Math is racist and perpetuates white supremacy

[Steeltime]

Wow. Just wow. Our education system is broken.

https://www.foxnews.com/us/nyc-public-school-asks-parents-to-reflect-on-their-whiteness

Funny how all these public schools ask students to "reflect on" a topic. The schools of course don't ask their students to "read about" a subject or, God forbid, "write about" a topic in a persuasive essay since the schools have produced an army of illiterates.

 

[IndySteel]

 

[Steeltime]

and here I was under the impression that Biden and Co was gonna bring this country together, but they are driving a bigger wedge between us. I don't think I've gone a day without hearing about whiteness, white supremacy, racism, systemic racism or racists. Acronyms are a form of white supremecy, Shakespeare is white supremecy, math is racist, Aunt Jemima is somehow a form of racism, damn, what is next? It is shoved in our face everyday. Everything we know, have learned, been taught is being reprogrammed to a new way of thinking. It's ******* exhausting!

That's the point, steelcity. Overwhelm the population with slanted, sloppy theories that pound home the evilness of white people. Never mind the reality. Don't look at every worthwhile advance in culture, science, farming, travel, or thought over the past 200 years. Never mind comparing any advanced society with countries in Latin America or Africa. Never mind that millions of "people of color" (what a stupid moniker - black is actually the absence of light and not even a "color") get fed only because the evil white people in North America feed them. Never mind that "people of color" have imposed slavery for thousands of years. Never mind that the Bible tells us of "people of color" in North Africa freeing the Jewish slaves thousands of years before Columbus landed in Haiti.

Instead, allow the tsunami of stupidity to overwhelm you until you finally repent from the sin of whiteness, flagellate yourself for 30 minutes per day ... oh, and purely as a coincidence, give a bunch of your money to [fill in blank of oppressed people here].

 

[thesteelcity]

he thinks they are dumb:

https://www.facebook.com/robsmithbk/videos/761459821461175

 

[Djfan]

Has anyone seen anything like this in history? I wonder what becomes of all of this.

 

[Steeler Pride]

Has anyone seen anything like this in history? I wonder what becomes of all of this.

I have not personally seen anything like this in our history, but I would point to the American Revolution as to an example of citizens taking back the country from a tyrannical government. Unfortunately, most Americans are far to comfortable to ever actually consider overthrowing the federal government. People may ***** about $200 million going to the WHO, but as long as they have a job, food on the table, a house with a white picket fence, then they really are not that invested in any substantial change. If I wanted to point to a prime example of what liberal policies can do to a country, I would start with Venezuela.

 

[Steelersreign]

I have not personally seen anything like this in our history, but I would point to the American Revolution as to an example of citizens taking back the country from a tyrannical government. Unfortunately, most Americans are far to comfortable to ever actually consider overthrowing the federal government. People may ***** about $200 million going to the WHO, but as long as they have a job, food on the table, a house with a white picket fence, then they really are not that invested in any substantial change. If I wanted to point to a prime example of what liberal policies can do to a country, I would start with Venezuela.

If there is a revolutionary war in Americas near future, the democrats and media have painted the picture that millions of white supremacist started the war.
The dems and media 100 percent of the time have a narrative behind every thing they say.
The schools are getting involved in this also.

 

[Steeltime]

Has anyone seen anything like this in history? I wonder what becomes of all of this.

I genuinely cannot think of any prior society which sought to destroy itself, knowingly, willingly. Not one. And where does stupidity always end? With stupid overwhelming the non-stupid and destroying it all. The Roman empire lasted 500 (Western empire) to 1500 (Eastern empire) years. The United States was an empire from approximately 1900 to today, a span of barely more than 120 years.

And anybody who doubts that this nation is on the decline is living in a dream world. A huge percentage of the population is obese. Type 2 diabetes runs rampant. A disturbing number of citizens are functionally illiterate. An even larger number cannot perform basic math.

