What if Wendy Kopp was black?

                         I have to admit to some bias before writing this blogpost. I have always made it known that I am a 2014 NYC corp member (about to finish my 2 year commitment). As a corp member I've seen the good, the bad and the ugly of the NYC corp. However, this blogpost is not really going to discuss those topics. Instead it's going to ask the question of whether Teach for America is the best form of support for high need schools? Or perhaps there was an alternative path that could have achieved similar, if not better results than Teach for America, while not carrying the white savior complex people often ascribe to the corp.
                     One might wonder what race has to do with it, but in many ways the approach of TFA is what I would imagine a well intentioned outsider would do if they were confronted with the horrors of educational equity. You see Wendy Kopp, founder of the corp, birthed the idea when she realized that investment banks and wall street were aggressively recruiting top talent from great schools and wondered why those students weren't going into education? Thus TFA was formed, the financially feasible way of going into teaching, while also keeping every other career option open. The idea that more intelligent teaching candidates would lead to more effective teachers isn't necessarily an awful one. The only issue is that teachers are kind of like fruit, it takes a few years for them to ripen and the best ones are often shipped to private and charter restaurants. Teach for America has certainly inspired people to remain in education or affect some sort of policy change in education, but the mantra of "one day" constantly posed to corp members as if it were a Utopian dream we were working towards, rings hollow as you realize how static the education system is. When I say static I mean static in its educational discrepancies. Schools  seem to be playing a game of firefighter, where the low performance is the constantly raving wildfire and the myriad of curricula are the ineffective tools used to put out these low performing outcomes.
                  And yet one day always seems to be several years away. Outcomes may change for individual teachers and classrooms, but your illustrious students of 7th grade easily slip back into their under performing ways when they reach another corp member who wasn't quite up to the task in 8th grade. I was that corp member my first year. Ineffective at classroom management and lackluster when delivering material, Teach for America had placed me in a position where I was largely unsuccessful. But I bit my tongue, took my lumps and finished what one education school professor described to me as the "tunnel of shit" that is one's first year of teaching. Now at the end of my second year, I am able to see actual growth in my students. I have grown into my own and find myself exponentially getting better at the job. Each day I become more aware of what good instruction looks like and with the impending completion of my master's of education, I will now be certified as a professional and not the hastily put together corp member people like to caricature us as.
             The main ingredient for my success? Veteran teachers who have consistently shown me how to run a classroom. Often it's not only the quality, but the variety that helped me as a new teacher (I still am a new teacher). Every teacher had something different to give me in terms of my own identity as a teacher. From Mr. Singleton's emphasis on teaching kids respect to Ms. Spencer's ingenious use of social pressure to govern the classroom, each teacher made up a piece of my identity as a teacher. I learned to love my kids from Ms. Roman and was taught to stand my ground by Ms. Cabarcas. Even veteran teacher who I had little contact with were incredibly influential. For example, Mr. McKenna's tenacity was infectious and Ms. Dwyer's organization, admirable. I didn't need a class to teach me what a teacher was, I had examples of it all around me.
             On the contrary, my fellow corp members in other schools who had opposite experiences (basically their second year was a continuation of their first year) found themselves in schools with mostly new teachers. Never having any true veteran presence, many of them had to try to figure out for themselves how a teacher was supposed to function. Some of them were successful and some of them failed. I have no doubt that if many of them had veteran teachers who were willing to provide insight into their craft, they would have been successful.
            It is estimated that a teacher reaches peak performance after 4 to 5 years of experience. Effective schools have grade leaders and content leaders, who help create a uniformed approach to how content is developed. Their presence in schools makes it so that students in the classrooms of new teachers get a normalized teaching experience. Gone are the days where new teachers learn to fend for themselves and instead new teachers are explicitly taught what is proper pedagogy by seeing it in action.
         A 2013 study from the American Educational Research Journal found that turnover rates in high needs schools are much higher than their affluent peers. The reality is high need schools struggle to keep their excellent teachers. When I came back for my second year, I was shocked to see the mass exodus of teachers that had occurred. 5 veteran teachers of a staff of around 40 changed schools. While that might seem insignificant, the caliber of teacher we lost was tremendous. Those 5 teachers were among grade leaders and some of the most active co-workers in our staff. Many of them ran several clubs and did special events that they were only privy to. When they left, unique experiences our school could offer were taken with them.
        Which leads me back to my question. What if Wendy Kopp were black? Would she look to the ivy covered halls to find our new teacher force or would she realize that it was the life force of a few critical teachers that kept a staff running excellently. I believe instead of jettisoning recent college grads into difficult situations, the corp would serve better if it made the decision to leave a school you love much harder. It would provide money and prestige to those who stay at their schools. In all honesty, veteran teachers deserve every bit of that money and prestige, at least far more than I do. In a year I hope to be preparing for law school. I am not the solution to my school. But the veteran teachers struggling to stay another year are. What if one day good teachers stood in struggling schools? What if those teachers gradually made those schools great? It's a risk either way, but I'd rather put my bets on them then on myself.

