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Village Voice on Voices From The Hellmouth
I said the e-mails had the feeling of testimony, which survivors of disasters often used. He asked me if this were like the Holocaust, and I said I suppose the idea of testimony was similiar, but that they weren't comparable experiences. So here's a lesson in how media work.
Dark asked me a half dozen times if these were all middle-class males, and I said no: nearly half were women, and my impression -- Î couldn't know for sure -- was that a huge chunk were working class kids. The Voice piece obviously reflects a pre-conceived and provocatively contrarian point of view, to which the writer is perfectly well entitled.
But I think it's pretty snarky to misrepresent what I said in support of it. He could just say it himself. I don't know why he even bothered to call. And I'm not into squawking about what reporters write. If you dish it out, you ought to take it.
Then, of course, there's the profoundly stupid idea at the heart of the piece that middle-class kids bring victimization on themselves, or don't deserve sympathy if they are harassed, humiliated, excluded, or sent home or suspended for being different from most other middle-class kids. In fact, it's so foolish an idea I doubt he even believes it.
This may be an honest difference of opinion, but it sure wasn't honestly gathered.So I'm telling the people e-mailing me to move on. Let's not play.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer.. The voice of the newest generation?
Am I the only one, or did anyone else find the author's style a bit over-embellished and somewhat difficult to follow? Nevertheless, an interesting read but as a previous poster commented, the VV did seem to focus on the topic of "rich-white-maleness" a bit too much, as if picking on a "different" group was somehow a racial and gender based trait rather than a HUMAN trait. Bah... High School sucked, and I'm glad I'm out at college!
Respectfully,
Kevin Christie
kwchri@maila.wm.edu
My take on this entire issue is simple: children are amoral, sociopathic monsters (by and large; there *is* obviously a minority of humane kids).
Evidence: look at several of the various West African "rebel" groups -- their favorite tactic is to kidnap children and turn them into soulless killing machines. With kids, it's so easy it's almost amazing that we don't have *more* problems.
It seems to me that the main reason we've had these recent murders is simply that guns are too easily available -- kids have been amoral monsters for millenia. It's just that it's hard for a child to kill someone with a 50lb. battleaxe -- but it's easy to pull a trigger.
Heck, *I* was an amoral monster -- there was probably a pretty good chance that if I'd got my hands on an MP-5 I would have run amok. Sure, I hated most of my classmates, but the real reason would simply have been that I didn't recognize them as being truly sentient -- it's like I viewed them as being mobile rock formations, rather than as people. That makes it easy to kill someone over what adults would see as "minor" bullying.
When you don't have anything else to measure your life by, everything seems huge and important. A few years of your life seem like an eternity. So, when someone beats the crap out of you on a regular basis, you tend to generate a hatred that's out of all proportion to the offense.
Combine that with a willingness to kill, and you've got trouble.
As for me, I'm just glad that my neighbor kept his MP-5 in a locked gun case. Otherwise, about
thirteen years ago, there would have been a mass-slaying in Canada. And I would have done a better job of it than those Columbine losers. I mean geez, they didn't even set up decent fire zones.
The risk in your approach is that it would tend to make the "outsider" kids feel like the other children are inferior, and therefore not worth keeping alive.
Of course, I've still got a pathological hatred of football players, so maybe I'm biased in that regard . . .
Ya know, if you started posting meaningful remarks, instead of whining about how Rob is oppressing you, you might garner more attention.
. . . notice the similarities between your attitude and the one being described by the Village Voice?
I thought so.
Well, to put this pile of shit into 3 sentences:
"You're not oppressed, because you're white and male."
"I was beaten in school so it's ok if you are."
"I'm bitter towards the world because I'm gay."
Such bullshit. Author needs a clue. BOredAtWork, where you at with that Clue Stick?
Dang! Why haven't we heard more about this?
We like to hear ourselves talk, don't we? Amazing that you can use all those big words and still not say a hell of a lot. Had I been writing the same story, I could have got it down to one paragraph and done it at a level that even a third grader could have followed with ease. Maybe being a "white boy" I just don't have as much to prove.
Don't blame guns for the shootings. After all, they manufactured their own bombs as well, and you don't find those just laying around anywhere. Even if guns aren't available, they're no more difficult to build than bombs are; resistance fighters in WWII made plenty of "zip" guns without trouble.
Face it, the reason you didn't do the same thing as the Littleton shooters isn't because you couldn't get your hands on a gun, it's because you lacked the inititive.
In my high school torture experience, I figured out the best places to put the explosives so as to demolish the building utterly. I wanted to kill them ALL, you see, so my father's shotgun -- easily available with a modest amount of ammo, too -- was not attractive to me. Shooting one by one wasn't good enough. Later of course, I realized making the scum live out their miserible useless lives was far better punishment than anything *I* could do to them.
I would have thought that the school shooting that DID happen in Canada a few weeks back would have shut up the "we're holy because we don't have guns" crowd. Guess not.
Yup. You bet. Things are tougher in real life.
Pound the crap out of someone at your place of amployment, in real life, and you might just go to jail. There's an even better chance of getting slapped with an assault and battery charge. And you will almost certainly be fired.
Maybe more high school students that get beat up should take immediate legal action. Bear in mind that assault covers much less than battery. I threat to kill is clearly assault, and can be prosecuted as such.
As for the "star athletes", those with criminal behavior in high school will most likely end up behind bars at some point. No harm in hastening the process.
Hrm.. seems it now ok again to blame anything
and everything on white males.
Gee, isn't that kind of thinking, "lets bash a
specific group" part of if not the problem?
Are others worse off? Certainly.
But that doesn't mean they (or I) don't
have any legitimate concerns.
If you had a headache you'd have a headache.
If the person next to had a headache AND a
kick in the groin, you *still* have a headache,
even if that person is worse off, that fact is
of no solace.
Everyone wants a level comfort.
Denying ANYONE that on the basis of color
or gender is wrong. Even if the color is white
and the gender is male.
Funny... us geek guys keep complaining about the lack of geek girls...
Maybe someone should set up a Geeks 'R' Us dating site.. *laugh*
Speaking as someone who barely cracked 5 feet through my junior year of high school, I came in for my fair share.
:>
;)
Since my family moved around alot, I had to fight this battle about every two years. What I found is that at some point, the worst of the perps would push me over the edge, and then they would get it big time. All out, no holds barred, fight-like-a-women, someone-is-going-to-get-hurt thrash fest. And always launched without warning. No barking, no growling: nuclear explosion. I actually climbed up on this guy in 7th grade, choking him out with one arm and wailing on his face with the other. He made a mistake after that last taunt: he turned around
All it took was one little episode like this and the other kids decided I wasn't so bad after all.
Lest anyone worry, I stopped such behavior in 1983. The last go round cost me $500 in stitches and left a nice bony lump on my head. Nowadays I wouldn't bother, I would just call my lawyer
A geeks dating site... hmm, good idea. And the only chance some of us are going to have to reproduce.
Oh where, oh where, is the Geek Girl for me?
Actually, I think VV has come closer than they usually do.
Most of the comments I read in this "Hellmouth" series _do_ come across as whiny comments from teens who need to get some perspective in their lives. Katz didn't come out and say "Gas Chambers == Home Alone Fridays", but he was heading in that direction. If you really want to see oppression, go to Kosovo, or China, or an Arabian country. THEN come back and tell me how bad you have it in America.
I'm talking about the general case here. The extreme cases should be deal with swiftly and sternly.
The fact is that 99% of people are NOT secure/comfortable/happy in high school -- even the "Populars". It's called puberty and it puts you in the uncomfortable position of having to learn a completely new set of rules. Very disorienting, yes; a reason to act like the world hates you, no.
It's time to get over this. If you want to dress/act weird, expect to be treated weird. It's a fairly simple concept.
If there is a good reason for your dress/action, then stick with it, but be prepared to take the consequences. There is a difference between unique and wierd. If you scare people, don't expect them to treat you like a friend.
Bitterness is for losers -- Don't be a loser.
Yep, no plans to ever go to a reunion kind of thing. And since most reunions are just an
excuse to get drunk, what could I be missing?
Seeing jerks act like jerks? Had plenty of that
already, thanks.
"But its to show off your success.."
Nonsense. Even had I a Nobel (not bloody likely,
I freely admit) to laud over 'them' with, I still
wouldn't go.
I'm actually Valis, but don't have enough time to set up an account right now. So on to the reply:
those kids were MENTALLY UNSTABLE, being harassed at school was a factor in their behavior, being neglected by their parents was probably also a factor, violent games/movies also perhaps a factor, but the main reason they did this is that they were UNBALANCED! They were nuts! Bonkers! Whacko! I don't care how weird you are, how strange, all of us geeks and nerds have harbored homicidal impulses at one time or another, but we don't act on them unless there is something seriously wrong with our brains!
I was just wondering, if the village voice is so off base (as most here seem to agree), what happens if everyone of us emails them just a simple note not to reduce everything to a race issue? I'm seeing that several have already sent emails, and I'm composing mine now. It'd be nice to let them know that hey, 40 million slashdotters (who *aren't* all white males) think you're really missing the point here. Hell, it made Mindcraft/Microsoft want to run another test.
Just a thought.
I agree with you
I was cool in highschool but I'm pretty eleet now!
Possibly, but would it hold true for _all_ cases? That would mean an ingrown toenail would always be a non-trivial problem.
I believe you're not searching for a counterpart so much as you're trying to define perspective.
Yes, being yelled at _is_ a problem, but you must admit that it is not nearly as severe as being driven from your home, living for days without food, or watching your child shot by the Yugo "Police".
Keep in mind this:
Human society is self-defined.
We created our society. Perhaps not conscientiously, but we did construct it out of thin air. Who dictates that one needs a button up shirt and tie? It is completely arbitrary. As such, we live completely within this abstract world of our own creation. Most people do not see the artificial sky that someone painted absentmindedly so long ago.
However, what this means, is that what we feel, what we think, what we are and how we percieve ourselves and the world, is all relative to this faberge eggshell we live in. Thus, even though a the stomach of a boy in Ethiopia might be empty, we are suffering more than he is because we are closer to ourselves than he is. The same applies to Australians and to anyone else not in our sphere of vision.
Do note that this applies both ways. Out there in Australia, an Australian may think we have it the best, and we probably do materialistically, and they may consider themselves miserable. However, relativistically, we too suffer, especially at the hands of self important, protected, jocks.
Try to use cultural relativism to understand why someone might be crying. Don't just critisize it because you think they are too well-off to cry.
-B
Cheap Shot: By your argument, Princess Diana is still better off because she was rich, even though she is dead now. Harumph!
Is it just me or is the one group in the US that is OK to descriminate against Single White Males? I've had this impression for years, especially during the 10 years I spent in the Military.
How about shutting your fucking mouth? Really.. how hard is it to SKIP, like not read.. an article?
Richard Cory
- --------------------------------
Edward Arlington Robinson (1869-1935)
Whenever Richard Cory walked downtown
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from soul to crown,
Clean favored and imperially slim.
And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked
; But still, he fluttered pulses when he said,
"Good morning," and he glittered when he walked.
And he was rich -- yes, richer than a king --
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought he was everything
To make us wish we were in his place.
So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.
-----------------------------------------------
No you're not.
Yes, being yelled at _is_ a problem, but you must admit that it is not nearly as severe as being driven from your home, living for days without food, or watching your child shot by the Yugo "Police".
Have you been paying attention? Being yelled at is hardly what people are complaining about. It's the physical assaults and the humiliating pranks and verbal abuse that are the problem. Are you suggesting that since it doesn't rise to the level of abuse that people in other countries have to deal with, it isn't worth taking steps to correct?
I'm all for having some perspective on the issue, but wrong is wrong. Are you going to stand up and say that beating on people because they are different isn't wrong? That it's just a fact of life that we should learn to deal with? If we're going to be different we should just expect to be beaten and abused? Perhaps you also think that if a woman wears a short skirt, she should expect to be raped? Why does it have to rise to the level of genocide before someone decides it's time to do something about it?
I've run into some of the former 31337 of my old HS. Some are grease monkeys, others are corssing guards, or taking my order at the local Dennys. I guess puting down "cool for x years" on a resume just doesn't cut it, eh?
Please read more carefully next time. I never said anything about destroying anyone's individuality. In fact, cliques are destroyers of individuality. They attempt to enforce some small group's idea of the "norm" onto those around them. This is a problem for those kids who can't or won't conform.
By the way, how does saying that something has gone horribly wrong with these children have anything to do with what adults have always been saying about children? If children are feeling the urge to kill and acting out on that urge, then something is very wrong.
Perhaps you should think before responding next time.
I'm in absolute agreement with this post. As far as I'm concerned, there's nothing more to say on the subject.
So for those of you living in the Hellmouth - wake up - you are right now living a life which is the absolute envy of 99% of the world's population. The fact that you are sitting here reading Slashdot is a pretty sure indication that YOU'VE GOT THINGS PRETTY GOOD. Odds are, in 5-10 years, most of you will have decent jobs, a good group of friends, and a fairly peaceful, rewarding life. And for those of you still weeping over Littleton, take a good look at the world around you -- much worse happens each and every day, even if it doesn't make as good TV.
Hmmm... so since other people "have it worse" then we do, we should shut up about it and ignore the problem then? Geeee, that makes a lot of sense. Because others are getting shot or bombed we shouldn't complain about getting urninated on or beaten up daily? Because people in other parts of the world have "worse problems" ours are somehow insignificant? Great logic there. I'll ask that you keep that in mind next time you have to pay the IRS, get a traffic ticket or anything else that hapens to you that you don't like.
Just because others may be worse off, that doesn't mean we don't have real problems here. Sounds like something I've heard many parents say to a kid: "Those kids in are starving so you should eat your dinner". That might work on a 2 year old, but most slashdotters are a bit more versed in the real world then that. We all realize there is suffering in the world. But that doesn't mean our suffering doesn't really exist.
Should we tell the Chineese that they have it better then the Germans did under Hitler so they should just shut up and LIKE the human rights violations visited on them by thier government? They live a life that would be the envy of anyone in a Nazi concentration camp.
Nice to see my remarks removed. Probably wasn't politically correct enough for /.
-kojak
Same AC as before...
I of course copied the _WRONG_ name from the text, I have obsolutely no problem with the guy who did the drawing.... just jane dark.
"Where, oh where, is the geek girl for me?
Where, oh where, could she be?"
"She's probably at home recompling Linux
And doing it better than thee!"
>>>>Do other people opinions _really_ make that much difference to how you think about yourself?
Their opinions matter, in that, they have the social power to make your life a living hell. And they will. I don't care what other people think of me otherwise.
P.S. : Slashdot won't accept my password. Any idea why?
I have been paying attention. Most of the kids here are whining because people treat them differently. A few have legitimate complaints about physical abuse.
Beating on people just because they are different IS wrong. But the bulk of the well-fed, overpriviledged whiners quoted in these articles have seen nothing more serious than intimidation and exclusion.
Don't go about putting words into my mouth. I most certainly do NOT believe a woman should expect to be raped because she wears a short skirt. Rapists should be slammed. Hard. Period.
However, there is such a thing as common sense. If a woman insists on wearing short skirts ("Because that's the real ME!") everywhere she goes; then she's not being very smart, is she. There are consequences to obviously stupid actions. If she insists on wearing a short skirt into a pool hall full of drunken, sex-starved maniacs, what does she _think_ will happen? If the maniacs rape her, the _fault_ is completely the maniacs. But she didn't help matters.
Why don't you _start_ paying attention. There are levels of discomfort and abuse in this world. And if you can't put things into perspective, things get very disorienting.
Ahh, Lord Kano.
I don't think he missed the point of the Hellmouth series. He just didn't think the series missed the _real_ point.
I think perhaps your hypocrasy is showing. Just because his view is different from yours, you start calling him names. Looks like you're being a "dickhead" by pushing him over the limit.
I have been paying attention. Most of the kids here are whining because people treat them differently. A few have legitimate complaints about physical abuse.
A few? The majority of responses to Katz' articles had experienced repeated physical and psychological abuses. You seem to want to dismiss the whole thing as an attempt by "well-fed, overpriviledged whiners" to gain attention. It's exactly this kind of mindset that allows these things to continue. School administrators treat it the same way you do. Anytime someone points something like this out, they sweep it under the rug. It's the fault of the person who is complaining. Maybe that person is insane. Maybe that person just wants attention. Maybe they are exaggerating. It's what all high school kids go through. Damn! When will someone wake up and take it seriously?
They never, even for a second, consider that the kid might be telling the truth. Why? Because they don't want to face that. They can't punish the star athlete or one of the most popular students without parents and other popular students raising all kinds of hell. So they just don't do it.
Another poster here had it exactly right. She (I assume She) said, "If you haven't experienced the terror of going to class *knowing* you will be tripped and spat at and verbally torn down *with the passive, or even active approval of teachers and adminstrators*, it's almost impossible to understand the insanity it causes -- you stop being able to judge whether a bump in the hall was an accident or another attack, you can't tell if an overture of friendship is real or a trap, you are in a constant state of fear and tension.."
I couldn't have said it better myself. It's not petty little name-calling that is the problem. We're talking about real abuses and real physical and psychological effects. Take, for instance, the recent death of a student as a result of being punched in the stomach by another student. The assailant is being charged with murder and people are outraged. They say it was an accident and that he didn't mean to kill the kid. That may be so, but the fact is that he chose to assault the other student. He made the choice to use violence. He ended the life of another person. He should face the consequences of his actions. Perhaps a jury will feel some compassion for him since he didn't intend to kill the other kid, but that is up to them. The fact is that another kid is dead because of his violent actions.
Maybe things like that will finally wake people up to all the violence that goes on in schools. Most of it is committed by the "jocks" and other popular kids. Why? Because they are the ones who can do it and get away with it. They are the strongest, and in high school, might makes right.
Administrators have already made their stance known on these issues. They intend to ignore it. I'd like to see something done about it. Otherwise, I'd like to see everyone shut the hell up about the whole issue and quit trying to put the blame everywhere but where it belongs.. on the kids that commit the crimes like the one in Littleton, the kids who contribute to the hostile environment in the school, the parents of both groups of kids, and the school administrators and teachers. The problem is real, but I guess there's a lot more money in it for everyone if they can pin it on the movie industry, the game companies, or the music industry. Sure.. they'll make their cash. I wonder who they'll blame next time it happens... and there will be many more next times... trust me. (glad I'm not in high school anymore. I bet that would be considered a threat and I'd end up being expelled and/or arrested.)
I think you missed something here. Most kids deal with teasing all the time. And most of them brush it off, or get over it sooner or later.
It's the PHYSICAL abuse that we can't stand for. Kids go to school in fear every day. They fear getting beaten up. They fear having their belongings vandalized or destroyed. And when no adult listens to them, they fight back and fear being blamed for instigating the situation.
This is the reality of many public schools in the U.S. These things that would be criminally prosecuted anywhere else, are simply treated as 'kids being kids' when it's the popular kids who do it in school.
Don't brush these people off as being overly sensitive. I think for many, it was quite a bit more than simple verbal harassment.
Hour for hour, I would rather return to the penitentiary than return to high school. The violence and confrontation I experienced in prison was not nearly as terrifying as what I experienced in high school.
No, being a high school geek is not as bad on an absolute scale as being in Auschwitz, but ya know what? It's pretty damn bad for the kids involved.
The author of this article has obviously experienced nothing like any of the aforementioned difficulties. I'm sure she wants to hold on to her share of the suffering pie, but the "geeks" have more right to it than she does.
I would invite the author, or any other self-appointed authority on what suffering is, to return to my old roach-infested, piss-soaked bunk in the pen with me for a couple of months. That will straighten them out and give me a chance to fill up the old "smokes" box again, selling their ass.