Those who were illiterate in 1821 could recite Biblical passages by the dozens from memory, quote Shakespeare, repair a threshing machine, repair a buggy, tan leather, make a bridle, make a saddle, make a rake, make a scythe, take care of cattle and horses, look after a family, raise food, process food, preserve food, clean game, salt and preserve meat, hunt, fish, dig a well, dig irrigation ditches, tend crops, repair a roof, hell build a house.

Today our illiterates cannot change a car battery.

 

[Ron Burgundy]

and here I was under the impression that Biden and Co was gonna bring this country together, but they are driving a bigger wedge between us. I don't think I've gone a day without hearing about whiteness, white supremacy, racism, systemic racism or racists. Acronyms are a form of white supremecy, Shakespeare is white supremecy, math is racist, Aunt Jemima is somehow a form of racism, damn, what is next? It is shoved in our face everyday. Everything we know, have learned, been taught is being reprogrammed to a new way of thinking. It's ******* exhausting!

The Left needs to keep coming up with straw men to 'splain away their failures to actually help the black community and keep them ginned up and voting Democrat.
You will notice on every form of media at the moment there is an effort to make blacks feel special.

 

[Steeltime]

You will notice on every form of media at the moment there is an effort to make blacks feel special.

By "at the moment," if you mean the last five plus years, then yes. Yes, I do. Every Yahoo article, every magazine, every television show, every commercial, every form of communication underscore the amazing amaziness of people of color.

No wonder white people by the thousands are getting onto rickety boats to flee Europe and go to Africa.

 

[DBS1970]

Now we have racist schools. Where is the rest of the media’s outrage over this racism?

Anti-white racism is just fine.

 

[wig]

5 + 5 be 10

Racist.

It's whatever I believe it to be. Don't be so ******* black and white with your answers.

What if I had 5 + 5 but I skimmed some off the top? Then I might have 9. But if I tried to replace what I skimmed with something else, I may have 11 or 12.

Or, 5 + 5 could equal "Fish". Who the **** are YOU to say?

 

[steel dino]

Racist.

It's whatever I believe it to be. Don't be so ******* black and white with your answers.

What if I had 5 + 5 but I skimmed some off the top? Then I might have 9. But if I tried to replace what I skimmed with something else, I may have 11 or 12.

Or, 5 + 5 could equal "Fish". Who the **** are YOU to say?

Yeah Einstein!

 

[wig]

Yeah Einstein!

Einstein was RACIST!

 

[Djfan]

I genuinely cannot think of any prior society which sought to destroy itself, knowingly, willingly. Not one. And where does stupidity always end? With stupid overwhelming the non-stupid and destroying it all. The Roman empire lasted 500 (Western empire) to 1500 (Eastern empire) years. The United States was an empire from approximately 1900 to today, a span of barely more than 120 years.

And anybody who doubts that this nation is on the decline is living in a dream world. A huge percentage of the population is obese. Type 2 diabetes runs rampant. A disturbing number of citizens are functionally illiterate. An even larger number cannot perform basic math.

Those who were illiterate in 1821 could recite Biblical passages by the dozens from memory, quote Shakespeare, repair a threshing machine, repair a buggy, tan leather, make a bridle, make a saddle, make a rake, make a scythe, take care of cattle and horses, look after a family, raise food, process food, preserve food, clean game, salt and preserve meat, hunt, fish, dig a well, dig irrigation ditches, tend crops, repair a roof, hell build a house.

Today our illiterates cannot change a car battery.

I think that you answered the question quite well. Add to it that the idea of personal accountability vs. government solutions, opportunity vs. results, etc., are almost dead in this culture, and we see why this culture is nearly gone.

 

[steel dino]

Einstein was RACIST!

I know he hated the Nazi's that he shared the same country with as a young man...

Who treated him not so good...

 

[Steeltime]

I think that you answered the question quite well. Add to it that the idea of personal accountability vs. government solutions, opportunity vs. results, etc., are almost dead in this culture, and we see why this culture is nearly gone.

