raven said:

Yes, it is.

Howso?  

1 hour ago, Lord Raven said:

u have to have in the bank (depending on where you transfer), which granted is better than a full 80k or 200k with interest, but it's _a lot_ and you still don't get much of a job out of it. FYI, non-art majors and even science majors can have difficulty paying it off if they don't have the connections or decide to pursue further education.

No you don't? Tons of people get through school entirely on loans and 'kid jobs'.  If it's a good major, they'll pay it off.

Edited August 3, 2017 by Lushen

[Shoblongoo]

20 minutes ago, Lushen said:

 Tons of people get through school entirely on loans and 'kid jobs'.  If it's a good major, they'll pay it off.

...kind of like how tons of people got through mortgage payments they couldn't afford on home equity loans and junk securities???

Student debt crisis is going to be the next subprime housing crisis. Millions of kids taking out 200K principle loans that they'll never be able to pay back to make tuition payments they can't afford, all being pushed through a system where its just accepted now that that's the way its supposed to work. All from the same government-backed lending institutions. And all being set up to default at the same time. Hmmmmmmmm--wonder where this is heading.

"its good...they'll pay it off..."

We seriously didn't learn a damn thing from the Crash of 2008.



 

Edited August 3, 2017 by Shoblongoo

[Lushen]

17 minutes ago, Shoblongoo said:

...kind of like how tons of people got through mortgage payments they couldn't afford on home equity loans and junk securities???

Student debt crisis is going to be the next subprime housing crisis; its so painfully obvious where this is heading.

Millions of kids taking out 200K loans that they'll never be able to pay back to make tuition payments they can't afford, all being pushed through a system where its just accepted now that that's the way its supposed to work. All from the same government-backed lending institutions. And all being set up to default at the same time.

"its good...they'll pay it off..."

We seriously didn't learn a damn thing from the Crash of 2008.

Who the hell is taking out 200k loans?  That is not how much it costs to go to school....like not at all... Like medical doctors get that much into debt, but even they're fine - that's just how being a doctor works.  (edit:  Who would even give a student a 200k loan?)

Between HS jobs, internships, co-ops, and scholarships anyone CAN afford to go to college if they choose.  If you're in poverty, you need to put together ~25k plus interest if you go instate, public college plus living expenses whcih you can get down well under 10K (I lived off less than this) with roommates. Internships and Co-Ops can pay for a large portion of it.  Again, a lot of people don't follow flowcharts or keep up with their curriculum or fail classes and end up in college a lot longer than they're supposed to be.  Kind of their own fault.  It CAN be done by anyone.  And apparently, the average student leaves with 25K average.  If you're really clever, you can pay that off by the time you hit 30.

Edited August 3, 2017 by Lushen

[Lord Raven]

54 minutes ago, Lushen said:

Safe zones are completely ridiculous.  There is no logical explanation for telling 18 year olds who are old enough to serve in our military and develop PTSD that they have a place where they can hide themselves from free speech they find harmful.  Guess what?  When they graduate, there are no safe spaces.  We give our children safe spaces, not our college students.  As I said, it's teaching children to continue to act like children.  It is not a right-wing media ideology, no one should be pat on the back because they don't like how a Republican won the election (Safe Zones started shortly after Trump's election).   This is not just another Fox News overstatement, I would literally not hire someone if they told me they went to safe spaces during their time in school.  It shows a serious lack in self confidence and maturity.  They should learn how to behave as mature adults.  They say that Harvard's high pass rates is because they are very selective, not because of handholidng, yet they are doing some serious handholding here.

This argument is ridiculous. Do you understand the purpose of a safe space? Do you understand the benefits of these in creating well-adjusted adults? Furthermore, do you think they're literally just spaces where people can whine and be a kid in? What are you even describing is a safe space? Go into detail here. You're generalizing a very specific concept.

Because these kinds of safe spaces often didn't exist in high school. Nor is it nearly as big an issue as people claim it is -- it's anecdotal at best, and it's also completely 100% simplifying the issue. It seems like something that is overblown by -- you guessed it -- middle class straight white males, who have a 24/7 safe space.

54 minutes ago, Lushen said:

After completing my bachelors degree, everything I learned in HS seems completely trivial.  Not only that, but half the stuff I learned in Physics (such as everything about electrical circuits) was completely wrong or oversimplified to the point where it was actually a bad way to think about it.  And all I remember doing in HS was pulling out my HW the 5 minutes before class and scribbling down random crap before the bell rings so I can turn it in and get my A.  My county was not 'easy', it would probably be considered 'average'.  When I got to college, there was an adaption period where I had to learn that the HW couldn't be done in 5 minutes.  This may be a difference in personal experience between you and I, because I went on to engineering where I learned to forget everything I knew about math and science because it was wrong.  Between that and reading/writing/english/art/PE being worthless to me, pretty much all of HS was a waste of time - all I really needed to learn was Geometry and Algebra which I could have in half a year.