Sounds to me like the parents don't know how to raise their child. Leaving an 8 year old at home by himself....cool. Regardless, the article was just a smart-assed waste of bandwidth.
Not all schools are as bad as others...
I had it fairly easy, In high school I was denied a scholorship, a trip to Washington DC, and Disneyland, various awards, etc. basically, because I was a geek.
Well, if people need to be "Empowered"
and take care or the problem themselves, without the courts, Guns seem like an effective way...
Perhaps 'Jocks' will think twice before beating up a geek, if he has to worry about getting shot.
But then, they probably don't even think once.
Why do 'Jocks' get athletic Scholorships, while I, who blew the scale of an IQ test in 6th grade, scored 212 on a standardized test, that the second highest score in the history of the school district was 172, scored 1310 on the SATS as a high school freshman, cannot afford to go to college?
The geeks just need to wait a few years - til they get into the work force.
If they're any good they'll be able to visit their jock boy "peers" (who are working at their dad's liquor store) and tell them how they're pulling down a high income doing "geek" work.
I got a great one! Just ask your mama! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
One of the BIG reasons Asians move to Western countries is because they DON'T want their children to go to Asian schools.
Several months ago in Hsin-chu, here in Taiwan, a girl was kidnapped by some of her classmates (male and female). Over a 4 day peiod she was raped, tortured (burned and had a clotheshanger inserted into her vagina) and finally beaten to death. Please tell me more about how nice Asian students are...please? And while you're at it explain the extremely high suicide rates amoung students in Asian countries due to bullying.
Sounds like you're a little racist yourself.
You've shown again you are the only one who can slashdot Slashdot. Score: 6 in five different posts? Overload mode again?
Now we can only wait to see if Slashdot dies again due to excess load... Sigh...
P.S.: this is not satire. This is not just ironical. I meant it.
Very good point (or, "point well taken!"). And also, by fixing things in our not-so-discriminatory environment will increase the pressure for change in the you-can-do-nothing ones.
In 1991 when the son of the British Representative to Taiwan was stabbed half to death outside the Taipei American School by a Chinese pissed about not getting a US visa. He stabbed the boy because he thought he was an American...you know how it is, "big noses" all look alike. Or maybe the American teacher who was castrated by a gang on the campus of National Taiwan University. They didn't like it that he had a Chinese wife.
Regarding the internment of Japanese-Americans in WWII. Yes, it was wrong. But they were not interred because they were Asian (if so the Chinese would have also) but because they were "Japanese"-Americans and the US was at war with Japan.
"America has no room for hyphenated Americans" - Theodore Roosevelt
Australia does NOT have a huge number of berzerker incidents. The reason we hear about the incident you mentioned is because they happen so rarely, that when something like this does happen it is very big news. The US has something like 10000 murders a year, now giving that the US population is 10 times that of Australia. That would mean that going on your argument that Australia should have at least 1000 murders a year. We do not, I don't think we have more than 100 murders a year, maybe 200. Not many more than that.
"Australia suffers the same "beat the crap out of anyone different" mentality as the US, but because so many kids are immigrants they learn pretty quick to abandon their own personality and join in with the mob-think."
Get over it, your talking about a country that is the mostly cultural diverse country in the world 2/3 of Australians were not born in Australia. There is no way you can just say NO Australian has a personality. The fact is there are some many different people with so many different opinions and so many different personalities that it is just accepted that being different does not mean better or worse, it just means they are different.
No, it's because the US is a f*cking insane, violent country which values power over intelligence; where the old men who hold power relive their testosterone-charged glory days through the meaty collisions of their sons on the gridiron.
//hagane
"let the best one win?" How is this compatible with Microsoft?
although i completely agree with your last two paragraphs, i think that you read the origional comment wrong. i agree with that too, look at what he said, it's not him making that assumption, it's the writer of the VV article who seems to think that all *geeks* are middle class white boys. i agree with what you both said.
Reid G. Ormseth, Esq.
With all due respect... a lot of us are not 'just' computer geeks. Yes, our expertise may be in the computing environment, but often we are savvy in many other areas, such as "literature, history, or philosophy".
I have read the Village Voice article, and as a habitual Voice reader, I recognized it by what it was: just another article were white middle and upper class males are labeled as 'the devil', while minorities and gays are suffering all kinds of unspeakable evils at their hands, yet get no attention. Because of this, I give her no credit nor believe that her article should be taken seriously. What moral authority does she have to talk about something when she may have little or no clue about what is really going on in the minds of other people? Just because she is a 'music critic' (and I have some doubts about her competence in that area) does not make her more qualified to contribute an article about this than, let's say, your local MacDonald's worker.
P.S- yes, I was a geek in HS; yes I did get beat up; no I didn't kill anyone; yes I grew up.
- Swift_Kick@hotmail.com
The attitude of 'my pain is worse than yours' relies on the assumption that people have a limited amount of empathy, thus one has to slight others' problems in order to capture that empathy for themselves. It's a sickening attitude that relies on the worst in people to be dominant.
Unfortunately, this attitude mostly _is_ a pity party. Where is the sweat and pain involved in changing things? Or do we see a few more people talking for the benefit of having someone hear their theories? Reminds me of the college students in this town -- they claim to fight this-or-that "by any means necessary"(direct quote), except, of course, by the boring tasks of voting, and other such 'trivialities of oppressive democracies'. or something. It seems as though these student political groups can be better described as social groups, and it seems the Village Voice bears the same stain.
of course, their readership has been falling for quite some time now.. (that might not be any knock again liberalism, but rather, political organization via dead-trees is getting out of date.)
Please don't use the term "reverse discrimination"
Reverse discrimination is used when whites suffer
discrimination, implying that discrimination is
when whites descriminate against a minority.
racism is racism.
When Charles Whitman, the former Eagle Scout, opened fire from the top of the Texas Tower, no one started cracking down on the Boy Scouts. And even in those schools where they take sexual assaults and other crimes committed by their athletes seriously (probably far too few, I'm afraid) I doubt that a single principal ever said, 'Gee, you're dressed like the football player who raped three girls: you must be about to do the same thing, so let's suspend you without an investigation.' On the contrary, the pep rallies where students are encouraged or required to show their support for the athletes' hobby would probably still go on on schedule...
And let's not forget that her own stereotyping comes through loud and clear through her unthinking assumption that the 'geeks' in question ARE white middle-class males...
What people were saying was that (a) they could see how an unstable or disturbed individual could be pushed over the edge by "geek alienation" (or any kind of alienation, for that matter), (b) they cited many instances of geek alienation in their schools, and (c) that the overreaction in the aftermath of Littleton was not justifiable or excusable.
...we have a nation in which everyone went to Woodstock and no one was the man.
... and then wonder why students act like crazed prisoners. Wake up Mom and Dad! Stop watching TV and play with your kids now, even if they're 15.
I can't wait until the baby boomers reach retirement and we can cut off their social security payments and repudiate the national debt. They still don't get it. They are so excited with their new power that they bomb foreign countries just like their "hated parents" did.
Now they even design the schools to look like prisons
"So because these kids aren't black, or hispanic it's perfectly okay for them to have to endure 4 years of beatings, humiliation, and torture at the hands of the status quo? I beg to differ with your assumptions here, and the author's opinons only confirm the great distance we still have to travel before we can understand each other as people. It's also very sad that the people who have experienced a long history of subjugation, and humiliation would so easily turn their backs on another group simply because their plight just doesn't measure up. I guess tolerance, and undertanding aren't qualities that we promote anymore, and interestingly enough it's these qualities that can help us solve our social and racial problems."
I'm glad to see, from the responses here, that I wasn't the only one who thought the Village Voice article was WAY off.
Jason Burke
jburke@motion.net
That Kleybold clown was allowed to run around in Nazi regalia for years, and his Jewish mother saw nothing wrong with it. Now, that sets a new record for tolerance and cluelessness.
These four very stupid, worthless parents are being sued for failure to discipline. Good. Take away their Beemers, since that's all they care about.
You goofy liberals are so hepped up on abuse that you've now equated all discipline with abuse. Get a clue, the worst abuse is not disciplining your children so that they can deal with society.
So some cruelty is acceptable and some is not? Don't you think that Kosovo and and the abuse and taunting of others is related? Man's inhumanity to man. . .
At leasts the message it sends.
I for one, am an asian american who spent his younger years getting the crap beat out of him. Well, I guess that just didn't conveniently fit in Ms. Dark's little convenient pigeon holing of geeks at the future white male opporesors of the world.
That was an extraordinarily irresponsible racist piece of literatature.
Home alone on the friday night. Gas chambers
Well, you know what? I don't care if I'm alone on the friday night. Quite frankly I don't care to be popular. Why are you denouncing the popular kids yet showing that you want to be popular too. Please make some sense.
it sucks to be a kid
Depends how you look at it. I'm a freshman at high school. My life is quite hectic: Wake up at 6:30, shower, get in the car, go to school, biology, english, p.e. (which I truly hate, the teachers who teach that class are clueless about what they teach, they don't even have asociate degrees), french, geometry honors (test every two weeks, giant amount of homework), business (an elective I and many other freshmen like me took, thinking it will be interesting, but really it's "accounting magnified", it has some valuable information, but most of it is as much of interest as doing account). Then go home. How? My house is a mile away. Sometimes I bike, sometimes others give me a ride, sometimes I walk (it takes me around 30 minutes). I come home, call my mom, who critizes me about anything that she is not happy with, such as "Why did you get a C, it could have been an B" or when I get a B, it could "have been an A", when it was an A "you probabably got away with it"). Then I'm struck between my weakened strengh of will- some force makes me go to the computer, while my sound mind makes me go do my homework, so really I don't do either. Then I go to work. My dad picks me up and reads me lectures in the car how I should manage my money and how bad I am. Ironically, work (a sys admin / tech suppport position in a web hosting company) is my only way to relax and meet people in real life of my age and few years older that I can actually talk to about meaningfull subjects.
At school I spend time with mostly two friends. Both of theme are atheletes, however they are not completely stupid. One of them is a straight A student, while the other one is a complete moron. Neither of them can talk about anything meaningfull - just brag about their grades, talk about how they smoke, make jokes about one each other and talk about sports. When they actually talk about school, they talk about how they use the trust given by their teachers, to get off with not doing homework and not studying.
I don't feel like an outcast. Yet I am. I am not popular, I'm rather quiet, I don't do things "that everyone does". I don't have a date, even though sometimes I do want one. Who the f*k am I? I don't know. I guess it's a stage, hope when college comes it will be over. Yet it's around 3 to 4 years away and if I don't start studying, I won't get into a college that I want to go to.
Screw Colorado, screw Kosovo, screw Ethiopia, screw Lewinsky, fuck everyone (in the sense of forget about and in the sexual sense) -- here's a typical attitude of the popular kids. No wonder shit like Colorado happens, excuse my language.
I am lucky to go to a school which is 61% Asian americans? Why? Quite frankly, Asian people, even atheletes and model students are much nicer then their middle American white counterparts. They don't make fun of others, they don't make issues about race. I guess it's because most of them come from inteligent families, who came here from Taiwan or S. Korea for high tech employment (this is in Sillicon Valley), so they given right values. However, many of white kids who are considered "cool", hate Asians. They probably feel that Asians destroy the traditional social system (atheletes pick on outcasts, while everyone stands by and laughs). Don't say that no one cares about the Asians. They are well disciplined and educated and they will not cause or take part in Colorado-like shooting. It's not even that they are Asians. They are not native born Americans, that matters. They understand that in order to suceed in the "politcally correct" modern day world (with three r's --> racism, rock-and-roll, regular people), they must follow a separate path from cheer leaders and quarterbacks.
I get the impression from this artical that problems that we might have are to be laughed at. Nothing that happens to us can be taken seriously, an that does not make any sense. Since when did people get the right to put down white males simply because they are that? I personally had a hellish experience during "High School", and simply the fact that I'm a WM doesn't mean that it should be ignored.
The biggest problems with schools everywhere today is size. I'm a short, shy, skinny computer-geek kinda guy and I never got teased or harassed in high school. The reason? The entire school consisted of merely about 300 students. In a place like this where everyone knows everyone else there isn't the slightest chance for something like that to occur. Some people may argue that this was due more to social and cultural differences (I'm writing this from lovely *.fi) but this isn't true. Both in Finland and Sweden many of the problems described here and in various articles have begun to appear in big schools (with over 1000 students.)
I haven't personally ever been to the US, but from what I gather the size of highschools are even bigger. Because this amount of students allows the formation of social groups totally isolated from eachother (meaning no-one from group A knows anyone from group B personally) I can easily see how certain groups can become oppressed. I'm not justifying this, even though adolescents of all species compete and form hierarchies, but I'm saying that it isn't so surprising that this has happened.
As for the guy/gal-thing that's been discussed here, it has often been mentioned that girls can be far more cruel than boys. Guys have this ability to confront, fight and get it over with (clearly not the case in many of the stories told here), but girls are more likely to attack their victim socially and psychologically by eg. freezing the victim out and spreading rumours while appearing friendly face to face.
A thing I'm surprised at is that the victims of harassment don't seem to have the ability or the chance to stand up for themselves. In jr. high I was actually on the verge of becoming a harassee (altough nowhere near the severity of the cases told here) but it all stopped when I decided I wouldn't take it anymore. Same thing goes for everyone else I ever saw in the same situation. I mean, if you were getting beat up, even an attempt at defending oneself vastly reduces the chances of getting beat up a second time because this time the bully knows it mightn't be so easy after all. I could also recommend martial arts for school-geeks (or rather, recommend it for their parents to recommend it for their children.) Two points: the kids would get more physically fit and it would grow their self-confidence. Two things that could make a difference and that many geeks lack.
I'll stop rambling as I'm becoming less coherent by the second (2.30am) but I'll just say that high school were the greatest years of my life, yet.
It's not limited to the U.S.
:-)
I had a horrid schooling here in Europe. I was (and still am) very shy, and not sport-orientated. Add an ability for maths into the equation (d'oh!) and that's a great recipe for no friends. Sure there were others like me, but I regarded them as even sadder! I suspect we're all guilty of looking down on those we find "beneath us" - but at least I left them alone.
It's human nature, and you aint never gonna change it.
What we all HAVE a right to, however, is freedom from bullying. It should not be tolerated. And this is where the author of this sad piece misses the point entirely. Bullying cuts accross all divides of race, gender, beliefs, dress-sense etc.
Isn't bullying really the issue? Don't we just wan't to be able to wear black if we want to (ooh no, no colours, too complicated hehe) without being picked on?
I was bullied for a year or two, then fought back one day. They left me alone after that one fight.
The isolation was almost as bad, but I just regarded it as my cross to bear. I was different, no-one understood me, so what... my problem.
Luckily I had a whole load of mates outside of school thanks to the then current CB craze. That kept me sane - in my opinion anyway
I have no answers. The gunmen were sick. Maybe you could blame their upbringing, but I wouldn't - I reckon they were very mentally ill. You'd have to be, wouldn't you, to do that? They could have struck out at anything. You can't reason with madness. No-one get's perfect life, but most of us just deal with it.
Here endeth the random thoughts. Comments welcome.
This article sounds like it was written by someone who has been claiming oppressed class status and is afraid of losing it if some other group is also seen to be oppressed.
:).
It also sounds like the same old crap about how middle-class white kids can't possibly have problems because they are part of the alleged white male conspiracy against all minorities and women.
The truth is, something has gone horribly wrong with these kids, and to attack them for saying something about it is simply shooting the messenger. It doesn't matter who is saying it, attacking those who say it doesn't do anything to fix the actual problems.
Until every person in middle and high schools in this country is safe from harassment and abuse from their peers, and until schools take a hard look at the established cliques, we will continue to see this kind of problem.
But it doesn't stop there. The schools alone can't solve this problem. Not only do parents need to start taking responsibility for every aspect of their children's lives, they must begin to instill in them a sense of respect for others and an understanding that other people are also human and do not exist for their amusement.
Children who are raised with a solid moral grounding (and no, I'm not advocating religion, just a simple, straightforward moral code) will be able to resist whatever is thrown at them by society, and be able to stand up for their own values.
We can ban violent games, internet access for kids, violent movies, even guns, but unless we bring these kids back into the fold soon, there will only be more Littletons.
This can be fixed without tearing down the Constitution, but it will require an effort on everyone's part. And it will probably require an outbreak of common sense in the newsmedia and in the legislatures.
Enough ranting for now
You're missing the point that many people made in Katz's piece. It's not about being called a loser because you're smart. It's about getting beaten day after day for not doing anything. I can handle someone calling me stupid, or not inviting me out on a Friday night. I can't handle a 300 pound meathead beating the crap out of me. It's illegal and immoral, and there's no reason for it to continue, whether the person being beaten is white, black, gay, straight, male, female, etc. These people need to learn to control their feelings and take them out in other ways.
-D
Why do American kids cry out against their station in life more loudly than their European or Ausie counterparts? American kids are the result
of the "ME" generation. It's all about them, it's all about being 'happy with who they are'. It's all about being 'special'. They lack the feeling of
community and common welfare.
The problem is that suffering (as well as.. joy?) are subjective. If I feel that I am suffering maximally, and so does an etheopian child, then to me and that child, we're suffering equally. You cannot gauge a person's problems from outside of them. Yes, you can say that in fact, the ethopian child is suffering more objectively, but to the white middle-class kid who gets beat up in school for being a geek, his hell is no less hot by his standards.
American teens are more out of touch with this than teens in other countries. The "American Dream" and "keeping up with the Joneses" tells
them that if they don't have the BEST, they don't have it good. If they don't have it good, they then must have it bad.
I fail to see how this has to do with being ousted by a community. In high school, I was "less than popular." I was a geek, I was into computers, and worst of all, I was fat. Wether or not I had money, or a nice house, or whatever, that made no difference to tormentors. (odd that "mentor" is present in that word) I don't think I "had it bad," materialistically I had it pretty good, and I was well aware of that. However, that has nothing to do with how you feel emotionally because someone else deems you "unworthy" of popularity, of acceptance.
To summarize: even if you have a billion dollars and all the best stuff in the world, if you're say, clinically depressed, then your life is still a living hell. If you're poor, but find happiness in something then I say you're better of than the person who "has it all."
If you're a jock, and you feel horribly worried that you won't be accepted so you beat up some kid who's different but it tears you up inside, then i'd say you're just as bad off as the kid you beat up, but you chose a more harmful way to deal with it.
High schools are one of the worst inventions ever created. They foster horrible class structures based on the wrong criteria. I don't know a solution, but I do recognize a problem here.
Neal Stephenson really hit a cord with me on this one, probably because I fit into the role of White Male Technocrat. Of all the scenes in the book, the dialog between Randy and his SO's friends probably got me going the most.
By the way, did you understand how Enoch Root managed to show up in present day after he died in WWII?
----
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Posted by Phantom of the Operating Syste:
If I stub my toe, I will cry out in pain. Unjustified perhapse, because others are in worse pain? We will complain about things we think are unfair. We wouldn't be people if we didn't. Don't be so hard on us for not being saints and doing what comes naturually to anyone.
If any of us could push a button to make the world a better place for all, I think we would do it.
Social progress takes time. We are fighting back because we can. By giving your logic an unfair twist, the only ones who shouldn't be fighting back are those that cannot. There are those in the worlds with worse plights than the minorities here! Should the minorities not complain of any injustice because of that? Of course not.
My 2k
-phantom
Posted by The Mongolian Barbecue:
How stupid I was- naturally white males are always economically advantaged and never oppressed (clearly that Katz article about the two guys from idaho was a fluke, nothing more). Gays on the other hand, although they might initially appear to be in this demographic, are not. Thus, the VV is not hypocritical in the slightest when it slams mainstream america for beating up a few gays, but when confronted by a few nerds being beaten up, tells the spoiled white kids to shut up.
