Reply to Help me Edit: Response to Brookings Report

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Reply to "Help me Edit: Response to Brookings Report"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=jsteele][quote=Anonymous]I think we’re talking past each other here.

Generally, I don’t think Brookings has to offer solutions to problems it identifies in order for its research to make accurate truth claims.

I also think they are right about what they identify here. Not universally, but more right than wrong.

I don’t expect “someone else” to solve this problem. When I recognize the dynamics they’re describing in my own life, I try to take steps to lessen them. With the climate here being what it is lately, I’m not down for describing those steps. That climate issue is worth some of your energy. It’s worse than it has been. That, more than Brookings, is going to cut into your traffic after the initial bump.

Regardless: Brookings doesn’t have to identify solutions to be identifying problems.[/quote]

Talking past each other or not, we are definitely having trouble communicating. Because neither Brookings nor you propose alternative actions for DCUM posters, all you have to offer is criticism. You say that your criticism is correct. But my argument is that while our users are making choices that might not be perfect, they are still the best choices available to them. If there are better choices, what are they? You won't say and Brookings didn't say. I assume that whatever secrets you are keeping are unknown to our users, so even though better choices may secretly exist, they are unknown to our posters who are still making the best choices among the alternatives known to them.

[b]It really seems like common sense that if you are going to criticize someone's actions, you should be able to tell them what they should do differently.[/b]  Otherwise, it is not clear that you wouldn't do exactly the same thing they are doing if you were in their circumstances.

[/quote]

NP but it seems like common sense to me that Brookings is actually critiquing both the system and the actors, and you're interpreting it primarily as a personal attack ("they keep calling us segregationists").  When you try to turn a discussion about systemic racism into a conversation about whether or not you're a nice person, you're centering yourself in an unhelpful and unsympathetic way.  I agree with the PPs that say you should leave this alone or at least re-read and edit it when you're not so upset.  If you have to respond it should be about the weaknesses inherent in the methodology, the fact that boundaries were redrawn during the survey time, and the less outraged points.

Not to pile on, but I've reported enough overtly racist stuff on the schools forum to know that there's plenty of meat on the report's bones.  You've deleted most, though not all, of it, so I'm not sure why you're committed to arguing that racism doesn't play a role in the school choices made by posters here.  Stop looking at it as about you and start looking at is about the aggregate of posts.  The methodology is flawed but it's not like they're coming out of fantasy land.[/quote]

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