This is anecdotal. You said it's not that bad, then you said it was a load of shit by this paragraph. FYI, this was not my high school experience, nor was it that of many of the people I went to school with -- and it has everything to do with the fact that we took APs as early as 10th grade and many students took classes at community colleges and were acquainted with local internships and independent study programs. It was a public school. I daresay, my AP classes were probably more in-depth than some of my college classes, ergo there's a great deal of inequality in public schooling across the country just based on our two posts alone.

54 minutes ago, Lushen said:

This is also another case of difference between us in personal experience.  Engineering is a lot more cheggable.  I imagine in political science you do a lot of projects like writing papers and such.  But in engineering, we do a lot of complex math and science problems out of textbooks.  HW grades range from 20-30% consistently.  This might sound like a large portion, but the other issue with public schools in engineering is all the curves teachers apply to test grades.  Pretty much, we get a test with stuff we've never seen before, we all get ~60-70% average, and the teacher bumps us all up to ~80%.  So, everyone gets the same test grades that make up 70% of your grade while 30% of your grade is HW.  Considering the HW sometimes takes 6+hrs (I usually stayed up past 3:00am doing HW twice a week the first two years), it is very difficult to get it all done, let alone make sure it is all correct.  It is not expected for people to get 100s on all these HW's, they're too difficult.  Then you have people who knock it out in 20 minutes because they copy chegg solutions and change them a bit so teachers can't tell.  The worst thing that happens if they get caught is a zero on that particular HW problem in which case they still end up getting a better grade than honest students because they get 100s on all the ones they don't get caught on.  The only other thing my grade was ever based on was projects, which resulted in everyone getting ~90% because the teacher couldn't figure out how to grade them objectively.  

I studied physics. Try again. This goes back to variable experiences.

54 minutes ago, Lushen said:

College professors are LAZY.  I had one guy literally hide in his office.  Like he would see people coming towards his office and he would start fast-walking to his office, close the door, and when people knocked he wouldn't answer.  Tenured and been teaching for his whole life...of course.

The few professors I had that were really good - that I learned a lot from, were the ones who openly mocked the 'standards' people tell them to live up to.  This even happened i HS, where my chemistry teacher made fun of the person reviewing his performance to her face because she was telling him he wasn't interacting with both sides of the class equally.  Most of these teachers were fired because they didn't follow the procedures the school told them to.

I could write a whole report on how flawed our education system is, but it's not the economics, it's the teachers, the tenure, and the people in charge of the individual colleges.  

a) college professors are not all lazy, and this goes back to variable experiences. I've had some bad experiences with profs, but it was never because they were too lazy.

b) this goes back to variable experiences, because the majority of teachers I knew stuck to their guns.

c) it is definitely the economics. Central Maryland is one of the wealthiest spots in the country, with a high property value -- and they have some of the best public schools in the country. Inner city Baltimore has shitty public schooling. Mississippi and Arizona have shitty public schooling. I have actually taught in Maryland and Arizona, and I can tell you that my experiences in Maryland were much smoother than my experiences in Arizona -- because Arizona is filled with poverty, and Maryland does not have nearly as much, and the economics determined the quality of schools they could go to. Property values increase by a lot due to the quality of local public schools (and gentrification, which leads to a soft-segregation redistricting, if you want to hear the racial side). The parts of Maryland that many of these people were from determined the quality of their education leading up to college, and it was kind of easy to tell which general region of Maryland the students came from depending on how knowledgeable they were.

You're arguing with someone who has taught classes, TA'd, etc for the past 6 years so I have quite a great deal of knowledge here. Economics are a very big factor in quality of schooling. More expensive private universities also have higher quality of education, whereas public universities are very much hit or miss.

54 minutes ago, Lushen said:

I never said to shut them down?  I said that sometimes people spend 20-40k they don't have on loans so they can get a history major and then they don't know what to know what to with it so they complain about how they have to be a teacher.  My HS councilor was awesome, when I told her I liked history when she was asking me what I wanted to do later in life, she told me that was stupid and I shouldn't do it because it won't pay off and I'd have to be a teacher.  Best councilor ever!  Today, she would probably be fired for that.... There's nothing wrong with going to school so you can do something you love, but understand that sometimes that means you won't make as much money.  This doesn't mean we should make it free for them.

What is the point you're making? This is what you said:

2 hours ago, Lushen said:

Some degrees (like art) should not be taught at 4yr level because they aren't economically justifiable or necessary and the skills taught in trade schools can actually be considerably more useful than the skill taught in public universities.

What do you mean by "should not be taught"??

And what does your personal experience with a guidance counselor have to do with anything? If nothing else, your guidance counselor didn't properly instruct you on what you can do, and they just said to resign yourself to one thing. There's plenty of stuff that Historians are useful for, take a moment and research it!

54 minutes ago, Lushen said:

ALSO, you either misquoted or didn't understand what I was saying.  The part you quoted was about trade schools, not bachelors.  I love trade schools for liberal arts.  I think that should be the standard.  I was saying trade schools for liberal arts should be more highly regarded and bachelors less.  Reasons being
1.  Trade schools are more economical which mirrors the less economical outcome of people receiving these degrees
2.  Hands on work associated with trade schools is more useful than textbook knowledge when it comes to most liberal arts (excluding history)

How would trade schools fix it, and how would these be offered at trade schools without college costs going way down? Furthermore, textbook knowledge is definitely not the only thing necessary for things such as history, because history is often used beyond just memorizing facts contrary to what people believe.

