Anyone here think white guys have it easy?

[bounce]

Is there anyone (minorities and women encouraged to respond) here who rests comfortably in the knowledge that the good old boys club will care for you, see to your needs, promote you ahead of minorities and women and give you an excellent career progression ahead of everyone else for half the effort? When I say "you" I mean white males.

After all, we're men, we're white and that's really the ticket. That's all they really look at. We're IN. We've got it made.

I've gotta say, from where I stand, nothing could be farther from the truth.

However, with this Summers firing at Harvard and LorSpi's reaction to it, I am interested to learn if I am the only one who has had to overcome HUGE obstacles to make it where they are. If there is a good old boys club, I was never a part of it.

In fact... well, I have a personal story that I will tell at a later date if anyone is interested in this question.

[MrDoublel]

I can tell you I've been backstabbed by my white bosses (current boss excluded) in the past and you can't get whiter than an Irish Catholic kid. :-)

Everyone in my family busted their asses to get what they have today. No favors from "The Man". My parents worked their way up from the oppressive poverty of the depression to a comfortable retirement. Were we rich? Far from it, but we weren't poor either. All due to hard work. That's what drives me nuts about those F'in' Libs and leaches that go on about welfare. Worthless pieces of crap need to get off their LAZY ASSES AND GET A FUCKIN' JOB!!!!

[LorSpi]

I most certainly do not. I've know far too many good men - white as well as a few other shades - get thoroughly screwed by the system. If I had to point out any particular trait that gives one an advantage - it would be class. That old socio-economic bugaboo secret handshake right schools edge.

Most white males out there come from the "wrong" class, wrong background and went to the "wrong schools". They make it - or not - because of their own intestinal fortitude and drive. And let me let you on to a secret - - every break I've gotten minus one has come from a white male. I have spent my career working in mostly male environments (I was going to use male dominated but ya see I'm trying to watch my p's and q's and be diplomatic about this whole issue ) and play well with others. My bosses hear nothing but compliments from me about my colleagues and I cover their backs - whether it's workload or exiting early.

I think guys in general are getting the short end of the stick in today's world. The normal energy level of a small boy seems to dictate medication and "special" treatment - while at the same time dogs are getting more quality play time! The lists of do's and don't's are ballooning - while everyone else seems to be given green lights for any kind of behavior, justified by some sort of bullshit excuse that have nothing to do with reality.

It is the American male - white and other variations - that has set an unprecedented standard in civility, hard work, overcoming impossible odds, get up and go and toleration if not indeed in most cases welcoming of folks from groups that anywhere else in the world are slaughtering each other. The US is the great country it is today because of the quality and effort of white males.

And might I add, I saw an interesting phenomenon in Israel when I was there too damn many decades ago. There was a sense of "precious", of "fragility" or "fleetness of time" about the way many there regarded their menfolk, particularly the young men. Guys will be guys and go out and do guy things. But there is always that extra burden, that extra danger about being an Israeli guy. I feel this way about American men, especially overseas. The lot of you are remarkably well behaved in public. In a world where everyone else is either selling snake oil, protecting their rear end or out to make a killing - figuratively or literally - American men in general are an immense source of pride to anyone who bothers to notice.

THAT said - don't try and tell me what I'm intrinsically capable of or not. You guys are this outstanding because your mothers raised you that way! ;D

[bounce]

OK Lor, points well taken.

Your "attitude" will take you far in this world (already has I'm sure). Most people talk themselves into what they CANNOT DO. You clearly don't have that limitation and I think that's great.

I guess my only problem with this whole "Summers" thing is with the Thought Police.

If you don't think the way WE want you to, or say something we don't like, you're OUT!

Shit, white guys are continuously attacked. I hear that crap too damn much:


You white guys came over here and stole the land from the peaceful Indians. You ripped them off for Manhattan. You blood-thirsty bastards spoke with forked-tongue and broke treaties. You intentionally gave them European diseases like the clap and polio. Those that were left alive after your murderous rampages were forced onto reservations. You invented the automobile and the internal combustion engine that is now destroying the ozone, causing Global Warming and killing the planet in general. You invented slavery and sharks are STILL KNOWN to prowl the high seas along the old slave-ship routes in hopes another body will be thrown overboard by the White slave traders (a congressman said that). You discriminate against women and minorities and after stacking the deck you earn your riches in a good-old-boys club on the backs of these hard working people.