Self Policing doesn't work when you're an invisible man

                         I thought the topic of Yale would be over. For those of you who don't know, Yale had a bit of controversy this past Halloween. A multicultural committee at Yale sent an email out to students asking them to be mindful of the costume choices they make this year. In response, the wife of one of the headmasters of a residential college at Yale, upheld a belief in being culturally conscious, but ultimately felt that self policing and honest discussion is the right way to go about achieving that goal. Students of color did not particularly like those comments and therefore demanded her resignation. If you want to know who I think was right and wrong (not like it matters) you can read my other blogpost about the matter. Instead I want to explain why Self-policing simply does not work for minorities.
                      Self-policing is a new entryway for racism to be disguised as pure disagreement. When self-policing becomes the defacto way to handle disagreements around hate crimes and other such transgressions, then anything short of blood (and even then some administrations look the other way) becomes ultimately ignored. One might argue that minorities can protest. But even we understand the concept of trade offs. Why protest that asshole frat boy Blake and his Cinco de Mayo outfit when we're still in arguments with the University over whether a black fraternity can get a house on Frat Row (cough University of Michigan cough). The point is that while these acts of racial insensitivity are damaging, we may not be willing to disrupt our everyday lives to exert the energy to get it to stop.
                 And when we do exert that sort of energy, due to the accumulation of abuse, we are typically met with the same response.
                   "Ok. Ok. Ok. Calm down, we didn't know you were that upset about it," says the unsuspecting public. But here's the thing, we probably have expressed our displeasure with the matter and were written off as either being overly sensitive (i.e. you need to let me have fun at your expense) or given some bullshit apology (e.g. I'm sorry, it's just so funny!). Then you wonder why we erupt randomly over what seems to be trivial but is actually important to us. The issue with self-policing is it puts the entire burden on minority students to create a new movement in order to solve problems that are non-existent in a non-minority student's life. Otherwise the non-,minority student will continue treating you like an invisible man, ignoring for as long as they can the subtle abuses they dish out through their everyday actions.
                When that headmaster's wife implied that self policing should occur, she essentially took away the only form of lifeline minority students had in terms of addressing grievances in a low energy manner. She sided, unknowingly with the students who were willing and ready to be culturally insensitive and instead of discovering through self reflection her mistakes, she remained adamant about not being at fault. Well she's wrong. She was at fault. Administrators are there to maintain peace and equality. They are not supposed to pick sides. Administrators only pick sides where there is a huge power differential (e.g. minority students constantly having to deal with culturally insensitive costumes) and even then they serve as equalizers. By having equal footing throughout the community, true intellectual dialogue can occur. But if you expect minority students to engage in discussion with our wings clipped and legs chained, then you are creating an intellectual dialogue for white men.

