Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A generation of American men give up on college

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

711–720 of 824 posts

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#711

Post by exporectomy »

happythen wrote: post #334
exporectomy wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a knee on the neck. Women might get assaulted You've been reading too much news. That doesn't happen to normal people in real life. Blacks have a huge disadvantage of poor upbringing by their own family and community and women have a huge "disadvantage" of not wanting to be a computer programmer.

No, I just get outdoors and live with real people, and see it myself. I've been pulled over in a car with two other dudes, and watched the darkest skin guy get the crap kicked out of him because they thought he is a gangster, while we had to sit on a curb and watch. Where I went to school, counselors tried to get me to take AP classes, which I didn't want, while my friends with darker skin, and better grades, had to…

> the darkest skin guy get the crap kicked out of him

On his way to a job interview? And also for many of your other darker skinned friends on their way to job interviews? And your female friends on their way to theirs? I'm not denying it happened in some isolated cases, but that it causes normal people to not get to "the door". It didn't even happen to normal people among your "dark-skinned" friends.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#712

Post by exporectomy »

jensensbutton wrote: post #354
exporectomy wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a knee on the neck. Women might get assaulted You've been reading too much news. That doesn't happen to normal people in real life. Blacks have a huge disadvantage of poor upbringing by their own family and community and women have a huge "disadvantage" of not wanting to be a computer programmer.

> Blacks have a huge disadvantage of poor upbringing by their own family and community The actual issue is they have to interview with people holding the same ignorant assumptions you do.

This is what the science actually says. Black disfunction is attributed to culture spread from adults to children. Black mothers, for example, criticize their children more often than they praise them, but the reverse is true for white mothers. That's just an example of the kind of cultural effect that can be included - I'm not sure if that one specifically has been shown to be causative of lifelong disadvantage.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#713

Post by teawrecks »

zepto wrote: post #695
teawrecks wrote: post #693

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, no individual or group consciously decided how races should be divided, that happened naturally. What you're saying its that acknowledging the divide exists is racist, which is the classic "color blind" excuse.

> No, no individual or group consciously decided how races should be divided, I think the Portuguese, the British, the Spanish, the French, the Dutch, and the Danish consciously chose Africans to be imported as slaves to America. Don’t you? Jim Crow laws were consciously written by people who were deciding how races should be divided. Race isn’t even a natural category. > that happened naturally. Are you seriously su…

> Are you seriously suggesting that slavery happened ‘naturally’?

Are you seriously suggesting that humans aren't naturally occurring? Are you suggesting that there is something inherent about the "Portuguese, British" etc that gave them the power and influence needed to enslave other races? Of course not.

Randomly populate a geologically non uniform landmass with humans, and over time some will exploit natural advantages over others based on arbitrary factors. The fact that the British colonized everyone wasn't because they were somehow genetically superior or more predisposed to colonization, they just randomly got dealt the best hand.

> If you can find somewhere I argue for that, you’ll be able to quote it.

I'm referring to your core argument that,

> A non-racist solution is to support anyone who has been less advantaged in wealth building.

You're saying that even though we can clearly see how past societies drew their lines when determining how to stunt the "wealth building" of future generations, we should rotate that line so that it's orthogonal to race and only focus on the people who have had the most trouble building wealth.

Consider a hypothetical scenario where we had a "perfectly equal past", where there was no slavery or systemic racism and everyone had been treated fairly based on their own ability. Even in this world, you'd still have some people who fall short at "building wealth" compared to others. You'd still see a "line" drawn based on natural ability. This is the only scenario in which I'd agree with you.

But the natural ability line isn't the only one that history has drawn. We can see the lines that history drew. Lines based on race, based on geography, based on gender, etc. and I think it would be ignorant of us to ignore the existence of any of those lines. It's not an either/or situation.