You white guys are the scourge of the earth and every problem we suffer through today was caused by you and those just like you dating all the way back before Columbus.



I consider all that to be nothing but hate-mongering and yet I also consider it to be FREE SPEECH.

I hear it (or off-shoots from it) every single day and yet I STILL do not call for peoples' jobs for thinking it and saying it. It's OK with me if people think and say that shit.

Idiots should be allowed to stand up and say idiotic things. From what I can see, that Right is guaranteed under the First Amendment. Constitutional Rights clearly don't apply to you if you're a white male sexist at Harvard though.

That's all I'm saying.

[LorSpi]

And was speaking not in private but from his position as president of Harvard. I do not have "free speech" when I speak in my official capacity. When I speak in that mode, every day word uttered can be used, dissected and interpreted to describe the position of the USG. That is why there are private exchanges - and why folks trying to do damage want the transcripts of those exchanges.

Summer spoke as the president of Harvard - no mid level munchkin here. Now this was suppose to be a private forum - but it was a large forum, not small. And in that forum the president of Harvard, speaking as the president of Harvard, indicated that the reason women are not represented in faculty by their numbers elsewhere - noting the science and math fields - has something to do with genetics. Nothing about the work produced or the quality of women in the field (the they can't bench press 300 pounds argument). Nope. Intrinsic. He's not among his buddies shooting the breeze. He's pushing this agenda in front of tenured women scientists, one of whom released the statement. I'm guessing now but I suspect that she realized that if the president of her university would come out publicly and proclaim such a thing, what chance would she have - being intrinsically unable to handle her tenured position? Then there's the women students trying to make their way in an environment where the boss man himself says they incapable before they even start. Been there done that. I did change fields of study. At the time, in that environment, I saw life as too damn short to spend it arguing with assholes about whether I was genetically suited to study deep ocean streams or make babies. I wanted to work - not politic.

We really aren't that far apart. I am just standing in a slightly different place because I wasted a lot of years on this very same issue.

As for the opinions of other assholes - I don't think I've been very tolerant of them either.

[bounce]

Ward Churchill got his ass handed to him as well. He stepped down as head of some division at University of Colorado. It cost him $20K per year.

He's still working there though (tenured).

I think he should be allowed to stand up and make a fool of himself. Then parents across the country can be free to send their kids elsewhere to college.

That's the thing about free speech. It's a two-edged sword. If you say something that outrages people, they will use their freedom of choice to buy someone else's product. Jane Fonda knows all about that.

I understnad what you're saying about talking while acting in an official capacity. As an airline captain, I had to be VERY careful what I said on the PA. I had absolutely NO freedom of speech whatsoever.

[LorSpi]

bounce said:

Ward Churchill got his ass handed to him as well. He stepped down as head of some division at University of Colorado. It cost him $20K per year.

He's still working there though (tenured).

I think he should be allowed to stand up and make a fool of himself. Then parents across the country can be free to send their kids elsewhere to college.

That's the thing about free speech. It's a two-edged sword. If you say something that outrages people, they will use their freedom of choice to buy someone else's product. Jane Fonda knows all about that.

I understand what you're saying about talking while acting in an official capacity. As an airline captain, I had to be VERY careful what I said on the PA. I had absolutely NO freedom of speech whatsoever.

Just like it's the folks paying yours and mine. No restrictions for folks unemployed or independently wealthy. Your airlines - and Harvard - have an image they want presented to the public. We all know that making sausage is one ugly process. But that's why I buy it pre-packaged.

Tenure is another issue. Probably the last great deals out there IMHO.

[bounce]

lorspi said:

bounce said:

Ward Churchill got his ass handed to him as well. He stepped down as head of some division at University of Colorado. It cost him $20K per year.

He's still working there though (tenured).

I think he should be allowed to stand up and make a fool of himself. Then parents across the country can be free to send their kids elsewhere to college.