54 minutes ago, Lushen said:

Howso?  

- Public schools are closing quite a bit

- Private schooling is very expensive

- Charter schools are hit or miss

- Schools are overcrowded (see point A)

- Teachers are underpaid and consistently pressured

- Standardized testing needs reform, is done by a singular private company that has many, many mistakes, and encourages teachers to teach to the test and not the curriculum

- Teachers are not very well trained fairly consistently

- Inequality across the entire country. We described our high school experiences as vastly different, and it's pretty easy to see that my difficult-but-worthwhile high school was not anywhere close to the norm

- College loans (40k on average, over 200k at the most, 30k at the most manageable) continue to not be paid off in a time when wages have stagnated, the baby boomers refuse to retire, and the job market requires experience that students lack due to lack of direction and misdirection

- Soft segregation going on in public schooling to weed out the "good" (white) kids and "bad" (black) kids

- Inner city public schooling perpetually underfunded, and jails being built based on their elementary school test scores

- Richer people can afford tutors to help their children succeed in school, whereas poorer people have no such aid after school, especially since teachers are understaffed

I can go on, but if you want to view statistics linking economic status to school quality, here you go: https://nscresearchcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/HighSchoolBenchmarks2013.pdf

54 minutes ago, Lushen said:

No you don't? Tons of people get through school entirely on loans and 'kid jobs'.  If it's a good major, they'll pay it off.

What is a "good" major, and why are there "good" majors and "bad" majors? Oh, so just STEM? But that's the thing -- not everyone is built to do STEM! A teaching degree? Have fun making pennies for all that stress. Everything else requires experience, often times in the form of unpaid internships.

26 minutes ago, Lushen said:

Who the hell is taking out 200k loans?  That is not how much it costs to go to school....like not at all... Like medical doctors get that much into debt, but even they're fine - that's just how being a doctor works.  (edit:  Who would even give a student a 200k loan?)

Between HS jobs, internships, co-ops, and scholarships anyone CAN afford to go to college if they choose.  If you're in poverty, you need to put together ~25k plus interest if you go instate, public college plus living expenses whcih you can get down well under 10K (I lived off less than this) with roommates. Internships and Co-Ops can pay for a large portion of it.  Again, a lot of people don't follow flowcharts or keep up with their curriculum or fail classes and end up in college a lot longer than they're supposed to be.  Kind of their own fault.  It CAN be done by anyone.  And apparently, the average student leaves with 25K average.  If you're really clever, you can pay that off by the time you hit 30.

200k loans = private schools, when you're middle class or above and your parents don't pay for your education, meaning no loans etc. That's part of what's killing the middle class.

If you're in poverty, 25k is literally greater than your salary. I was lucky that I got ~5000 a year in grants because my parents made 20k together (and 15k in a merit scholarship) so I essentially got paid to go to school. If you're not living on campus, you have a 40k loan going on.

I make around 20k/year as a grad student, I have 1000 in yearly fees in grad school, I do not pay for my own insurance/phone bill (grad college has health insurance, my parents pay car insurance) and I pay 300/month for a car. Imagine having an entry level job at 30k/year, not living in Arizona where rent is cheap, having to pay 250/month for a car, much more for various kinds of insurance, phone bill, and then student loans (300/month if you want to pay off 20k with no interest in 5 years), and there goes your paycheck! Have fun, fucker! And people wonder why economic class migration is so shit in this country.

[Lushen]

I spend like an hour typing up a response to everything....  Then I saw that you truly believe schools are purposefully causing segregation by weeding out the black kids....  Then I decided there was nothing to gain intellectually by going back and forth on this subject with you any longer....

goodnight....

Edited August 3, 2017 by Lushen

[blah the Prussian]

9 hours ago, Lushen said:

I realize I listed a considerably amount of issues, but our education system really isn't that bad.  The fact is, most people in America study abroad because they think it sounds fun while the rest of the world studies here because our education system actually works.

Well, I'm studying abroad in the UK next year(hopefully) partially because I live in Orague so have the chance(American), partially because I much prefer the British model of teaching history, but mostly because King's College London, one of the best schools in the UK, costs about 33,000 pounds a year for an American. We don't need to make colleges free but clearly there's a way to make them affordable without becoming a socialist hellhole.

[Lord Raven]

10 hours ago, Lushen said:

I spend like an hour typing up a response to everything....  Then I saw that you truly believe schools are purposefully causing segregation by weeding out the black kids....  Then I decided there was nothing to gain intellectually by going back and forth on this subject with you any longer....

goodnight....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_segregation_in_the_United_States#Contemporary_segregation

Quote

A 2013 study by Jeremy Fiel found that, “for the most part, compositional changes are to blame for the declining presence of whites in minorities’ schools,” and that racial balance increased from 1993 to 2010.^[11] The study found that minority students became more isolated and less exposed to whites, but that all students became more evenly distributed across schools.