As further evidence of the dismal state of our current society - what is the last great work of fiction our culture produced? American authors once included some of the greatest storytellers (Mark Twain) of all time, those who generated moral tales that challenged Dickens and Milton (Melville and Moby Dick, Billy Budd), poets who produced works that told stories and actually rhymed (Whitman, Frost), realists (Hemingway, Fitzgerald), authors at the beginning of the style of writing "fiction as we think," i.e., stream-of-consciousness (Faulkner). If asked to list the greatest works of American authors and poets, I would offer the following (in order):

• Moby Dick by Melville
• Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Twain
• The Great Gatsby, by Fitzgerald
• A Farewell to Arms, by Hemingway
• To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
• Catcher in the Rye, by Salinger
• The Sun Also Rises, by Hemingway
• Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury
• The Sound and the Fury, by Faulkner
• Last of the Mohicans, by James Fenimore Cooper
• Call of the Wild, by Jack London
• Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, Robert Frost
• Oh Captain! My Captain!, by Walt Whitman
• The Road Not Taken, Robert Frost
• Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell
• The Raven, Edgar Allen Poe
• The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck

What do all of these works have in common? Every one of them? All except one - To Kill a Mockingbird - are at least 75 years old, and TKAM is 60 years old. What happened to American literature?

What happened is that current authors have had a watered-down education. The vast majority of tudents over the past forty years, I believe, don't have the background, training or education to read or understand great literature. Not surprisingly, then, the same students are unable to author great works. Indeed, they cannot create even good literature.

Take, for example, somebody considered to be one of the best American poets the last 50 years - Maya Angelou. Because I have a degree in English, focus English literature, I have read hundreds upon hundreds of novels and hundreds of poems. Some poems are entertaining, tell a story, employ great rhyme and meter. Coleridge's Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner, for example. One stanza from that poem - read it, you will like it - from memory:

The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew
The furrow followed free.
We were the first to ever burst,
Into that silent sea.

Look at all the amazing tricks of language and meter. The internal rhymes (blew, flew - first, burst), the alliteration (breeze blew, foam flew, furrow followed free, silent sea), and the perfect meter. However, the mariner by now has shot the albatross (symbol of good fortune), so Coleridge crafts a very different approach in the next stanza, explaining the plight of the sailors. Compare the meter, the "false rhyme":

The breeze drop't down, down drop't the sails,
T'was still as still could be.
And we did speak only to break
The silence of the sea.

Instead of the running alliteration and meter, internal rhyme, we have something called a "chiasmus," which shows a mirror image and is meant to be non-lyrical ("drop't down, down drop't") and a "sight rhyme" where the words look like they should rhyme but don't (speak, break). That is the work of a great poet, in a work that covers about 60 stanzas and tells an amazing story, with lines we know almost 200 years later. ("Water, water everywhere and all the boards did shrink, Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink").

Maya Angelou's poems are ... mediocre. Let's compare two stanzas, one from Whitman and the other from Maya Angelou's "great work," Still I rise.

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,
The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;
Exult O shores, and ring O bells!
But I with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don’t you take it awful hard
’Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines
Diggin’ in my own backyard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.

Whitman's is the first, of course. When you read his stanza, you will note an internal rhythm, called "meter." A writer generates meter by alternating emphasized syllables with non-emphasized, one after the other. Doing so takes work, but results in text that sounds like music:

The SHIP is ANCHor’d SAFE and SOUND, its VOYage CLOSED and DONE,

Bad poets ignore meter and then use forced, monosyllabic rhymes because they are easy. Example:

DOES MY HAUGHTiNESS OFFend you?
DON'T YOU TAKE it AWful HARD

The lines have no meter, no lyrical rhythm. The lines are stilted, forced, about a small subject ("Oooh, poor me!"). "Cause I laugh like I got goldmines, Diggin' in my own backyard"? Really? So you're saying the mines are digging themselves?

Her "great work" has a dangling participle, for Christ's sake.

 

[DBS1970]

Steeltime,

Stop being racist.

