Meta: more questions on off-season-off-topic subjects
So, it seems fairly well established that during the off season, when Michigan related sports content is lacking, posts on different topics (cars, pet peeves, favorite meals, worst meals, etc., etc., etc.) are tolerated and even appropriate sometimes.
The list of banned topics is fairly short: stay away from politics, religion, bewbs, and anything personal about Michigan athletes.
I'm curious about whether or not it is appropriate to talk about race issues. This morning, I saw a link from a college student who attends my church. The link was to a viral post by Colgate student Jenny Lundt, who was commenting on white privilege. (you can easily find this if you wish by googling "jenny lundt." Her initial comments went up about a week ago.)
The topic of race, and white privilege, is important. I think there is a subtext on race and white privilege that is very much part of the world inhabited by athletes. It is a topic that is rarely talked about, although I'm sure it is something every athlete is aware of. I do remember seeing something about race and building bridges in Michigan's locker room several years ago, when Hoke was still coach.
My question is whether or not a topic like this works at mgoblog. It is relevant. It isn't politics or bewbs or religion. We're in the middle of the off season. And yet . . . I wonder if we can have a civilized discussion on this. Or whether it is too fraught with danger. I can see arguments going both for and against this kind of topic.
EDIT: Well, the board has spoken, and common sense prevails. While not technically spelled out as off limits, the board isn't the place to discuss hot button issues that are important societally. Which includes race issues. I can accept that. After all, I come here to read about Michigan sports.
Having said that, I will have to seek out better places for dialogue and discussion. I miss the late night discussions in the dorms. Maybe that doesn't happen any more. But I loved that you could have debate with guys on your floor who felt very passionately, take different positions, and still relate as friends the next day. The problem with some forums is that they are either echo chambers with people who have the same take you do, or echo chambers with trolls seeking to provoke. Honestly, I'm not looking for either of those kind of discussions.
So, from your perspective, hot button topics are by definition political? Well, if you go that way, than it makes sense to say that discussion of race has no place here.
Generally, yes, at least as far as this board is concerned. Keep in mind that virtually every topic of controversy that is not religious has become a subject for debate between politically-minded idealogies with real consequences in spheres of policy.
I defended you earlier and now you gotta do this? No he did not say that Hot-button=poilitical. He said that it is a political AND hot-button topic. After which he explained are pretty much the same thing on this blog. You can not have a conversation on a "hot-button" topic without politics getting involved. Many people have their beliefs based along party lines and bringing up an issue that the two sides of the aisle debate about the ligitmacy of, is going to spark a political debate, whether you intended to or not.
This is obviously not the place for this conversation although many(most) of us would love to be able to have this conversation with our most favorite internet community. I think it is an extremely important issue that needs more recognition around the world, but on a UM sports blog, has no place. I gave you and anyone else my email address in an earlier comment if someone seriously wants to have this conversation, but let's do it in the privacy of an email conversation, not the one and only BEST MICHIGAN BLOG EVER.
I look forward to email dialogue. I was actually curious about whether there could be intelligent and civil dialogue on this topic. This is actually something, as I said several times, which intersects very directly with sports and with Michigan sports. I have read enough from Michigan athletes to know that they definitely have opinions about this.
The whole relationship of this topic to politics and religion is complicated. I would love to have the discussion without bringing in politics or religion, although to be true, they are part of the discussion. Because of my status as a pastor and Christian, assumptions are made (about me) by some on the board, which aren't necessarily true. But I expect it.
I realize that I myself get frustrated by the statements of some posters who in my opinion unfairly assume motivations or ideological positions held by myself and others. After things kind of went in that direction, I backed off on commenting. It just becomes pointless and irritates everyone. Some posters have close to an auto neg position. While points are pretty much meaningless, you kind of realize there's nothing good about adding more responses that are just going to be negged.
I continue to believe that it is important to talk about issues like this. I appreciate this virtual community. For those of us who are not students and not in academe, there doesn't seem to be hardly any good venues to have discussion in a diverse community.. C'est la vie.
EDIT: BTW, I posted in response to StephenRJKing yesterday evening, before your post above in the thread with your email. I guess I could have said to SRJK, mmmkay or "riiight." Because while SRJK et al are right that I should know better (about posting, even a meta topic,) it is also the case that technically, unlike politics, religion, and pics of bewbs, hot topics aren't banned from the board. Common sense says they might as well be.
