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9th January 2020, 06:37 PM | #1 |
Show me the monkey!
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Monkey See. Monkey Do. Oops $12 million.
Parents of four black students plan to sue a New York school district for $12 million after a teacher wrote 'monkey do' above an image of their children outside zoo's gorilla enclosure and showed it to a class
Originally Posted by Daily Mail
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9th January 2020, 07:07 PM | #2 |
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Ker Ching!
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"The process by which banks create money is so simple that the mind is repelled. Where something so important is involved, a deeper mystery seems only decent." - Galbraith, 1975 |
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9th January 2020, 07:44 PM | #3 |
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Goes to show: In the USA, lawyers make VERY good money.
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9th January 2020, 07:53 PM | #4 |
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9th January 2020, 08:48 PM | #5 |
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Yeah, those folks are gonna be rich.
Man, you have to be a special kind of moron to do something like that. |
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9th January 2020, 09:37 PM | #6 |
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How would the judge or whoever determine whether this amount is fair or not?
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9th January 2020, 09:44 PM | #7 |
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Juries award unrealistic amounts and then judges reduce it to fit the real world that we live in. The kids will get about $5,000 each. Maybe less.
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Bigfoot believers and Bigfoot skeptics are both plumb crazy. Each spends more than one minute per year thinking about Bigfoot. |
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9th January 2020, 10:17 PM | #8 |
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If it gets to a jury. More likely a settlement, maybe?
IANAL, but my guess is they will eventually settle for an undisclosed amount and the case will be dropped. The teacher(s) in question may be fired. |
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9th January 2020, 10:48 PM | #9 |
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9th January 2020, 11:33 PM | #10 |
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I don't see the problem, kids are often compared to monkeys, I was always called a monkey as a child, it was meant to be endearing. Because they're black they can't be playfully compared to monkeys? Why?
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10th January 2020, 12:11 AM | #11 |
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"The process by which banks create money is so simple that the mind is repelled. Where something so important is involved, a deeper mystery seems only decent." - Galbraith, 1975 |
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10th January 2020, 12:18 AM | #12 |
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10th January 2020, 12:23 AM | #13 |
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A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject. Sir Winston Churchill |
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10th January 2020, 12:24 AM | #14 |
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You may be being a little obtuse here. I might safely refer to my own children as monkeys, but there's a history of racist insults targeted at blacks calling them monkeys or whatnot.
In Europe for example, racist soccer fans will taunt black players with monkey noises or throw bananas at them... It's been a serious problem. See this recent article for some context, but obviously the problem was not just limited to soccer in Europe: https://edition.cnn.com/2019/12/17/f...ntl/index.html To stay on the safe side, just don't compare black people to monkeys or apes, ever, for any reason. That seems simple enough to me. |
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10th January 2020, 01:47 AM | #15 | |||
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Reminds me of this clip from Clerks 2:
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10th January 2020, 03:13 AM | #16 |
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10th January 2020, 03:14 AM | #17 |
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10th January 2020, 03:16 AM | #18 |
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It shows how some slurs can be quite culturally specific. Coming from the cold north it took me sometime to work out what this meant. We don't have porches. at least not ones that people sit in, they are more like airlocks to stop the cold, wind and rain coming in when you go out. So the connotation of being lazy and lolling on the porch took some working out.
Cheeky monkey would be a widely used term to children when I was little, with no racial connotations, but certainly now one would not want to use it about any but the most blonde of tykes. |
10th January 2020, 03:24 AM | #19 |
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10th January 2020, 03:55 AM | #20 |
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The issues I have with this
1. The students plan to sue. The process has not started. 2. It is published in the daily fail. May be a media beat up. 3. I want to know the result of the case. The judge might have a different opinion. 4. Is this a single racist photo or one incident in many? 5. Critical facts may be missing. |
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10th January 2020, 04:09 AM | #21 |
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10th January 2020, 04:12 AM | #22 |
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"The process by which banks create money is so simple that the mind is repelled. Where something so important is involved, a deeper mystery seems only decent." - Galbraith, 1975 |
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10th January 2020, 04:32 AM | #23 |
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A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject. Sir Winston Churchill |
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10th January 2020, 04:33 AM | #24 |
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10th January 2020, 04:56 AM | #25 |
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10th January 2020, 06:10 AM | #26 |
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I assume the insurance company will pay out? School districts in general may face an increase in premiums.