Central to the VV's "reasoning" is the assumption that every white male nerd is well-educated, advantaged, and headed for a lucrative Si valley IPO. This is just not the case. Engineers are - well- engineers. True, we are better off than many in the US economy, but to say that we are somehow the oppressors is naive. Why doesn't the VV look at www.faceintel.com- where a bunch of white nerd engineers expose the age discrimination and other predatory practices of Intel, for example?
This VV article is nothing more than a bitter liberal making broad, insulting generalizations. Sophistry at its best.
Posted by Lord Kano-The Gangster Of Love:
Life isn't easy for most of us. Asian, Black, Hispanic, Native American, White whatever...
Life is hard. Bad things sometimes happen to good people for no good reason. You're not doing anything good by ridiculing white people when they snap. Blacks and other snap just as well. In LA a few years back an average weekend saw more young black kids murdered than were killed in Colorado last month. In East LA murder is nothing new among the latino community ether.
Is it alright to vilify all black people because of the actions of a few? No. Neither is it right to vilify all white people because of a few mental defectives in their midst. Don't get me wrong, I too have some pet peeves when it comes to the paler people among us (namely country music, Nascar, and the endless media attention bestowed upon Leonardo Dicaprio and Ricky Martin) but someone blowing a gasket and going postal isn't something that just white people do.
Instead of saying THEY, THEY, THEY, THE PARENTS, BLAH BLAH BLAH, maybe you should be saying why? Was it something that we did? was it something that I did? Was it something that I allowed?
If you missed the point of the Hellmouth series maybe you were one of the dickheads who pushed these kids over the limit. I spent time on both sides of the fence, when I got older, I did my best to make amends, by protecting the kids who I used to pick on.
LK
This guy is trying to be allegorical. The problem is that his allegory is weak.
I prefer to think of this in terms of Northern Ireland and the IRA. Jocks are the brits-- protestants, and "others" are the catholics. Some of the catholics get guns. Some of them get Law degrees and loin the Sinn Fein. Some of them just bear it.
We don't understand this because we have an overgeneral nationalistic/ethnocentric view --weltangschauung(sp?)--of the world. Whenever a heterogeous group starts to polarize, there will be tension and pressure. Each high-school, college fraternity/greek system, office/department is a microcosm of the larger society. When a political order emerges, it has to play by the same rules as any other political system whether it's white/Dutch South Africans against the Bantu people or whether it's the local high-school jocks against the geeks. Pressure builds up and will be released. If you make a peaceful "release" impossible (the haves defend their stake too sucessfully without assimilating the have-nots) you make a violent one imminent.
Also, the whole conflict is very animal. Jocks are battling for sexual dominance over geeks. This is all about fighting over the "best womenfolk" and general pack/herd-fighting for alpha-male status. Our problem is not the geeks, who are not pack animals. Our problem is the pack animals who establish the pecking order. High school trains people to establish the same social pecking order in the workplace to create the glass ceiling for women and minorities.
We should examine the social environments in our schools and re-engineer them towards teaching social skills that we want people to have later in life. Now, we teach people how to divide up and wage class warfare. Or rather, we create an environment where it is necessary to learn those skills.
Posted by Lord Kano-The Gangster Of Love:
The following two quotes are given in reverse order to make a point.
>>I think perhaps your hypocrasy is showing.
>>I don't think he missed the point of the Hellmouth series. He just didn't think the series missed the _real_ point.
Perhaps a your poor grammar is showing.
>>Just because his view is different from yours, you start calling him names.
That's usually why name calling starts after you leave High School. People aren't geeks, dorks et al, just dickheads and arseholes. Take your pick.
>>Looks like you're being a "dickhead" by pushing him over the limit.
Over the limit into what? Dickheadity? Or would that be dickheaddom?
LK
Posted by generic kewl tech reference:
to know that there was such an easy solution to the constant abuse that was my school experience: Just learn to fit in or suffer, rich white boy!
Thank you, Village Voice.
Never mind that my parent was on welfare and had less than $100 in the bank, everybody knows the white people are the oppressors.
Admittedly, where I went to high school, we had very few minorities when I went. Perhaps I didn't notice how badly they were being treated, being selfishly caught up in my own trivial little daily beatings, humiliations, assaults, and death threats.
I wish that the well-meaning parents, teachers, school counselors, and psychiatrists (and psychiatrists, and psychiatrists...) had been as honest with me as you were, Village Voice. Instead of telling me to tell a teacher or authority figure (which got me beaten) or to just pity or ignore my tormentors (which got me beaten) or to stand up to my oppressors (which got me locked in a locker as they threatened to set fire to me), they should have just told me that it was all my fault and to conform or perish.
It's nice to know that the suicide attempts were just petty whining over normal adolescent problems. I'm sure every child goes home, digs out the 9mm Walther PPK their parent had hidden away, and wonders just what it would feel like to go to school the next day and blow away everyone who pisses them off.
Thank you, Village Voice.
cc: Village Voice
bcc: slashdot.org
Rush is a band, not the Big Fat Idiot on TV.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Atheists are not a majority. It must have been an unusual, nonrandom selection of people in your class if the majority were right-wingers and atheists. Either that or you are using the overly broad definition of atheism that some Christains are guilty of and labelling every other religion as atheist.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
I'm bisexual, I'm a goth, I'm a pervert, and I'm a geek. I for one have found that being ridiculed and stereotyped on one of these grounds is pretty similar to another. I certainly get more hassle for being a goth because people can tell from the street, and I get more ridicule socially for being a geek. People are surprisingly OK about my being a pervert, and bisexuality gives hardly any of the people I meet any trouble at all, though I had to leave a particularly bigoted workplace over it once.
So here's one data point: her bland assertion that "geek profiling" is a breeze compared to traditional oppressions like homophobia isn't true for me.
--
Xenu loves you!
You totally missed the point of what he was saying with that line. He could have just as easily used any p.c. persecuted group (gays, blacks, hispanics, jews, etc.) and said the same thing.
Telling someone to just shutup and take it like a man just because that is the way it has always been isn't the answer.
?
No question about it, someone at the White Male Power Elite coordinating center screwed up and forgot to send us our membership cards and jackboots and my bank certainly never received that "Financial Elite" transfer. (Not that it mattered as we worry about financial status or skin color. Something about living in a world where people "will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.")
According to Jane Dark, you just can't suffer if you're white. What's next - you can't be poor if you a Jew? Students (most assuredly not all white or male, either) describe daily abuse ranging from "merely" being a social outcast to severe physical and emotional trauma. Oh wait, according to Jane, they're geeks, so they're white, so they're card-carrying members of The Establishment, so it doesn't matter because it can't be real. I wonder how she feels about the Holocaust - it seems like she'd fit right in with the the revisionists who claim it never happened. They're also noted for never letting mere facts interfere with a position...
Here's my letter to the editor.
I am a slashdot reader, and I really liked this article. Its critical message of historical context is well deserved. However I would like to point out what I enjoyed about the articles, and it wasn't Katz's self aggrandizing readership stroking. Neither was it in a well deserved backlash of oppressed people uniting in pointing a finger at their persecutors. The true masterpiece in the work was the Slashdot readership itself, and the community outpouring of support and sympathy to those in such a position (but not necissarily the monsters at Columbine.)
When I read the Hellmouth series, what I found most redemptive was the large number of people who had suffered through simular persecutions raged on them in their High School experience. Many of them not echoed in the debate (maybe for their simplicity an finality on the subject), spoke of how they felt for those going through it now. They also emphasized that if they live through it, that the real life waiting outside was not like high school.
These people reaching back to help kids in simular experiences (which one can not remove the label of being truely horrible) were the true magic of the moment. It has been celebrated in popular movies and scholorly histories alike that only true community can overcome the effects of such horrible treatment. Yet the News, this and even Katz's articles never even mentions such. I wish it would as it is the one in a thousand actually chopping at the root of the problem.
Even this artfully crafted article mentions the paradox of creating persecution to justify persecution, the communal solution is freightfuly missing. The overtones of young geeks outmaneuvering historical persecution of other races as the persecuted presents a problem that only is wrapped up in the community acceptance and support that no one talks about.
Its the solution, and the real story in the Slashdot articles (or rather in there responces) but without reverberation I fear such articles pointing fingers will only lead to more finger pointing and then vigilant persectutive justice, and a new cycle begins.
^~~^~^^~~^~^~^~^^~^^~^~^~~^^^~^^~~^~~~^~~^~
The Village Voice has long been a bastion of extremist (American) liberalism at its worst. This latest editorial amounts to telling those who shared their stories here, "Shut up, you can't know what discrimination feels like, you're white."
/. would get them /.'ed. I guess they need the ad revenue, no matter the cost. Small wonder their subscriber base keeps slowly shrinking.
Of course, being liberals, they know what's good for us better than we do ourselves. Patronizing bastards.
No doubt they knew that posting a story about the crowd on
"I only believe in a fair fight if I can't rig it in my favor."
-Grimjack
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
-jafac's law
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
"I think there might have been an athelete clique, but nothing like the US, and it was scarcely
supported by the schools. I think most Europeans find it surreal how much energy, time and money
goes into sports in US schools and universities."
I think you've hit the nail right on the head.
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
-jafac's law
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
In my sophomore year of HS, I lost my entire clique of geek friends when they all went off to Illinois Math and Science Academy.
I guess I was smart, but not quite smart enough.
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
-jafac's law
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Um - we're NOT talking about the general cases here. We're talking about the extreme cases where people actually set off bombs and shoot other kids with guns. What did you think we were talking about?
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
-jafac's law
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
"Don't get me wrong, I too have some pet
peeves when it comes to the paler people among us (namely country music, Nascar, and the endless
media attention bestowed upon Leonardo Dicaprio and Ricky Martin) "
as the duly appointed representative of the white race, I hereby apologise for Nascar. We're truly sorry, there's no excuse for it. As far as country music goes, we've still got groups at the UN studying it, and drawing up war-crimes charges.
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
-jafac's law
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
DOOOO IIIIIIT!
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
-jafac's law
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
As I mentioned in a comment where it was on topic, I wasn't that impressed by Cryptonomicon -- but this V.V. article reminds me intensely of Waterhouse the Younger's treatment at the hands of the academics. "Being able to read a technical book is a privilege of the elite", indeed!
Isn't it racist to say that the color of someone's skin matters more than the content of their character, or their social role?
Dear Sirs:
I just finished reading your feature "Suffer the (White, Middle-Class) Children" (http://www.villagevoice.com/features/9921/dark.sh tml) and I must say I am quite disappointed. Your writer apparently heard stories of suffering and pain, then checked a color bar and saw "white" and "male" and concluded that the pain and suffering weren't real, and that this was just the white, male establishment trying to steal the identity-politics initiative. Hardly the journalistic thoroughness that The Village Voice is known for.
Neither Jon Katz, nor the thousands of kids and adults that wrote him, claimed that they were the only people being punished for being different; all they said was "Hey, it's happening here, too." School *is* Hell; Matt Groening wasn't telling any new tales when he drew that collection of cartoons a decade ago.
I've never been a fan of identity-politics -- I've always felt that the problem was "the system" was taking advantage of individuals, because individuals rarely have any way to fight the system or even of knowing that the system doesn't have to be that way. Black, white, female, male, adult, child: as individuals we are all easily oppressed; only by gathering together can we become strong enough to fight the system.
But there are plenty of special interests that have figured out that they don't have to gather everyone and address all the problems -- all they need is to gather enough people from a single category, and focus on one set of problems -- and they'll have found their own special path to power, and representation within the system, consequently make the system that much worse for the rest of us. Blacks, women, gays, the elderly, the poor, the handicapped -- they all have their special needs and special desires, and their own special advocates who are all just more cogs in the system.
Your writer and your editorial policies indicate to me that The Village Voice is proud of its place within the system, and isn't interested in anyone else upsetting the status quo. Just remember when you send your kids off to school in the morning, you're condemning them to the same daily torture that you once suffered, and remind yourself that you had a chance to say and do something about it -- and decided not to rock the boat. I hope you feel proud of yourselves.
We call it art because we have names for the things we understand.
I concur. I believe that "equal" should refer to your protection under the law. So that no individual has more rights/freedoms then any other.
.. how about if we were all extremely inteligent weaklings? (I'm going to the extreme here) The society as a whole benefits because of our diversity.. trying to make everyone the same will just hurt us iun the long run.
However even if you take the "equal in abilities" stance.. everyone is still equal if you take an "average" of their abilities. So one person might not be as smart as another.. and another might not be as strong.. another not as socially adept. etc etc..
I think one would have a REALLY hard time finding someone that maxes out in all possible human abilities and traits. And I think it's for the best.. how far would our society go if we were all big muscled idiots?
Ex-Nt-User
I found the article pretty offensive, personally. It showed the ugliest side of reverse discrimination, the part that says, "your pain has no validity because you don't match our idea of an oppressed group." The fact Ms Dark assumes that the people who contributed their personal stories to Katz's series are white males is so patently racist that I'm shocked her editors didn't call her on it.
None of the respondents even mentioned their race. For all we know, many of the contributors were non-caucasian and non-male. That wasn't so much relevant as the fact that they considered themselves nerds and geeks.
I consider myself a liberal on many social issues, but this Village Voice article is exactly the kind of "liberalism" that makes me want to puke.
-- Bander
What we need more of is science!
I thought the Village Voice completely missed the point about much of the Jon Katz writings (normally I detest Katz, but I'll make an exception)... namely, that in the wake of the school shootings, suddenly every kid who was slightly unusual became a suspect, and schools felt they had to engage in "geek control." regardless of how hellish high school may have been for people (disclaimer: it wasn't for me), the geek profiling from the administration interfering with the education of others was unacceptable. Why the VV failed to even bother with this aspect of it is beyond me.
-Dean
I went to North Texas in a program that was precursor to the current Honors Program. One more year of high school would have killed me. It was that miserable.
One side note: the Village Voice article tries to make a point about "not getting a date on Firday night," when that's just one of the details. It was getting beat up for blowing the curve on a math test, getting shoved around for asking a girl out on the Friday, or any of the other violent and crappy things that can happen to you when you're not one of the social elites, and dare to step out of your appointed niche.
Well... I'm a former high-school geek myself, but I've also been doing a lot of volunteer work with high school kids for the past 10 years or so. And, I can tell you that this quote is right on. (I think the article itself draws some incorrect conclusions, though.)
The point is that it isn't just the geeks or the social misfits who have a hard time in high school -- that time of life is hard on *everybody*, but the symptoms show up in different ways. Here are some other ways it shows up:
* Eating disorders
* Suicide
* Narcotic and Alcohol abuse
* Steroid abuse
* Promiscuity
* Crime
Anorexic popular girls
Football players who commit suicide
The valedictorian who's a closet alcoholic
The homecoming queen who thinks the only way to get boys to like her is to sleep with them.
The champion wrester who turns to steroids so he'll keep winning and stay popular.
It's tough on everybody, "Jocks" and popular kids included. The main difference is how good the kid is at covering it up. Yeah, some kids tend to get the brunt of the physical abuse, but that doesn't mean that they're the only ones hurting.
In my school, they put the smart kids from one grade in gym with the delinquents from the next. I got a lot of abuse in gym class. But, looking back on it, I wouldn't trade it for being the star of the football team needing rehab.
>White middle American class kids do one thing >well - complain. Katz provided what
> appeared to be a legitimate >opportunity for them to claim victimhood
I see that you're making exactly the same mistake that the author of the article did; classify opression as "more or less important" using shallow political factors, instead of looking at the real issue -people being physically/psichologically abused (not just bullied). "Middle-class white male" isn't an monolithic group, despite what some people might think.
>Note to future teenagers - you're going to be >bullied, you're going to be hard-pressed for a
> sexual outlet, no one is going to like your >clothes, and you've got horrible zits. Welcome to
>planet earth. Kids in Kosovo would kill to have >problems as trite as yours.
"Note to gay kids: you are going to be discriminated, beaten up, harassed and killed just because you're different. That's okay because that's how it's always been in the real world, and if you don't like it, go to Sudan/Ethiopia/India and face the real problems".
Is that okay with you?
(As for whining, many of the responses to Katz's article weren't so much accounts of personal experiences as calls for action and practical advice to deal with harassement, so I wonder how much of them did you really read).
What an insult.
Being home... alone... unharassed... on any night whatsoever was paradise.
I think they completely missed the point.
Nobody can judge anybody else's personal pain. We are products of the societies we are raised in. It's the flipside of this pyramid. Sometimes the people being beaten the most at school, who have the most quiet voices are feeling the least pain. They've grown accustomed to the abuse.
Who hurts more? The popular kid who's rejected by their peers, or the unpopular kid who's rejected by their peers?
Is the unpopular kid deserving of a "reality check?" Should we throw him into a greater hell simply because he isn't in enough pain where he is? Should we call him selfish if he cries?
It's a damn shame he doesn't want to be beaten up every day. He should take it with pride and tell himself that as long as the Ethiopians are starving, he has no right to complain. His agressors are good kids -- They're not crying 'What about ME.'
It's a little more complicated being selfish or "keeping up with the Jones'."
Slashdot's readership lost a lot of credibility in my book when so many people wrote in with their horror stories of high school and understanding of the Littleton killers' motives instead of describing those kids as what they were: weak-willed chickenshits.
Also, why is it that so many people can't understand why school administrators are going apeshit when kids look suspicious? First, put yourself in the shoes of the school officials. If the school you're in charge of just locked itself into closets because some asshole with a machine gun who had a bad Quake day decided to kill everybody, you'd be pretty paranoid too. Second, take off the fucking trenchcoat for a month or two until things calm down. Why is that so hard?
> No barking, no growling: nuclear explosion.
Most scaringly this worked for me also quite well... if they got on my nerves, I walked away, if they continued, I didn`t notice them until they begged to much for a lesson.
But its not a general solution!! For me it worked, well on some less bloody scale, because I always have been LARGER and HEAVIER than most class-mates.
Also I generally show a quiet, slow and hard-to-anger behaviour... but only up to some degree. After that I fall or at least tend to fall into some form of rage and believe me, most didnt expect anything. So I was an unpredictable risk and they dropped me.
Would it work for YOU? Mostly, I dont think so. It made me a big lot of trouble (but in most cases, when you beat up three bullies who believes the bullies?), I know how to play my role, I know to analize a situation (attack? bad... retreat? good... surrender? BAD! wait for another day? why not?) and only failed once.
And one more thing I discovered later:
Unity makes you strong!
When I demonstrated to get along with the thugs, many less lucky guys tend to hang around somewhere around my friends and me.
So I got interested: What would happen, if you put all those looney scared mices together?
Well, starting with four or five guys you get a hard to impress group. Oh, you might say, fighting the gang by building your own gang?
Yo, man, whats your problem?
Never embarase anyone outside the group. But when embarased:
Never tell publically what you do next.
Tell Teachers. Or sometimes even better, parents.
Sue em. Get them before school-court. Scare em.
No fair one-on-one.
No fair fights at all.
But even more important:
No fights at all.
No revenge!
Always remember: Never ever insult anyone.
And never attack. Always keep a cool head.
And fight back hard when you are ready for it.
Did I mention, that this way I never ever had a problem from the nineth degree to the thirteen degree?
"Life is short and in most cases it ends with death." Sir Sinclair
I highly suggest others send a note to the Voice. Perhaps the author will engage their brain next time?
Interesting article on Voices From the Hellmouth. The assumptions are quite interesting as well. The most striking one is the idea that geeks (and apparently gays) are all white, middle class males.