That's the thing about free speech. It's a two-edged sword. If you say something that outrages people, they will use their freedom of choice to buy someone else's product. Jane Fonda knows all about that.

I understand what you're saying about talking while acting in an official capacity. As an airline captain, I had to be VERY careful what I said on the PA. I had absolutely NO freedom of speech whatsoever.

Just like it's the folks paying yours and mine. No restrictions for folks unemployed or independently wealthy. Your airlines - and Harvard - have an image they want presented to the public. We all know that making sausage is one ugly process. But that's why I buy it pre-packaged.

Tenure is another issue. Probably the last great deals out there IMHO.

Well, yeah Lor, but think about this...

Summers wasn't ejected by Harvard's Board of Directors. The fucking faculty voted him out.

AND, I must say, my airline had an image to protect. Harvard has a political agenda to push.

Well, that's not exactly true. They are inflating student grades because nobody can come from Harvard with a "C" average. What kind of image would THAT be?

Summers was against that too. I think if you go to Harvard, you get either an "A" or you drop the course.

Some image.... At Harvard we send our grads out into the world with inflated grades and brains filled with a political agenda. We train our grads how to think all right!

Makes sense to me...

[bounce]

And one more thing Lor...

I have two daughters and I want them to think just like you do (about personal limitations anyway - they do NOT exist so don't listen to people who tell you they do).

So when you say we're not that far apart, you're right - at least as far as women's achievement is concerned.


Here's the difference between what you think and what I want my daughters to think:

The world is filled with people who will tell you (man or woman) what you CANNOT DO. People tell themselves what they cannot do. Negativity is EVERYWHERE!

I want my daughters to understand that and IGNORE it when they hear it.

The angry reaction is a mistake. The idiots have a right to speak. Understand that and move on!

That's what white guys have had to learn to do. We're inundated with the "negative" crap. In general, we've learned to "deal with it" and move on.

When I hear it, I am nowhere close to drawing a fist and throwing a punch.

Why are you?

[LorSpi]

bounce said:

And one more thing Lor...

I have two daughters and I want them to think just like you do (about personal limitations anyway - they do NOT exist so don't listen to people who tell you they do).

So when you say we're not that far apart, you're right - at least as far as women's achievement is concerned.


Here's the difference between what you think and what I want my daughters to think:

The world is filled with people who will tell you (man or woman) what you CANNOT DO. People tell themselves what they cannot do. Negativity is EVERYWHERE!

I want my daughters to understand that and IGNORE it when they hear it.

The angry reaction is a mistake. The idiots have a right to speak. Understand that and move on!

That's what white guys have had to learn to do. We're inundated with the "negative" crap. In general, we've learned to "deal with it" and move on.

When I hear it, I am nowhere close to drawing a fist and throwing a punch.

Why are you?

Of the job. Ya think? Sounds like a lot of whining about how he wanted this and wanted that - - and lost his job. For the money, I think folks expected someone who could perform - not fail dramatically enough to get headlines. The simple fact that his record looks like a bad soap opera makes him grossly incompetent. A competent president would have handled the situation.

You think idiots have a right to call your daughter the C word in the work place in front of fellow techies? I know women at CBS who had to put up with that as part of their work environment. After all those idiots had a right to speak. That's what management said. And when the union listed hires on the same day by race and gender instead of sign up time, so that lay-offs targeted groups, you'd tell her that's life? Well, that's not what happened at CBS - and they lost in court for that bit of skulduggery.

White guys who were passed over for hire by lower scoring minorities didn't learn to take it. They took it to court. Let your daughter attend a university where she is told that she is intrinsically incapable of working in her major. She accepts that then why bother? That's right on the line of not reporting rapes.

If the president of a university can't do his job, and Summer clearly could not, why blame women and minorities for his failure? He failed the university. It was white males that casted the deciding vote. Remember that.

[bounce]

You think idiots have a right to call your daughter the C word in the work place in front of fellow techies?

Hell no! That isn't what I meant.

I know women at CBS who had to put up with that as part of their work environment. After all those idiots had a right to speak. That's what management said.

That is out of bounds of "civility."

