Absolutely on the nose. I'd go a step further - if he had said "If I were Isreael", then he's imagining being policy maker directly responsible, instead of merely being a citizen.
It's not empathy to put one's self in someone else's shoes, but then dismiss the viewpoint that comes with wearing those shoes. This is simply another version of the "No true Scotsman" fallacy.
Moreover, using collective guilt as an underpinning of any political stance is garbage. It's not enough to say racists and racist policies are bad - white people are collectively guilty, regardless of their own personal behavior and history. It's not enough to say Israel's out of line with their policies - all Jews are collectively guilty. So on and so forth. And it's alienating and insulting to anyone sympathetic policy-wise, but don't want to be lumped in with bad actors.
This is absolutely political, in that any conversation about Israel's foreign or domestic policy ends up an argument falling along political lines.
There's several posts already excusing the blog post because it aligns politically with the poster's own views (in this case, that all Jews have collective guilt for Israel's policy.)
On remark 2 - I think these feelings of unfulfillment are very common among young men (and women I imagine), but at that age, it's hard to find an audience of peers mature enough to discuss these feelings without falling into stereotypes and tropes (e.g. "bro" advice).
On remark 3 - These are political debates, not conversations. There's no amount of data or statistics you can throw into the conversation that's going to convince either side to stop advocating their viewpoint.
This is an excellent point. I always assumed the emotional aspect of sex was part of the reason the verb "withholding" was used, much in the same way it's used to describe a more generalized "withholding" of love and affection, whether it's as simple as a kind word or hug on upwards to the more carnal. But withholding something implies that thing is deserved or earned, which runs contrary to body autonomy.
Even though he used this language, I thought the author did a pretty good job explaining why sex isn't something that's rarely "withheld" as a means to an end. But our language around love (physical and emotional) and relationships needs work.
Beyond the oblivious benefits of having different communities of students commingle, how does desegregation help poorer performing school? I was under the impression desegregation was more about providing more equal access to better run schools than improving poorer preforming school.
> how does desegregation help poorer performing school
1. There are studies showing that socioeconomic and racial diversity in schools (which often go hand and hand in urban contexts) have huge measurable positive impacts on people from less advantaged backgrounds, and no impact on people from more advantaged backgrounds.
2. Affluent families often have more time to devote towards advocating for improvements in their school. Incompetent administrations get shielded when there aren't parent watchdogs.
3. Hate to say it, but high-quality teacher retention is very difficult in schools that are close to entirely black &/or poor.
It is much easier to create two high-quality socioeconomically diverse schools than it is to create two high-quality schools one which has mostly rich white students and one which has mostly poor black students.
I definitely do not have all the solutions though. I'm not really sure if desegregation in many coastal cities is even possible right now while private schools remain. White private school attendance is very related to school system diversity.
> I'm not really sure if desegregation in many coastal cities is even possible right now while private schools remain.
It's not just a problem of private schools - it's families having the ability to move to a different district.
If you're affluent enough, no one can force you to send your kid to a given school. They want to bus your kid? Move to the suburbs. They want to bus from the suburbs? Send your kid to private or religious school? Ban those? Hire a nanny/tutor. So forth and so on. As you pointed out, there's not benefit academically for these advantaged kids, so this understandable why there's push back. Some people aren't going to value being exposed to other communities enough to outweigh the inconvenience of busing their kids.
We could try to make these communities more desirable to live in, but 1) we're assuming we haven't tried making them desirable (and if not, why not), and 2) we risk pushing out the poorest of the community and negating the benefits for those families. It's a big, hard problem - how do you go about improving a failing school in a poor neighborhood without changing the neighbors in the neighborhood?
I was too young to remember the 70s, but, from what I understand, busing occurred mostly between neighborhoods in the city, often moving kids from one poor community to another. If you were in a neighborhood with nicer schools and busing was enforced, you moved. And the politicians and judges enforcing busing certainly didn't send their kids to these schools - if they lived in these communities at all.
