“Somehow she seemed less keen on the British kid reconnecting with their roots with coal dust or the Australian a poison jar.”
Tbh, going outside to reconnect with nature sounds like a great idea for both kids and adults. Instead of investing in office nap pods and pizza parties, companies should start building jungle gyms and bring back recess.
I miss jungle gyms.
Did you do monkey bar fights ?
I’ve never thought about that, but it’d honestly do so much good. Sure, some people would be too lazy to take advantage of it, but a little physical activity in the middle of the day, after sitting in a chair or whatever all day, would probably do wonders for people’s brains. That’s not even mentioning socializing with coworkers. It’d probably actually accomplish the “team-building” they always try to do.
The new google office in Boulder has two distinct climbing walls visible from outside the building.
It’s all fun and games right before someone would claim you cursed them or brought a bad luck.
I’m a person of colour and left leaning, but I find that there is ironic racism from the liberals and the left, as exemplified by this post. I appreciate that many thinkers including Slavoj Zizek call them out on this. There is the idea that persons of colour and minorities are perpetually helpless who need uplifting by privileged white people. Which in effect condescends and stereotype PoCs and thereby exotocising them. It denies the humanity and agency of PoCs to be an individual human who are just as flawed as any of us. This is the modern-day version of “white man’s burden”.
I mean, this is pretty clearly racist, and everyone is acknowledging that? I think it’s okay for marginalized people to laugh at absurd situations they encounter
Yes, but there are still blinds spots for many. Trying hard not to be racist sometimes ends up being one.
Oh absolutely. White savior complex is absolutely a thing to be wary of. I just thought that in this instance everyone knew what she was doing wasn’t a good thing, and was laughing at the ridiculousness of it.
In general I agree, of course
If you dislike an aspect of yourself powerfully enough, instead of grasping it to lift it out, you just poke it back under the surface.
Why do I have to think of Chakotay?
For anyone not getting the reference: Chakotay is a native American character on Star Trek:Voyager played by Robert Beltran. The show hired a Native American consultant named James Highwater (real name Jack Marks) who was a complete fraud.
https://heavy.com/entertainment/star-trek/jamake-highwater-voyager-fake-native-american/
It would still be racist if it wasn’t for the fraud. It’s a future where everyone is enlightened and rational; not a bible or Quran in sight. You won’t find the doctor sprinkling holy water on his patients or fumbling with a Rosary. Some things may indulged by the enlightened, though, for are the savages not like children, in a state of nature.
At least it’s not as bad as the space jews. Holy shit, the space jews. They are even introduced as stealing our federation women. The US used to hang people who published that kinda shit. Whatever happened there?
Star Trek oftentimes depicts people as the other as part of broader plot arcs where people learn to understand one another. At first there’s misunderstandings between people, but then over time these misunderstanding are overcome and there’s peace.
One of the main reasons for TNG is because Gene Roddenberry felt the Klingons were portrayed in too much of a negative light in TOS. So TNG had a Klingon on the crew in a Federation Starship and the Klingons and Federation were at peace. DS9 similarly featured a Ferengi character and had the Ferengi join Starfleet as a borader plot arc. Voyager had a Borg character.
Not sure which characters you think are space jews, is it the Ferengi? If that’s the case, no word of lie, My favourite character in all of Star Trek is Quark, a Ferengi character.
Yeah, the Ferengi. Nothing wrong with Quark as an individual, I think. Even the wiki page on the Ferengi mentions the “controversy”.
Personal story. Back when I was a nerdy kid watching Star Trek I told my german father who the Ferengi were. He’s not woke at all (nor the opposite). He’s just of a generation and background where all that is simply not an issue. He immediately said something: “Oh, like Nazi caricature.” It had never occurred to me before. I never recovered. It just got worse the more I learned.
FWIW, the hanging remark was about this guy.
Yeah it starts out as a caricature because we’re seeing them how the Federation sees them.