Issues of Race and racial theory are inately political. They cannot be seperated. Race in many ways is an entirely political concept with numerous examples throughout our simple history. Whiteness iteself is purely political with no basis in actual science and significantly changing definitions over time. Race and all issues surrounding race are as much political as they are social and always have been.
First off, damn you are pushing me to my grammar nazi ends. But really what bothers me is that you consider issues of race to be political. They are not political. Ask any practicing psychologist and they will tell you about the issues with hiring practices, workplace discrimination, and natural tendencies to want to be around others that look and behave like ourselves, and how they are innate(Hey that's how you spell it!) and subconsious. White people are more likely to associate happy emotions and thoughts with a white person's face than an african-american's. The same is true in the opposite way. These are facts. I don't have a perfect solution to the problem as I am only a studying psychiatrist, however, I think accepting the facts as facts, and not as political debate is the first step to addressing this issue. There is very little doubt among workplace psychologists that race discrimination is not a political issue, but rather a human issue that we need to work to overcome.
SRK, c'mon. Discussion of race is somehow not political (or religious)? It is one of the defining political issues of the last five years, perhaps THE defining one. The suggestion that "race is different from politics" is in itself a presuppositional political statement.
And you should know this.
Frankly, in our culture, it is virtually impossible for such conversations to BOTH include legitimate multiple viewpoints AND remain civil. Either it remains civil by people rushing to agree with each other at the expense of real idealogical diversity, or people get offended and temperatures rise.
I would be skeptical about conversations of this type in any format, and certainly here.
We'd double-disqualify the thread once we got into heated discussions of Lutheran vs. Baptist theology, so I don't think there's a lot of ground that we can cover here.
Addendum to my earlier post: Race is heated in the last five years. Yes, obviously. That does not mean that it hasn't been a major issue before that, because it obviously has--for our country's entire life.
Yeah, but my avatar is better than your avatar. So there.
EDIT: Do you have two middle names? Stephen R. J. King? So a debate would be between SRK and SRJK?
Yep. Robert James, my two grandfathers. The double-middle name is a modest family tradition amongst eldest sons.
BTW, my immediate family is probably the only group of people on earth who would choose my avatar over yours, and given the nature of my avatar even that is a questionable assertion.
Well, we are both Stephen Robert. But my middle name is after my father.
As for the avatar, my wife has always been the one with the good looks. One of these years, I'm going to change it to another picture of her.
wouldn't your real Christian cage match would be protestant v. catholics?
and maybe a good OT thread would be: Name an OT Topic sure to blow the board up! i bet there'd be some dandies in that one.
Or it might be Orthodox vs. Roman Catholic.
Regarding StephenRJKing and Baptists, I read once that in Tennessee, there is a church with the name of "Left Foot Baptist Church." Apparently, there had been a dispute in one particular church over the practice of foot washing as to whether you should wash the right or the left foot. And so the congregation split over the question. StephenRJKing being a Baptist, he would have better source material to verify whether or not this story is true or apocrophal.
I suspect that the story is apocryphal, though I have no actual evidence to prove it. There are various stories like that, though, that are exagerations developed to humorously illustrate a point. And that point (there are a lot of small Baptist churches that have small differences from one another in close proximity, particularly in the south) is reasonably accurate.
Interestingly (and discussion of this would definitely break the thread) many Baptists don't consider themselves protestant at all.
Yes, this is very interesting to me. There is a very different culture for small Protestant (and Baptist, and Pentecostal, and Holiness) churches in the south. On my maternal grandmother's side of the family, they go back 6 generations in western Kentucky near Paducah. I have visited two of three family cemeteries. The 3rd was the family slave cemetery, and it's exact location is no longer extant. (I kid you not.) I visited a great uncle at Macedonia Road Baptist Church, and have done service work with another church in West Virginia. Just a whole different world than anything in Ann Arbor or Chicago.
But if people were just better to each other, it would be good.
Sounds a lot closer. But who's counting?
Can't get here fast enough for me.
Be glad. Lennon was an asshole for most of his life.
Your characterization of "Lennon was an asshole for most of his life" is so full of your own subjective bs that its credibility and accuracy IMO is just barely above absolute zero.
Nobody is perfect, and Lennon was not the excepttion to that that you are.
On the other hand, he is clearly the most important figure in popular music, and has been for 50 years, and will likely continue to be.