When mob justice doesn't work

                  People have an issue with mob justice, but I think the irony behind the criticism is that mob justice often represents the purest form of free speech that exists. In an anarchist society or one with little government intervention, mob justice would be the de facto social check for most behavior. If people don't like your shit, you got to go, or that's at least how many of these situations have been playing out. But one might be surprised to hear that even I have seen a few instances of mob justice where I had to raise my eyebrow. Often my issue is not with the mob (mobs are gonna mob, it's kinda what they do), but the actors responding to the mob. Simply put, when mob justice initially started, corporations were probably taken aback. Scandals have happened before the age of the internet, but now it's so much easier to expose the rampant racist remarks made in the upper echelons of corporate America. Since corporate America had lost its personality several decades ago, these businesses responded to this outrage as if it were a textbook scandal. What corporate America failed to realize was that the internet and all its awesome power can be angry about Africa tweets one minute and bickering about a dress color the next. I mean just ask Kony 2012 how the global movement of young people helped usher in a new change in the child soldier situation in Uganda (update: he still hasn't been caught). And that's ok, it's kinda how the internet has functioned. So why aren't corporations privy to the fickle nature of the internet? There are a few things that would probably help corporations and other domains deal with mob justice in an appropriate manner.


1. Verify before crucify:
          How many times have we seen someone's public image be crucified because they've been accused of a crime that they actually didn't commit?  Mob justice is what would happen if we did not have a legal system and decided to punish without verifying any of the facts. If corporations made it a standard to verify accusations and transgressions before reacting, we would see lynch mobs fizzle out quite quickly. But in order to do that, corporations need to be willing too...

2. Test the resolve of the mob:
       Remember I have no qualms with mob justice because mobs function like dust tornadoes (I hear people call em dust devils elsewhere, well fuck you) they look incredibly terrifying and can definitely be irritating if you're caught in it, but most of them will fizzle out in a few seconds, leaving you pretty much unscathed (except you'll have some dirt all over ya). So many forms of mob justice would fizzle out if a corporation claimed to take the mob seriously, but stood by their own, thorough investigative process. This process would test the mobs resolve and if the mob finds themselves easily distracted by the next bit of juicy internet drama, the corporation can then deal with the issue without the integrity of the penalization process being called into question.
If the mob continues their adherent disgust with the company, letting that disgust materialize in lost customers, etc., well the customer is always right and honestly such pressure is not and should not be illegal. People are allowed to choose with their wallets and if you can't make them happy, then you need to change your business model. But as I said before, this actually rarely happens. Sure the zealots, who scream from the mountaintops might call for a boycott, but these actions are just as effective as the so called boycotts the transphobic community has been launching against Target. Target don't give a fuck.

3. Have a consistent behavior scheme in your company
     Shout out to the Youtuber Destiny who made this awesome video about why the ban of Gross Gore from Twitch, while potentially justified, was ultimately unsettling. He argues that the fact that GrossGore escalated from several warnings to a full permanent ban when there were other intermediary steps that could have been taken, makes it seem like the process is unfair and can be easily manipulated. When there is a clear behavior protocol, then it's hard for mob justice to continue going, unless of course your system is inadequate for the particular instance that occurs. But you still don't cede to mob justice, just change your system to make it responsive. Furthermore, protocols ensure that people within your company or community know exactly what they can and cannot do, actually encouraging more freedom since people aren't afraid of randomly getting in trouble. 


           In short, mobs good, corporations dumb. Mobs can do their mob thing as long as the rest of the world responds to them appropriately. 