Boy, will some of my friends be shocked. All these years and there was a white-boy struggling to get out of their female/black or some other non-white-male selves.
Wonder if they'll suddenly start voting for Newt Gingrich? Scary thought.
Articles like this are yet more confirmation that leaving America was a *great* idea. It's not perfect over here in Ireland, but at least every debate doesn't need kneejerk race reactions.
*Lot's* of kids get abuse in school. I know of numerous people who have taken abuse they should never have to deal with, and school systems continually stick their heads in the sand and ignore it.
In the course of following the events in Littleton (the UK/Irish press carried it with the underlying question of "Will those crazy yanks ever give up their guns?") it never occured to me to think about what race geeks are.
Your article is the only one I've seen that depicts this as a white-only issue. I suspect it has more to do with your own worldview, and inability to see the world from a geek of any background's perspective.
By the way I think what the students in Littleton did was absolutely disgusting and has absolutely no justification. What they did was completely their own responsibility. In an effort to draw some positive action from it however, I think schools should start trying to deal with the cruelty that students inflict upon one another - long before guns or bombs are involved. Abuse of geeks, date rape, hazing, racism, sexism, and a host of other anti-social activities should be actively discouraged and punished. Students should learn from day one that tolerance and respect is an all important value and that without it things like Columbine and certain Village Voice pieces are all too common.
US Citizen living abroad? Register to vote!
Was she abused in school? Was she an abuser in school? Did she have a happy experience in High School? Is this really any of her business? Why is "Jane Dark" relevant to this discussion at all?
Get off my lawn.
>> why do these things seem to be centred around the US?
Because the US news gets reported everywhere else (CNN anyone), whereas australian etc. news is rarely reported overseas.
Australia has ahuge number of "berzerker" incidents when considered per head of population (16 million = less than 10% of US population) - Hoddle Street anyone ? Backpackers murders ? The postal workers in Melbourne ? The Tasmanian incident that is so rarely mentioned that I forget it's name (not to mention the determined extermination of aboriginals in Tasmania).
Australia suffers the same "beat the crap out of anyone different" mentality as the US, but because so many kids are immigrants they learn pretty quick to abandon their own personality and join in with the mob-think.
Tim (yeah, 2nd anti-Aus posting in 2 days...)
I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just squandered. - George Best
I'm sort of afraid to ask this, but....why do
:)
these things seem to be centred around the US?
I'm not sure on the demographics, but I know
Australia has one of the highest person/net usage
in the world, most of the kids I know play console
games, we get all the terrible US telly, and yet
we don't seem to have the same problems.
I know that I was bagged at high school for being
geeky, but who cares? Do other people opinions
_really_ make that much difference to how you
think about yourself? I certinaly didn't give
myself an ulcer over it.
Just think of the people who critisise you as
being stupider than you are, merely trying to
bring you down because of their dissatisfaction
with their own intelligence. Makes you feel
better
daniel
It takes the mature involvement of adults (parents & teachers) to to break up the "horrible class structures" and prevent things from getting out of hand. Sadly, mature involvement from adults is getting more rare every day.
Your password has expired, please login to change it.
Go away.
An analogy: this might seem way off-topic, but I believe there is some similarity. This sort of argument reminds me of some of the opponents of women's ordination, the ones who say that women who favor such a thing are self-centered and that they should solve all the world's other problems first. How well-off and selfish these women must be to think about this issue when millions are battling poverty and hunger. Or so the argument goes.
Here's a news flash for you, buddy. Injustice and oppression are real, even when there are other evils in this world.
Needing a reality check? The Me Generation? These kids are selfish brats who think they deserve to be pampered? Yeah, right. Even white male suburban teenagers are human beings, and even they ought to be treated with human dignity. If babies in the Third World are dying of malnutrition, that still does not make it morally justifiable to subject people who are financially more comfortable to daily physical, sexual, and psychological assault.
Nobody deserves to get beat up. Not even a middle-class geek.
But, unlike the author of that article, I believe that you can decide against the moves for playing along with the popularity game.
Actually, I understood the article to say that you could decide against the popularity moves, but that it's a bad idea. Which is absolutely correct, of course -- unless you want to live as a hermit, you've got to get along with people. If you want someone's help or affection, you have to make them like you. "Just leave me alone" is a two-edged sword -- nice in study hall, but a bummer on the weekend. Of course, if you're different enough not to be taken in with the US's consumer culture, things are a lot easier (read: if it's not important to you to have the biggest TV, the fastest car/biggest SUV, and the nicest house, then you don't need to Rico Suave the HR folks to get the mega-$ job).
"If you want to play in the Real World, you've got to learn Real World moves" -- TNHD
Just junk food for thought...
Perhaps I'm supposed to think "black" when I hear of a drive by, or of "white" when I hear of a school shooting as the author seems to suggest. Yes, I'm aware of the treatment given some 'Driving While Black,' but what does it matter the color of ones' skin, of their clothes, of their eyes, or where they live? Wrong is wrong, not a pait by numbers.
I just thought this was a silly comment, mostly because I mentally continued the sentenve as "...unlike the great story of (black) teen angst, Moesha."--- http://foo.ca
A few points for all the folks who whine about 'whiners' must consider:
.....
1) People really do get physically, emotionally, sexually abused in schools and not in some abstract way - in a real way.
2) The people who are targeted are perceived to be different from their attackers whether by race, gender, status,
3) If any of this abuse occured off school grounds there is a pretty good chance that it would reported to the police if not prosecuted.
4) The race/gender issues in the VV article are off the point since this kind of crime is almost uniquely WM in the US in every aspect. Almost every 'lone crazed gunman' has been a WM, some middle class, some poor, some better off.
5) Saying that "life is hard get a helmet, you can't imagine how much better you have it than anyone else, including me" smacks of what my mom used to tell me when I wouldn't eat my dinner e.g. "finish your beets, children in asia are starving" - Maybe that's an effective argument for 4 year olds but it hardly helps anything.
> But some things don't quite add up. Ask all of
> your friends if they felt different and
> miserable in high school, and you'll wait a long
> time for anyone to say, "Nah, I was
> well-adjusted and happy. In fact, I spent most
> of my time beating on the losers, huh-huh-huh."
I was home schooled. When one of my "peers" found that out, they invariably asked "How can you stand it?" They didn't understand that I didn't miss the so-called "social life" that the school provides.
In other words, they liked school, or at least the parts not involving education.
Seems this author is lackiing in understanding.
-- Out of cheese error! Redo from start.
The same shit when on at my high school in SC. And they wonder why I don't go back for reunions...
The star athlete at my school (class of '69) managed to avoid the draft and Vietnam. Over the years after graduation he assaulted a number of local people but never went to jail....his family had connections. In 1983, he threatened the owner of a restaurant and got his brains blown out all over the customers. The owner claimed self-defense and got off without even a slap on the wrist. He was an asshole because the school system ENCOURAGED him to be an asshole. He was never punished, he was always rewarded. Well, he got his final reward.
BTW, am I the only one who saw the NBC interview with the Columbine High School football team? God, the total sum of their IQs is probably smaller than my shoe size.
I agree with you completely. I'd also like to add a few points. The author seemed to be trying to be satirical, and sound intellectual. It didn't work. While I agree with all the facts he stated, the conclusion was, well - non-existant. It's obvious by reading that this person has not spent much time in a public forum, and has not acclimated to the online world.
I believe his article was akin to an early style of flame-bait - badly written, bad humor, and condescending.
--
I agree with you completely. I'd also like to add a few points. The author seemed to be trying to be satirical, and sound intellectual. It didn't work. While I agree with all the facts he stated, the conclusion was, well - non-existant. It's obvious by reading that this person has not spent much time in a public forum, and has not acclimated to the online world.
I believe his article was akin to an early style of flame-bait - badly written, bad humor, and condescending. It was nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt to attack white men.
--
^^^^ moderators: nix this one.
--
I think it's dumb to get into intra-media scraps, but I found the Voice piece to be disappointing, and surprisingly distorted. I never compared these e-mails to the Holocaust, and made a point of not making that comparison. I said they had the feel of very painful testimony. I think his self-consciouly contrarian idea that white, middle-class males can't be in pain, or don't deserve sympathy if they are is too silly too warrant a lot of discussion.
He also overlooked the fact -- which I made a big point of -- that an enormous percentage of the e-mailers were women, and, I thought, middle-class. He was writing to a preconceived point of view, and not very honestly.
jonkatz@slashdot.org
Actually, VV came much closer to the true problem than Katz did.
In comparing schools to prisons they were close to the truth and
missed only by not exploring the comparison more closely. "Modern"
schools are factories, factories to mill the unique edges, distinctive
extrusions, and characteristic cravasses from our individualities.
"The purpose of public education is to teach reflexive obedience
to arbitrary authority", I tell my daughters. It began with military
training in central Europe, was adopted and expanded upon as a tool
of political inculcation by British socialists and was siezed upon
and remolded by American industrialists in the image of the factories
for which they were to produce refined ore (workers!).
Schools don't harbor a repressive social order by accident -
production of repressive/suppressive social order is their very purpose.
They exist not so much to teach math/history/language etc. as that we
must all get up at a certain time, accept an external committments of
our time, obey a variety of strangers and accept their authority based
upon the social structure, limit our "freedom of speech" to acceptable
norms, follow the dress code and others I've probably been to thoroughly
"mainstreamed" myself to recognise. And it is no accident that those
who most exemplify social order and obedience - the players of team
sports - are the exhalted of this microcosm.
Nor is it an accident that those who don't/can't fit are handled most
roughly. The horrors visited upon the physically inept are bad enough,
but the Geek Tragedy arises from the fact that the nominal purpose of
mass education - edification of the intellect - has little to do with
its real purpose. By definition the intelligent have access to a larger
conceptual space than the normals and are thus more likely to cross
into expressions and behaviors which the consumer/worker factory finds
unacceptable, and hence must restrain coercively and "taught" not
to repeat.
While industrial economics ruled, this system worked well enough:
the socially successful in school were "successful" in life enough to
reinforce the school social system in partly self fufilling feedback.
Now as factory industrialism nears extinction it doesn't work so well.
The nose-picking dork with the palm-top on his belt that the jock
beats up on after school may be not just the jock's boss a few years after
school, but could be the jock's father's boss in a part time job tomorrow.
Of course the sports and poms recognise this inversion of the natural order
and vent their despair with renewed hostility.
Meanwhile perceptive and interactive space (cable, vcr, games, inet)
have exploded in the last decade. Those who may be socially maladroit
in meat space can often find ego validtion in conceptual space at a point
so far removed from mundane conceptual space that feedback from the
school social milieu will more likely be percieved as arbitrary sadism
than a directional inducement. Likewise normal conceptual space has
expanded and thus been diluted and diffused to the point where the
elite of the worker/consumer factory school are often at a disadvantage
to, and outperformed by the pasty fat kid who's on the computer all day.
But schools go on - they have an embedded politically powerful
bureaucracy to ensure it - pretending that they can produce cohort after
another of ample worker/consumer droids for factory jobs which no longer
exist, in ever larger, more expensive factory schools.
The largest single problem manifest at Littleton is not violence in
games or movies, not guns, not the clash of geeks and jocks, gays and
homophobes, not social angst and alienation nor hatred and intolerance
themselves. The problem lies in a state sponsored and backed system
of institutionalized homogenization of young minds; confining an ever
more socially and intellectually divergent group into unintended and
often unwilling contact, conflict and competition while imposing an
external social order which no longer fits the real world.
>This article sounds like it was written by someone who has been claiming oppressed class status and is afraid of losing it if
>some other group is also seen to be oppressed.
Until I read this article, I always thought that the adjective ``Politically Correct" was used by conservatives of Rush Limbuahg's ilk to tar their more liberal critics.
Some of the people here at Slashdot may be familiar with George Orwell's essay about how politics make for bad language. (I don't remember the name of this essay, but it is in his _Collected_Works_ -- & worth reading.) But I doubt as many recognized some of the rhetoric Dark used in her essay, which is lifted from Post- & De-Constructionist ``literary criticism". This is a body of writing written by people who want to pass themselves off as experts in literature, but do not want to expend the work on actually _reading_ any works of literature. (In other words, the PHBs of the liberal arts.) These catch-phrases warned me that I was in for a superficial treatment of a complex problem.
Dark's point seems to be that if you are American, white, suburban & middle-class, you can't know what suffering is about. If she were truly as insightful about this matter as she tries to present herself, she would have realized that this is one more example of good-ol' American striving towards mediocrity, which has been described by such writers as H.L. Mencken & Mark Twain -- although being Dead White Men, she probably considers their testimony suspect.
Then again, the rise of Post- & De-Constructionist ``literary criticism" could be seen as another example of this relentless striving. After all, the PHBs seem to be everywhere.
Geoff
I think I see a trend here. Maybe for them it really would be easier to muzzle the entire internet than to produce p
I don't mean to sound rude at all, but here is Jane's situation: she is a she, she is black, she was poor as a child, and now that she's a 'journalist', she's pissed that she's not making more money, and she feels that it is the fault of 'white America'.
Let me say one more thing, I am in no way a bigot (more on that in a moment), think differentiophobia is stupid and stand up for the opinions of most people, even if I disagree.
BUT, I am vehemanently (sp?) opposed to idiots who are idiots by choice, and the same for assholes. And this lady seems to be both of those, which I am opposed to.
*Rant-O-Matic shutting down*
Happy slashdotting!
The one and (thankfully) only,
LafinJack
we are building a religion
a limited edition
we are now accepting callers
for these pendant key chains
- The problems with our society that lead to excessive violence, too-easy access to weaponry, etc. These include parental incompetence, a lack of emphasis on education (inadequate funding, supplies, etc.), and so on.
- The systematic persecution and abuse of high school students because of differences (whatever they may be), sometimes with the acceptance, or even approval, of the school administration.
- The excessive distrust and trampling of student rights in the wake of littleton due to the fear that anyone who shared certain arbitrary attributes with the shooters might, at any time, do the same.
Katz's stories, and the tales he related were partially about the second issue, and heavily about the third. The village voice ignored the third issue and decided that the second issue was unimportant.In reality, the first issue is what needs to be dealt with by mainstream society. The second by school administrators and the students themselves and the last will eventually die down, but hopefully will leave us a little wiser (not bloody likely!) and kinder.
Mind you, I'm not trying to make light of any of this. I'm just trying to point out that it's not a single, simple issue, but actually the combination of several. Each must be dealt with individually and appropriately.
Stupid people will be persecuted to the fullest extent allowed by law.
Hello?? Clue???
It's usually yhe ones that are having a hard time that DON'T complain that much... They bear it stoically..
It's left to the 'Political cause celebre's' to voice how much they're opressed without that really being true...
By your very statements, then the race relation bill is the biggest excuse to complain ever, and the biggest _excuse_ to claim victimhood.
Note to all future teenager: You don't have to be bullied.. There are people out there who give a damn, even when things are darkest.
And maybe kids in Kosovo would kill to have such problems rather than their own.. But you know what??
The prevous article seems to be along the lines of the whole problem behind Kosovo.. "Hitler tried to exterminate the Jews.. So we'll only do something more minor, and exterminate a smaller group."...
Just because there's a big problem somewhere doesn't mean that you don't address the smaller more persistant ones too..
Malk
Maybe it's just me... But the whole article reeks of the prose of one of the hardcore Politically Correct.
From the title alone, "Suffer the (white, middle-class) Children", you get a taste of the real issue the author is addressing.
The fact the kids are white and middle class.
There's no real addressing of the 'Geek Profiling', no attempt to address the fact that the most sensitive of the kids are being picked on, for the sheer fact that they are sensitive, and show the most reaction to being hurt.
Oh yes, that article is penned in eloquent English, with the verbal flourishes and pomp that accompany the arrogant and self obsessed.
There was one mention of ethics. And one of compassion.
The rest was about politics. 'Progressive' politics. 'Identity' politics.
And the sum up paragraph drove home what the author really seemed to be directing all this flamboutance at (and don't be fooled, it is almost entirely flambouyant waffle.. There is very little not no real meat in this article...)...
The impression in her mind that the white middle class males are trying to steal the 'identity' of the 'opressed' (read 'black', 'from the slave origin', Politically Correct garbage).
Is that all it comes down to in the minds of some, that all the pain and suffering is merely political vying to see who can be the biggest victim??
I'm white, was brought up middle class, and had a rather nasty breakdown at 11 due to bullying.
All the PC administration would do is tell me 'I ought to get to know them better, they're nice really... You should invite them round for dinner'... Every excuse under the sun, and many that weren't...
I wasn't interested in being a victim, and I'm not now...
Faecal matter occurs.. Deal with it.
This isn't about politics, or something that happened generations ago.. People have grown up a little since then.. They understand a lot more...
This is about something that's happening now..
It's about ethics. It's about opening your eyes and seeing that the people who change the course of the world are those that think differently...
And if you kick that person all their life, when they change the world, will they not kick back?
At school, is the place where attitudes are formed... And, I know very well that it's a nightmare for the teachers to cut the fine balance between overprotecting the children (as seems to be the rage in the US), and offering them no protection at all.. Or maybe protecting them from the wrong things...
Every child needs a challenge.. They need the ability to prosper and grow...
The physically inclined require physical challenges (so, install a few adventure playgrounds... The few bruises and grazes they garner are proud badges to a child, to show wht they've achieved... But, oh, I forgot, in the US, the parents would sue the school for 'damaging their child'...), the bookish need the company of the bookish, so they can exercise their minds and feelings in peace...
I'm sorry, but I feel nothing but contempt for the author's offhand dismissal of the problem as being politics...
It's not.. It's about the people... It's about the future.
Only when people stop shouting about politics and the 'use' of the 'victim culture', and deal with the people who hurt, but refuse to identify themselves as victims.. Just as people who hurt, will things start to become clearer...
Just my tuppence worth,
Malk
Katz specifially said he wasn't comparing them to the holocaust survivors. And, no, it's perfectly legit to call them merely surviviors. They survived high school. If you can call a person who walks away from a car wreck a survivor, then you can call anyone who makes it though high school, geek or jock, a survivor. High school is pretty tough.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Geeks didn't ask to come from white middle-class families. And geeks tend toward strong anti-establishment views (due, I'm sure, to the fact that they don't fit in the establishment) which makes it ironic that the seemingly liberal Village Voice should target them because of race/status.
I don't know how to solve society's problems, but I do know that more classification/division isn't the answer.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
Look back on these comments, and look at the Voice article...
Take any phrase that starts or relys on the phrase "all:every[implied or not] white males"
Replace "white males" with "african-americans" "jews" "muslims" "gays"
Reread it in its new state.
Send a small note off to the author...
"Good morning sunshine, your a racist"
The Village Voice of course, and its minions of the "cause" would then launch into the whole "I cant be a racists because the white male power structure holds all the cards and with out an opressive force you cant be racist"..and of course you can just sit there and smile and say "good morning sunchine, your a racist".
Then they might come back at you with some Rage Against My Cherios sounding rhetoric about "the criss cross power structa come down and holding us down by thier horse ridding badges and lilly white chosen" to which you can smile happily and hum to them, to the tune of "mmmmm bop" "goodmorning sunshine, your a racist"
The power to be
washed over by the mass cry
to be the power
Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap! Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap! Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap!
Was it just me or was there an undercurrent of
bigotry, prejudice and racism in that article
nicely clothed in a wrapper of political
correctness? Not only that it dripped with a
thinly veiled bitterness.
Oh, of coure, I forgot. All us white middle class
folk are part of a conspiracy to oppress everyone
else. For her information it has nothing to
do with race or class (I'm 1/2 chinese myself).
Don't peg people with race or class labels.