I am not a huge fan, my third favorite Beatle, but cmon man, get a grip.
You are 100% correct. However, I wasn't being provocative. I think I was just wistfully wishing that a discussion like that could be possible. Which is why I posted a meta topic, instead of the topic itself. And yes, I too very much wish we could have a real discussion on touchier topics. If points were like coin, I'd be glad to cash in 500 or 1000 to be part of such a discussion. But points don't work that way.
I thought just photographs were banned. I decry this legal overreach but I'm not prepared to do anything about it.
You must be a lawyer. I misspoke. Obviously pics of bewbs are banned. Technically discussion of the same is not banned. Since we are off season, maybe you could start a discussion topic on bewbs?
My addition to that topic: since we went to a wedding last week, and my wife was getting some new duds for herself and searched a bunch of sites for various apparel items, I now get pics of barely covered bewbs from Macy's and Victoria's Secret and another emporium or two coming up on my side bar ads. Even though my wife never comes to mgoblog. Smh. I'm going to have to either delete those cookies or search a bunch of things like Michigan apparel to get those ads to disappear.
what about duathletes or us (exceedingly slow) tri-athletes? is there space in the tent for us or is that too much diversity?
It doesn't get more athletic or require more endurance than that. Kudos.
trust me, athletecism is a requirement around here to keep up. whatever i had is fading fast....trying to make up for it with cunning and grouchiness.
Did you enjoy the races, or is the /s tag the clue that you actually despise running and racing and waddling?
Also, how did you travel to and from Bolivia? Would love to hear about your trip.
To address one of your questions. I'm "far right" politically except when I am not. I would describe my politics as "practical midwesterner." I have hate for no people. Well, except possibly for politicians and sociopaths, whom routinely screw over the people of my adopted burg, Chicago. And yet I agree to serve this societal poison when asked. I'm a complicated dude who actually desires to resolve problems,and that's a thing.
And, yes, I've physically visited Bolivia, as well as every one of the fifty states, 50-100 foreign countries, if not more, including solo motorcycling across Africa, and all seven continents, including three weeks crossing glaciers on the Antarctic continent.
Michigan football, hockey and softball are my primary interests when I escape here, although South America ain't a bad place to visit on your own terms, and so I've visited the real and virtual Bolivias.
Living in greater Chicago, I feel your pain, with the State budget impasse and the political culture and corruption. Yeah, this isn't the place to discuss any of that, but what a mess our fair state is in. Smh. Yeah, I have feelings about politics here, but never comment on them anywhere.
Kinda like the OP.
i came here for the bewbs.
i left feeling a distinct lack of satisfaction.
Didn't do it for you? Me neither.
I'm always surprised at the level at which SRK tries to push the envelope on verboten topics around here. Religion isn't OK here. Doing things like "let's talk about race" isn't OK, either, especially when it's thinly veiled in "someone from my church brought this up."
What's so hard about a sports blog being a place to talk about sports? You're a preacher. We get it. This isn't a place to talk about that stuff. Quit trying to stretch the boundaries.
Word.
The hubris on display in his last OP was pretty stunning to me.
My last OP was on texting and driving. I happened to be in the car, ready to respond to a text, and remembered the day previous a post where many users were peeved with drivers who texted. Which led me to remember that many people say they don't like texting and driving at the same time, but do it themselves. I was guilty as charged, so posted about it once I got off the road. Just a friendly reminder to anyone else out like myself who doesn't like it, yet still does it.
So here's where I'm confused. What's proud about owning up to the fact that I'm inconsistent, and that I have been guilty of texting while driving? I was simply self-aware enough to say that there's something wrong with this picture. That's all. Don't see the hubris in that. Whatever.
So, I was mistaken about it being an OP. It was your comment in the "What do you do for a living?" thread. Apologies for the mistake.
Thank you,
A white guy
My two cents? The term white privelege is a dangerous and self defeating way to describe real injustices in our society. It brings up guilt and perpetuates distance between people and us-versus-them attitudes, making problems worse.Yes there are real wrongs in the past and present, but no I don't see white privelege as the healthy way to frame the problems. America is the dream that people of all backgrounds can come together as equals under shared values. So it comes down to how well we treat each other and about how much we value each other, shown through our actions. Talking about priveleges goes backward toward disunity, whereas talking about shared values, goals, and examining how we treat each other in a color-neutral way is a way forward toward unity.