Test Prep and Prestige: How I learned to stop worrying and love teaching

                           I wake up at 5:30 in the morning every single day to begin my commute to my school. As a guy I'm blessed with the ability to do a 15 minute turn around and find myself on my way to the train station at 5:50. On a good day the trains run smoothly and I find myself a seat. On a bad day I spit out onto the tracks, my saliva representative of the fatigue of another work day, quietly dreading the eventual behavior disruption that will come on my triple period block with one of my classes. And then when I arrive they're perfect. I mean perfect in the sense that you could make a freedom writers movie using them, of course for that production to be complete you would need a teacher. I remember when I became a teacher, I tried to be a teacher. And it didn't work. So then I tried to be myself. From that point on my kids saw me as their teacher. Often the nerdiness comes through at times where I'm nervous or insecure. I find that your kids will strip you down and let you know when something is wrong. Your insecurities are keys on a piano for them to play. Better get used to hearing the tune. Eventually in your first year you'll find yourself drinking a little too much. Smoking a little too much. Curled up in a ball, crying in the shower with your clothes on, a little too much. And you'll hate it. At that moment no amount of mantra or motto will save you from the existential dread that can only be described as society induced disappointment. People can call you superman, but after a kid tells you to suck their dick, you begin to wonder why you even decided to become a teacher instead of taking that tech writer job in Wisconsin. I'm sure my manager there wouldn't have told me to suck his dick, well...probably. But you learn that forgiveness isn't a virtue, it's a paradigm that you're constantly stuck in. They're just kids isn't enough to forgive. Often times you have to murder pillows and bookcases in order to forgive yourself for taking it. Pictures taped up on your wall do little to comfort you after being berated. Your kids are not monsters, but the struggle will turn them into it. Test Prep means nothing when all you wanted was prestige. A flashy little badge to wear that says "I made it through Teach For America." Often times I find myself folding my students' notes a few times more when I snatch them from their hands. I want to bury their words in an infinitesimal dimension and each fold separates their words from me. Ahh you miserable fool. Why teach if you hate it. But I don't hate it. I love it. There are so many amazing moments where you get to see light bulbs and shattered fluorescent glass. I hope you have a hammer for glass ceilings male teacher because your female students will astound you. I spoke Spanish through my kids and through me they speak English. Our accents are embarrassing, but our rhetoric is eloquent. I can speak Vietnamese too. In fact every modicum of my voice has been crafted by their presence. To see me write is to see me teach. Performance or not, you choose the person you leave behind at the end of the mini-lesson. I used to think that teaching was about lecturing. I tried to lecture. It didn't work. I tried to talk to my kids. Now I am teaching.
         Being an adult is a farce taken to its extreme. No one is an adult until the title has been thrust upon them. Unfortunately teachers are forced to be adults. 22 and 23 year olds who were overgrown children in college attempt to be adults when they enter their classrooms for the first time. We can't afford rent or even a bed frame, but we'll still wear a button down with a tie and khakis to prove that we've moved on from our days of torn jeans and a University of Michigan hoodie. Four months in the hoodie will be donned weekly. You keep the khakis because you want to keep up the illusion of being professional. Your gelled hair will become dry and your pristine tie tossed aside. Such niceties are for show anyways. And teaching isn't a show. It's the show. You're the main attraction till the next body comes in.