 

[Tim Steelersfan]

As further evidence of the dismal state of our current society - what is the last great work of fiction our culture produced? American authors once included some of the greatest storytellers (Mark Twain) of all time, those who generated moral tales that challenged Dickens and Milton (Melville and Moby Dick, Billy Budd), poets who produced works that told stories and actually rhymed (Whitman, Frost), realists (Hemingway, Fitzgerald), authors at the beginning of the style of writing "fiction as we think," i.e., stream-of-consciousness (Faulkner). If asked to list the greatest works of American authors and poets, I would offer the following (in order):

• Moby Dick by Melville
• Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Twain
• The Great Gatsby, by Fitzgerald
• A Farewell to Arms, by Hemingway
• To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
• Catcher in the Rye, by Salinger
• The Sun Also Rises, by Hemingway
• Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury
• The Sound and the Fury, by Faulkner
• Last of the Mohicans, by James Fenimore Cooper
• Call of the Wild, by Jack London
• Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, Robert Frost
• Oh Captain! My Captain!, by Walt Whitman
• The Road Not Taken, Robert Frost
• Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell
• The Raven, Edgar Allen Poe
• The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck

What do all of these works have in common? Every one of them? All except one - To Kill a Mockingbird - are at least 75 years old, and TKAM is 60 years old. What happened to American literature?

What happened is that current authors have had a watered-down education. The vast majority of tudents over the past forty years, I believe, don't have the background, training or education to read or understand great literature. Not surprisingly, then, the same students are unable to author great works. Indeed, they cannot create even good literature.

Take, for example, somebody considered to be one of the best American poets the last 50 years - Maya Angelou. Because I have a degree in English, focus English literature, I have read hundreds upon hundreds of novels and hundreds of poems. Some poems are entertaining, tell a story, employ great rhyme and meter. Coleridge's Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner, for example. One stanza from that poem - read it, you will like it - from memory:

The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew
The furrow followed free.
We were the first to ever burst,
Into that silent sea.

Look at all the amazing tricks of language and meter. The internal rhymes (blew, flew - first, burst), the alliteration (breeze blew, foam flew, furrow followed free, silent sea), and the perfect meter. However, the mariner by now has shot the albatross (symbol of good fortune), so Coleridge crafts a very different approach in the next stanza, explaining the plight of the sailors. Compare the meter, the "false rhyme":

The breeze drop't down, down drop't the sails,
T'was still as still could be.
And we did speak only to break
The silence of the sea.

Instead of the running alliteration and meter, internal rhyme, we have something called a "chiasmus," which shows a mirror image and is meant to be non-lyrical ("drop't down, down drop't") and a "sight rhyme" where the words look like they should rhyme but don't (speak, break). That is the work of a great poet, in a work that covers about 60 stanzas and tells an amazing story, with lines we know almost 200 years later. ("Water, water everywhere and all the boards did shrink, Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink").

Maya Angelou's poems are ... mediocre. Let's compare two stanzas, one from Whitman and the other from Maya Angelou's "great work," Still I rise.





Whitman's is the first, of course. When you read his stanza, you will note an internal rhythm, called "meter." A writer generates meter by alternating emphasized syllables with non-emphasized, one after the other. Doing so takes work, but results in text that sounds like music:

The SHIP is ANCHor’d SAFE and SOUND, its VOYage CLOSED and DONE,

Bad poets ignore meter and then use forced, monosyllabic rhymes because they are easy. Example:

DOES MY HAUGHTiNESS OFFend you?
DON'T YOU TAKE it AWful HARD

The lines have no meter, no lyrical rhythm. The lines are stilted, forced, about a small subject ("Oooh, poor me!"). "Cause I laugh like I got goldmines, Diggin' in my own backyard"? Really? So you're saying the mines are digging themselves?

Her "great work" has a dangling participle, for Christ's sake.

Yeah but we've evolved, now we have Cardi B!!