And when the union listed hires on the same day by race and gender instead of sign up time, so that lay-offs targeted groups, you'd tell her that's life? Well, that's not what happened at CBS - and they lost in court for that bit of skulduggery.

As well they should have!

White guys who were passed over for hire by lower scoring minorities didn't learn to take it. They took it to court.

That shit happens every single day in the airline industry.

Let your daughter attend a university where she is told that she is intrinsically incapable of working in her major. She accepts that then why bother? That's right on the line of not reporting rapes.

Bullshit. The world is full of idiots. Getting angry because of their idiocy is a mistake.

If the president of a university can't do his job, and Summer clearly could not, why blame women and minorities for his failure? He failed the university. It was white males that casted the deciding vote. Remember that.

I know very well that's true, but I can't really see a NE liberal (Metrosexual type) as a "male" though, can you???

[MARIO]

lorspi said:

bounce said:

And one more thing Lor...

I have two daughters and I want them to think just like you do (about personal limitations anyway - they do NOT exist so don't listen to people who tell you they do).

So when you say we're not that far apart, you're right - at least as far as women's achievement is concerned.


Here's the difference between what you think and what I want my daughters to think:

The world is filled with people who will tell you (man or woman) what you CANNOT DO. People tell themselves what they cannot do. Negativity is EVERYWHERE!

I want my daughters to understand that and IGNORE it when they hear it.

The angry reaction is a mistake. The idiots have a right to speak. Understand that and move on!

That's what white guys have had to learn to do. We're inundated with the "negative" crap. In general, we've learned to "deal with it" and move on.

When I hear it, I am nowhere close to drawing a fist and throwing a punch.

Why are you?

Of the job. Ya think? Sounds like a lot of whining about how he wanted this and wanted that - - and lost his job. For the money, I think folks expected someone who could perform - not fail dramatically enough to get headlines. The simple fact that his record looks like a bad soap opera makes him grossly incompetent. A competent president would have handled the situation.

You think idiots have a right to call your daughter the C word in the work place in front of fellow techies? I know women at CBS who had to put up with that as part of their work environment. After all those idiots had a right to speak. That's what management said. And when the union listed hires on the same day by race and gender instead of sign up time, so that lay-offs targeted groups, you'd tell her that's life? Well, that's not what happened at CBS - and they lost in court for that bit of skulduggery.

White guys who were passed over for hire by lower scoring minorities didn't learn to take it. They took it to court. Let your daughter attend a university where she is told that she is intrinsically incapable of working in her major. She accepts that then why bother? That's right on the line of not reporting rapes.

If the president of a university can't do his job, and Summer clearly could not, why blame women and minorities for his failure? He failed the university. It was white males that casted the deciding vote. Remember that.

Actually, Lor, it seems that Summers was the ONLY one at Harvard doing his job. Here's an article by a liberal columnist explaining the root of Summer's problems with the faculty.

------------

Failing Grade
by Peter Beinart
Post date: 02.23.06
Issue date: 03.06.06

ome of my best friends are professors. Many of my relatives, too. I'd probably be one myself, had I done better in graduate school. But, this week at least, I'm glad I chose another line of work, because the most prestigious professoriate in the world, Harvard's, has just made an ass of itself.

It has done so by toppling President Lawrence Summers, who resigned rather than face a second faculty no-confidence vote, which he seemed set to lose. In explaining the coup, conservatives will cite political correctness. They'll say that, by challenging African American Studies Professor Cornel West and musing about the relationship between gender and scientific aptitude, Summers ran afoul of the left-wing dogmatism that dominates campus life. But that gives the faculty too much credit. It lets them pretend they were defending some abstract ideal, some principle larger than their own self-interest. The truth is far shabbier: The Harvard faculty deposed Lawrence Summers because he wanted them to care about something beyond themselves.