Unless we start telling people where they can live and how they can raise their children, I don't think this path is viable.
> here's not benefit academically for these advantaged kids, so this understandable why there's push back.
Hm. It's not understandable to me - if there is no harm academically, why the pushback? If you look at recordings from Boston parents during the busing protests, they're quite clear about what their issue is ("n*****s").
> If you're affluent enough, no one can force you to send your kid to a given school
This sounds intuitive when you hear it for the first time. And I did alude to it in my previous comment. But I don't think we should overstate the effect. From 21st century data, at a macroscale, enrollment does not really drop when you integrate, even when that integration involves sending kids to schools that are not the closest neighborhood one.
Cambridge, MA has implemented a '21st-century busing' controlled choice approach and saw no decline in enrollment. [0] Parts of Brooklyn recently did the same and saw no change in the enrollment of white students. [1]
It's hard to say exactly why this is the case - perhaps racial animus has declined, perhaps there is a growing awareness that attending a racially diverse school is not actually harmful for educational outcomes, perhaps white flight in the 80s and 90s wasn't caused by busing in the first place, perhaps the benefits to remaining in cities are increasing, etc.
Moreover, busing didn't fail. By the 1980s, after concerted efforts to integrate, schools were more socioeconomically and racially diverse than ever before. Since about 1990, however, schools have re-segregated to the amount they were in 1974.
I don't buy that de facto segregation is an inevitable result of freedom of mobility. The evidence strongly suggests that it is related to policy choices and that it can be changed. Given the massive impacts that it seems to have on overall quality of education, shouldn't we try?
Sorry for waiting over a week to respond, but I wanted to address your example about Boston.
>Hm. It's not understandable to me - if there is no harm academically, why the pushback?
Not wanting to send your kid to a bad school in a bad neighborhood? Let's be specific here - these were parents in South Boston worried about sending their kids to Roxbury. (Yes, ironic given Southie was also a bad neighborhood.) Sure, plenty of them were racist as hell on top of that.
To the larger point - were these privileged kids living in Southie? No - they were also poor and working class, just like the kids in Roxbury. So where are these privileged kids living? In the suburbs. Which didn't have busing into inner city schools. And where affordable housing means paying half a million dollars for a condo instead of a million dollars. And there's very few POC who can afford living there. Are these families racist? Maybe not overtly, but they certainly aren't challenged to living along side POCs.
> Moreover, busing didn't fail. By the 1980s, after concerted efforts to integrate, schools were more socioeconomically and racially diverse than ever before. Since about 1990, however, schools have re-segregated to the amount they were in 1974.
So it failed in the 90s instead of the 80's. Roxbury and South Boston still have bad schools (although both are less crime-ridden than the 70's)
Interesting enough, Cambridge and Brooklyn have grown in affluence starting in the 90s, which more affluent families moving in. Lo and behold, the schools improve across the board as the city can bus kids and resources around to poorer preforming schools.
> "It is much easier to create two high-quality socioeconomically diverse schools than it is to create two high-quality schools one which has mostly rich white students and one which has mostly poor black students."
I could not disagree more, not with our current approach to inner city schools. Desegregation through busing among bad neighborhoods didn't improve bad schools. Affluent families moving into those neighborhoods did.
> Given the massive impacts that it seems to have on overall quality of education, shouldn't we try?
Given the current trends, I'm not seeing the interest in making these poorer communities less poor. It would be bold to see an attempt to bus kids from affluent communities into the city, but that is very unlikely to happen.
While not addressing the problem directly, school desegregation efforts usually also spread socioeconomic classes more evenly. Poorly performing schools almost always have poorer students, and bringing in more well off parents allows for things like fundraisers and increased parental involvement in things like PTAs and band/football/etc. organizations. Despite the "Karen" meme, more involved parents can also lead to problems (bad teachers, broken facilities) being addressed that would otherwise go unacknowledged.