Another 2013 study found that segregation measured as exposure increased over the previous 25 years due to changing demographics.^[8] The study did not, however, find an increase in racial balance; rather, racial unevenness remained stable over that time period.

Researcher Kori Stroub found that the “racial/ethnic resegregation of public schools observed over the 1990s has given way to a period of modest reintegration,” but that segregation between school districts has increased even though within-district segregation is low.^[12] Fiel believes that increasing interdistrict segregation will exacerbate racial isolation.^[11]

More from that wiki article:

Quote

A principal source of school segregation is the persistence of residential segregation in American society; residence and school assignment are closely linked due to the widespread tradition of locally controlled schools.^[13] Residential segregation is related to growing income inequality in the United States.

A study conducted by Sean Reardon and John Yun found that from 1990-2000, residential black/white and Hispanic/white segregation declined by a modest amount in the United States, while public school segregation increased slightly during the same time period. Because the two variables moved in opposite directions, changes in residential patterns are not responsible for changes in school segregation trends. Rather, the study determined that in 1990, schools showed less segregation than neighborhoods, indicating that local policies were helping to ameliorate the effects of residential segregation on school composition. By 2000, however, racial composition of schools had become more closely correlated to neighborhood composition, indicating that public policies no longer redistributed students as evenly as before.^[14]

A 2013 study corroborated these findings, showing that the relationship between residential and school segregation became stronger over the decade 2000-2010. In 2000, segregation of blacks in schools was lower than in their neighborhoods; by 2010, the two patterns of segregation were “nearly identical."^[13]

It's definitely a real concept.

This article goes through some more specific school districts in more detail: https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/11/modern-day-segregation-in-public-schools/382846/

That's why I kept calling it soft-segregation. You should educate yourself before trashing my whole post based on a concept you don't understand.

[Shoblongoo]

It’s all a matter of how a given society chooses to allocate its resources. If you have a country that prioritizes military spending and mass incarceration of non-violent offenders, and where one of the two major parties stakes out the position that taxing millionaires at a level commensurate with their earnings is “socialism”…

...then You get a country that’s really good at fighting wars and filling for-profit prisons and running up trillion dollar deficits on the federal budget. But that can’t fund public access to healthcare and higher education.

 

If you cut the defense budget in half (we could do this and still spend more on our military than any other country in the world—the defense budget is that overbloated)

 

…And you get rid of mandatory-minimum jail time for everything from possession of marijuana to unpaid traffic tickets.   

…And you scale back the state and local police + departments of correction and probation to the size they need to be at to actually detain and process dangerous criminals—The murderers. The rapists. The robbers. The burglars. The kidnappers. The arsonists. The domestic terrorists.

...And you have a system where the segment of the population that controls 90% of the nation’s wealth bares no less than 90% of the nation’s tax burden; they can’t loophole their way out of payment and pass the cost along to lower earners or to the national debt.

Then you can have a country that educates its citizens. Keeps them healthy. Derives public benefit therefrom. And maintains a balanced budget while so doing.

We have simply chosen as a country that we would rather keep more money in the hands of a new American aristocracy (The Trumps. The Hiltons. The Vanderbilts. The Rockerfellers. We say we don't have aristocracy in this country--they're aristocrats).  And spend what money the government takes in on soldiers and prisons instead of books and medicine.

...Then we wonder why we get outperformed by everyone from Germany to South Korea on international competitiveness, and get populist shit-heads like Trump telling us to blame the Mexicans.

 

Edited August 3, 2017 by Shoblongoo

[Lushen]

1 hour ago, Lord Raven said:

<snip>

These sources are ridiculous in my opinion.

 "“tracking”—designating students for separate educational paths based on their academic performance as teens or younger." "The education department and advocates have said tracking perpetuates a modern system of segregation that favors white students and keeps students of color, many of them black, from long-term equal achievement. "

WHAT?  So we should have the intelligent kids who are way ahead of their curriculum in the same classes as unintelligent kids who are way behind their curriculum?  This is your solution for a better educational system???  This has nothing to do with racism or a modern system of segregation.  Black students have the same ability to have high academic performance as white students.  The reason they statistically perform lower is not because they are black, but because there is a lot higher percentage of black students coming from poverty and inner cities w/o a full family who tend to perform low in school.  Well guess what, there are white people who come from inner cities that have the same issues.  But they're not a minority, so who cares?

This is the thing that really frustrates me about liberal ideologies.  They all want to help the inner city minority kids but they don't give a shit about the inner city majority kids.  

I used to consider myself left on social issues back when republicans were against things like gay marriage but right on economic issues but the left has gone so far left I think their ideologies are the ones with all the racism and bigotry.  Guess what?  No one is writing news articles criticizing minority groups.  What group is getting criticized consistently in the media and by gov't laws?  White males.  I'm pretty sure I've been called a white privileged male a lot more than most have been called something racist. 

54 minutes ago, Shoblongoo said:

<snip>

As someone pointed out earlier, a lot of countries in Europe count on us for their military.  South Korea also counts on us for our military.  The reason we spend 500billion on our military budget is because we're not just covering our military, but many other countries as well.  Not to mention a lot of our military spending is going towards research and development for things like shooting nukes out of the sky which I think I would pay 500billion for alone.

