Tag: isms

Let me be clear: Unarmed college hopefuls don’t deserve to be shot. Unarmed kids heading to work or trade school don’t deserve to be shot. Unarmed kids floundering aimlessly through life don’t deserve to be shot. Unarmed kids who have been in trouble—even those who have been nothing but trouble—don’t deserve to be shot.

The act of pinning the tragedy of a dead black teen to his potential future success, to his respectability, to his “good”-ness, is done with all the best intentions. But if you read between the lines, aren’t we really saying that had he not been on his way to college, there’d be less to mourn?

That’s dead wrong.

Black Kids Don’t Have to Be College-Bound for Their Deaths to Be Tragic by Jasmine Banks (via gwest650)

cecileemeke:

asholles:

thuggamane:

There’s been an update with @PsykoUK’s ordeal and im sickened. These racist thugs that are the metropolitan police found it was ok to detain him without probable cause. For simply sticking up for 3 eleven year old girls who did not have their Oyster cards, he was criminalised for being black. The worst part about this is that there will be no justice. Take a good look at Institutional racism and white supremacy here folks. Absolutely disgusting.

Smh

This is absolutely unacceptable. This happens to young black people all the time, it needs to stop. REBLOG. This NEEDS to go viral otherwise the MET police will just sweep it under the carpet.

Work and Worth

robertreich:

What someone is paid has little or no relationship to what their work is worth to society. 

Does anyone seriously believe hedge-fund mogul Steven A. Cohen is worth the $2.3 billion he raked in last year, despite being slapped with a $1.8 billion fine after his firm pleaded guilty to insider trading?

On the other hand, what’s the worth to society of social workers who put in long and difficult hours dealing with patients suffering from mental illness or substance abuse? Probably higher than their average pay of $18.14 an hour, which translates into less than $38,000 a year.

How much does society gain from personal-care aides who assist the elderly, convalescents, and persons with disabilities? Likely more than their average pay of $9.67 an hour, or just over $20,000 a year.

What’s the social worth of hospital orderlies who feed, bathe, dress, and move patients, and empty their ben pans? Surely higher than their median wage of $11.63 an hour, or $24,190 a year.

Or of child care workers, who get $10.33 an hour, $21.490 a year? And preschool teachers, who earn $13.26 an hour, $27,570 a year?

Yet what would the rest of us do without these dedicated people?

Or consider kindergarten teachers, who make an average of $53,590 a year.

That may sound generous but a good kindergarten teacher is worth his or her weight in gold, almost.

One study found that children with outstanding kindergarten teachers are more likely to go to college and less likely to become single parents than a random set of children similar to them in every way other than being assigned a superb teacher.

And what of writers, actors, painters, and poets? Only a tiny fraction ever become rich and famous. Most barely make enough to live on (many don’t, and are forced to take paying jobs to pursue their art). But society is surely all the richer for their efforts.

At the other extreme are hedge-fund and private-equity managers, investment bankers, corporate lawyers, management consultants, high-frequency traders, and top Washington lobbyists.

They’re getting paid vast sums for their labors. Yet it seems doubtful that society is really that much better off because of what they do.

I don’t mean to sound unduly harsh, but I’ve never heard of a hedge-fund manager whose jobs entails attending to basic human needs (unless you consider having more money as basic human need) or enriching our culture (except through the myriad novels, exposes, and movies made about greedy hedge-fund managers and investment bankers).

They don’t even build the economy.

Most financiers, corporate lawyers, lobbyists, and management consultants are competing with other financiers, lawyers, lobbyists, and management consultants in zero-sum games that take money out of one set of pockets and put it into another.

They’re paid gigantic amounts because winning these games can generate far bigger sums, while losing them can be extremely costly.

The games demand ever more cunning innovations but they create no social value. High-frequency traders who win by a thousandth of a second can reap a fortune, but society as a whole is no better off.

In fact, these games amount to a huge waste of societal resources and talent. 

In 2010 (the most recent date for which we have data) close to 36 percent of Princeton graduates went into finance (down from the pre-financial crisis high of 46 percent in 2006). Add in management consulting, and it was close to 60 percent.