One day, I hope to get to a point where we're approaching a "perfectly equal past", but until then we have more than 1 line to account for.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#714

Post by zepto »

harimau777 wrote: post #658
zepto wrote: post #643

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the silent majority of progressives Really, from what I can see all of current progressivism is compatible with his approach. The silent majority of people who would have called themselves progressives a decade ago are silent because they are silenced and called racists or just right-wing if they question the new orthodoxy. Ergo, the people you are referring to as a silent majority are no longer included as progres…

I think that the issue goes both ways. Modern conservatives have adopted a strategy of ignoring or exploiting discrimination and inequality. So if someone cares about addressing those issues, then the current progressives are the only game in town.

> So if someone cares about addressing those issues, then the current progressives are the only game in town.

If you believe in the approach of Kendi and DiAngelo, they are the only game in town.

If you believe Kendi and DiAngelo’s approach is counterproductive then supporting modern progressives is acting against the very issues you care about.

You don’t have to make a choice of which foot to shoot yourself in. You can simply not fire.

There are plenty of more moderate political voices, even within the parties. You can support them and you can denounce the groups whose policies you dislike.

Modern progressives are only in the ‘game’ because people support them. If you don’t like what they represent, you can stop.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#715

Post by exporectomy »

lyaa wrote: post #419
Levitz wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So let me get this straight. Your reasoning is that in brutally sexist societies women choose to study completely male-dominated fields because they don't have to make a living after it, whereas in the most egalitarian societies in the entire world sexism pushes them towards traditionally female fields to escape discrimination?

The point is, in middle eastern societies, the realities of working in STEM don't impact the choices women make for their college majors as much. Most of them go to college before marriage with the expectation of not having a long term career in what they study (public colleges are almost always free there, btw). They decide what to do considering different sets of pressures in comparison to women in the west. Women…

But time has already passed since greater sexism and males and females have already gravitated in two consistent directions - men working with things and women working with people, even when it defies traditional gender roles, such as computers and business. You expect that trend to change direction after some tipping point of sufficiently little sexism?

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#716

Post by zepto »

teawrecks wrote: post #713
zepto wrote: post #695

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No, no individual or group consciously decided how races should be divided, I think the Portuguese, the British, the Spanish, the French, the Dutch, and the Danish consciously chose Africans to be imported as slaves to America. Don’t you? Jim Crow laws were consciously written by people who were deciding how races should be divided. Race isn’t even a natural category. > that happened naturally. Are you seriously su…

> Are you seriously suggesting that slavery happened ‘naturally’? Are you seriously suggesting that humans aren't naturally occurring? Are you suggesting that there is something inherent about the "Portuguese, British" etc that gave them the power and influence needed to enslave other races? Of course not. Randomly populate a geologically non uniform landmass with humans, and over time some will exploit natural advan…

> Are you suggesting that there is something inherent about the "Portuguese, British" etc that gave them the power and influence needed to enslave other races? Of course not.

No. I’m saying they made a conscious choice to enslave other races, just as abolitionists eventually made a conscious choice to oppose it.

> You're saying that even though we can clearly see how past societies drew their lines when determining how to stunt the "wealth building" of future generations, we should rotate that line so that it's orthogonal to race and only focus on the people who have had the most trouble building wealth.

Yes, why not?

This is what it means to stop being racist. You stop enacting race based policies, and you take steps to counteract the impacts of past racism on people in the present.

This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t acknowledge that racism was a cause. If you claim that is what I am saying then you are just lying.

Consequences of racism are the largest historical reasons black people as a statistical category have had trouble building wealth.

There is nothing wrong with recognizing this as a priority. As I point out, the groups with the biggest problem will benefit disproportionately by default if we address this.

However black people are not the only ones who have suffered from impediments. Racism is one cause, but there are others.

A person who is struggling today should be helped regardless of their own skin color or the skin color of the grandparents.