What are you going on about with crime?  We jail people too much?  What about this guy who we deported 20 times because we couldn't afford a proper border patrol and didn't jail him because it's more economical to deport.
http://wkrn.com/2017/07/31/accused-sex-attacker-was-deported-to-mexico-20-times-court-documents-say/
20 Deportations and he gets to come back and sexually assault some poor woman.   But by all means, of course, mexico handles crime better than we do.

You also want us to cut our local and state police despite the fact that we have the highest amount of crime in the world...  Are we living in the same country?

Edited August 3, 2017 by Lushen

[Shoblongoo]

1 hour ago, Lushen said:

 What about this guy who we deported 20 times...he gets to come back and sexually assault some poor woman?

What about him???

Arrest him, put him on trial for rape, and lock him up.

You take these kinds of wild sensationalist headlines. And you portray them as prototypical of crime in America, so as to justify the obscene levels of over-incarceration in this country and call for an even more expansive police presence to combat our epidemic of "crime."

And what you completely ignore is that the murderers and the rapists and the thieves are a minuscule minority of the people that go through the criminal justice system in this country.

The overwhelming majority of persons who we arrest and jail in America are in the system for drugs, unpaid fines, and driving with a suspended license.

Spend one week in a criminal Court and you will see it--dozens of them going through "the system" everyday. Maybe one or two child molesters and a guy who beats his wife (i.e. people who actually belong in jail) in between. Some low-level shoplifters. And then every once-in-a-blue-moon; the guy who raped someone after being deported 20 times.

The fact that the system is so clogged up with the guys driving on a suspended license or smoking a blunt in a public park and the police spend the overwhelming majority of their time chasing these guys down is the reason why as over-policed as our communities are, you still have a seeming scarcity of law enforcement resources on-hand when it comes time to chase down the violent rapist.

The fact that the system is so clogged up with the guys driving on a suspended license or smoking a blunt in a public park is likewise the reason our records show that this country has so much "crime."

-Violent crime is low.
-Stupid shit that we attach criminal-law penalties to so we can build as many prisons as we build and justify having as overbearing a police force as we have is high

We could:

1) Liberalize our drug laws
2) Liberalize our traffic laws
3) Eliminate mandatory minimum sentencing for non-violent crimes
4) Put less money into funding prisons, probation departments, and law enforcement
5) Redirect police departments and the justice system to use the bulk of its resources arresting and prosecuting real criminals; not "you are charged with strict liability for a collision while operating a motor vehicle in violation of NJSA 39:3-40. How do you plead?" 

...And with that... 

You could have more police officers and more court resources going after arresting and jailing dangerous criminals (i.e. the guy who gets deported 20 times then rapes someone). At a lower cost. With more resources freed up for schools and hospitals.  With fewer disruptions to policed communities and better relationships between police departments and the communities they police.

Yes...We live in the same country...

How then you can say the problem is we don't have enough police and don't arrest enough people is mind-boggling, but it sounds like you've had extremely limited contacts with the criminal justice system and have a rather rose-colored view of how it works. 

Edited August 3, 2017 by Shoblongoo

[Tryhard]

16 hours ago, Lord Raven said:

...  the Democrats are an economically right-wing party, fiscal conservatism and social liberalism would naturally create a Democratic voter. Especially in a more fiscally conservative country. The older generation of baby boomers would likely vote for someone like Clinton over Sanders.

Maybe so, but I'm not really sure the Democrat base would call themselves 'fiscal conservatives' - they seem willing enough to spend government funding pretty freely even if they are not exactly 'socialist' from an economic standpoint. Neoliberalism is more accurate, and it's not like they are going to pick up much by going further right-wing.

47 minutes ago, Shoblongoo said:

And what you completely ignore is that the murderers and the rapists and the thieves are a minuscule minority of the people that go through the criminal justice system in this country.

Talking about 'thieves', how about we talk about the thief bankers in 2008 that committed fraud and crashed the economy? Of course, they got off with no punishment, and in fact got bailed out with stimulus packages. Yet the US has 25% of the prison population with 5% of the total population - a lot of that due to non-violent drug offenders in which private prison and rehabilitation companies profit directly from having as many inmates as possible, and spend their time lobbying to politicians. I suppose we know where the loyalty lies.

It's funny, I've found a view prevalent everywhere, but especially in Americans more than most seem to care more about tax cuts and accumulation of wealth moreso than human life, especially considering the majority of them are still getting fucked at the end of the day. I don't know how to explain to people that they should care about others.

Edited August 3, 2017 by Tryhard

[Moblin Major General]

1 hour ago, Lushen said:

http://wkrn.com/2017/07/31/accused-sex-attacker-was-deported-to-mexico-20-times-court-documents-say

I find the fact you use my local news to boost your soapbox insulting. To suggest that this is the norm is disgusting, and should be treated as such. Think about it, if the world was so dangerous that the linked article was the norm, armed protesters would fill the streets, and anarchy would ensue. Crime is only as bad as the authority trying to stop it. If the police are trained to be helpful, accessible, and transparent, crime will go down. The opposite is the norm here in the US, and you wonder why our prison is larger than the rest of the world due to almost every group except upper middle class white guys with no mental disabilities are the only ones treated impartially by the police.