Only the small minded do that. I'm not saying
that there aren't minority groups and that they
don't get oppressed sure they do. BUT, you can't
define a "minority" group by race and class
alone, if you are to do it at all.
She should get off her, we are so down-trodden
holier than thou, "horse." Wake up, your
type of thinking that labels and classifys others
and then pre-judges them based on YOUR arbitrary
classifications is EXACTLY like that of those other
small minded bigots who I image, and you insinuate,
persecuted and oppressed you. We need to realise
that people are people no matter where you go.
We all have the same wants and needs, hopes and
dreams, as everyone else. Whether your white,
black, hispanic, asian, whatever. Judge people
on the merit of WHO THEY ARE, not where they
come from, what they look like or how much money
they make.
The pity is that she has failed to realise that
she has become just like those "racist bigots"
that she hates so much. Poisoning yourself with
bitterness will not make you a better person.
I sympathise but we all have issues. Ever had to
deal with the extreme loneliness of being from
a bi-racial family? (man I hate using this
terminology, but it's probably the only thing
you'll understand). You're of two different
cultures but belong to none, not accepted by
either side. Until you stop looking at everything
through the glasses of race and start drawing
on the strength that your unique background
gives you. Same thing for anyone from a single
minority. But you can't get to that point in
your personal growth without letting go of the
bitterness, hate and frustration that you've
accumulated. It starts with forgivness. Sounds
cheesy but it's true.
Cheers.
********************************************
Superstition is a word the ignorant use to describe their ignorance. -Sifu
Home alone on Friday night. Gas chambers.
I don't think that Jon's article went that far, and despite that, I do think that the Village Voice article raises quite a few interesting points.
Yes, it sucks to be a kid. But, unlike the author of that article, I believe that you can decide against the moves for playing along with the popularity game.
Twenty-some odd years ago, I was in the same situation as Jon's correspondants. I was a computer nerd (geek wasn't used back in 1974). I didn't earn the anger of the more popular students, but rather they just ignored me totally.
There is NOTHING that justifies what happened in Littleton. But also, there is NOTHING that justifies what has happened in the aftermath of Littleton -- expulsions, suspensions, geek counseling, "geek profiling," etc.
The establishment is overreacting, as usual. But let us not overreact as well.
School sucks. College sucks. Work sucks. Life sucks.
It's up to you to figure out how to win the game. Spraying a school with bullets isn't the answer. Succeeding is the answer.
How? Everybody will have to figure that out for himself/herself.
--
"May I have ten thousand marbles, please?"
as a culture, america does not value quality so much as quantity. "well, i've got enough quality, what are you talking about?", you exclaim. thank you for demonstrating my point exactly.
america is one of the only cultures that de-values education, and deceitfully misguides its children from understanding that all people are both teachers and students. to paraphrase, "a good person is a bad person's teacher, a bad person is a good person's job."
people, fix the design for the next release. don't keep kludging the implementation; that path is for fools. why condemn your children to following you into the abyss? enlightenment w/o action guarantees endless bondage on the wheel. what can we do to escape this?
Note to everyone in America: Things are fucking rough, get over it.
Ha, same tactic, and Katz didn't have to write anything about it in his original articles, because each "social class" has its own representatives. We're geeks, Katz (being somewhat mainstream media) provides a good voice to the mainstream.
Just happens that gays have their media icons, blacks have theirs and so on, etc.
ALL HAIL BRAK!!!
I find your selection of a title for "Confessions of a Redhead" very appropriate. Although from the reading, I couldn't tell if you used it in truth or in metaphoric terms.
/.
Anyhow, I must concur, and say that the more traits which are not "appreciated" by society, leads to more bothering by those who would have you fit in. I am both, geek and redhead. I stand out so unbelievably that I can identify with many of the posts here on
ALL HAIL BRAK!!!
>Ye gods. Get a grip. Now redheads are an oppresed group?
Not what I meant by it. But allow me to clarify.
Here we have quiet, little Jason. Sits alone at lunch, reading a book, eating the packed lunch mom made this morning. No one bothers him, but then again no one comes to sit with him. Jason doesn't stand out.
Here we have quiet, little Mike. Sits alone at lunch, reading a book, eating the packed lunch mom made this morning. Someone sees him being weird (oh my god, people still read books, gasp), and comes by to harass him. Mike stands out not by his actions but simply by looking different. He has red hair.
Now, if Mike had been with the "in crowd" he wouldn't have been picked on, but he decided that he liked to learn and read and do other "nerdish" things. People already held a small bias because red hair FORCES you to stick out like a sore thumb. Now, God forbid, Mike isn't even trying to fit in. Egads, indeed!
I'm sorry to say this, but apparently, one of the first decisions we make about people today is still based on appearance. Mike could have been well groomed, nothing in particular to make him stick out (no strange haircut, no strange clothing, no strange anything), but still his red hair labels him as different as someone who has black skin or is overweight.
People discriminate.
I've never claimed oppression due to my red hair, and now that I've gotten older and past the high school phase, no one really ever mentions it, unless they're trying to relate who to see about a computer problem, "Yeah, go see Mike, you know the guy with the red hair." However, I've been picked out of a herd of nerds (hehe) simply because I was the "strangest" looking one. That's sad, because WE ALL know how strange some of our friends look like.
I am NOT oppressed because I don't allow it. (I'm am NOT SUGGESTING that victims allow their attackers to do such, I am just saying that some people do not stand up against oppression) I revel in my difference. I see maybe three other red haired men in any given week. Redheads altogether account for less than 5% of the whole worlds population. I AM unique. I love it.
It's just a shame that I was picked on more readily due to my own genetic appearance and my own nature to desire knowledge. Redheads can all tell you that enduring public school is the worst part of living as a redhead. I not only endured the monikers reserved for geeks, but also the monikers for redheads. (yeah, they're not creative, but what do you expect from people who can't figure out how to harass you properly with intelligence?) To this day, only one of those redheaded nicknames has been answered to: Duracell. That was creativity! Duracell batteries are the coppertop. I refuse to answer to anything but my given name. And when people yell out "Hey, red!", I don't even acknowledge that I heard.
I don't want to say that any of the other harassment was solely attributable to my hair, but I know that the names were. But then once people get to know me, they make fun of me for more appropriate reasons like my intelligence.
ALL HAIL BRAK!!!
Your comments, while valid, also seem to prove a point about America which perhaps you did not intend to prove.
After WWII, America rejoiced, reveled and otherwise felt good about itself. We were told that we could have anything we wanted, but as the Great Depression taught us, we would have to work to get those things we wanted. This did not bother Americans, those two great tragedies seemed to have an important effect on this mode of thinking.
Now jump forward to present. The geeks, nerds, and other social outcasts in high school are idealists (mostly, and I know because I'm proud to be one.) We've read countless books where in the end, it is the smartest person who is our hero, because he uses his ability to determine the best route to thwart his oppressors. These are propagandist stories, judging simply from when in history they were written, and also by whom they were written. Yet they still hold true to some case.
The geeks, nerds, and outcasts have worked to put learning (gasp) as the focus of our schooling, and yet now our American Dream is failing. The truths that were instilled from our parents and grandparents that if we work hard enough, everything will be provided seems to be fading. Why is this? Because rewards and vicarious living through the talented athletes, popular people and otherwise "in group" has become prevalent.
Now to get to your point about the difference between Ethiopian, Kosovar, and geek. It is true that the tragedies happening elsewhere in the world are far more disturbing and shocking, and it is true that their victims are mostly unable to speak up. Yet, Kosovars and anti-Milosevic Serbs ARE speaking up online. So are the geek class. Why?
The answer is simple. Our ideal is dissolving, and we as a class are finding ourselves under fire by all sides. So, we USE our voice which our class created to speak up against the atrocities (I use that word with as much fervor as I would describing the helplessness to stop tragedy anywhere) performed by our oppressors.
Yes, it is a shame that Ethiopians cannot speak up, but it speaks of their upbringing (not to say that their upbringing is the Right Thing) which has made them helpless. And without meeting Maslow's pyramid of having the necessary things to feel good about yourself, these people are forced to accept their plight. It is most definitely not the Right Thing.
Geeks in America are on a higher rung of the pyramid, and are in the position to move higher by fighting for what is Right. However, no one ever condoned killing, slaughtering, or massacring your oppressors. That is a war crime by Geneva standards. (I find the Geneva guidelines for war to be silly. I know that they protect basic human rights, but to imagine that we have rules for war is outright absurd. I guess "Not all is fair in War.")
I guess my point is that it's not about "keeping up with the Joneses" or even "being the Joneses", it is about reward for work done. That is what we believe. I'm fairly certain that you will not find another person in our "social class" that feels otherwise.
Finally, I'm making another shameless plug for escape from your situation to all high school students that feel oppressed. In Texas, there are at least two programs which allow students to leave high school after their sophomore year. One is Texas Academy for Leadership in the Humanities at Lamar University in Beaumont. The other is the Texas Academy for Math and Science at University of North Texas. I went to TALH my senior year, (it's charter year) and I am currently planning our 5-year (since the beginning) reunion. My best friend was my roommate there (and we're going to be roommates again), and my fiance also attended. The rest of the charter class are people I would consider my closest friends ever. My advice is to research whether there is a program like these in your home state.
It was a reward for my intelligence, but also provided a new challenge. Isn't this what we're all after anyways, challenges?
I'm always glad to help anyone learn more about these programs, as I consider TALH (and somewhat Texas Governor's Honors Program) to be the life-changing experiences that have shaped me.
PsychoSpunk
ALL HAIL BRAK!!!
Well, I just wanted to say that I'm thankful that
we have a media outlet like the Village Voice around to reduce every issue to race.
pathetic...
It seems that people cry out about what most bothers them. It seems only natural.
People with the means to cry loudly, do so. Though having the means usually implies that their woes are not as dire as those of the ones who hurt too much to be heard.
A starving Ethiopian child can not be heard farther than earshot. And this is a tragedy.
An angst-ridden middle class American teenager, with access to the Internet can be heard world-wide.
Why do American kids cry out against their station in life more loudly than their European or Ausie counterparts? American kids are the result of the "ME" generation. It's all about them, it's all about being 'happy with who they are'. It's all about being 'special'. They lack the feeling of community and common welfare.
Now, I am not begrudging anyone their experience of the educational system being unfair and unpleasant. I too was a geek who didn't fit in - though by comparison to some, I was very fortunate. Certainly being beaten for being a geek will leave welts that last a lifetime. But laying on dirt, starving, is worse by far.
American teens are more out of touch with this than teens in other countries. The "American Dream" and "keeping up with the Joneses" tells them that if they don't have the BEST, they don't have it good. If they don't have it good, they then must have it bad.
We're all in need of the occasional reality check.
Having food is better than not - even if it is something we don't like.
Having a home is better than not - even if ours is the only one on the block without the swimming pool.
Having a job is better than not - even if the boss is a sadist and the guy in the next cubicle smells bad.
Unlike the starving Ethiopian or driven-out KosovAlbanian, we have choices people. We have options, and we define our context.
As for being a high-school reject, left home without a date on yet another Friday night... What better time than now to hack on some Linux code and start your own company. I wonder, had Jobs and Wozniak not made the Apple in their garage, would they have been the type to go an kill people?
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
the world health organisation says that depression will soon be one of the world's biggest diseases. and i'd guess that young people, especially geeks being picked on at school, would be particularly vulnerable to depression.
now different people might react to depression differently. some of the more extreme reactions could be:
* going overboard on drugs
* growing up and oppressing the hell out of other people
* committing suicicde
* shooting people
now the last is the most extreme reaction. perhaps a reason why mainly white men seem to do this, could be that white men get depressed like all humans can, but they believe the hype about white men being superior, and that drives them that extra step into insanity where they think it would be a good idea take their rightful dominant place and murder people.
i dunno, just a theory.
people getting depressed suck. people overdosing on drugs or attempting suicide sucks. it'd be good if we could figure out why this is escalating. i have my own theories about centralised media and suppressed creativity.
people murdering other people sucks and i have no sympathy for it. but if we can figure out how people get that way, and maybe reduce it, then that would be good.
m.
The Village Voice seems convinced that oppression can be blamed on the oppressed (read the last paragraph). It's like saying, "You weren't very happy in that German death camp, so why didn't you just leave?"
I don't believe students always have someone to talk to, or they might not be sure of who to talk to. As well, by shifting the blame to the victims, it almost suggests that this abusive behaviour is acceptable, which it isn't.
Look at the men and women in abusive relationships. How many times have they been asked, "Why don't you just get out of there?" I think people need help to realize that there are more options than violence, and the people involved in the oppression should be taught respect for their fellow students/people/etc.
Why not attack this problem from both sides?
æeee!
Check this link.
Enough said.
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
Apparently the story continues in Dan Green's next column. Maybe it'll have a more satisfactory ending this time.
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
is it just me, or does this article seem to have no connection whatsoever to real life?
/. has had _no effect whatsever_ on mainstream discourse about littleton. I have yet to see a single mainstream news source mentioning the /. conversations, or allowing the opinion that, um, maybe it isn't _that_ bad for teenagers to wear black clothing.
/. geeks should shut up and stop whining, you have to admit that the /. geeks should at least be _heard_.
/.'s bandwidth. Dude, you don't dis on Rob's server. You can't crash slashdot; slashdot crashes you. A lesson which the Voice's web admins are probably learning today.
The first half of the article is more or less made up, the second half contains no objective facts. The second half is just opinions-- valid opinions, to be sure-- and the first half, as just an excuse for the second half of the article to exist, was inexcusable.
Then the geeks did something radical-- they got their hands on the discourse. It was this response that shivered the paradigm
um.. what? the conversation on
People began having something resembling empathy for the shooters-- not for their crime but for their crisis, for what they told us about the terror and class divisions fissuring even affluent high school life.
I read quite a bit of the slashdot conversation, and i don't seem to remember anything vaguely resembling empathy. there were some people who refused to demonize the killers (which i guess to the Voice counts as empathy) and some people who could understand the social position of the killers; but i don't think there was a single posting that sided with the posters, or identified with actually going out and cold-bloodedly shooting people who hadn't really done anything. And of course a lot of people here have felt sometimes like going into school and killing everyone, but there's a huge gap between _feeling_ like doing that and actually being willing to kill people.
The reason this entire article is off base is that _nobody's paying attention to slashdot_. Even if you accept the Voice's premise that the
The Voice missed the _point_ of katz's little polemics. The point wasn't self-pity so much as the little detail that this "geek" lifestyle is now suddenly classified as Dangerous. The article seemed to more or less ignore the fact that the school administrator type people have been massively clamping down on personal freedoms of anyone who didn't fit the social mold, since after all not fitting the social mold means you're alientated and that means you could possibly kill people. The way i remember Katz's postings, the point wasn't just to complain yeah, the littleton killers were right, high school sucks, the point was to argue that after the killings, the point was to document the suffering inflicted on the alienated in the name of Littleton. The nation mourned, but nobody was actually directly _hurt_ except for a couple hundred people in colorado, and the geeks. It's hard to say that a group which was blamed for littleton and is now being shuffled into "counceling" at the slightest provocation doesn't have a right to complain about that. And the worst bit is, the geeks really _aren't_ complaining, not where they can be heard. If the Plight of the Geeks had gotten any kind of mainstream media coverage, it would be different. But any limiting of personal freedoms has gone unnoticed and/or ignored.
Stop whining, said the Man, as he stomped on the geek's face.
Of course, that maybe the geeks shouldn't be whining is a perfectly valid opinion; but it shoulda been posted on slashdot, not presented as "news" to people who wouldn't have otherwise cared. What it comes across as is just the Voice wants to express to its readers that Look, this group of geek-type people sucks. And the readers probably wouldn't have otherwise cared the geeks existed.
And the whole race/gender thing was just a _little_ out of proportion. To be sure there's gonna be a predominance of white males caring about this, but that isn't exactly on _purpose_. The only reason anyone wouldn't be whining on slashdot is if they don't have the money to afford a computer/internet/etc. The Voice seems to be automatically assuming that anyone female, black or hispanic can't use a computer. Which, um, seems pretty racist to me.
oh, and the line that the postings "crashed slashdot" was horribly inflamatory. There were a lot of postings, but nothing near what it would take to eat
Ok, i notice i've been kinda rambling, and didn't express what i wanted to say exactly the way i meant to. But you get what i meant.. right?
- mcc
so much blood for such a tiny little hole
problems do have soloutions you know --NIN
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
The media just treat it with a completely different spin. When a poor black teenager commits murder, it's considered a sign of the "problems of the underclass". Reporters consider crime so typical of poor black teenagers, that it's hardly even news.
On the other hand, when a middle-class white teenager commits murder, the murderer is considered deviant from, not typical of, the white middle-class community: "how could this happen here?"
send all spam to theotherwhitemeat@ropine.com
The author rails against identity politics, in the way that many leftist activists do today, without really saying what's wrong with it. What she misses is that every politically significant minority group in this century has gotten its start in identity politics.
I certainly agree that the nerve that Jon Katz tapped smacks of a burgeoning identity politics. The dissemination right here on Slashdot of a shared experience mirrors turn-of-the-century feminist literature, the Harlem Rennaissance, or the gay press of the sixties and seventies.
Not everyone agrees on the names to apply ("geek", "dork", "nerd", etc.). Similarly, the civil-rights movement has shifted from one name to another ("Negro", "colored person", "black", "African-American"). The gay-rights movement's history can be divided chronologically by the dominant nomenclature at the time ("homophile", "homosexual", "gay", "gay, lesbian and bisexual", "queer"). The important thing about this, though, is not the naming itself. It is the profound feeling among the members of the group that they do form an identifiable group, whatever they call themselves. Labeling and identity often go together, but identity politics was precisely named.
So what's so offensive about identity politics? It's certainly gotten a lot done in its time, hasn't it? Absolutely. I assume the author's problem is what happens in the later stages of identity politics. The rough edges of identity politics don't begin to show themselves until the movement starts to make gains in the mainstream.
This is caused by the conflict between three forces: one, the radicals who started the movement to begin with (or are their ideological successors); two, the less radical policy-wonk lobbyist types who have taken over the established organizations (the NAACP, for example); and three, the rank-and-file minority person, who is now in a better position than he or she was when the whole movement started.
The radicals are irked at the lobbyists for "selling out", for becoming single-issue people instead of building the broad-based leftist coalitions they invision. The policy-wonks are most interested in amassing political power (one would assume with the intention of eventually vaulting over into mainstream politics). The rank-and-file are mostly just tired of the whole thing, and want to stop thinking about politics so much.
This is where the radicals feel the need to jettison identity politics. Once identity politics has reached the point at which national organizations are amassing power in the mainstream, it does little but for the people who already have power in the minority (and wish to transmute that power into mainstream power).
Where the author of the VV article went wrong is this: there's nothing wrong with identity politics, per se. Even noted identity-politics bashers like Cornell West and Urvashi Vaid admit that.
Identity politics is great for a newly-formed movement. It gives its constituency a sense of belonging, which in turn generates enthusiasm for the cause. Us-vs.-them is a great way to get people motivated, and identity politics' first contribution to political rhetoric is to identify who, exactly, us and them are.
Here, Katz's comparison to Stonewall is striking. When queer historians use "pre-Stonewall" and "post-Stonewall" as shorthand for points in gay-rights history, the important factor differentiating the politics is identity. Before Stonewall, there were a lot of men having sex with men and women having sex with women, but they usually didn't identify with any particular political movement. After Stonewall, they suddenly saw their commonality as something, not just personal, but political.
Identity politics isn't the best framework for an existing movement. But for a newly-politicized group, it isn't a bad start.
Hey folks... when I start to stick up for Katz, you know someone's been a real asshole.
Here's my reply to the column. It probably could be more coherent, but I think it makes its point.
