Discussing How An Event Affected You, And What You Wanted Instead

Discussing How An Event Affected You, and What You Wanted Instead

When understanding a problem, testing samples include or exclude distinctive differences in a population. Diversity in the sample set or lack there of may be necessary depending on what problem is being observed. In the case of Darwin’s Finches, samplings were finches from different islands. In the case of a class room, it would be students with various and diverse backgrounds.  In the case of companies, it would be the various employees with diverse backgrounds.  And, in the case with clients, every client is considered unique.

While samples may integrate or segregate based on differences, it is used scientifically to study a particular and unique characteristic of the population as a whole.  Who is affected by this problem and why?  For cancer patients, the segregation of candidates may be required to identify a unique gene flaw, which is then tested against non-cancer patients.  The same would hold true with Alzheimer patients.  Or patients with Leukemia due to exposure to glyphosate [ Round Up ].

When segregation and integration are used in a human population to define racism, it is not used scientifically to understand a problem, but to create an artificial problem that doesn’t exist, and probably never did. Yet, it is used to exclude and separate people from opportunities that should be available to everyone.

Racism is not a prejudice against humans of different races, because there are no different human races. Rather, racism is the process whereby certain characteristics — like religion — are taken as signs of essential biological difference. Sociologists Karen E. Fields and Barbara J. Fields call this creation of difference "racecraft." Racecraft is all the cultural work done to divide people into arbitrary categories called "races." Once you've established that this human, over here, is not in fact fully human, discrimination and prejudice follows naturally.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlaws discrimination in hiring on the basis of "race, color, religion, sex, age, or national origin."

A recent ruling by U.S. Magistrate Mark Hornsby of Louisiana helped to clarify the distinction between race and racism. Hornsby ruled July 16 in a civil case Joshua Bonadona vs Brewer, where Bonadona sued under civil rights law, alleging that Brewer had discriminated against him by denying him a coaching position because his mother was Jewish, even though he himself is Catholic. In this case, Bonadona wasn't being discriminated against for religion, since he was not actually Jewish. So was he then being discriminated against on racial grounds, based on his heritage?

Hornsby concluded that he was, since "Jewish citizens have been excluded from certain clubs or neighborhoods," Hornsby writes, "and they have been denied jobs and other opportunities based on the fact that they were Jewish, with no particular concern as to a given individual’s religious leanings. Thus, they have been treated like a racial or ethnic group that Title VII was designed to protect from employment discrimination based on membership in that group.”

Systematic segregation was and is used to create unnecessary problems, like: discrimination, isolation, wage gaps, roadblocks to work, investment disenfranchisement, poorer public services, fewer business opportunities, opposing culture fears, concentrated fears, linguistic and dialogue drift … just to name a few problems at the society level.  

And in a recent conversation concerning low wages for teachers, I stated, “are you aware of the stress placed on people who are earning below that limit [4x their rent]. They and their children are not able to participate economically in our society. Many of these homes have high ACE numbers, leading to children that will not be productive when the graduate from high school or college, simply because they will be dealing with psychological problems and inappropriate social habits.”

To break down the stereotypes created through segregation there are two sets of instruction needed:

1. Debate as Scientific Inquery

2. Facilitating the affects of an action

Our country is not a democracy as many believe, but a republic.  A republic is built on the power of representation, or put another way, sampling.  The idea is that a representation of the populous as a whole is taken to understand the social direction the group as a whole should go.  We consider how these representatives are elected the democratic process, but it’s more than just voting .. it’s talking, and not just talking (free speech), it’s how we discuss issues that matter.

Debate provides the guiding principle on how issues are discussed. We don’t have to use the rules of debate, or Roberts Rules of Order to insure that debates between 2 or 5 individuals are handled with decorum. This methodology only gets in the way at this level of discussion.  Instead, it is to focus on the issue vs labeling.

Labels – topics, groups of people, types of fruit, … - are used convey meaning when a longer explanation of meaning is not necessary.  The distinction between Roman Tomatoes and Cherry Tomatoes is easily understood. Yet,  labels easily lead to classifications based in racism or wealth – squalor, poor, low, middle, and wealthy, upper class.  Labels can also be applied to the conditions children at home face – single parent, fatherless, only child, middle child, youngest child, molested, endangered, …

Whenever someone uses a label in a debate, the participants in the debate should not accept the label as given, but instead use the scientific method to consider the label’s validity.  Is gravity really 9.8 meters per second squared, or only at sea level?  What happens as we move farther away from the earths surface, does gravity change?  