But watch the scene where Nog is asking for Sisko’s endorsement to join Starfleet. Sisko is making assumptions about Nog about it being part of some scheme to make profit. But Nog breaks down and says it’s all about how his father’s life was shit working for Quark and he didn’t want to live that way. Sisko has a “wait, am I the asshole?” moment and gives the recommendation. Nog is a great member of Starfleet, loses a leg in his service. Rom decides to quit working for Quark and is a brilliant engineer when working for the Bajorans. Quark learns to respect his brother. So no, it’s not just one individual Ferengi that’s cool, it’s a whole story with defined characters.
We even see improvements made in Ferengi culture. Ferengi women’s rights and democracy. Social issues in Star Trek? Crazy!
Yeah, S1 of TNG was problematic. Remember the episode where they go to a planet where everyone is black and they have a crazy violent society? So yeah, S1 of TNG was kinda bad for that.
But it improved and and the story of the Ferengi was interesting with a lot of discussion about workers rights in a capitalist society which is something that’s not normally possible in Star Trek because of the nature of the Federation being a vaguely defined utopia.
And Quark is my favourite character because while he was most certainly flawed (as all interesting characters are) he would call out the bullshit of the Federation. He was never quite right about things because of his flawed perspective, but he made some very good points. Also the funniest character in all of Star Trek because of that flawed perspective. Most humour in Star Trek surrounds characters like Spock or Data misunderstanding humans, the humour of Quark was him understanding humans better than humans understand themselves.
In the end, no one hates the Ferengi, no one thinks of them as evil. S1 of TNG has problems way beyond the Ferengi, but judging all of Star Trek for some embarrassing things in S1 of TNG means you’re really missing out.
And in the end Star Trek is about social commentary and putting aside differences. Can’t do that if there’s not initial differences to overcome. TNG S1 just took things too far in defining those differences. It wasn’t trying to build a racist narrative and we are talking about episodes that aired like 36 years ago.
One of the Ferengi in the problematic episodes was played Armin Shimerman a Jewish man. He saw similar problems as you and pushed to change how the Ferengi were portrayed. And he succeeded and got to play another Ferengi. Guess which Ferengi he played in DS9?
The 90s were simpler times without Google people couldn’t check your bullshit.
Now people find all kinds of different bullshit with Google. So we solved the problem of gritters being hired as consultants for TV shows… by electing them to public office instead.
It definitely still happens. Lmao
Akoochemoya
We are far from the bones of our ancestors…
“Is it the tattoo? Because mine’s bigger!”
Bro got reverse rasicm’d
There was a slightly different version of this around a month or two ago where the whole class was Navajo
Turns out Cherokee had a lot of princesses
Wonder if they went to the same school
The one thing I hate about modern social media is the lack of time tags. Twitter’s “6 days ago” tells me fucking nothing! Tumblr’s complete absence of temporal acknowledgment is frustrating.
You can get the time if you go to the post and click on the three dots, but it really shouldn’t be that much effort.
Must have been math class cause this dummy doesn’t know anything about percentages.
He was connecting with nature during maths
Class sizes are outrageous now. There must have been literally 100 people in the class including him. =p
Do they call themselves “Indians”?
Many do, yes.
I have a few friends who are Narragansett and they all call themselves Indians
I love the Narragansett
Yep that’s the one, I live right near the brewery
According to CGP Grey, yes, they do.
What do you mean they?! /s. Personally I don’t like the term, but my status card does say “Indian and northern affairs”, but at least if you go to the government site it mentions how “Indian” is not how many indigenous people want to be referred to as. Why do they not change it? Good question, I’d assume legal stuff with the act or whatnot. But at least I prefer indigenous.
I can’t say I personally know many Indigenous people, but the few I do would often refer to themselves as “a cherokee” or as part of the insert here tribe. Based on the other comments it seems like that isn’t as typical as I thought.
From what I gather, that seems more common in the US. But I don’t really know, just got that sense from media and such.
My guess as to why they don’t change it is COBOL
A majority of them I knew growing up in Oklahoma did, but that was in the 90s, I have no idea if that is still a typical thing.
Yeah, the older people still say stuff like “come over here and talk Indian with me”. But it seems like most of the younger people will either say their native, or name a specific tribe.
I grew up being told to say “native American”, so it really threw me when I went to the Smithsonian recently and saw the “American Indian” museum.
A museum museum would be kind of cool. Just a bunch of VR headsets where you can visit museums that no longer exist.