FLAME
Hey VV-- Go look at the responses on slashdot. Think really carefully: did the boys in Littleton decide that they would, ohhh, *make up* this entire fantasy-world where they were the oppressed? Maybe you say yes, and maybe you say no. The fact remains that their reality *was*--emphatically WAS--to them, Reality-with-a-capital-R. Kids don't have historical perspective. Kids don't give a rat's ass if you tell them that "it's all part of social order." Kids DO understand that adults don't, and never have, understood them on their terms. As much as you love to believe that you understand them, you understand them on your terms only. Your terms, which you've learned in the stilted, academic farce that is college sociology, (or perhaps in the hallowed pipes of some media faucet) mean jack shit to these kids. They understand that it hurts. They understand that adults laugh it off when a kid gets pissed on. They understand that you laugh it off because you don't see the bruises. They understand that you laugh because nobody sees the bruises. Just because I'm white middle-class, and because your handy-dandy laminated demographic doodads tell you I'm destined to do wonderfully in the "real world" doesn't mean that in school I won't--didn't--have problems. What's your real world worth to the Columbine kids who died? Shooter or "victim," they never met your real world. So how about you back off a little, go back to reviewing bubblegum pop albums (prediction: the next twenty will *also* get three stars out of four), and work at something you can understand. --J.R. Parsons Jr.
/FLAME
I think it's disgusting that a music critic (and yes, it pisses me off that she's female, too) would even dare to presume that she knew jack shit about a boy's life in high school. Especially since she's obviously been through a college program rich in sociology and lacking in psychology. No offense meant to those of you who can keep it in check, but the liberal bullshit that is modern socio-anthropology is a brainwashing funnel. Her article just proved it.
Go ahead, change the focus back to where you want it: media responsibility? gun control? She's attacking the cause of the hatred, saying that we, as geeks, are not entitled to hurt. We aren't allowed to be victims. We have it soooo good in the "real world" that we shouldn't complain about life in school.
Again--her "real world" meant bugger-all to Klebold and Harris. Or to their victims. In their reality--the one that she presumes needs no changing--there is a prison atmosphere. A social order that fosters cruelty. A system whereby the physically strong, in the hunter-gatherer tradition, dominate the tribe.
Maybe in her world, white middle-class males have it great. She's sitting pretty working for the Village Voice, living the trendy life, while pale males all around her rocket through the glass ceiling. The worst torment she can expect is being hit on by the boss at a party. And hey--she can sue!
Like I said to her: back off. Don't write about what you don't know about. I'm not about to suggest that her complaints as a female in a pale-male-dominated workplace are unfounded, because I've never been there. I won't tell a lower-class black that he should just "suck it up" and rise above his ghetto roots. I won't tell a gay man or woman that they've got it easy as long as they stay in cities. Why? Because I'm not gay, I'm not black, I'm not a woman.
I expect the same from other people. Walk a mile in my shoes after Chris Givens has pissed in them as "a little prank." Then you can write a trendy article telling New York how much you know about high schoolers.
Kids and teens don't have a perspective, yet. They are still developing it.
And until they do, everything is a tragedy, and that sometimes underscores or belittles or melodramaticizes their lives.
Being made fun of, criticized, ignored, or taunted I think is mild and easy enough to ignore, or you just cave into peer pressure.
I know I had to deal with worse, and I'm sure some portion of the Hell Mouth feedback also was more than the average persecuted angsty teen. We're talking about racism and epithets, vitriolic diatribes, discrimination and violence based on weight, size, glasses, race, ethnicity, religion, and gender. Things that make a 7 year old question every tenet of their existence, that they are good, that they are loved, that they are valuable.
The fact that it is other kids doing this makes it all the more tragic, because I'm sure those kids are going through all the same self doubt, but they figure out how to overcome it; by projecting it on others.
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
I was kicked out of the college I first attended because it was easier to label me insane that admit a rich jock could be doing something bad. I was stalked by a football player back before the term stalking was used. I feared for my safety. I complained and was told that I was making it up and must be insane. I was kicked out and lost everything because I persisted in my allegations.
These attitudes are everywhere and need to change.
BTW: Now, I have a paper stating i am sane amd 2 degrees. They were wrong but will never have to face any consequences.
--- If you don't want to know the answer, don't ask the question.
Unless you happen to a minority in a heterogenous society, you will neer have a clue as to the ribulations of the oppressed. Being teased in high school, does not compare to being beaten on the streets because of your race. In one case you live, the other you can die.
And while most schools have cliches, Americans must be applauded for carrying it to such an extreme. You must accept the fact that school will remain hell for a large group of students, and with a lot of guns people will continue to die. Then others will gather around and be unable to figure out why. As much success will be made stopping school shootings as has been made stopping crack
Woe be on to them, all who rise against poor people, shall perish in a the end. Buju Banton
Unless you happen to a minority in a heterogenous society, you will neer have a clue as to the ribulations of the oppressed. Being teased in high school, does not compare to being beaten on the streets because of your race. In one case you live, the other you can die.
And while most schools have cliches, Americans must be applauded for carrying it to such an extreme. You must accept the fact that school will remain hell for a large group of students, and with a lot of guns people will continue to die. Then others will gather around and be unable to figure out why. As much success will be made stopping school shootings as has been made stopping crack
Woe be on to them, all who rise against poor people, shall perish in a the end. Buju Banton
Here is the text of the comment I submitted to the Village Voice.
Jane Dark, writing about Jon Katz's article on the alienation of geek kids in school manages to practice the currently PC brand of discrimination through which the reality of social problems is dismissed because these kids are largely white.
It is not discrimination against blacks which is wrong, nor discrimination against Hispanics, but discrimination against any social group on the basis of any social distinction. There is only one group in society against which we discriminate in full agreement: criminals.
Her well-written and engaging polemic is all the more insidious for being presented in quiet and erudite prose. Unfortunately, language skills are no proof against bigotry, and dismissing problems which result in dead school children because the problems appear to afflict only white neighborhoods is surely bigotry.
Katz was over the top in comparing the kids to holocaust survivors; even over the top in calling the kids he heard from survivors. Dark is dismissive, to the point of contempt.
The issue of importance is: how to eliminate these occurrences, without regard to demographics.
Katz was over the top; so was Dark.
The real question is what will we do about bringing back some semblance of order to our schools. When will we pull the plug on the "experiments" in teaching methods, and revert to what worked well for my generation (I'm 50) and for my parents' generation?
And when will parents finally learn that the responsibility of parenting includes regular (daily) and deep communication with their progeny? When will they learn that a TV or a computer is not an acceptable surrogate parent?
I was a social outcast in my jock-centric high school. I got through it, and never once considered perpetrating violent acts on my classmates. I did, however, spend many hours in talks with my parents about the frustration of the school, the town, and the stultifyingly narrow view of most of the population there.
Parents and family are the answer. Having kids isn't a hobby -- it's a life commitment. Why is that so difficult for some parents to grasp?
--- Bill
Well, score +1 for living in Canada! I can get it on 2 different channels
here on Toronto. I think I should start giving away bootleg
copies to anyone who wants it.
Or, more geekily, just turn it into a MPEG.
Hmm....must go rent MPEG encoder....
Pope
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
I think the main difference is one of cultural identity.
America, as a society believes that the only way to forge a coherent country is to get everybody to conform, teaching them what it means to be American, suggesting that somebody born there could plausibly be "unamerican" because their beliefs differ from the norm.
Australia, like Britain, prides non-conformity (this is particularly the case it Australia, a country obsessed with ridding itself of the rest of our cultural baggage), so although you may get some hassles for being different, everybody makes a point of being different, so it balances out.
In America (from what I can tell) if you don't fit into the bad eighties coming-of-age-movie stereotype you are castigated and denighed all the freedoms that the rest of the countries idenfies as part of their cultural heritage.
Remember that America is a democratic which makes its children pledge allegence to the flag every morning, seemingly in order to remind then what they are supposed to be. It has got to be an bit of an arse if you don't happen to agree.
Mark.
I looked up some of her other articles...despite fancy words and long sentences...they all say the same thing. "White Man Keeping Down Black Man." Oh well...the Hellmouth article doesn't bother me much now, considering where she is coming from. Anyone who respects her opinion is, to me, worthless. Anyone who understands that she is a fool...well...they'll take this latest rant with the appropriate ammount of salt.
Blar.
That article did have one good point:
/.) believes they are doing wrong. Everyone is fighting for the higher goal of a perfect society, decrying the injustices of our culture, and damning the oppression and racism they see all around them.
:)
For the moment, we have a nation in which everyone went to Woodstock and no one was the man.
OK, it's blatent hyperbole, but it drives across a good point. No one (especially our relatively thin slice-o-society here @
Fact of the matter is no one wants to take the blame, we all want to give it. That is one of the key problems with the younger American generation (myself somewhat included). If everyone would stop pointing their fingers around the room, we might eventually have a useful conversation of what to do about it.
Mid
NB -- Yes, I realize the hipocracy of pointing my finger @ everyone and then telling everyone to stop pointing fingers... no need to, er, point that out
I don't agree with Katz on many issues, but I almost always enjoy reading his work because it's substantive enough to make me think about issues I might not have considered.
I was disappointed with the article in the Village Voice because it didn't do that for me. While my experiences in high school weren't as bad as many of Katz' correspondents, I refuse to have my own sour memories and mild but still perhaps too-lingering resentment caricatured like I'm in a John Hughes film.
There are sick people out there. What are we going to do about it? Try to "profile" them so we can head them off, and catch mostly well-adjusted (or at least non-threatening) people in the process? Pretend to restrict access to media (when does an 'R' rating actually stop a 16-year-old)? Pretend to restrict access to firearms? Hasn't society learned yet? There are no easy answers, but it's a good step in the right direction to just start being nice to each other.
The Hellmouth series didn't solve the problem, and I don't think that's really what it was for. It gave me an important insight, though. The system is not merely damaged; it's broken. Katz is significant simply because he opened a discussion on a large scale that didn't previously exist, and perhaps, by opening that discussion, he has contributed to helping thousands or millions of people realise they're not alone. Jane Dark didn't seem to be blaming guns (or worse, pictures of guns), so it's all the more frustrating that on so many levels, she seems to have missed the point.
Humans are not constrained to finite compassion. We can care about white, middle-class, teenage boys and still care about malnourished children around the world. They're both symptoms indicitave of broken systems, that is, sets of values that cannot survive in a world that's changing as rapidly as ours. Ms. Dark's article is a symptom, too, that the problem is more pervasive than we might've hoped. It's my responsibility--my moral obligation--as an adult that survived at least one of those situations (hint: I had plenty of food), to try to fix things. I have accepted that most of my attempts will fail. That's okay. I don't have to be successful every time--just once will do.
Below is a comment I have sent to Village Voice. It says pretty much how I feel about the article.
---------------------------------------------
That's an interesting critique of the "Voices from the Hellmouth" postings over on Slashdot. However, I feel that there is something essentially wrong at the heart of it - a point that seems to have been missed along the way.
For the most part, the "geek kids" who have raised this issue are white and middle class - however, they are an excluded section of the white middle class school population. Cast your mind back to your school - who were the white kids that had no friends, the ones who were quiet, serious, nerdy perhaps. Maybe the kids with the thick glasses, maybe someone who was overweight, possibly someone who looked just like you, but never seemed to fit in.
I don't know about where you went to school, but at my school, those kids went through hell. Part of no clique, mostly friendless, certainly unable to defend themselves easily from attack. And those attacks came. It was certainly easier to be coloured at my school than to be a nerd, or a goth, or just different.
Grouping these kids in with the rest of the school - especially saying "The idea that this group could move into the slot of the oppressed, as well as occupying the traditional role of the oppressor, " is laughable. These are kids we are talking about. They have no personal history of being the oppressor. And here we move to the crunch of this argument.
Your article was based on a political view of what is essentially a sociological problem. So what if these kids are from white middle class families. That isn't the point. The point is that there is a lot of suffering and persecution going on out there that is not being recognised. What is worse is that a lot of it is coming from the people who *should* know better - parents, educators, the people who are meant to protect children.
I am appalled that such a well respected organ as the Village Voice would run an editorial piece that basically says "Someone is being persecuted and we don't care". Not so long ago, people said that about gays, blacks and all the other minority groups that you wouldn't dare say such a thing about. What is the difference here? At the end of the day, the Hellmouth respondents are children.
Children who are suffering.
A little planning goes a long way...
I did enjoy Katz' "Hellmouth" articles, and think that "geek profiling" is a real and unsettling phenomenon, but I also think the VV article did a good job of putting things in perspective. Likewise, the Littleton tragedy saddens and concerns me, but perhaps not for the usual reasons.
It troubles me to all of a sudden hear impassioned cries of "Gun control! Gun control!" from people who never seemed to notice the HUNDREDS of kids who get shot every year in inner city schools and streets. Or people who can watch NATO's daily bombing of civilian targets in Kosovo such as hotels, condominiums, TV stations, and marketplaces, without being moved to cry "Bomb control!"
I graduated from high school about ten years ago, and for most of my Jr. High + High School career, I was one of the "weird kids" who got picked on pretty bad for being smart or having atypical interests. I'm pretty sure that I had it worse than most of the kids in my school, frequently getting jumped in the locker room, having my locker vandalized, and just generally being harassed.
Big freaking deal.
At my high school, kids brought guns to school, but it was primarily to show how cool they were. I NEVER seriously worried that one of those guns might end up being fired at me. I sometimes worried that some of the school bullies might show up at my house to jump me some afternoon. I NEVER worried that one of them would decide to do a drive-by on me because I had looked at him wrong.
When I was out riding around with my friends, we worried that cops might give us a hard time because we had long hair or dressed different. We NEVER worried that those cops might decide to have a little fun with us, Rodney King style. Hey, even if we looked funny, we WERE still primarily white and middle class. Other than the standard nuclear paranoia of the Reagen 80s, I never once seriously worried that my house might be bombed at night, or looted by soldiers, or that my parents might get dragged off by dudes with guns. There's plenty of places in the world at this very moment where those are very real fears.
So for those of you living in the Hellmouth - wake up - you are right now living a life which is the absolute envy of 99% of the world's population. The fact that you are sitting here reading Slashdot is a pretty sure indication that YOU'VE GOT THINGS PRETTY GOOD. Odds are, in 5-10 years, most of you will have decent jobs, a good group of friends, and a fairly peaceful, rewarding life. And for those of you still weeping over Littleton, take a good look at the world around you -- much worse happens each and every day, even if it doesn't make as good TV.
I think the article is criticizing some things that were never really said -- Katz was comparing the email he was getting to the *tone and format* of holocaust testimonies, not so much the crimes committed against the kids to death camps.
As for the criticism of "The idea that this group could move into the slot of the oppressed, as well as occupying the traditional role of the oppressor...." I don't know of many geeks who end up 'the oppressor'. It's true that if geeks survive high school, many of them will end up successful, but that doesn't make them the 'oppressor'; and I'm offended by the implication that later success obviates horrendous early abuse. Did her escape from slavery invalidate Sojourner Truth's rage at bondage?
There was also a trick pulled that even people on slashdot have done -- amalagating different levels of abuse to say 'hey, everyone is miserable in high school, stop being such a martyr.' Under this technique, unhappiness at not making the cheerleader squad is cheerfully is treated as indistinguishable from rape and attempted murder.
In elementary school, for example, I was definitely the wierd kid and abused, but I didn't suffer *daily* abuse. Some of the individual incidents were pretty bad, but while they may have led to longterm scarring, they didn't cause the sheer irrationality that daily abuse did -- as I discovered when I got to junior high, and got to be the (fairly randomly picked) scapegoat. If you haven't experienced the terror of going to class *knowing* you will be tripped and spat at and verbally torn down *with the passive, or even active approval of teachers and adminstrators*, it's almost impossible to understand the insanity it causes -- you stop being able to judge whether a bump in the hall was an accident or another attack, you can't tell if an overture of friendship is real or a trap, you are in a constant state of fear and tension... there were times when I *wanted* to kill, when if I had had a weapon in my hand people would have been dead. I didn't, thank god, but I can't help but understand the rage utterly.
Then I got to high school, where I was a pretty normal kid (the adminstration didn't tolerate bullying, and the geek clan was large enough that we had our own gravity and protection from abuse.) Had occasional unhappy times, just like anyone else, and I think a lot of people who weren't abused but also weren't in the top cliques look back at their sometimes-unhappy times and think it's the same as the worst abuse.
Laura
PS: If you want a lovely look at the attitude at Columbine high, take a look at Chuck Green's Sunday column. The captain of the Columbine football team is under a restraining order to stay away from his ex-girlfriend; he's facing a criminal charge for threatening her; he was picked up by sheriff's deputies prowling outside her house; he was caught by a teacher intimidating her in school; he threw himself in front of her car. Dear Principal DeAngelis's reaction? Suspend a *jock*? The captain of their precious football team, the one they have a sports medicine doctor for? Oh, forfend, no! Instead, he told the girl's parents that she should leave school.
I agree with what your saying, I posted this to see what kind of response I would get.
I've thought about this and other problems mostly on my way home from work on the train, and can find no good solution, one that works on all sides. It just completely bugs the hell outa me that no one has figured it out yet.
It's problems like these that you really need to follow your instinct on which course to take.
I ask why this is. Why is it that the culture and society that exists for the most part in the US has the ability to single out a group of people who are not only smarter than most but also more independent.
I believe that it's the inherent fear of the unknown and strange that causes this, which I feel comes from the strange and slightly ironic Christian background. Ironic because most people here (in the US) say they are Christian, but yet at the sametime support most social and moral ideals that are against it (against as in not what is normally considered traditional values of that religion). The current culture takes this fear of the independent, the non-conformer, the thinking, and the questioner and attacks them just for being. They get angered at the very fact that other people do not want to be like them and probably also afraid. It brings forth an inborn insecurity of the social order.
People are naturally lazy; they want to do the least as possible. Granted some people are not so, but for the most part this description works. People also today believe that everyone should be or is equal. I personally have no clue as to why or how this came to be considering it's just totally obvious that everyone is not. So I think than when they encounter someone with a bit more brains than the rest, they cry out in anger shouting 'HOW DARE YOU BE DIFFRENT' and strike out at the person.
So I come to what amounts to my real question. How can we as a group deal with this dilemma? How can we change the social climate in that it's ok to be smart and a free thinker? We as a group of the other must search for the answers and apply them to our lives because singling out people who think, people who question was one major reason for 'the Dark Ages' when European civilization was held hostage by corrupt priests and tyrants.
The Village Voice has its agenda, and of course, it's free to vilify any expression of white malehood, but hey, should the guns ever point their way, they'll probably wish they'd taken the trouble to understand.
---Joe Merlino gnupg public key ID: 1E91EBAF
At school, I wasn't the only geek in my class. Like you, I stood out in more than one way, so copped more flak than those who were "just" geeks. As well as being a geek, I am below average height, socialist and Christian. The other kids in my class were mainly right-wingers and atheists. They thus had three ideological/personality trait type things to pick on me for, and the fact that I was short was apparently funny too.
You filtered Katz's columns, not articles about Katz. Yes, Rob Malda's purpose in life is to annoy you. Quick, call the FBI!!!
I'm sure "SlashdotMedia" will improve on all the wonders that Dice Holdings blessed us all with
This might be offtopic or even flamebait, but it's been on my mind, so I'll say it. Worst that happens is I get moderated :).
It's easy to say anything you want after somebody dies. Just a few weeks ago, some kid walked through a school in Georgia and shot a bunch of people. Nobody died - the kid didn't kill himself. Where's the outrage, where's the compassion? Where are the millions of people rushing to the aid of this kid, somebody that you could actually help?? I gotta feel something for him moreso than those at Littleton, because here's a kid who was so emotionally tortured that it drove him to try doing something similar, but at least he still had a spark of humanity left in him that wouldn't let him do it.