WAP Lyrics

I said, certified freak
Seven days a week
Wet-*** *****
Make that pull-out game weak, woo (ah)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Yeah, you ******* with some wet-*** *****
Bring a bucket and a mop for this wet-*** *****
Give me everything you got for this wet-*** *****

Beat it up, nigga, catch a charge
Extra large and extra hard
Put this ***** right in your face
Swipe your nose like a credit card
Hop on top, I wanna ride
I do a kegel while it's inside
Spit in my mouth, look in my eyes
This ***** is wet, come take a dive
Tie me up like I'm surprised
Let's role play, I'll wear a disguise
I want you to park that big Mack truck
Right in this little garage
Make it cream, make me scream
Out in public, make a scene
I don't cook, I don't clean
But let me tell you how I got this ring…

 

[Steeltime]

TSF with supporting evidence of my point. Seriously, what American work of fiction or poetry composed in the last 50 years will still be read in 200 years? I have already addressed the extraordinarily mediocre work of Mayou. No way. Not worthwhile.

MAYBE Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities. That is a very weak "maybe." Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five - again, maaaaaybe, though it is more than 50 years old.

That's it. Fifty years, two good-not-great works of fiction by American authors. Oh, and the books are 33 years old (BOTV) and 52 years old (SF).

 

[Vader]

It's at the point where cultures need to separate. Western society won't survive this.

Since I'm in education I see this crap all the time. Cancel culture only goes one way. Cancel anything white.

 

[mightyguru]

Steeltime,

Stop being racist.

He's actually being critical. Big difference.

I do think there have been some great authors in the last 50 years...Philip Roth, Don DeLillo, Thomas Pynchon...but a dearth compared to 100 years ago.

 

[Steeltime]

A good friend of mine is an English teacher in a public high school in Los Angeles. She told me she cried about seven years ago when the revised reading list for her AP English class came out and had removed Great Expectations from the list. That edict is a symptom of the disease known as ignorance ravaging America today.

Great Expectations is the perfect book for intelligent high school students of all economic and racial backgrounds, as it tells the story of an impoverished orphan who receives an anonymous beneficence that allows him to live an entitled life. The story is funny, heart-breaking, includes characters too amazing for me to describe here, and is a novel of extraordinary writing. If you have never read it, seriously - read the damn book. It is now available on Kindle for free.

And the LA public schools removed it from their reading list, replacing it with some garbage that will then be replaced in another three years by more recent garbage since as we all know, newer garbage tends to stink less.

Me? I read Great Expectations in 8th grade, again in high school, and re-read it about once every two years. And of course high schools now teach Shakespeare only to "advanced" classes and "gifted" students. Why? Because stupidity is the new coin of the realm. After all, average students would not benefit from reading an author whose work remains unparalleled today, and since modern authors regularly craft a description of despair that exceeds Macbeth's soliloquy:

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Yes, LAUSD, brilliant decision to remove that work from the majority of your students. Luckily, the same students can read the incredible work by Maya Angelou:

Now you understand
Just why my head's not bowed.
I don't shout or jump about
Or have to talk real loud.
When you see me passing
It ought to make you proud.

Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

Wow. That poem is phenomenally phenomenal. Maybe even phenomenally, phenomenally phenomenal. Cardi-B phenomenally phenomenal.

 

[Steeltime]

I do think there have been some great authors in the last 50 years...Philip Roth, Don DeLillo, Thomas Pynchon...but a dearth compared to 100 years ago.

I debated including Roth and The Plot Against America. I read the book. Good, not great.

Is it something people will be reading in 50 more years? I don't think so. Not many people read it today, and the book is just 15 years old.

Pynchon and Gravity's Rainbow - liked it. Had to re-read a couple portions as the book is ... long. So many characters I debated crafting an Excel spreadsheet to keep track. Again, good - not great.

 

[ZonaBurgh]

"As further evidence of the dismal state of our current society - what is the last great work of fiction our culture produced?"


21 will be right along to counter your point, or more likely, prove it.