Nah, this is fake as shit.
In college I had an SJW that basically let me do whatever I want in class because I was trans, thank God too, cause damn is Intro to Psychology a hard fucking class
Damn, the only leeway I ever got was for being smart. Sure me being trans certainly helped with the lesbian professor, but she was only giving me leeway because I excelled in her classes. Turns out gen ed English professors dgaf if you go in already writing at a college level
Oh I flunked the fuck out of College English several times despite that not making any sense, I’ve always done well with words and shit, hell I’m a fucking writer.
I talked to my guidance consular about this, and she told me that sometimes professors have biases towards or against students, or just a fucking weird way of doing things, and everytime I had the same professor, so she just had me take it one more time with someone else.
Aced the FUCK out of it with no problem, so yeah… there’s negative and positve bias… The first english teacher was a cold bitch, but the one I switched to was pretty cool and actually engaged with the material, explained what he expected from assignments, a complete 180
Yeah I was taught to write in a white upper middle class Midwestern style with an explicit push towards academic and persuasive styles. My high school prepped me for it hard. Add in a certain charisma when I write and I’m exactly who skates by in stuff like that.
And yeah that prof was firm but fair and we got on great.
God fuck I wish I realized I was trans back in College I might have had a way easier time instead of burning out and having a mental breakdown because I went to some liberal as fuck courses (…partly due to said mental breakdown, mind.)
In the words of my favorite Presidents: “Discipline makes things easier. Organize your life”
Just saying letting you do whatever probably didn’t make that class easier.
Funny they would say it’s racist…
The gov of Canada allows any of its employees who identifies as first Nation to take extra days off to participate in traditional practices (including fishing and hunting), which is something that doesn’t exist for anyone else and to me that’s discrimination towards anyone that isn’t Christian or first Nation considering our holidays are based on Christian celebrations…
Edit: Guess I wasn’t clear? Our holiday calendar being based on Christian celebrations and first Nations getting a guaranteed 5 days off to celebrate their traditions is discrimination against people that aren’t part of either group since they’re at the mercy of their manager when it comes to being able to have a day off for their traditions/holidays.
Giving rights to people doesn’t take them away from others.
If Christians needed this according to their religion I have no doubt they’d get it.
In fact in my country (UK) many Christian events are already holidays (Easter, Christmas). Is this not the same in Canada?
Edit:
Canadians commonly refer to Easter as the period from Good Friday through Easter Monday. Good Friday (and /or Easter Monday) is a statutory holiday in Canada.
Christians already have this in Canada. So your point is totally incorrect. This in fact brings their religious rights in line with Christians.
I’m saying that people that aren’t Christians or first Nations are discriminated against because they don’t get guaranteed days off to celebrate their traditions. It’s 100% in the hands of their manager to accept it if asked.
Ah I see your point now.
So we should be trying to get this right for other religious groups and not complain that first nation people have it.
Giving more people rights is always better than taking them away.
My favorite solution is to treat everyone the same by making the holiday calendar secular (one long weekend a month or something of the sort) and giving everyone X personal days a year.
Yeah a certain amount of days a year regardless of religion seems the obvious thing.
It’s literally discrimination yo. The should never be more/less rights for specific groups like race, gender, age, etc…
No it’s literally not and there absolutely should be when you take cultural biases into account.
If everyone was equal to begin with you’d be right but they aren’t.
Putting a female or foreign sounding name on a CV results in less responses. So those people should be given a boost because they’re already behind.
Disabled people are already at a disadvantage so giving them an advantage doesn’t make anyone else worse off.
It’s not a zero sum game.
Giving rights to people doesn’t take them away from others.
This is a horrible take. Some people being more equal than others has the same effect as discriminating everyone else. Let’s give just white people some right and see how well that goes over (again).
We need to give these rights to other religious groups. Not take them away from others.
Well exactly. Having privileged groups in obviously the wrong way to go about things. Even if it is looked as just “giving more rights” to a group instead of everyone else being deprived of that right.
Then you’re still treating people unequally based on however many holidays their religion has. Not to mention atheists. It shouldn’t go beyond “you get priority to get this specific day off over this other person for whom it’s not a special day”. And of course not allowing employers to deny vacation requests without a good reason, for some minimum number of days a year.
