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occasioned by a visit to Shaws
Racism
“What do you think about racism?” one of my coworkers asked me on Friday. He’s one of Yale’s token minority students, and very self-aware about it. (He’d previously played the same role at a rather snooty prep school. Who knew?) But for me, as for many WASPs, it was a weird question: both to big and too simple. “Well, the simple answer,” I said, after flailing for a while, would be ‘It’s bad.’”
But of course it’s more complicated than that.
( Read more... )
Afterthoughts:
This problem sort of oddly parallels what I think about Williams’s admission policies of actively recruiting more minorities and students from disadvantaged backgrounds in general. Unlike with people who move to NE but stay southern, I think that the end of Williams as a white middle class liberal (WMCL?) bastion is a Good Thing; but I think that, since the new student body will come from such a different backgrounds, that the Williams culture of being overwhelming involved with outing club stuff and a capella will also be at an end, and that something valuable may be lost there.
Also like Germany’s more troubling problem of What to Do about Immigration. I have a lot of sympathy for the people who worry about the birthrate and the influx of Turks, Poles and miscellaneous who can’t or won’t assimilate. (Again, this puts me in the same boat with some rather unsavory types: in this case, neo-nazis, for one.) However irrationally, I worry that the FRG will, in some way, gradually cease to be German. Which leads to the even thornier question of “What is it to be German?
Hmm. I’ll save that digression for another post.
Snobbery ( Useless Superpowers )
Pride/gluttony: Thanksgiving
Tabloid Headline in the checkout:
Prophecy Reveals: World Will End on Thanksgiving!!
Hey, maybe I just have atypical family dynamics, but I can think of far worse days for it to end on. You’re well fed, enjoying yourself with your dearest friends and/or relatives, and at love and charity with your neighbors.
(Well, unless you have the kind of group where you have meltdowns over the stress of cooking everything and being forced to spend time with your nearest and dearest. Like I say, maybe I have a weird family dynamic/excessively rosy view of the whole thing.)
And I guess it would pretty much suck if the world ended before dinner. ;-)
Racism
“What do you think about racism?” one of my coworkers asked me on Friday. He’s one of Yale’s token minority students, and very self-aware about it. (He’d previously played the same role at a rather snooty prep school. Who knew?) But for me, as for many WASPs, it was a weird question: both to big and too simple. “Well, the simple answer,” I said, after flailing for a while, would be ‘It’s bad.’”
But of course it’s more complicated than that.
( Read more... )
Afterthoughts:
This problem sort of oddly parallels what I think about Williams’s admission policies of actively recruiting more minorities and students from disadvantaged backgrounds in general. Unlike with people who move to NE but stay southern, I think that the end of Williams as a white middle class liberal (WMCL?) bastion is a Good Thing; but I think that, since the new student body will come from such a different backgrounds, that the Williams culture of being overwhelming involved with outing club stuff and a capella will also be at an end, and that something valuable may be lost there.
Also like Germany’s more troubling problem of What to Do about Immigration. I have a lot of sympathy for the people who worry about the birthrate and the influx of Turks, Poles and miscellaneous who can’t or won’t assimilate. (Again, this puts me in the same boat with some rather unsavory types: in this case, neo-nazis, for one.) However irrationally, I worry that the FRG will, in some way, gradually cease to be German. Which leads to the even thornier question of “What is it to be German?
Hmm. I’ll save that digression for another post.
Snobbery ( Useless Superpowers )
Pride/gluttony: Thanksgiving
Tabloid Headline in the checkout:
Prophecy Reveals: World Will End on Thanksgiving!!
Hey, maybe I just have atypical family dynamics, but I can think of far worse days for it to end on. You’re well fed, enjoying yourself with your dearest friends and/or relatives, and at love and charity with your neighbors.
(Well, unless you have the kind of group where you have meltdowns over the stress of cooking everything and being forced to spend time with your nearest and dearest. Like I say, maybe I have a weird family dynamic/excessively rosy view of the whole thing.)
And I guess it would pretty much suck if the world ended before dinner. ;-)