Social media is the neighborhood bar, virtualized, with infinite seats at the bar, but no beer nuts (or beer). Truly one of the saddest places in the world -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJW19nlzb3Q
Anyone can pull up a seat to the bar and many people do. Inmate conversations are drowned out by shouting matches over politics, sports, or whatever has raised passions that day. And there's constant yells of "What the #@$@ are you looking at?" coming from random patron to another. And hundreds of bar promotions for any and everything under the sun.
Doubt members of the countercultural are going to want to hang out at the largest Buffalo Wild Wings...
The fact Sean did this multiple times makes me smile.
This should be legal in beer league hockey. I spend a good amount of time in net with my defense men standing right in front of me, facing away from the net - I would love someone to come in and fan away all the beer farts from the crease.
Ken Dryden is a legend - he was a tall butterfly goaltender in the 70s and is the prototype of professional goaltenders today.
I think it's funny he thinks goalies are too big given he was a huge goalie himself. I do think goalies might be too mobile on their knees, which Ken alluded to in this article.
Knee stacks and landing pads change the game in the early 2000s. Goaltenders now can drop in a butterfly and slide across the crease still on their knees, allowing them to cover backside plays, passes from behind the net, and wraparounds, which used to be bread and butter plays for offenses. Getting rid of the pads would force goalies to play the same "drop and pop" style Ken did, where goalies need to get to their feet more often to more laterally.
This would give offenses more incentive to get the puck to behind the back line and open up the ice more.
Alternatively to that, goalie skates have also gotten smaller - there's less protective covering on them. This makes it easier for goalies to push off with their skates while on their knees, since more of the blade of the skate can touch the ice. I can image the NHL could declare "for goalie safety" that goalie skates must have a certain thickness of protection around the skate, which would make sliding less effective.
Of course, amateur goalies (such as myself) should be able to keep knee stacks, since they also reduce stress on the hip caused by the knees dropping into the ice. ;)
> I think it's funny he thinks goalies are too big given he was a huge goalie himself. I do think goalies might be too mobile on their knees, which Ken alluded to in this article.
This is actually what to me is the most enlightening. It is almost like a whistleblower coming out to say something is wrong. Similarly to how the sport of cycling in the 2000s was filled with doping across the board. All the players that played back then came out and admitted that they doped because everyone else was doping. But now they are retired so they didn't mind admitting how they played the game and broke the rules.
I think Dryden is basically doing the same thing. Although it isn't as scandalous as doping, he is basically saying that as a top-tier goalie (among the best of all time) he recognizes that he did so well in his career because of his size. He didn't have to rely as much on athleticism as the goalies before him. So now he is opening up about "the truth".
hahaha. I've been to a bruins game in TD Garden, and while I agree with you it still was pretty fun. Jacques Plante, best goalie to ever play for the Oilers!
I wouldn't have gotten where I have without someone telling me to take my shot and apply to a good college I dreamed about applying to when I was much younger. My parents encouraged me to with their blessing. There were plenty of neighbors and friend who told me it was a moonshot to get in, that I should go to state school, that I couldn't afford it, I wouldn't fit in, yadda, yadda, yadda. But I got in, went, graduated, and I've done well.
I'm sure if my parents told me it was a long shot, I wouldn't have applied. And, I can imagine internalizing this idea that I never had a chance because of who I was and where I was from.
So don't apologize. You don't need to feed the self-righteousness of others.
It's not empathy to put one's self in someone else's shoes, but then dismiss the viewpoint that comes with wearing those shoes. This is simply another version of the "No true Scotsman" fallacy.
Moreover, using collective guilt as an underpinning of any political stance is garbage. It's not enough to say racists and racist policies are bad - white people are collectively guilty, regardless of their own personal behavior and history. It's not enough to say Israel's out of line with their policies - all Jews are collectively guilty. So on and so forth. And it's alienating and insulting to anyone sympathetic policy-wise, but don't want to be lumped in with bad actors.