When people ask "Oh my god, what went wrong? What could we have done?" I don't think they really want to know. That's why they ask it of dead people, because they won't get an answer. They like to beat themselves up and feel guilty, but not *that* guilty. Not so guilty that they'll actually have to do anything about the problem.
www.HearMySoulSpeak.com
I don't know what the hell "liberal" means anymore, except maybe "weenie". If that's the meaning of the word, then the Voice fits it very well.
I'm a Leftist, a Progressive, maybe even a Socialist (depends on my mood), but Liberal? Pffft! Yuck-O.
Liberals read the Village Voice. Leftists read The Nation. Liberals sip wine. Leftists down scotch (straight up). Liberals support gun control. Leftists smuggle guns to East Timor.
Phooey on Liberals! They're just Republicans with inferiority complexes.
And for the record, I was beat up pretty frequently in school (especially middle school), and you bet I wanted to make those rotten jocks pay for it. And now I do, when I charge them for my consulting services! Woo hoo!
Is there a counterpart to Godwin's Law which describes cases in which a legitimate complaint is dismissed as trivial by comparison with Auschwitz/the Gulag/life under the Taliban (pick one or more)? If there isn't, there should be.
Stealing lunch money is not a petty problem. It is theft and extortion. It is little different than being mugged on the street, or having crooked cops or mobsters demand "protection" money. The only real difference is that kids and teenagers are young, and may not know what they are doing. But that is not an excuse to let it slide unpunished, or dismiss it as part of the way school is.
Bullying is similar. Beating someone up will put you in jail in the real world, but in school it is dismissed as harmless fun. In Georgia recently there was a kid who was killed by a 14 year-old bully and charged with murder, and people are complaining because it was an "accident".
Wake up. There is real tyranny going on, real Lord of the Flies type stuff. And it keeps happening because no one takes it seriously and the offenders go unpunished. Your attitute is the problem, because the schools seem to share it.
Nobody identifies with him and his motives. He wasn't targeting any group, he didn't have anything against the people he shot.
People call him a "good boy" for some reason. Apparently he was a popular kid who's girlfriend broke up with him (or something...) and he went berserk, not to get revenge but just to get attention.
He was a copycat attacker.
This is the kind of thing that is directly attributable to the excessive media coverage, and even more to discussions like this, where people identify with the Columbine killers! I can understand the hatred of the evils of highschool (I was treated rather poorly by my peers and some teachers as well, and felt the same urge to homicidal retaliation), but these guys were sick, evil bastards. They had a history of general nastyness which should have clued people in to the fact that these were not your typical geeks, goths, or whatever. I haven't seen many people stress the importance of the distinction between these demented individuals and the general population of geeks and other "personality" outcasts. It's a damn' rare combination: to be a geek and to put such a low value on human life, including one's own, outside of one's fantasies.
The only thing people can identify with, in this case, is the pain, not the action. Many people have had their heart ripped in two by a bad relationship, very few people thought that going out and shooting people at random would make them feel better.
In any case, better that people ignore these psychopaths than give more media coverage to inspire more copycats.
White males don't make up a majority of the population - *males* don't make up a majority of the population in the US. It is statistically significant that the last decade of "How Could this happen Here?" school killings have been committed by males. (The claims that AIDS was a white male disease were never true worldwide, and were exaggerated in the US by some political groups on both sides. This did its other victims no good.)
There's also a considerable correlation, according to criminologists, between some kinds of violence and some races & social backgrounds. Children get shot in Cabrini Green, but the warning signs are much different than they were in Littleton or Conyers.
"More data needed"? You want MORE? Hah. There's been enough. Do your research.
My two cents is that this author is more noise than signal.
I have to take issue with several points the author raised. However, the most central is that school shootings is a young-white-male-only phenomena. It parallels in 1980 with saying that AIDS is a gay-white-male-only phenomena. The fact that is mostly hits males is obvious. The fact that it mostly hits white males could easily be because they make up the majority of the population.
If the number of shootings were to increase to a figure, such as 100, we would see more minority representation. Just as the number of AIDS cases increase, we see other groups represented as well. Perhaps it is incendiary to some to compare the original class of people in shootings to the original class of people with AIDS, but the point is that you can't say it's a white boy only phenomena based on a handful of events. MORE DATA NEEDED.
The other thing that is shocking is the claim that JAIL is the closest analogy to high school! And the admission of a "cruel social order". I hardly think that just because something goes on in jail, it should also go on in the high schools.
My opinions about this whole thing were pretty much the same as the author's. While I think Jon Katz is a good writer, I thought this whole "Hellmouth" series missed the mark by a wide margin. The most tragic part of the Littleton shootings was that the perps were so self-absorbed in their petty problems (nobody likes me, people take my lunch money, etc.) that they felt justified in killing people over some identity problems they should have solved by first grade.
When the so-called "geek" community reacts to this by displaying a similar degree of self-absorption and decrying that the real villain is society and the school system, that's a pretty sad indicator. There are tougher things than high school in even the most cushioned life, and certainly minorities are justified in scoffing at middle-class whities when they display such pathological and weak behavior.
This article is an example of something that's been bothering me for a long time. I'm tired of hearing about how perfect life is if you're white, how horrible it is if you aren't, and that everything that happens in the world is based on the color of your skin.
I grew up in a family of various skin colors and social backgrounds. As a result, I had the pleasure to meet an even more diverse group of people (friends and colleages of my mom and stepfather). I also had the unfortunate (but valuable) experience of meeting racial intolerance. And I am/was a geek.
My experience has led me to this conclusion. Intolerance and oppression is wrong. It doesn't matter if it's because you're shy or black. It just plain wrong. As a society, we seem to have convinced ourselves that it's OK under certain circumstances ("It's natural for boy's to be aggressive", "She's antisocial; she should learn to fit in"). The exeception is when the child acts because the victim has a certain skin color or religion. This is because we're sensitive to these issues. And even then, in certain households or communities, it goes uncorrected.
As for the article, I find it annoying. How dare you tell me that my pain is more trivial than yours! You know nothing of my life. I know nothing of yours, and so I won't judge how much pain you've been through. Yes, life sucks. But there are problems here that we're all a part of. Instead of a big pitty party and playing "My Problems Are Bigger Than Yours", it would be refreshing to hear some ideas about what to do about it.
-Jennifer
Yeah. I'm a white male, and therefore any difficulty I encounter is my own damn fault and any hardship I endure is nothing compared to that endured by some other non-white non-males at the same time in some other place.
It's a question of focus. I think that it is quite telling that these school slayings (didja hear the news this morning about the 14 year olds who're being tried as adults for conspiracy to commit murder?) are happening in the suburbs and not in the inner city. I think that it's really interesting and we ought to be paying more attention to the evils of homogenous culture.
Sadly, what has happened with the Voice article is a shift of focus onto comparative misery. I told my father recently, "We didn't live in a crack neighborhood, I was not in the death camps, and I was not abused at home. My school experience doesn't add up to that much misery -- but nonetheless, it's the worst experience I've had."
Just because something's not as bad as it could be doesn't mean it's good. There's a tendency among lobbyists and agenda groups to compare widely separated events -- it's a polarizing tactic -- and use the (falsely) invidious comparison to promote their own agendas. Don't get distracted by the assertion that this is a white male phenomenon. Keep your eye on the point: brutality in schools is commonplace and so far our culture has said that it's okay for kids to grow up inside what is effectively a large version of the Milgram guards/prisoners study. Now that's a polarizing issue.
Oh, go on, check out my job.
and I don't see where I can exclude these Littleton/Jon-Katz-is-the-oppressed-geek-messiah stories. I understand that this is probably interesting to many people that are bitter about their high school experiences, but I don't have time to wallow in their self-pity. How about adding a Littleton category so I can skip it?
I wrote as a letter to editor at Village Voice:
The article on Hellmouth misses the point. Or perhaps it makes a point which needs to be questioned. Katz makes the analogy between Nazi camps and schools for "geeks".
In one way this analogy is a stretch in that geeks rarely end up dead. They may suffer emotional and psychological harm. Geeks may even experience physical harm on a regular basis, but, if there are cases of geeks getting killed, they are not well published. On the other hand, schools are like Nazi camps in that the unwanted of society are belittled and hurt, both physically and mentally. However, there is a difference. That difference is that the rest of the population is right there watching it. In this case their complacency is direct. It is not because they can't see the people being hurt, it's because they don't care. What's in it for the rest of the people if picking on the geeks keeps the jocks from picking on them?
In answer to all of this, Ms. Dark says that it's the geeks own fault. She says that, because they choose to actually be individuals, they deserve what they're getting. I ask, does anyone deserve to be beaten up every day? Does anyone deserve to have their life be made a living hell because they either can't conform or refuse to conform? Does conforming give one some privilege which prevents harm from coming to oneself? I don't think so. If we say that America guarantees individual rights, including life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, what does that mean for the people who are in the margins, including geeks in schools?
Society requires conformity to function. However, it also requires civility. It seems that the mainstream in schools, and perhaps in other places, has the conformity part right without any of the civility which makes a society actually function. Schools (and society) are creating a small population of strongly anti-social people. It then wonders why there are shootings at schools and buildings bombed. The whole situation needs a lot more consideration than meerly saying that "geeks" deserve it because they don't conform.
Can we score the Village Voice a 0 for 'off topic'? How about 'flame bait'? Since when is this about race? There's sort of a common fallacy that since 'white males' have historically been 'oppressors', that they (we, I'll admit it) should put up with any treatment they receive, in the interest of good karma or something equally as silly. This is about the reaction of society to 'difference'. Sure, race is a trigger for discrimination, but so is having an unpopular opinion (Socialists don't get much respect in Highschool (or anywhere else for that matter)). Making a value judgement about which sort of discrimination is worse becomes a 'forest-for-the-trees' situation. What purpose does it serve to sit around arguing about whether people's complaints are justified? It's like taking a set of 5 spouse abusers and saying that the one who didn't draw blood is less guilty and/or a better person. Disclaimer:I'm just rambling, and I think proofreading is for wimps. -nme
You still don't get it. The woman should have the right to walk into a pool hall in that short skirt and expect to be treated with respect. The problem is a cultural one. We live in a society where if a woman does eomething like that she should have know better. What we need to do is try to change the society so that there is no need for her to know that, because the majority of our society respects women. The same without nerds, geeks and outcasts. If they are different they shouldn't have to choose between hiding who they are and being verbally abused for showing who they are. I'm not saying they should be invited to parties or included, but they shouldn't have to expect anything worse than just being left alone.
If the number shootings were to increase to a figure, such as 100, we would see more minority representation.
That Village Idiot article reminded me of something that happened in my health club lockerroom shortly after the shooting. Two men were talking about the shooting from the perspective of parents of sons who had competed with Isiah Shoels. One commented that had the shooting occured in a central Denver HS it would have been covered as "gang violence." He had a point, since a series of (mostly) minority violence *was* covered as a "summer of (gang) violence" a few years ago. But I and another man argued that the shooters would be covered as nuts regardless of race.
Now I'm not so sure. This reporter appears to group all white males together (like I, the son of working class Southern parents, would be a natural shoo-in for exclusive Boston country club membership were it not for those pesky non-discrimination laws). Could she handle the fact that some black men are psychopaths, or would she brush it under the rug of "gangs" -- and then paint gangs as a natural response to white oppression? I hope I never have to learn the answer to that question.
(Oh, and for the racist bean counters, the informal discussion group in the lockerroom was two white males and two black males. No women since this is a cowtown with unisex lockerrooms.)
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
I wonder how old "Jane Dark" is, in light of her Woodstock comments.
My HS years (late 70's) were far darker than those presented in movies and TV shows... and few adults believe my horror stories. It was a surreal experience; all of the adults saw "the Brady Bunch" where I saw "Heathers" or "Pump up the Volume." From what I've heard from later students, the schools have gotten steadily worse.
I wonder how many adults read the horrors of HS and think of a scene from "Leave it to Beaver" instead of "Lord of the Flies, on Bad Acid." The Beav never had to deal with the 'roid rage, or drugged out classmates, or students who can't sit at the same table because of restraining orders for domestic violence.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
I understood the I know it from experience... line as a statement implying that "geeks" can stop being oppressed by denying their own interests. It's one thing to suggest that a teenager may make more friends by learning to feign interest in sports or popular music. It's a very different thing to suggest that a teenager must deny their own interests to make friends. Hence the analogy to other things that people would find intolerable to deny - their religion, their family, etc. Judging by the score given my response, others agree.
As for the other issues I must side with Jon Katz. The author appears to have an agenda that makes debating points on her own terms an exercise in futility -- I know that I can't credibly believe someone repeatedly published in the Village Voice was unaware of how "identity politics" has been used and abused by an astonishing variety of groups.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Of course the principal suggested that the cheerleader *voluntarily* withdraw from school. It would be a violation of the jock's Federal rights (as defined by the US Dept of Education) to expel him simply because of a restraining order for violence against a fellow student.
I kid you not. One of the local weekies had a detailed article in response to a similar problem at a different school. Minors *must* be allowed to attend class unless they have been formally suspended or expelled. Suspension/explusion is controlled by the schools, not the courts, and they are not required to consider any outstanding criminal or civil actions against a student -- in fact, I think they may be *prohibited* from considering that unless the acts occured on school property *and* the schools have pursued the matter - in other words, unless the school themselves decide that the matter is important.
I'm sure it all makes perfect sense to the bureaucratic mindset. Forms must be completed and regulations followed. Students must be expelled for possessing a weapon, even if the weapon is a fragile ceremonial dagger brought to geography class by a student who spent a year in Africa. Students *can't* be expelled just because they've been arrested for violent crimes committed off campus.
Hmm; I think I might remember more of the details of that other case. Student was a non-US citizen convicted of a violent crime and in jail pending extradition. Student is demanding that the Denver public schools send him a tutor in jail, since he can't attend class. DPS says that they have no choice, due to Federal law.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
I think the most offensive aspect of that article, which is saying a lot, is the implication that geeks choose to be outcasts.
Sucks to be a kid. Sucks especially if you decide againt the moves for playing along with the popularity game.
I guess the editor will also dismiss antisemitism; you can't help Jews who decide against adopting the dominant religion.
I know the editor dismisses homosexuality. At least, homosexuality among white males, the only other example of an identity group driven by the white middle class. I guess white male gays wear the jackboots used to put down other gays.
And why do I keep thinking about the charming old tradition of "passing"? A black kid with light skin tones who doesn't attempt to "pass" as white deserves what he gets, neh?!
I guess I've been deluding myself by seeing people as individuals, not as official minority groups and the oppressive overclass. Where I see Bob, a nice guy who happens to be an athlete, I should see a jock -- can't reserve the latter term for athletes with attitude problems vis-a-vis non-athletes. And Sue, the math genius, must always be referred to as Sue, black coed.
And I must never, ever, recognize that Bill is being beaten up because other students have labeled him a 'snortzball.' A 'snortzball' is not a Recognized Political Correctness "identity group" and his bloody nose is therefore his own damn fault for running into Allen's, Sam's, Jim's, John's, Roger's, and George's fist. Repeatedly.
With Focus on the Family and other "right thinking" religious groups headquartered within 100 miles I've always identified myself as liberal. But I find this shit far more offensive than anything I've seen come out of the conservative camp.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
After what Katz had to say about the interview, I'm certainly less inclined to a charitable reading of some parts of the article myself (to say the least). It now seems that the article was indeed saying, in essence, "Middle-class white kids have no business whining", which drastically underrates the problem.
Still, it may just be my own cynicism, but it seems to me exactly right that "'geeks' can stop being oppressed by denying their own interests". I think I saw the basic principle as early as 6th grade: They will hate you and abuse you unless you pretend to be as stupid as they are and to like the same stupid things they like. The problem is that it is indeed intolerable to pretend such things, and most of us fail even if we try. The author said only that life is harder for those who don't pretend--this seems plain enough, and it's just as plain that this needs to be changed.
--Moss
This is a
Now there are two of them.
There are two _____.
Note: This is actually a response to a few different comments, but it is a response, so in the interest of not multiplying threads innappropriately I've placed it as a reply to what seems one of the most important of the comments to which I am responding.
I think a number of people have misunderstood Ms. Dark's point. Specifically, the perception that she was dismissing people's pain as 'mere politics', considering their pain irrelevant because of their races, or (as in the comment above) claiming that they were to blame for not trying to fit in.
I'll consider the last point first, as it is the simplest to clear up. The comment
was taken by many as saying something like: "of course it sucks, but it's your fault for not trying hard enough to be popular." But, especially in light of the following sentence: it seems clear that the author sees reasons to decide against playing the popularity game (after all, she did so herself) and is simply acknowledging that life can be harder if you do what you love or what you believe in or just what you want rather than whatever is popular or cool. In the same sense, she might indeed have said: "It's hard to be black in America, especially if you decide against--or never learn--the way to pass as white." But I think she would agree--as I know both you and I would--that some things are more important than ease and comfort, that ease and comfort had by such means would be worse than pain and hardship.The accusation that the article is racist is based on such comments as this:
Clearly, geeks are being told that they have no business complaining, because they're a bunch of white kids just like their oppressors. But is this so clear? Certainly she is struck by the novelty of the situation, of a group of people that is (let's face it) largely (of course not entirely) white and male complaining of oppression in the same language as more 'traditionally' oppressed groups. But consider her language: "the group stepping forward to take its rightful place", "looks exactly like... [those]The observation here is that people who are being oppressed are, for their own defense, seeing themselves as a united group set against a group of oppressors, as has been done many times before, but that this time the two groups are not set apart by obvious differences of race, class, or sex--that, in fact, both the oppressors and the oppressed 'look like' those who had traditionally been the oppressors only.
This brings us to the third misreading, according to which people's statements are felt to be dismissed as 'merely political'. All I can say to this is that Ms. Dark does not appear to view politics as such in a negative light. To observe that what is being done here is political is simply to say that it hopes to have a large-scale effect in society. To react against oppression by posting on Voices from the Hellmouth is different from just trying to keep out of trouble (this would be 'merely' personal, as opposed to political), or from boldly defying the oppressors and going on being a geek (this is the sort of thing she calls "just abstractly noble"). It is different in that it actually calls out to people "Listen to me! Something is wrong here! Something has to be done!". Thus, to call it 'political' is not to dismiss it, but to recognize it for what it is, and in fact the first time the word is used it is said approvingly ("the outpourings [are] politically progressive").
Now, I don't deny that the article does express some doubt as to the possible dangers of using this particular political tactic (identity politics) in this way, but I do think that if we read it carefully and with an open mind we can see that it is not half so damnable as some of the responses might make it appear.
--Moss
This is a
Now there are two of them.
There are two _____.
It is one thing to say "being a kid is hell, so what?" It is another thing entirely to say that geek profiling can be justified or tolerated when applied by the state, for example school administrations.
While it does appear that I hold greater empathy than does the author for those geeks (regardless of gender and race) who are alienated in our schools, that issue is to me quite irrelevant in comparison with the real issue: People are being meaningfully discriminated against by the government just for being different; for dressing different; and for acting different.
I do not discuss the social treatment of these kids, I am discussing suspensions, counselling and worse (we had arrests in Tampa), merely because of geeky identity or an unwillingness to make superficial change to suit the officious passions of an asshole school bureaucrat.
This shouldn't happen anywhere, but it certainly shouldn't happen in America.
It is *this* discrimination I am concerned about, and for two reasons: (1) it is wrong; and (2) it won't help the "problem" the school administrators and politicians propose to address.