       Sometimes I show my students my scars because they will judge me honestly. The irony of their honesty is that it's compassionate. I never understood how they could stand with me in solidarity against my plight. Then one day they showed me their scars and I cringed. My kids noticed my taken aback posture and begin to retreat. Often they'll nonchalantly talk about how they have no bed frame in their house. I guess we can bond over our own impoverished state, except for that fact that I've chosen this life. They are simply victims of fate. To err is to be human, but to be unjustly positioned in life is to be capitalist. I once had a student ask me what was he supposed to do at a funeral? His friend had died due to petty nonsense and he had to miss the long awaited school trip to attend the service. I had never been at a funeral, except for one. But it was for someone I hardly knew with feelings I could hardly understand. Adults are supposed to know the answers to these questions. At that moment I was the adult in his life. I failed. That night I went to a bar and pretended to drink myself into sorrow. Except I didn't go to a bar, I stood in and completed a grad school paper. And I didn't drink myself into sorrow, I stood up all night playing league of legends, raging at an unsuspecting player who did something that was not all too important.
       So why teach? Honestly there is no reason. Teachers are paid too little. The situations we are placed in are rigged. Success comes bundled in large portions of failure. This isn't a half empty- half full situation. It's a perhaps you could get one more drop from the cup situation. My kids are brimming with intelligence that has not been tapped till they got to me. I do not know why. I try to recount how I became intelligent and begin to wonder, am I even intelligent? Does the capacity to think and expound on one's thinking justify the label of intelligence. Meh, I could certainly beat my kids at my middle school self. And that's the issue. I don't remember a teacher specifically teaching me to be smart. I don't remember a teacher telling me I'm the best. I remember everyone around me expecting it. I sit in my chair one day, waiting for one of my kids to come up to me and say, "Mr. Arroyo how much smarter are the kids in Queens." I don't know what answer I'd give. Knowing myself I'd be honest. A lot smarter. They're harder workers. They truly engross themselves in the material and therefore by the time they get to high school and college they'll have developed the skills necessary to do higher level work. It's an uphill battle from here kid. At that point the kid would have ignored me and probably went back to what ever they were doing.
       I have a student who wants to be a lawyer. Dealing with her is night and day. When I saw her I incorrectly stereotyped her as the loud angry black girl. I now know that is a part of who she is. In my class, for the most part, she is a studious and inquisitive student, who is soft spoken when working through material. I understand her in ways she does not realize. I too, enjoy being quiet and studious, but often feel pressured to be loud and boisterous. Hell, I love being loud and boisterous. I do not need to choose. Both states are part of my personality repertoire. When she wrote in ebonics for her first persuasive essay, I did not cringe. I merely told her the truth. I completely understand your work, but the world outside of here will deem it unacceptable. You want to be a lawyer yes? She nods. Then you need to talk the way lawyers talk. And that has unfortunately been dictated by a predominantly white educated society. Talk ebonics to me. Talk however you'd like. But when we're doing academic writing, we both must hide our roots, cloaking them in clever diction and unnecessarily obtuse grammatical schemes. She still struggles with elements of reading comprehension. She will need to work harder to be a lawyer. I should push her harder.
      But that's the catch-22 of a teacher. If you go home feeling your job has been done, then you are incompetent. Of course, do not stress yourself out, but do not accept a 54% passing rate. Do not accept a 55% passing rate. Hell, do not accept a 99% passing rate. These percentages are nothing. Your kids are the ones at stake. I gladly give up my dreams to my kids, knowing that the minutia of my mind may very well be the only thing I have left to give. The rest of it is occupied by lesson plans, observations, grad school, parental expectations and being a 23 year old. I guess adulthood is the trick of losing yourself. That's how you wake up 50 and unhappy. Eventually your true self comes surging back, expecting a vacation and life achievements, when in fact you've been setting yourself up for the point that you could be happy.
     Do not read this as an indictment of teaching. I am just a writer who writes with the lines heavily shaded in. I have always been one to point out the disgustingly ugly, so that way when you get into the profession, the beauty is a nice surprise. I have finally stopped caring about grad school. I have finally stopped caring about dating. I have finally stopped caring about being an adult and test prep and prestige. Instead I care about my kids learning. And once I stopped worrying, I realized I love teaching. 