What is wrong, is to continue the racist practices of past societies by enacting race based policies.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#717

Post by bernulli »

betwixthewires wrote: post #648
jjk166 wrote: post #514

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not like there is a cheap alternative that the professors can switch to. All new edition textbooks are expensive. They can't specify out of print editions because then you can't guarantee that your students can get access to them, and the textbook companies update the problems in the books just enough to make using a different edition from the one specified impractical. Some publishers may incentivize using thei…

As a professor, create your own PDF and give it to all the students free, update it if there's a new development in the field, which is something you'd know as a professor. It is really not that hard, these professors often write or collaborate on the textbooks themselves so they're writing them anyway. If the textbook is needed for learning and not just a way to get some extra money then this would be standard pract…

What's the longest text you've ever written that you can judge 'it's not that hard' to write a 500p standard textbook?

As a corollary, only very few professors actually have their own textbook and thus don't make any money whatsoever from choosing a specific textbook.

Finally, why would you deny someone money for work they did, typically in their spare time? Who else do you think should give away their work for free? Musicians? Doctors? Carpenters? Bakers? Do you accept money for the work you do?

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#718

Post by bernulli »

bernulli wrote: post #570
jasonladuke0311 wrote: post #566

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm guessing you haven't dealt with the spiral-bound, Kinkos-printed "text" written by the professor, sold for $75, and updated every semester to prevent resale? My wife had two of these every semester for her last two years of college.

How is that a "kickback from the publishers for forcing these (always crap) textbooks on their students" ? I'm not denying that black sheep exist, I am denying a pervasive conspiracy of "big textbook" to the benefit of the professors. Also, an easy solution to not everyone buying Kinko-printed spiral bound lecture notes easily comes to mind...

I see the downvotes, but I still don't see how some guy self-publishing and printing his own book at Kinkos is proof for a conspiracy in which publishers collude with professors to force students to buy books from that publisher. If anything, it's an example for the exact opposite.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#719

Post by bernulli »

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #609
professoretc wrote: post #546

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I'm not even sure how that would work? Like, if my department goes with a particular textbook, or a certain number of classes all use textbooks from the same publisher, then sometimes we get discounts on things like solutions manuals or custom editions, but I don't know how a publisher would pay a particular professor for picking their textbook.

Well they all send you free books, in the hope you'll pick their one.

I'm still missing the part where I get rich! Please tell me!

Truth be told, in my field the intro level textbooks are essentially indistinguishable, down to graphics and specific examples, and every publisher has one. Even if I got free samples for all of them (I don't), there is zero difference for the student. You look at the classics, maybe check out a new book, but in the end pick the one you're already familiar with because you don't have any time to waste.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#720

Post by betwixthewires »

bernulli wrote: post #717
betwixthewires wrote: post #648

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a professor, create your own PDF and give it to all the students free, update it if there's a new development in the field, which is something you'd know as a professor. It is really not that hard, these professors often write or collaborate on the textbooks themselves so they're writing them anyway. If the textbook is needed for learning and not just a way to get some extra money then this would be standard pract…

What's the longest text you've ever written that you can judge 'it's not that hard' to write a 500p standard textbook? As a corollary, only very few professors actually have their own textbook and thus don't make any money whatsoever from choosing a specific textbook. Finally, why would you deny someone money for work they did, typically in their spare time? Who else do you think should give away their work for free?…

I never said anything about someone giving their work away for free. Roll it into tuition, whatever, but this predatory textbook cartel hustle has to stop.

The professor is giving a class, they're going to teach all of what is in the textbook, and for those who can't write it themselves and use ones written by other professors, they can give out that PDF, they don't have to write one.

I was simply responding to this:

> It's not like there is a cheap alternative that the professors can switch to. All new edition textbooks are expensive. They can't specify out of print editions because then you can't guarantee that your students can get access to them, and the textbook companies update the problems in the books just enough to make using a different edition from the one specified impractical.

in the parent comment. I'm pointing out that there is a cheap alternative. We have had digital documents for decades, there are ways to keep those documents up to date without rewriting the entire document, there is no excuse to have a publisher and distributor for educational companion text documents for students in classrooms. It is glaringly obvious that the status quo with textbooks is artificially maintained even though technologically there is absolutely no reason it has to be this way.

Post reply on HN