@Tryhard Don't. It's that simple. If we cared about our fellow man, slavery would've been one of the first things to go, and the Trail of Tears wouldn't happen. You can't get into our heads, so go after our money instead.

Edited August 3, 2017 by Hylian Air Force

[blah the Prussian]

7 hours ago, blah the Prussian said:

Well, I'm studying abroad in the UK next year(hopefully) partially because I live in Orague so have the chance(American), partially because I much prefer the British model of teaching history, but mostly because King's College London, one of the best schools in the UK, costs about 33,000 pounds a year for an American. We don't need to make colleges free but clearly there's a way to make them affordable without becoming a socialist hellhole.

@Lushen

[Lord Raven]

6 hours ago, Lushen said:

WHAT?  So we should have the intelligent kids who are way ahead of their curriculum in the same classes as unintelligent kids who are way behind their curriculum?  This is your solution for a better educational system???

If that's what you got out of the article I linked, then you definitely have reading comprehension issues.

6 hours ago, Lushen said:

This has nothing to do with racism or a modern system of segregation.  Black students have the same ability to have high academic performance as white students.  The reason they statistically perform lower is not because they are black, but because there is a lot higher percentage of black students coming from poverty and inner cities w/o a full family who tend to perform low in school.

Didn't you say economics was irrelevant to class performance?

I could write a whole report on how flawed our education system is, but it's not the economics, it's the teachers, the tenure, and the people in charge of the individual colleges.

Come on, stay consistent!

6 hours ago, Lushen said:

Well guess what, there are white people who come from inner cities that have the same issues.  But they're not a minority, so who cares?

Evidently, a lot of people, because we're focusing now on issues that are plaguing white/rural areas that have been plaguing black communities for years. In either case, the poor are screwed over, but there are studies that show that all else equal, the white person is still more likely to reach success or be in a better environment than the white person, for a lot of reasons. Many of which are in the Atlantic article I linked!

6 hours ago, Lushen said:

This is the thing that really frustrates me about liberal ideologies.  They all want to help the inner city minority kids but they don't give a shit about the inner city majority kids.  

Yes they do.

6 hours ago, Lushen said:

No one is writing news articles criticizing minority groups.

What the fuck?

http://www.breitbart.com/

https://heatst.com/culture-wars/

http://www.foxnews.com/

http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/29/us/black-lives-matter-blowing-it/index.html

I can keep going, but I assure you that minorities have gotten plenty of news articles and plenty of places that continue to shit on them.

6 hours ago, Lushen said:

What group is getting criticized consistently in the media and by gov't laws?  White males.

[citation needed]

6 hours ago, Lushen said:

I'm pretty sure I've been called a white privileged male a lot more than most have been called something racist. 

I'm sorry to hear that. I guess it sucks to hear that you're privileged when the rest of us constantly have to endure shit about fried chicken & watermelons, purple drank, being poor and having no father, being stupid based purely on the color of your skin, being lynched

or other races about being burned alive in a fire by one of history's greatest monsters, being cooked in an oven, having to endure the highest rate of hate crimes

or other races are about curry, being terrorists, telling you to go back to al qaeda, telling you that you're not welcome in this country, being literally the most hated demographic in this country along with atheists

but i'm sorry you have to hear about being privileged more than the rest of us, it's fucking tragic

[Tryhard]

7 hours ago, Lushen said:

I used to consider myself left on social issues back when republicans were against things like gay marriage but right on economic issues but the left has gone so far left I think their ideologies are the ones with all the racism and bigotry.  Guess what?  No one is writing news articles criticizing minority groups.  What group is getting criticized consistently in the media and by gov't laws?  White males.  I'm pretty sure I've been called a white privileged male a lot more than most have been called something racist. 

by the way, is this the part where I tell you to stop being a snowflake? that's how these things usually go, right, especially for someone who criticises safe spaces just before?

pretty sure all groups get criticised and generalised, and i hate to tell you but white males (which I am) are not really the ones who have had the short end of the stick - i've seen different races criticised for years for being lazy, thuggish, etc. but as soon as there are accusations about white males people flip their shit?

I mean I don't think those accusations are productive and I'll usually criticise both as being unreasonable but you're just being purposely ignorant if you think they didn't/don't happen to other groups

Edited August 4, 2017 by Tryhard

[Lushen]

14 hours ago, Lord Raven said:

http://www.breitbart.com/

https://heatst.com/culture-wars/

http://www.foxnews.com/

http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/29/us/black-lives-matter-blowing-it/index.html

So you couldn't find individual articles so you just link the websites?  What's more funny is the only article you referenced was a huge stretch and from the most liberal major media outlet out there.

Saying that Black Live Matter is fucking up is not racist, they are.  The 'organization' is worse than the NAACP. 