Why Bloomberg's own logic doesn't hold up about safe spaces

            I've had pretty good friends disagree with me on the function of safe spaces, but I often find myself shocked at how people evaluate these spaces. At the very core of it, people who disagree with safe spaces often do so not for any legitimate first amendment reasoning or intellectual progressiveness, but because they don't actually believe the people who need the safe spaces have a legitimate claim to them. In the process of explaining these safe spaces, I'm going to provide yet another reason for why Michael Bloomberg is an ass, which honestly is just a bonus for me as a New Yorker.
              Safe Spaces are a reaction to the normal vitriol minorities face from the outside world via microagressions.  Imagine if anywhere you go on campus you can come across beliefs that are antithetical to your own. More than that, these beliefs often make you feel less than. Beliefs such as: you just got into this school because of affirmative action. Or perhaps "black parties are shut down because black students are wilder than white students" My personal favorite is when someone who isn't black uses the N-word and justifies the use by claiming they hear black people use it all the time. Even past this petty shit, you'll have Donald Trump rallies that will openly call for the deportation of american citizens. You'll have history classes that constantly affirm white narratives, leaving you with specially designated minority classes (or if your white professor is progressive, he'll try really hard to choose one book from a woman or minority, but only one!). All of this reflects the normative experience for a minority. It's taxing. It's frustrating. If you do not believe that it's taxing and frustrating, then you now have your reason for why you think safe spaces should not exist: minorities are crybabies. Don't give me the nonsense about how they prevent learning other viewpoints. Minorities do not have a choice on whether they learn differing viewpoints. Differing viewpoints are shoved down our throats. Normative assumptions about us are shoved down our throats. Microaggressions are shoved down our throats. And unless I intend to just not be a student, I'm going to have to deal with them. So why can't I have a place where I know once in awhile I do not have to deal with them?
           People like Bloomberg argue that giving you this safe space prevents you from learning how to deal with these so called microagressions. I disagree. I believe giving you a safe space empowers you not to accept them. And that's the real issue. People like Bloomberg believe that it's a certain reality that minorities of all kind will have to deal with this shit in the workplace, so might as well get used to it now. But why? Why can't I instead say, ya know I can't keep you from acting like an ass in everyday interactions, but this space or time right here I'm going to ensure you can't plague me with your negative comments. Why must minorities be taught it is ok for people to insult their very person nonchalantly and more so accept those beliefs. The notion that Bloomberg is in favor of radical change is false because any attempt to do so (look at the Yale incident as a perfect example of this) is typically met with ardent backlash. Instead people want minorities to accept the jokes, accept the criticism and give a fake smile afterwards. But minorities have decided to say fuck that shit. So we have our safe spaces, where we don't need to hear about this nonsense and if we do want to discuss it. we are able to discuss it without feeling like our candid feelings will upset some sort of balance in the universe.
        So let's be honest. You don't actually believe safe spaces are holding back intellectual progress. You just think minorities need to stop being crybabies. Well I'm glad you're able to tell me and every other minority how to feel. Opinion duly noted. Good bye. 