Nor should labels be used in a derogatory fashion to label a debater, such as name calling, or race bating.  “You are only saying that because you’re a bleeding heart liberal!  Stop being a snow flake and accept the fact that homeless people choose to be low life’s who don’t want to work!  They could find work if they wanted to, they just don’t want to!”

Scientific Inquiry, uses 6 questions to determine if everyone agrees that something is what it is, vs common sense:

1. observer the phenomena

2. form a question

3. create a theory about the phenomena

4. conduct an experiment

5. analyze the data and draw conclusions

6. see if others can replicate your results

Here the scientific process can be used to test that gravity does in fact change as you move away from sea level, though ever so slightly.  And, it can be used to examine the labels used in a debate.  Those labels that concern the topic of diversity in homeless populations.  We could simply challenge the observation that all homeless people are alike. Are they?  What if some of the homeless do actually want to be homeless, while others are migratory, and others became homeless due to economic circumstances that they are unable to change and would willingly choose a home if the opportunity arose, and so on.

The biggest challenge will be changing the culture ingrained methods we use to discuss how a problem affects us.  I say culturally ingrained, because as a child I was uniquely positioned to watch how a family issue affected me personally, and how my mother used her authority and position to pressure me into silence.  This issue is the, “Family Secret!”. It’s passed down through the generations. It happens to every generation. It is never spoken about, because if others were to learn of the family secret they would judge us, ridicule us, think less of us, or they would split us up and put us in different families that would be far worse than what I was dealing with as a 5 year old.

The challenge is to provide a space where people of all ages can:

1. state what the situation was

2. voice how a situation affected them

3. state what they wanted instead

"We believe that the real number of children whose records were lost or who were afraid ever to come forward is in the thousands," the grand jury report says.  

In a study of children exposed to violence, including being a witness to and a victim of violence, is examined among 8-11-year-old children of migrant and seasonal farm workers. Potential relationships between sociodemographic factors and violence exposure are examined, and associations between violence exposure and children's emotional and behavioral problems, and weapon carrying behavior are investigated. The results show that greater than 50% of the children had been exposed to violence, with 46% having witnessed violence among others and 19% having been the direct victims of violence.

Violence exposure was positively related to children's emotional problems, behavioral problems, and weapon carrying behavior. Compared to non exposed children, violence exposed children were eight times more likely to evidence internalizing problems, were six times more likely to evidence externalizing problems, and were four times more likely to carry weapons (specifically, knives or guns).

As NYPD SVU demonstrates in their series, is that children do not have the language to articulate the violence that they have witnessed.  Nor, when the violence is reported, are people willing to listen to it, as the Grand Jury in Pennsylvania reported.  Victims of rape were often told to get out of the precinct house by officers who didn’t want to hear about it.  If they made it past the officers to a detective, the case was often lost.

When university's create “Safe Spaces”, what they should really be creating are “Safe Spaces for people to talk about the violence they witnessed or was perpetrated on them.”  In most cases, these safe spaces are created by therapeutic integration groups, where “Adults Molested as Children” or AMACs are able to see how the violence affected everyone involved.  They are encouraged to discuss how the violence affected them. And, they are encouraged to discuss what they wanted instead.

I said that this is a cultural issue, since this same situation [non disclosure and confrontation] is perpetrated by the HR departments.  People who feel offended are separated from those that have offended them, instead of confronting them.  Closure comes from being able to describe the situation, state how if affected them, and what they wanted instead. While I won’t go into all the legalities of why this methodology came about and persists, I can use this forum to advocate that the HR department review it’s policies with group psychologists to see if this method could be employed to improve relations between various groups of people.

