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Originally Posted by smooth
except frosstbyte, and I think you're making some really interesting points so far, what if the reality is that "education is not the way to survive and get respect from your peers"? what if that's actually true and realistic? then the issue is not at all the hip-hop culture, regardless of who is or is not paying attention to it, but the reality of the situation on the ground.
and this can be taken in the context of structural racism...or it can be taken in the rubber meets the road sense of how effectively a textbook protects a student from another's physical violence.
leaving aside the survival proposition, do you honestly see evidence that our culture rewards education with respect?
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Well, I suppose there might be some truth to what you say, but I guess my point is our focus should be on figuring out why that is the case and then how to make that not be the case. I mean, obviously, right now, if your family is poor and living in a ghetto, it's more straightforward to drop out of school, join a gang and bring home drug money than it is to gamble on maybe getting into school to rack up loans to maybe get a good job when you graduate. The question is why do some groups of people succeed in that latter gamble whereas other groups languish in the former? I think roach is probably right that we've zero'd in on what is perhaps a useless aspect of the problem, but my feelings, again, are that we need to focus on the problem and solving the problem of CYCLICAL poverty and poor education instead of tossing affirmative action at it.
The article you quoted, dc, is painfully reaching for a meaningless conclusion. Sure, people get things all the time because of who they are and not what they did, and the legacy system at elite schools, particularly during the era when Bush was applying, was corrupt and stupid. And, shockingly, they
got rid of it. But to describe it as affirmative action because it's politically convenient doesn't do anything to help the argument that affirmative action is a bad thing. In fact, it actually makes affirmative action look WORSE, because (if you want to call it that) it got someone like George W. Bush into Yale.