The Social Justice Community and Minority Movements are not one in the same

                                   This has been a topic I've thought about a good deal. First,I feel I have a unique vantage point when it comes to these two distinct communities. Growing up I was very much a part of the "anti-political correctness crowd" to the point that I considered myself Republican, while conveniently ignoring how they stood in opposition to the morals I hold near and dear to my heart (to be fair to myself, I preferred moderate Republicans, Ted Cruz and his ilk always seemed outlandish to me). Then I went to college and they filled me with their liberal nonsense, turning me into a no good hippie. My hair was long. My sentences overly complicated. And I started using lingo like intersectionality and white people. Now that I am close to two years of separation from college, I've mellowed out to a more moderate position that still leans heavily towards my liberal roots. One thing remained constant during that entire period of ideological shift. I was Puerto Rican. More importantly I was aware of the larger struggle minorities had been facing for centuries and while college amplified my disgust with institutional biases, the gut wrenching feeling of playing a "fixed game" was always there. So one could say I was always part of the minority struggle and I don't mean to incorrectly coalesce all minority struggles, but for the sake of how they depart from the social justice community, I think there's some uniformity to be had. As someone entering a community with allegiance to another, the demarcation between one community and another becomes crystal clear. That being said, I think my main argument is that the social justice movement/community and the minority communities/movements are not one in the same nor are they never mutually exclusive. People often think the social justice community falls in file rank with minority communities, but that is sometimes not true. Furthermore, there are radical aspects to some minority movements that make them mutually exclusive with the social justice community. But for me to even begin to explain these points of tension, let me unpack some of my perceived notions of the social justice community.
                     The social justice community is born out of an overwhelming acknowledgement of the institutional biases minorities of all kinds face in society. Simply put, a bunch of academics decided to do research on typically ignored groups of people and realized, "wow these people are actually treated in a pretty negative manner in a whole host of ways." Once that realization was widely accepted, people took it to as an ideological lens, where one asked "how is the world I live in centered or favored on privileged identities." Unsurprisingly people realized quite a lot of what seemed to be "normal" actually subtly affirmed agent identities, while demeaning minorities. Once you come to the realization that you are in the wrong, then you must decide to what degree do you actually care? Some people shrugged their shoulders and said," tough luck," while others felt something needed to be done about it. While those who actually cared about their transgressions tried to find a way to "fix" the negative environment they were propagating, it became apparent that these issues were not simple, but complex. So academics, writers, and intelligent people alike came together to try to unpack these negative instances, how they occurred, and what would be a suitable substitute to them. It's from this ongoing inquiry that the heart of the social justice community can be found. The oft "complicated lingo" is portrayed as such simply because it requires someone to abandon what they are already comfortable with. The very pushback given to this vis-a-vis "political correctness" is the very qualifier for the language policing to begin with. Also, language policing is a bit extreme. Often the social justice community encourages dialogue and mutual understanding. When that's not possible, the response is not one of censorship, but instead of refusal to acknowledge. Why should I give credence to your awful language when I have a suitable alternative you refuse to use? I will reject your use of language and stand by the targeted identity.
             The irony in all of this is that the one party that seems to have very little say is the minority themselves. Of course the inquiry process theoretically should be rooted in minority thought and literature. But a scarcity of minority academics and thought leaders and a mutually exclusive element every true minority struggle has with the institution makes it difficult to take suggestions from the social justice community as gospel. When you have your gay friend shouting faggot or your hispanic friend using the word spic freely, you begin to wonder if all the effort put into precise language is actually a huge farce (it of course isn't for various reasons, the example is just used to serve as the distinction between social justice on a college campus versus how it can play outside the ideal environment). Even I cringe at my students calling the only white student in my class "whiteboy." I always admonish them, but I understand that the term is less of racial prejudice (they honestly love the kid) and more of a candid reaction to an identity they rarely see in person.
      We have a community whose mission is to promote a positive environment for minorities of all kind. The flaw with the community is that some minorities honestly don't give a shit. I guess that's not true. Oppression in some way, shape or form is cared about in the community, but talk about using the word latino versus hispanic falls on deaf ears when rent is due and all you have to eat is rice and eggs. I guess the point is that often what is important to the social justice community and what is important to the minority community is not always the same, nor should it be. There are somethings that can only be achieved amongst people within the particular minority group. These cultural shifts and changes within the identity should not be shaped by people outside the community and therefore excludes a chunk of the social justice community. Now one might say that this exclusion does not imply that the community is mutually exclusive. One can tacitly support minority self determination from afar. But what happens when minority self determination comes at another groups detriment? The assumption that women being paid more won't be at the detriment to men is nonsense (in a monetary sense). I guess what I'm displaying here is an inherent distrust of the social justice community's focus on what appears to be surface level (language, which honestly does matter, but when stacked up to the Benjamin, falls a little flat) versus the true factors that oppress minorities (money, power, etc.) What if instead of needing outside assistance, a minority group had the influence to change their own fate? Then would the need for a social justice community even be there?
       Another departure is the dubious assumption that minorities are all down with the cause. I may be for latino empowerment and still make black people jokes on my break at work. While, one can argue that repercussions similar to the ones faced by whites should await minorities when they engage in this kind of behavior, one cannot deny that they should be able to choose to engage in this behavior. Just as agent identities carelessly oppressed minorities, sometimes in explicit ways, but also sometimes accidentally (e.g. building brownfields in poor minority communities), minorities should not be expected to act in a manner that will be cognizant of the struggles of anyone else but their own. This bleeds into another discussion of capitalism and our government. Can we truly have a fair society, when the premise of our society is that coalitions should face off against each other. Of course cooperation might typically be the best course of action, but for when attrition is most acceptable, our very way of living affirms such behavior. You cannot expect minority movements to be selfless, their very existence is engulfed in the self. From this comes the often ignored or criticized aspects of minority movements. The formations that caused a stir in white america. Or perhaps the disruption of Bernie Sander's speech, which had many minorities calling for blood, willing to sacrifice one of their own for a white male candidate. Even in the struggle itself we see different factions vying for power. You can act latino, but not too latino, unless you got it that way, then you go Jenny from the block. On the other end you have Latinos who are proud, but want the entire community to be educated and well read, often passing the same racist judgement that had been placed on them when they first stepped into a predominantly white university.
       The social justice community serves a refuge for those in the minority community who haven't picked a side. It's either social justice or dungeons and dragons. Nerd communities have begrudgingly accepted minorities, often in an effort to create a more hierarchical structure for the pinnacle of nerd existence: the white male.  But inherent in the social justice community's reactionary nature is a disconnect from a minority movement. Some things only black people can deal with. Some things only Latinos can deal with. Some things only women can deal with. And so on. Of course intersectionality makes this all complicated, but that's the point. The entire process is too complicated for one to pinpoint a particular fission. It's more like there are hundreds of breaking points and within those breaking points are even more breaking points. To throw your hands in the air and give up navigating them is an unnecessarily defeatist attitude, but to imply navigating them is an easy process is equally foolish. Often when I try to wrap my head around it, I find myself wanting to listen to more people. My own social justice philosophy (a mentor of mine called it a "journey") is developed through the experiences of other people. Often listening to them and relating to them informs what I believe to matter. I find that to be a more candid representation of the community, then an uninformed adherence to a lexicon.  