But more important, official discrimination is in many ways more invidious than de-facto segregation into social castes. Official government-sponsored "geek profiling" provides further justification in the minds of those who would stereotype the "different" students -- that's precisely the definition of profiling!
No longer necessary is resort to the innumerate illogic that because a pair of geeky, game-playing kids went postal, all geeky, game-playing kids are risks to society, and therefore all are fair game for ridicule and ostracism. Geek bigots no longer need to engage in vacuous demagoguery to justify or defend their cruel alienation of the "differents." They can now point to the law.
I should think that the Voice author who first raised the race and gender cards would be peculiarly sensitive to government-sponsored stereotyping.
But then again, perhaps that is why he chose to conflate these points in the first place, sweeping everything under the rubric of "white boys unjustly playing identity politics?" If so, I wonder whose cynicism is the worst, the supposed white-boy-victim-wannabes' or the author's?
Once again the voice misses the point.
First, they use this as an excuse to pick on white males. It seems to me that they didn't actually read the Hellmouth section or the would have seen that there were many comments from non-white males. Last time I checked I was not one of those.
Also, they seemed to miss what was happeneing. We are not upset because were were simply picked on. If it had been just name calling it wouldn't have been a big deal.
But let's fact it, it never stopped at simple taunting. Most of the people (myself included) indured far more than that. We were physicly assulted, spit on and in some cases sexually harrased.
We aren't looking for ppl to feel sorry for us, that part of my life is over and I'm over it. I just hope that someone might sit up and listen the next time a kid is beaten up for being different, rather than just ignoring it the way most school officals do now.
I've just read your web-essays, and I think you mention at least twenty times how "smart" and "exceptional" you are. How self-indulgent can you get?
You should join MENSA. Its full of mal-adjusted geniuses who can't get a date.
Note to gay kids: you are going to be discriminated, beaten up, harassed and killed just because you're different.
Ha. Nice tactic, but nothing in Katz's original articles or my response have anything to do directly with gays.
Yes, everyday redheads are persecuted, taunted, beaten, raped, and even murdered for their fiery hair.
Ye gods. Get a grip. Now redheads are an oppresed group?
Last time I was at a bar they were hotly pursued as a preferred trait.
Oh just to move to Ireland and quit yer whinin'
White middle American class kids do one thing well - complain. Katz provided what appeared to be a legitimate opportunity for them to claim victimhood - the right to bitch.
Note to future teenagers - you're going to be bullied, you're going to be hard-pressed for a sexual outlet, no one is going to like your clothes, and you've got horrible zits. Welcome to planet earth. Kids in Kosovo would kill to have problems as trite as yours.
Okay, suppose the principal (or anyone else) HAD done something to Bubba jock.. What would he have done? He'd go home, get Uncle Jed's deer rifle, go back to school, waste another 15 people, and then eat his gun. The problem here is that when you DO take action against the tormenters, they often retaliate violently and there are very few (legal) ways to stop them. 'Course, theres always backwoods justice, but thats a far cry from a good solution.
-Medieval
Dear Editor, /. stories refered to was not just 'normal' horseplay. /. will track the demographics of /., wow what a concept! The High School I attended, was
Jane Dark does not get it. I guess she is just too caught up in the
oppressed being non-white females, to see anything else. The type
of abuse that the
But Janes' racist and sexist attitudes have blinded her. There is a BIG
difference between periodic teasing and incessant insistent ridicual,
that is often acompanied with physical attack. This is what some kids
go through at school. We are not talking about home-lonely Friday
nights, but spit-target Tuesday mornings and black-eyed Thursday
afternoons.
The demographics of the stories in
the readers of
about one half "hispanic". I am "white". I had four friends. Three were
"hispanic". We were all nerds. We all suffered constant humiliation. The
reason; we were more interesting in things like high energy physics,
Star Trek, and computers ( in 1975, computers were very weird ), then
football, sitcoms, and "who is doing who". Half our most ardent opressors
were hispanic.
Being different is the reason for oppression, not race. Race is only
one point of difference. There are many. And as far as sex, I guess
Ms. Dark skipped all the responces by lady geeks. After reading those,
I finally found out why the smart girls in grade school, that I liked so much,
suddenly turned so dumb in high school. I thought it was hormones. Now
I know. They sent their minds into hiding! How terrible. I guess not all do.
It seams that those who stay geeks have a harder time then the guys.
And....
( White_Male != Middle_class) && ( Suburban != well_off ).
It is ironic that the author is relying on stereotypes to support an
otherwise untenable possition! I think she is just resentfull of anything
that takes glory from her pet cause. Maybe she is just so bitter from
looking at things through her distorted world view for so long, that she
thinks it is okay for white male boys to have to endure daily abuse and
humiliation.
P.S. On a side note:
I live in an area that looks idealic. It is in the hart of Sonoma Valley.
The kids there are a mess. Most are from broken homes, with parents
that are addicts. Just because someone is a white male, and not living in
an urban slum, does not mean that they are Wally Cleaver. Poverty does
not respect borders or race. Poverty is the worst oppresser of all.
P.P.S. Jane Dark, learn to write! I thought I rambled.
It's defnitely not the same mag as it was when Norman Mailer was on it (he lasted 18 months, I think...)
Jon Katz is a new journalist. Whether or not you agree with him. The Geeks article in RS was a beautiful example of fly-on-the-wall journalism.
NJ is a lost art, it's really, really terrible to see it die out for sensationalism.
(if you want to know more, try http://www.goldcoastdigital.com/gonzo/wsmith) Majorly under construction, but most links work!
Join Mensa? No thanks, the SCA takes up too much of my time as it is.
And for what it's worth, I don't normally write essays like that. I don't run around telling people I'm smarter than them, because I don't care. What I do care about is that kids are having their lives made miserable, and I like to write, so I gave my perspective. Sheesh.
"Somebody exploded a letter-bomb today
There's this nifty article called "The Guy's Guide to Geek Girls" on the Girls Who Wear Glasses site.
Not a meeting place, per se, but it's a start.
*grin*
"Somebody exploded a letter-bomb today
Boys with problems tend to commit criminal actions ranging from vandalism to murder.
Girls with problems just quietly off themselves, or else commit "slow" suicide such as anorexia.
At least, that's the stereotype. But as such, people are much more concerned with the boys' problems.
"Somebody exploded a letter-bomb today
The "Hellmouth" experience IS NOT "teasing" in any normal sense of the word. This is one of the big problems we seem to be having with being taken seriously. To some extent, I can accept that "teasing" is always going to go on. I cannot and WILL NOT accept that intimidation, physical abuse, rape/attempted rape, extortion (of lunch money or otherwise), etc. should be a valid part of high school "socialization," or that a school administration should look the other way as this goes on.
As for dangerous, go read this -- I think that the experiences of the author and his fiancee go beyond simple "teasing."
Oh, and BTW, Matthew Shephard was white. So is Damien Echols, who is on death row for a crime he obviously didn't commit, because he was seen as a freak and local law enforcement thought he was a "Satanist."
Race isn't the only thing that'll get you killed in this country, I'm afraid.
"Somebody exploded a letter-bomb today
Yeah, sounds a lot like what happened to my friends and I when we complained about a jock who basically thought that the junior high girls were his personal harem. (He was a high school senior.) NOTHING was ever done about it. I went to a counselor, and she didn't really believe me and broke confidentiality on me, and the jock followed me around for two weeks threatening my life, and all the other little gossips started asking me if I'd had an abortion. Ugh.
The real kicker was that my mom called ME a slut because he had tried to get me to sleep with him.
"Somebody exploded a letter-bomb today
Perhaps comparing the "Hellmouth" series and the protests against "geek-profiling" to the gay-rights movement isn't as far-fetched as Jean Dark seems to think it sounds.
For one thing, "faggot" and "sissy" and "dyke" are common names to call kids who don't fit in, regardless of their actual sexual orientation.
For another thing, authors like Jane Dark insisting that the "geeks" don't have problems is quite eerily akin to the studies funded by various homophobic groups who insist that homosexuals make more money than the poor "normal" folks, and that "they can change if they want to."
It's easy to argue whether intelligence is hereditary or environmental (or some combination of both), much like homosexuality. However, telling a smarter-than-average kid to "just stop being smart (read: showing off)" or telling a "geek" to "just try to fit in" is akin to telling a lesbian, gay man, or bisexual to "just stop being attracted to the same sex" or "just don't talk about your sick and immoral lifestyle."
A further question: When the problems of white, male, suburban kids who "don't fit the mold" are ignored by progressives, is it any wonder that some of them turn to the Far Right, when the Far Right is much more eager to welcome them? It's something to think about, in the opinion of this Left Wing bisexual female geek.
"Somebody exploded a letter-bomb today
So the only thing wrong with us is that we don't "fit in," and otherwise we're overprivilged whiners?
I think not.
The gay-community parallels are perfectly appropriate here. In fact, "faggot" and "sissy" and "dyke" are typical insults directed at outsider kids, even if they are straight.
Many les/bi/gays are born in "priviliged" families, and some homophobe or other is always eager to kick around statistics that "prove" gay people earn more than straight people. (No, not all gay people, fools, just the ones comfortable enough to tell some random stranger that they are gay.)
As it happens, the suffering of the different and intelligent is nothing new. I'm a third-generation Hellmouth survivor: My grandfather suffered literal physical abuse at the hands of the nuns at his Catholic school because he's left handed. My mother, the smartest kid by far in her class, was denied the chance to be an exchange student because "she's just a steelworker's daughter." I've discussed my own experiences previously -- suffice it to say that I'm well aware of the cruelty of peers and teachers, having lived through it.
If you like, you can go read Oh No, Not Again!, which was my original reaction to Littleton, and Confessions of a Redhead, my follow-up after seeing Star Wars. The second one might not make much sense unless you're familiar with the Chronicles of Amber, though.
Maybe it's time to write another essay, and send it someplace where it'll do some good. Like the Village Voice, which I would have expected to have had better sense.
*disgusted sigh*
"Somebody exploded a letter-bomb today
How do we save all the starving children, anyway? Send them food and medicine? Then they will grow up an have an exponentially larger number of their own children who will then starve. Can we save them too? If not, then they die and we're all morally inferior because we didn't save them, if so, then the exponential growth multiplier is applied again, recursively, ad infinitum. Sooner or later, the capacity of our resources will be exceeded by the growth of the problem, and we will end up being morally inferior (implying that those who are morally superior should gain authority over us, but that's another argument). Alternatively, we could try to change their culture, but we don't have the moral authority to do that either, in our new enlightened p.c. age.
Is this off-topic? Of course it is! That's my point! You can answer every emotional crisis that anyone ever had by pointing at Ethiopia or Rawanda or Cambodia or Nazi Germany or Yugoslavia or [your tragedy here], but that response doesn't address the issue at hand. It's a patronizing diversion, and we're still left with the problem.
What is the problem again? Kids in emotional crisis bring guns to school and shoot other kids. How is pointing at Ethiopia going to put a stop to that? It won't: these kids are inured to guilt, because guilt is the modern subsitute for corporal punishment.
And yes, for the record, add my vote to the camp that says high school should just be abolished anyway. There's no fixing it. (It takes less power to destroy a thing than to control a thing, no matter what Mua'dib [sp?] said.) Let the lovers breed, let the jocks play, let the geeks go work in better labs, and everyone will be a lot happier.
And Jane Dark should still move to Ethiopia.
Bye.
Measure your wealth in hours, not just dollars.
There's more involved than simply being unpopular. As a kid, I was bullied and beat up; I can remember being literally spit on by other boys. My family was often a target of minor vandalism. There were times I was afraid to leave the house because I might get into a fight. (I'm doing much better now; besides being a reasonably successful hacker (in the Jargon File sense), I hold a nidan (second degree black belt) in karate. Nobody bothers me B->; and I teach a lot of kids, some of whom have a bit of the geek in them.)
The Voice article just doesn't get it. We're not talking about being unpopular, about not getting a date for the dance; we're talking about being physically and mentally abused.
So what if these geeks are mostly white suburbaners? I'm reminded of Repo Man:
Yes, they're not turning firehoses on us, or burying us in mass graves. But do you tell a white kid who's just been beat up because he was too smart for his peer's liking, "Your pain's not real?"Geeks may not be experiencing the level of oppression undergone by various racial and religious groups.
But it still hurts.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
I understand the outrage over the Village Voice article..
Regardless of your race or social status, you can be opressed and abused.
I remember kids from high school who hung out with the jocks and were considered jocks by most but who felt sick about it all the time...
They didn't know how to get away from the jocks.. they were afraid of the people who were supposedly their friends. They were afraid of the harassment they would have to endure if they tried to get away (and i truly believe in these cases it would have been worse then what the geeks had to endure). But, believe it or not.. I've seen geeks do the same things to their friends. I've seen people who have been trapped by their geek friends who constantly endure a barrage of abuse because they don't love star wars (or for some reason equally stupid).
I've known Geeks who have belittled me for being female.. I've known Geeks who have gone out of their way to trash my projects so they could get a slightly higher mark...
Worst of all.... I've known Geeks who acted like jocks, showed the social awareness of a jock and after being an asshole to everyone, would then go on to tell us al that we were stupid (or maybe even call us ugly) for not giving in to their childish demands.
They would treat people (who weren't jocks or geeks) like they were complete morons because they hadn't heard of *Linux*... The Geeks at my school made fun of people too...
Now, I know that a lot of geeks are hurt and treated badly.. but I really believe that it's more of an individual thing..
I'm from Canada.. and every school in my city has its own personality... I was always into "Geeky" things, as long as I can remember... but I faced opression on both sides. I wasn't geeky enough for the geeks and I did NOT want to hang out with the jocks...
But Geeks had some sort of elevated status at my school... they believed that because they had been accepted by this unbelievably clique-ish group of geeks that they were somehow the most intelligent people on the face of the planet... even the jocks sort of looked up to them in some sort of twisted way...
I hated my situation and wanted to make it better.. instead of kiiling them all I sat down and made a plan to my school a better place..
I made it possible for those who had no friends, who had no group to be my friend...
the jocks didn't like me, the geeks didn't like me... but that was ok.. because there were other people out there who needed friends. people who were sensitive and treated badly by both sides...
ok well, anyway.. my point is.. opression can be felt by anyone.. and the oppression can be cause by anyone.. we've all been the oppressor or the oppressee at some point..
We all need to take a good look at our situations if we don't like it and then make an effort to change it.. I was the most sensitive, self consious child.. I would cry before school everyday because i was afraid.. but then I learned to reach out and help and it made me feel a lot better...
much better then feeling self pity.
http://www.theonion.com/onion3520/second_amendm
They can't say it better
It isn't just you - racism against white males is considered "politically correct".
Hum - it was a sarcastic article, it is NOT REAL. I knew guns advocates didn't had any humor...
I think this Onion article makes a good point at showing how stupid the NRA and other guns lovers can get when it comes to defend their right to play with their toys...
As somebody said "Small penis, big gun"
American kids are the result of the "ME" generation. It's all about them, it's all about being 'happy with who they are'. It's all about being 'special'. They lack the feeling of community and common welfare.
Now I disagree with this. I think that we rather do understand a feeling of community and common welfare. Our community is the GEEK community. Our common welfare is the welfare of all geeks who get kicked around in school. Sure, our community isn't necessarily the town in which we grew up or even the town in which we live now that we're successful. Our community is, well, the geeks on the 'Net, or the members of our gaming club and people who go to Cons, or SCA crews.
And we DO care about each other and the common welfare of this community, more so than many other communities of interest, I would argue. (Jocks in HS tend to compete and conflict with jocks in other HS's; geeks in one HS will as often as not collaborate with and support geeks in other HS's...)
Perchance the American youth, and Americans in general, are self-centered in terms of suffering, but that's a result of a million social factors, history and other things as much as a genuine egoism. I honestly don't think that any one nationality is more self-centered than another. [Just so happens that 50% of the folks on the 'Net these days are young Americans, because that's where the access is available. Also, American culture lends itself to speaking your mind, loudly, and arguing with each other. Federalist 51, the free marketplace of ideas, etc...]
Geeks, on the other hand, may very well be a little more self-centered, but I think that has to do with the fact that the things that interest geeks interest so few other people (and all of them are fellow geeks) that interest simply breeds a quasi-self-centered focus.
IMHO. I could easily be wrong.
Those kids didn't fit a simple pattern, besides, the profiling is just being used against undesirables. I mean, the kids who shot and killed other students in Arkansas were hunters, why aren't hunters being targetted? Could it be that school administrators just want to "get those freaks"?
Hatred of intellectuals is no joke, just ask anyone who lives in Cambodia. Someone asked a monk there recently how they could tell who was or was not an intellectual. "If you wore sunglasses," said the monk. Millions of people were slaughtered there, and some just for appearing to belong to a certain unpopular group. Today, you only see foriegners in Cambodia wearing sunglasses.
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
It's sometimes not that easy to ignore it and shrug it off. Not all the abuse is mental.
Two years ago in high school I was beaten everyday as well as mentally abused. I would almost always have black and blue arms and legs. Thats not the kind of thing you can just ignore. Being beaten everyday, spit on, thrown in trash cans.
You can't just ignore things like that.
Jane Dark's feature, "Suffer the (White, Middle-Class) Children" was a poorly researched, irresponsible piece obviously designed to be inflammatory. She basically calls the oppressed high-school geeks whiners. She says it is a white problem, and implies that these white folks don't know what suffering is.
_ __________________________
Well, she may be correct on the first count - in 1995 over 90% of suicides were by white folks. I think those people knew what suffering is. "Jane Dark" says she had her share of jerks to deal with in high school, and sure it sucked, but she was able to deal with it. I don't think she realizes the extent of the abuse some of these kids endure. Many of them are told daily that they are worthless human beings, a waste of oxygen. Maybe this doesn't happen as much in predominantly minority high schools. Whether or not that is true, the suffering exists, and it is extreme enough to drive these kids to kill themselves and each other. There is no point or purpose in making this a racial issue except to be inflammatory.
Jane, you have succeeded in provoking a response from me. I'm just sorry you had to belittle the suffering of thousands of teenagers to do it.
____________________________________________
Auditing and dentistry are excellent career choices for people who don't like other people but aren't coordinated enough
Sent to the Village Voice:
"Boo hoo, the little white middle class kids aren't happy!" Jane Dark's compassion just chokes me up. I have no idea what her experience is, I can only speak for myself and and those I know well.
She mocked the comparison of being urinated upon and being "home alone on a Friday night" to gas chambers in Aushwitz. On the surface, I can agree with her, but by that logic, compared to what's going on in Yugoslavia, she has NOTHING to complain about herself (have HER children been murdered in an ethnic cleansing effort?). And compared to what happened in Nazi Germany, no one who was born after 1948 has any room to complain (after all, none of US have ever been herded into train cars and carted off to death camps). But we do don't we. We each have our own experience and our own crises which shape who we are.
Perspective is certainly necesary, we can't give much weight to someone who's idea of tragedy is breaking a nail. But to dismiss the psychological torture endured by being an outcast and being the object of ridicule, just because most of the people affected are white is ludicrous.
I am a hispaic male, and I endured the same treatment as these white people. I know many people who grew up in the inner-city who endured far worse treatment. People who were embarassed and even afraid to tell other people that they were going to go to college. Nerdiness and brains not only seem to NOT be valued in our nations' high schools (Black, white, red and green), but they are penalized in a very real way.
Ms. Dark shoud take off her black/white glasses and see that we are talking about scarring, about torture, about punishment. Very different from others she's encountered, but very real nonetheless. The difference is, that those who make it through the torture (even those from the inner-city) often find themselves in positions of power and success. (We sold corporate America on the computer and now we have them by the balls) But we carry the scars forever. We carry the hurt just as deeply and just as severley.