First, Summers wanted tenured professors to teach. And not just that; he wanted them to teach large undergraduate survey courses. Summers noticed what people have been noticing for a long time: Students at Harvard--and at other prestigious universities--often graduate without the kind of core knowledge that you'd expect from a good high school student. Instead, they meet Harvard's curricular requirements with a hodgepodge of arbitrary, esoteric classes that cohere into nothing at all. Summers wanted to change that, perhaps by making students take overview courses that gave them a general introduction to different disciplines. The problem is that those are exactly the kinds of courses Harvard professors don't want to teach. Most professors are specialists. They want to delve ever more deeply into their particular research areas. The more their teaching tracks that research, the easier their lives are. So they offer classes on obscure micro-topics. The last thing they want is to bone up on introductory material they forgot in graduate school. Summers, who made a point of teaching a freshman seminar himself, thought perhaps they should. And, for that, he was accused of not respecting the faculty. When he mentioned reviving Harvard's introductory art history survey to one top professor in the department, she responded that no self-respecting scholar would want to teach such a course. "Are we citizens or employees?" asked another professor, pretentiously. How naïve of Lawrence Summers: He actually thought they might be teachers.

Summers certainly wasn't opposed to research. But he was impolitic enough to ask various departments to explain why their research mattered. He evidently believed that, as president of the world's premier university, asking probing questions about the direction of academic disciplines was part of his job. The poor fool. He even had the temerity to ask West, one of only 19 "university professors," a rank supposedly reserved for the greatest scholars in the world, what he was doing. The confrontation exploded because West is high-profile and black. But he wasn't the only university professor who was asked about his work. And, for many faculty, the really offensive part wasn't that Summers confronted a black faculty member. It's that he asked any tenured faculty member to justify how they spent their time. "Once someone's a tenured professor," one professor told The Chronicle of Higher Education, "if he wants to write articles for The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times instead of doing his scholarship, he has every right to do that. Once someone is a tenured professor, they answer to God. It's as simple as that." Summers thought it was a little more complicated: He thought that tenured professors had a responsibility to cultivate more than their own egos. It's unlikely his successor will make the same mistake.

Finally, Summers thought it was a problem that roughly 90 percent of Harvard seniors were graduating with honors. The Ivy League considers itself a bastion of meritocracy. But, as Summers understood, Harvard's shameless grade inflation mocks that pretense. By giving almost everyone very high grades, Harvard promotes the fiction that virtually all of its graduates are academic superstars--and obscures those who actually are. Worse, it punishes those less exalted universities naïve enough to believe that a mediocre student deserves a C. As a result, students with honest transcripts find themselves at a disadvantage when competing for jobs or graduate school.

But, for professors, giving everyone absurdly high grades is the path of least resistance. The last thing an academic wants is angry students showing up at her office door, trying to appeal their grades. Far easier to preemptively capitulate, which seems to be what the Harvard faculty thought Summers would do as well.

Even more than professors, one might have expected Harvard students to rebel against Summers's crusade against grade inflation. But they didn't. In fact, despite all the news reports about how controversial Summers was at Harvard, he doesn't seem to have been that controversial among students at all. An online poll found that only 19 percent of undergraduates believed Summers should resign. A New York Times Magazine profile noted that virtually "every student who has actually had contact with Summers has come away liking him." And, while the faculty passed a no-confidence vote against him last year, graduate students in the arts and sciences rejected one. One wonders, in fact, what might happen if Harvard students were given the chance to vote no-confidence in their professors.

Perhaps none of this really matters. In this era of conservative power, in which politicians are more likely to run against America's top universities than to learn from them, Harvard is largely irrelevant. But that was part of Summers's project: to challenge the narcissism that makes Harvard easy to ignore. It's why he has made it easier for students to participate in rotc. It's why he waived tuition for families making less than $40,000 a year. It's why he wanted professors to do useful research and students to learn basic knowledge. As one of the few contemporary college presidents who tried to turn liberal ideals into government policy, rather than just opining about them from the ivory tower, he wanted Harvard to serve the nation, not merely itself. And, when Harvard hired him five years ago, that's what it said it wanted, too. Now we know the truth.

[bounce]

I think the tenure system has done more to HURT education than people realize.

Tenured professors get paid to do nothing but research hit pieces for the NYT Op ed.

Ask them what the fuck they're doing and they're OUTRAGED!

All the professors want to be liked and hand out "A"s like they're Halloween candy.

I have no idea what the tuition is there, but it sounds like a total rip-off.