Alternatively all the other school children will get $12 million less in education. This is the problem I have with punitive damages against public bodies*, the consequence falls on the public either with increased taxes or decreased services, probably some of each. Some lawyers will take 30%? of the damages and these children may be sent to private schools and have a college fund. In reality the harm from this particular incident to them is minor. The appropriate action is disciplinary against the teachers concerned, probably educational for staff. Possibly re-writing of codes and curricula. * Another example is the $10 billion in damages awarded against Sudan one of the poorer countries in the world for the bombing of USS Cole. The award is to the people from the richest country in the world. All the people injured or killed and the families will be getting benefits which would make them wealthy in Sudan, the damages will save no one from a life of poverty but may maintain many in poverty. The $10 billion is going to come from education and health services to the poor. Who or what is being punished with punitive damages levied against a country like Sudan. Even the costs of defending such cases in US courts is likely to be difficult for Sudan. $10 billion is greater than the annual revenue for the government, for comparison this is like the US having to pay out $4 trillion for shooting down the Iranian airliner that killed 290 people for which $300 million was paid out by the US. |
10th January 2020, 06:18 AM | #27 |
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10th January 2020, 07:08 AM | #28 |
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Gunter Haas, the 'leading British expert,' was a graphologist who advised couples, based on their handwriting characteristics, if they were compatible for marriage. I would submit that couples idiotic enough to do this are probably quite suitable for each other. It's nice when stupid people find love. - Ludovic Kennedy |
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10th January 2020, 07:19 AM | #29 |
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Two teachers.
The school and the district do the hiring, training, and supervision of teachers. They set the norms and expectations for their staff. The taxpayers, of course, have a vested interest in how their money is being spent. They have the standing to oversee the schools they're paying for, and the responsibility to do so. These kinds of things don't happen in a vacuum. These teachers were somehow under the impression that comparing their black students to monkeys was okay. I think the entire "chain of command" is implicated in the evolution of these norms. Everyone - teachers, administrators, taxpayers - need to feel the bite of that responsibility. And the shame and chagrin of allowing these norms to blossom in their schools. |
10th January 2020, 07:24 AM | #30 |
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1. No human being alive in the developed world is ignorant that using ape/monkey imagery to refer to black people is problematic. We can just skip the "Waaaat? Oh lordy me I just never knew this was an issue" game people try and play every time this topic comes up.
2. "Oh but my grandfather called me a monkey growing up I don't see the issue..." Are you the subject of a century long campaign of organized dehumanization based on comparing your race to lower forms of life? No? Then shut up. 3. "KACHING Oh it's all about the money" As noted the odds of the children getting anywhere near the stated amount are nil. |
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10th January 2020, 07:33 AM | #31 |
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10th January 2020, 07:37 AM | #32 |
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I know a children's hospital that pulls the same guilt trip. Every time someone threatens to sue after their kid dies from negligence the hospital bats its eyelashes, summons tears, and says in a quivering voice "but but but we need that money to save the other children!"
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You added nothing to that conversation, Barbara. |
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10th January 2020, 07:41 AM | #33 |
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I gotta say "Racism is just too big to fail" is certainly a novel argument.
"Oh come on now the schools won't have anything left if we have to stop to pay out money for every racist incident..." |
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10th January 2020, 07:52 AM | #34 |
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You added nothing to that conversation, Barbara. |
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10th January 2020, 07:56 AM | #35 |
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"If you're not going to spend our money on good teachers and administrators, then probably you should give it back."
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10th January 2020, 08:01 AM | #36 |
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And it's like the blackface thing. As if not doing it is somehow hard or requires some unreasonable amount of effort.
I'm a really, really white guy ("Whiter then a snowman with a bukakke fetish" - Yahtzee), from the South, had a grandfather who constantly referred to his children and grandchildren as "monkeys" and I take a perverse pride in not being overly and stereotypically "woke" about topics because I don't like the "Holier than though" cause purity that mentality generates... and I still cannot stress enough the absolute bare amount of minimal amount of effort it has taken me in life to be self-aware enough to never use monkey/ape imagery when referring to black people. Like it's not even hard. |
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10th January 2020, 08:11 AM | #37 |
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Bigfoot believers and Bigfoot skeptics are both plumb crazy. Each spends more than one minute per year thinking about Bigfoot. |
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10th January 2020, 08:18 AM | #38 |
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Apparently it took a lot of effort for them to set this up. Way more effort than just... not.
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10th January 2020, 08:22 AM | #39 |
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Emotions run high at Longwood school board session on controversial slideshow
Originally Posted by Newsday
https://www.newsday.com/long-island/...how-1.40457326 |
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Bigfoot believers and Bigfoot skeptics are both plumb crazy. Each spends more than one minute per year thinking about Bigfoot. |
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10th January 2020, 08:30 AM | #40 |
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That's the other thing. This wasn't a verbal slip up that, mountains of context aside, might, might have been a nothingburger in some cases, again mountain of context not withstanding.
It was a goddamn Powerpoint Presentation. You can't just Freudian slip in desktop publishing. |
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