References:

Judge rules that Judaism is not a race but Jewish people can be targeted for racism. Here's why that matters.

https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/judge-rules-judaism-not-race-jewish-people-can-be-targeted-ncna896806

Economic Consequences of Segregation

http://www.umich.edu/~lawrace/consequences.htm

Scientific Method Steps

http://www.schoolofdragons.com/how-to-train-your-dragon/the-scientific-method/scientific-method-steps

Report details sexual abuse by more than 300 priests in Pennsylvania's Catholic Church

https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/14/us/pennsylvania-catholic-church-grand-jury/index.html

Children Face Dangers On Farms, But Not From Farmwork

https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2012/03/09/148320219/children-face-dangers-on-farms-but-not-from-farmwork

Survey of exposure to violence among the children of migrant and seasonal farm workers.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7610214

Key facts about children’s exposure to violence

https://www.childtrends.org/indicators/childrens-exposure-to-violence

Destroy!

Nu.

1600 breaths continuous Breaths .. 100, 1600, 200 Speed .. 3.5, 6.0, 3.5 Bpm .. 86, 110, 165, 132 Miles .. .41, 4, .4, .5 ... 5.5 Time .. 7, 50, 9 Incline .. 2, -1.5, 0 Weight .. Bmi .. Muscle .. 35 Ive been eating more animal protean lately. Like 1 lb per meal. Im finding that my happiness comes more easily. This is probably due to less sugar diet.

Fundamentalists

The problem with fundamentalists, is that they always complain that they are being excluded from the conversation.  Hate speech should be allowed, since all speech should be allowed.  Except, hate speech only has 1 purpose, and I’ll get back to this in a minute.

Fundamentalists aren’t being excluded from the conversation. No, instead, they are being ignored.  Which is more infuriating.  They want to be heard.  But not in a fashion that supports actually resolving an issue. Instead, they want to be heard in such a way that it distracts from solving a problem.  As if kaos were the only solution.

The Supreme Court created a test that stated that speech is not protected when it fails one or both of these tests:

Does it harm yourself

Does it harm others

Think about that for a moment. Does your freedom of expression cause physical harm to yourself.  If you cut yourself in such a way that it puts your life in danger, should this activity be protected?  And, what if a group uses ritual sacrifice, which ends the life of another human, is that protected speech?  In this case NO!.  It is not protected speech.

The second test is whether your speech calls for hurting another person or group.  This came about when Sarah Palin asked her base to shoot a Senator.  Had anyone else said it, they would have been incarcerated immediately.  However, this speech is not protected either.  Calling for someone’s death is akin to demanding genocide.

Which brings us back to what fundamentalists want.  If they believe that kaos is the answer to everything, then their only means of feeling as though they are winning is when kaos rules. Thus, to achieve kaos, they must engage everyone else in fights.  It is the only time that a fundamentalist is being heard.

Fights don’t solve problems.

And, thus, why fundamentalists are ignored. Not silenced. Just not given the space needed to be engaged.  This requires time or energy and will only be lost in a fruitless exchange that leads no where.  

17 miles

Quarreling Siblings

As a parent, you might relate to quarreling siblings each picking on each other, and eventually getting into a fight because neither started the fight, neither are willing to end the fight, and neither believe that they are in the wrong for either continuing the fight or for starting it. And, yet, you have to stop the fight by sending both of them to their respective corners.

Why?  Why do you stop the fight?  What is your reason as an adult for stopping the fight?

There are many reasons: 

you’re tired of hearing them quarrell? 

you’re afraid they might actually cause physical damage to the house?

you’re worried that they may hurt each other?

you’re worried that you’ll get into trouble of the police are called, and they file charges through child protective services?

you believe that siblings need to fight to prepare them for the real world which will beat them down at the first instant it can.

What distinguishes Good Leaders from Great Leaders is their reason.  And, the way they go about separating the siblings, as well as bringing them back together again.

Great Leaders separate the siblings because there is an expectation of how they are to treat each other, even when their is a disagreement.  In general, it’s called, “Dialogue”.   But not just any dialogue, it’s a discussion about what was the original point that caused the ruckus in the first point.

What type of society do you want to live in? Is it a society that quarrels with each other over the smallest of issues, or one that discusses the issues to understand them and find solutions that start addressing part of the issue, if not all of it.

The next step is to bring the two siblings back to each other, through their motivations.  What ever the original issue was, it may not be remembered, but what is remembered are the feelings and motivations for starting the fight.  These will uncover the reason for the fight.  And, through these, the two siblings and begin repairing the damage caused by the fight.

Eventually, as I’ve found, at some point, one sibling will need something from the other sibling. And, then either the argument will be over, or it will start again.  But, in most cases, the argument will be over, and the relationship will begin to be repaired.