Then choose your religion based on how many days off it gets you.
I can make a new one that has a holiday every day of the year at that point.
That aside, pretending to be part of a religion for personal gain feels rather disrespectful for something that for many people is deeply personal.
Sure. Then if nobody hires you, it’s not religious discrimination - they’re actually respecting your religion’s beliefs about never needing to work
This is what happens when people condense ideas into simple phrases. The quote works great when describing things like marriage equality, but something like extra days off work for some people is different. The obvious solution is flexible holidays for everyone.
Treating some better than others is just prone to issues since by treating a group better than others, the flipside is you’re treating others worse than them. Flexible holidays would be a fair solution.
It would be discrimination if only Christians got December 25 and 26 off. But that’s not the case, is it?
In terms of Indigenous people getting extra holidays… well they get that because of residential schools and even worse things done by the Canadian government. I dunno, it’s a whole emotional thing, there’s not much logic to why 5 days off helps with all that. The government generally just does stuff like this so Indigenous people don’t go to the UN and embarrass the country.
But arguing against Christmas being a holiday means the “War on Christmas” crowd won’t go along with you, and arguing against Indigenous rights gets the left against you. So it’s a politcal non-starter.
One religious group gets to have all its holidays off by default
One ethnic group gets to have an extra five days off to participate in traditional activities
All people who aren’t part of those two groups are dependent on the goodwill of their employer to have days off for their religious holidays and traditional activities
How is that not discrimination?
If the CHRC agrees I think there must be something there, right?
https://www.chrc-ccdp.gc.ca/en/resources/publications/discussion-paper-religious-intolerance
Discrimination against religious minorities in Canada is grounded in Canada’s history of colonialism. This history manifests itself in present-day systemic religious discrimination. An obvious example is statutory holidays in Canada. Statutory holidays related to Christianity, including Christmas and Easter, are the only Canadian statutory holidays linked to religious holy days. As a result, non-Christians may need to request special accommodations to observe their holy days and other times of the year where their religion requires them to abstain from work.Footnote4But religious accommodations for other groups do exist.
Edit: sorry, this was meant for another comment. People in this thread seem to be missing the fact that non-christians and non-native people may be able to ask for religious accommodations from their workplace.
Being allowed extra days off sounds like it would be terrible for your job prospects.
?
You have to deliver fewer hours of work than other potential employees. Plus, your employer has to plan around your schedule in particular. It’s a lucky break for any employer if you are just not the right guy for the job for reasons completely unrelated to your ethnic background.
Yeah we’re talking about the public service here so it’s not something that people really worry about, but I understand where you’re coming from if we were talking about the private sector…
Oh yeah, public services never discriminate!
If there’s one employer for which you can work where you can be sure they will do something if you feel like you’re discriminated against due to your ethnicity it’s that one.
I would say that that’s the government of Canada making itself a more attractive potential employer for folks who identify as First Nation (and thanks to the Indian Act they wouldn’t be able to make it up on the fly)
Many organizations offer religious accommodations, it’s just usually something thats handled internally and not necessary advertised.
But it being dependent on the goodwill of your employer leaves the door open to discrimination.
Your boss is a closeted racist and you’re a Muslim asking to have an unpaid day off for an Islamic holiday? Refused. You’re a white guy asking for a day off to have a long weekend for camping? No problem. You’re a Christian they celebrates Easter? Hey, you’re off by default!
Everyone should have the same opportunities, no matter their ethnic origin or their religious beliefs, the government should be blind to that.
That’s fair. I don’t know enough about discrimination laws to speak on whether it already is the case (even where I am), but I agree it should be legislated.
It brings to mind parental leave packages and how employers sell themselves on those, when realistically it would make for a healthier society if strong parental leave was the standard as opposed to an exception.
Lol, Native Americans don’t go out everyday and perform rituals to “connect with nature”. That’s the racist part in the post. Some Indigenous tribes probably do, but not all Native Americans are the same. There are still different tribes and ethnic groups with their own customs and culturesm
Nah, I just found it funny because the federal government applies the same kind of logic to their employees as a reconciliation measure, so it’s pretty ironic.