14 hours ago, Tryhard said:

by the way, is this the part where I tell you to stop being a snowflake? that's how these things usually go, right, especially for someone who criticises safe spaces just before?

pretty sure all groups get criticised and generalised, and i hate to tell you but white males (which I am) are not really the ones who have had the short end of the stick - i've seen different races criticised for years for being lazy, thuggish, etc. but as soon as there are accusations about white males people flip their shit?

I mean I don't think those accusations are productive and I'll usually criticise both as being unreasonable but you're just being purposely ignorant if you think they didn't/don't happen to other groups

I'm not going to claim that there is more racism against white people than black, I imagine it's the other way around. Nevertheless, there are areas where if you go as the only white person around it can be incredibly dangerous and areas where if you go as the only black person around it can be incredibly dangerous in the United States.  

What I can argue is that most of our politics and media are more against white people than black people.  Examples like Black History Month, Black Student Union, Black Lives Matter, NAACP.  You could try to help Lord Raven find actual examples of black people being criticized in the media, but you'll probably just see the opposite.

Let's talk about NAACP.  Just yesterday, they declared a travel advisory on my home state of Missouri.  In other words, Missouri is known to be a racist state and you should exercise caution because your civil rights will not upheld.  There are considerable more racist states than Missouri, the only reason I can think of for the NAACP targeting Missouri is the Michael Brown shooting indecent, which was proven beyond reasonable doubt to not actually be a hate crime, but a police officer defending himself and having to go into protective custody b/c he received death threats.  They cited like two examples of specific people saying things that could be construed as Racism, but very indirectly.  What's calling a whole group of people something based on the actions of a small minority?  Stereotyping right?
http://www.nationalcenter.org/P21PR-NAACP_Missouri_080317.html

 

edit:  It's not a war of whose more racist.  I'm just tired of seeing people who think it only goes one way.  Racism should end immediately, but calling out white privilege and protesting for more black rights is just making people more frustrated and create more racial divisions.  The best way to stop racism is to stop segregating them in protests, laws, and media reports. 

Edited August 4, 2017 by Lushen

[Res]

11 minutes ago, Lushen said:

What I can argue is that most of our politics and media are more against white people than black people.  Examples like Black History Month, Black Student Union, Black Lives Matter, NAACP.  You could try to help Lord Raven find actual examples of black people being criticized in the media, but you'll probably just see the opposite.

Now you're just being embarrassing.

All but one U.S. presidents has been white (and male).

Congress is currently 80% white (over-represented, when only 63% of U.S. residents are white) (Congress is also over 80% male).

The U.S. is pretty firmly controlled by white people; is, and always has been.

Media? Again, the majority of people you will see on your screen are white. Majority of reporters are white. The vast majority of media is in English! When I recall to mind all my favourite (and the general population's most favourite) TV shows, the top billed character is nearly always white (and male). Sure, TV shows are growing more diverse, but the non-white characters are still usually only the sidekicks.

Literally millions and millions of Native Americans that white people slaughtered, enslaved and/or spread disease to, and kept from participating in U.S. government until very recently (until 1957, which is within my parents' lifetime, not all states permitted Native Americans to vote in their own country), and are generally talked about today by schools as if they're history.

Black History Month has to exist because pretty much the rest of history taught is white history, and if a special month wasn't set aside for black history, many schools would likely not teach it. Black Lives Matter exists because they don't, to white people. (BTW, BLM were the only people to show up at several funerals of white people shot by police; they're an organization that aims to highlight police aggression in general).

In general special groups and accommodations are formed because without them, change would never come about. If disabled spaces didn't exist you wouldn't have altruistic able-bodied people saying 'I can walk, so I should park further back!'. (And FWIW many able-bodied people still park in them, regardless). 

And here's the thing: In areas of the country where it's unsafe for black people to walk around, it's generally because the local government, schools and police are white. Because the threat comes from people with lawful authority. Whereas in areas of the country where it might be unsafe for white people to walk around, it's usually because those spaces are areas of desperate, low-income people with no lawful authority who were pushed out of the gentrified white-dominant areas. 

[Lushen]

1 hour ago, Res said:

Congress is currently 80% white (over-represented, when only 63% of U.S. residents are white) (Congress is also over 80% male).

First off, it's 72.4% of the United States that is white which is pretty damn close to 80% (as of 2010 only 7 years ago).  
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Americans

And you're not factoring in that in the minorities, only 90% of the minorities speak english fluently.  Obviously someone who doesn't speak english well isn't going to be asked to speak in Congress...once again statistics tell only parts of the story.

edit: Actually it's likely much less than 90% of them.  I couldn't find any specific data, but I saw some right wing websites report one in 10 Americans can't speak English.  So it's probably exaggerated but still based off some amount of truth.  I think it's safe to assume that most of those people are not white (if not all) so the percentage of minorities speaking English would be lower than 90%.  

edit2:  Ah, here we go https://www.census.gov/prod/2013pubs/acs-22.pdf

1 hour ago, Res said:

Media? Again, the majority of people you will see on your screen are white. Majority of reporters are white. The vast majority of media is in English! When I recall to mind all my favourite (and the general population's most favourite) TV shows, the top billed character is nearly always white (and male). Sure, TV shows are growing more diverse, but the non-white characters are still usually only the sidekicks.