Graduates of Harvard and other Ivy League universities are also more likely to enter finance and consulting than any other career.

The hefty endowments of such elite institutions are swollen with tax-subsidized donations from wealthy alumni, many of whom are seeking to guarantee their own kids’ admissions so they too can become enormously rich financiers and management consultants.

But I can think of a better way for taxpayers to subsidize occupations with more social merit: Forgive the student debts of graduates who choose social work, child care, elder care, nursing, and teaching.  

roachpatrol:

voxclara:

savanna:

roman-numerals:

yiffstrider:

amporeon:

terraparticle:

amporeon:

IMPORTANT: So they had these cards in the women’s restrooms at this doctor’s office that I was at. I’m really happy that they put them in there because it makes it easier for a woman to escape an abusive relationship without the abuser expecting anything. It gives me hope when I see things like this.

Oh yes, because women are never abusers.

I never said that they can’t/ aren’t. I’m well aware that some women are. I was just trying to talk about a positive thing that I found in a restroom. Don’t turn my post into something that it’s not. God fucking damn it, it’s like you can’t talk about something positive on this site without someone trying to ruin it or twist the original posters words.

Thank you so much for the positive post, and the VERY true words at the asshole commenting on your post. This is the exact reason why I don’t like this website sometimes. Christ.

If you have to qualify Situation A with “but Situation B happens, too,” do you actually give a shit about Situation B? Or are you looking for ways to derail Situation A?

^

40% of domestic violence is experienced by men, do you suppose they also put these cards in the men’s restroom?

Wouldn’t seeing these cards in the restroom alert abusers that there were probably the same cards in the other gender restroom, possibly making them more violent and cutting off their partner even more from resources that could help them?

This seems ill thought out. Unless, of course, they are only in the women’s restroom. In which case they are ignoring 40% of domestic violence victims. I wonder why.

getting really tired of this 40% myth and how frequently everyone scrambles to believe it because they want to look reasonable and fair.

While some people may believe that there is a higher reported incidence of women experiencing violence by their male partners due to men underreporting when they are victims, the reality is the opposite. In 2008, 72 percent of the intimate partner violence against males and 49 percent of the intimate partner violence against females was reported to police.Catalano, Smith, Snyder, & Rand (2009). Bureau of Justice Statistics Selected Findings: Female Victims of Domestic Violence. U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, NCJ 228356.

Researcher Elspeth McInnes…  recounts some of her research that showed that when men talked about women’s violence against men, some cited abuse as not having a hot meal on the table, not having the children bathed before bed, or women spending money on gambling or shopping. At the more severe end of the spectrum, they nominated verbal and emotional violence as abuse. Then, a tiny minority documented physical abuse, and an even smaller minority named sexual abuse. 

“Women were talking about being run over, being drugged and raped at knifepoint, having their children dangled over high rise balconies till they did as they were told and of course you get verbal and emotional violence,” says McInnes. “When we were talking about physical violence against men, one of the worst examples was that she banged his head with the cupboard door – which isn’t good – but the sheer level of fear, harm and terror that women talked about was simply not present in what the men’s data showed.” 

The vast majority of domestic assaults are committed by men. Even when men are victimized, 10% are assaulted by another man. In contrast, only 2% of women who are victimized are assaulted by another woman.2

Two studies have found that at least 40% of police officer families experience domestic violence, (1, 2) in contrast to 10% of families in the general population.(3) A third study of older and more experienced officers found a rate of 24% (4), indicating that domestic violence is 2-4 times more common among police families than American families in general.

in conclusion while domestic abuse hotlines in men’s bathrooms would be great too, women are the majority of victims of violent, life-threatening domestic abuse by a lot more than 40%, and men are still the majority of perpetrators of violent, life threatening domestic abuse, even to other men and boys. this is not a remotely equivalent situation.

using abused men and boys to prop up the myth that women abuse men right back nearly as much is toxic, abhorrent nonsense. we need to cut it the fuck out.