Pretentious sayings that assholes always misuse or abuse

                    There is nothing I hate more than when I'm having a hearty debate about a topic and someone resorts to an old adage to back up their point. Often they hastily throw in the old adage in a desperate attempt to readjust the debate so that it seems they are holding an impenetrable bastion of intellectual high ground. These adages aren't bad per se. They are just often misused or abused to the point that any meaningful discussion comes to a halt once they rear their cliched heads.


1. There is no such thing as a free lunch:
         I just had to sit through an education lecture where the professor harped on about this principle over and over like an automatic telephone operator. "But Bernie will tax corporations to account for the..." There is no such thing as a free lunch. "Studies show that consumer tax could..." There is no such thing as a free lunch. "God is literally going to come down and give us the secret to cold fusion" There is no such thing as a free lunch. Of course there is always a drawback of some sort and the law of matter exists and yada yada, but if it doesn't directly or indirectly affect me in a meaningful way, then what does this matter. The same idiots harping about free lunches, neglect minimum wage studies that show raising the minimum wage often worked in favor of the economic health in many localities. Who's eating lunch now? The only time it's appropriate to talk about lunches and whether they are free is when someone invites you to a needless event that will most likely be boring and pointless or when someone is actually neglecting the negative externalities of a problem. Otherwise, no lunch for you!


2. Correlation does not mean Causation
       Sure. This is true. But often what many people mean when they use this is more along the lines of: "Since Correlation does not mean causation, I will completely ignore any statistical data you bring to this. There could not possibly be any predictive capability tied to your data. Your information is practically useless." This is the adage of choice for the uninformed, but incredibly willing to debate. Instead of encouraging more exploration, they like to dismiss information without examining what the information might actually bring to light. I once argued with a kid who claimed that a positive correlation between tuition prices and money given to universities overtime did not mean universities received more money over time. I looked at him quizzically because that's exactly what that means. The frustrating part is that the kid believed he was right because his 10th grade chemistry teacher stupidly taught him correlation does not mean causation, but apparently failed to teach him how to interpret graphs.



3. Survival of the fittest
       God these are some of the people I dislike the most. Often the most privileged and obtuse individuals are the ones spouting off this pseudo Darwinian nonsense. I often hope all the errant shrapnel from drive by shootings that are fated to hit someone, finds their way into the skulls of these fools. The ironic part is these are often the people who cry foul at every step and turn in life where things are not going their way. This is the guy who argues with his Professor about the grading policy because he felt his paper was graded "too harshly." These are the people who try to pressure Professors into dropping assignments of the syllabus in the first lecture. The kid in class who would whine and complain about sportsmanship whenever another team uses less than savory methods to get ahead, especially when the complainer himself had just unsuccessfully used those methods.



4. But it's just a theory
     Tagging along with our evolution theme is the ridiculous notion that because something is theoretical it should be completely discounted. The favorite use of this old adage is when someone insists that there is some sort of scientific debate surrounding the theory of evolution. This theory is widely accepted to be true in some way shape or form in the scientific community. You know what theory isn't widely accepted? Creationism.
(note: all "it's just a theory" users should test the theory of gravity, preferably at tall heights, using their own bodies for test subjects)

5. That's just the way the world works (the world isn't fair)
     We've all been guilty of saying this, but what's frustrating is when some smug asshole purses his lips for a sly smile and blurts this saying as if he placed a verbal royal flush into the conversation. Fuck you. The world doesn't have to work any particular way and being too lazy to change it isn't a good excuse for why the world is fucked up. Instead what should be insisted upon is the world being changed in such a manner that we don't accept stupid bullshit.

I'm sure there are more, but I'm just so angry thinking about these five I'll stop here.