The vast majority of media is in English because the vast majority of Americans speak English and nothing else....

Maybe most TV shows have more white people in them because there are more white people in the area they're portraying?  The other day I saw a youtube video of someone complaining that Game of Thrones is racist because there are more redheads than blacks.  No, it's just portraying western europe during the dark ages...  Many US TV shows show modern US culture which is only ~15% black.  Is it racist to portray real life?

 

You just don't realize that TV programs exist to make money.  They're not going to make money appealing to the minorities who don't speak english...

1 hour ago, Res said:

Black History Month has to exist because pretty much the rest of history taught is white history, and if a special month wasn't set aside for black history, many schools would likely not teach it. Black Lives Matter exists because they don't, to white people. (BTW, BLM were the only people to show up at several funerals of white people shot by police; they're an organization that aims to highlight police aggression in general).

I don't really have a problem with Black History Month.  To me, it's like MLK and shows us who we were.  It was just one of the things I could think of.   The issue is the modern organizations like the NAACP.

And once again, you're the one stereotyping.  Black Lives Matter exists because white people are racist? You can't stereotype more than that.  BLM also supported protests  over the world (and was formed) following a false reported hate crime.  Their very existence was created on a lie.  I don't support a lot of rights organizations, because I think all they do is stir up trouble and cause conflicts and racial barriers.  Here's some of what BLM has actually done for society:

http://www.diversityinc.com/news/james-comey-viral-video-effect-police/

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/former-chicago-top-cop-black-lives-matter-killing-blacks/article/2610687

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/07/10/permanently-disabled-baton-rouge-officer-sues-black-lives-matter-for-2016-ambush-shooting/?utm_term=.49cd47d054c9

http://www.lifezette.com/polizette/poll-americans-reject-black-lives-matters-myth-of-racist-police/

http://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/2017/07/06/author-black-lives-matter-motivate-shootings/

1 hour ago, Res said:

All but one U.S. presidents has been white (and male).

Which is actually quite high when you put things into perspective.  This is the most annoying thing I see people reference.  Guess what, not all 50 presidents are valid when you're determining racism in politics today.  I'd wager less than 1/4th of our presidents existed in times similar enough to today's culture to where you can compare them.  MLK died during our 36th president, so everyone before him has no MLK impact.  Liberal radicals like to think that we should maintain a 50/50 minority/majority ratio for our presidents, regardless of who the candidates are.  What really frustrated me was how many people wanted Hillary to win the election just so we can have our first female presdent.  The fact that she came so close means females stood just as much chance in the election as males.

1 hour ago, Res said:

Literally millions and millions of Native Americans that white people slaughtered, enslaved and/or spread disease to, and kept from participating in U.S. government until very recently (until 1957, which is within my parents' lifetime, not all states permitted Native Americans to vote in their own country), and are generally talked about today by schools as if they're history.

Build a time machine and maybe we can actually do something about that.  History is important, and I'm not arguing that we have a disgusting past.  That doesn't mean people born after 1957 are to blame for what their parents did or suffered from.

Edited August 4, 2017 by Lushen

[Lord Raven]

I linked media outlets watched and read by a lot of people who have a habit of unfairly criticizing minorities for no real reason. CNN is also a right of center outlet not a left leaning outlet contrary to what the far right thinks.

In either case I swear you only get your news about racial issues from tumblr or some shit like that if you legit think that white people are always criticized and legislation only ever favors non-whites. You haven't linked to any mainstream sources at all, you haven't shown much of anything but your own feelings about this, and you haven't linked to specific legislation that targets whites people.

I mean our Attorney General is highly anti-black, joking that the problem with the KKK is just that they smoke weed. Wanting to re-institute mandatory minimums. Looking into racism against white people in college campuses where the majority of them are white. And this guy has an executive position.

The thing about race relations is this; the majority of white people are in a safe space and live in a bubble. They don't see racial divides and haven't seen them until recently when Barack Obama had to point them out due to him personally being black and experiencing them. Yet despite all these issues and despite the fact that segregation solved the legislative part of segregation, there is inherent inequality between white people and non-white people. So when white people tell non-white people to shut up and suck it up and stop hurting their feelings, it's completely ignoring the problem -- and it's been like that for decades.

Right now you're backed against a corner and going "I WANT ALL RACISM GONE" but you're ignoring the reason why organizations like the NAACP and BLM exist. You're also ignoring actual issues that are related to race and the fact that one race constantly gets the short end of the stick. Being white is a factor that factors into your privilege, it's not the only thing that you have going for you. But let's not pretend at all that being called privileged is anything bad in comparison to the experience of a minority in this country, especially if they're black.

EDIT: and people born after the 60s are reaping the benefits of what their parents had before. What, do you really think that majority black neighborhoods were going to be dandy after the civil rights movement? Do you really think that people accepted integration easily? Segregation still exists today because white dudes have all the power.

Also in a sample size of 438, an 8% difference is 35 representatives. That's quite significant.

Edited August 4, 2017 by Lord Raven