NGT on race

As a child I wanted to play in the NFL as a running back but the forces of authority kept forcing me to play offensive guard all my life. What if they would have given me that shot a running back. I can only wonder what could have been.

Didn't tuber aka otto tell us he was state government worker in NOLA?

Must.


Resist.


Urge.


To.


Feed.


The.

quote:

---

As a white male, the only time anyone ever suggested that I shouldn't become an physicist was when my music composition teacher suggested I should become a composer instead.

---

LOL...

I understand what he is saying, and I think he did have whites and blacks who tried to steer him in other directions.

But he himself credits his love for science to the fact that his parents took him to libraries, planetariums, and museums every weekend. This is the difference.

How many black (or, for that matter, white) parents do that for their children. Again, parenting plays the most important role in developing children. He obviously had good parents who believed in and valued education.

Spiderman,

Are you telling us that you're WHITE?

If so,.....Jeebus, you are one messed up puppy.

Your posts make you seem like Jeremiah Wright, Jr

Booker T Washington and Dr. Carson would be ashamed of anyone that said learning(in any field) it is too hard for a child/young mind to accomplish so why try.

quote:

---

Yeah, Tyson really had it rough.

---

So because he had dinner with someone once, it negates everything he said?

I literally know absolutely nothing about Tyson. Not a thing. But I find it curious how quickly people here just dismiss everything he says just because it doesn't fit your world views. I mean, he is just talking about his own experiences, no? So he's just lying? I dont know him, maybe he has a track record of embellishing.

quote:

---

teacher suggested I should become a composer instead.

---

. . . oh, i get it.



. . . . composing.

quote:

---

If a certain white person believes that being a white male is extremely disadvantageous when compared to minorities in hiring, schooling, etc (thats what I mean by your "world view" btw, something that you explicitly stated) and he loses out on a job to a black woman, he is also more likely to attribute this to racism bc of his preconceived notions.

---

I've stated my worldview. As I said, I imagine it's the same as yours and the same as any person's who is not a bigot.

In the example I gave you, the person who did the interviewing (the district superintendent) and who had access to every single element used in determining who was best qualified for the job, recommended my wife for the job. This was based on a 4-fold criteria of test scores, experience, seniority, and the interview. After all that the superintendent, a Hispanic woman with a doctorate from USC, made her recommendation. The 5 member school board, all Hispanics, ignored her recommendation and gave the job to a less qualified, less experienced Hispanic woman. The woman washed out of the job in under two years. Yet you keep wanting to say that my labeling of this as racism is attributable solely to my "world view."

There's a 90 year old black guy in our church who fought honorably in WWII. He told me once that when he came back from the war and got on a public bus, he was told that he had to sit in the back of the bus. Maybe I'll tell him when I see him tomorrow that his perception of this incident as racism is in reality just a reflection of his world view. Actually I won't tell him that. It was racism. I know it. He knows it. What happened to my wife was racism as well. It has nothing to do with world view and everything to do with objective reality.

As for Neil Tyson, I'm a fan of Tyson's, so I happen to know a little bit about his life. My point about Tyson is that like almost everyone who succeeds in life, he was helped along by someone in a position of influence who took an interest in him. Tyson is brilliant, he's focused, he had supportive parents who were married to one another allowing Tyson to grow up in an intact home, and who were highly educated and successful in their own careers, and he was blessed by knowing early on what he wanted to do in life (blessed in the sense of career success). So let's say that's, to pick an arbitrary number, 80% of why he succeeded. But Sagan took an interest in him, for whatever reason. I never heard Sagan talk about his, but I did hear Tyson talk about it so I only know his side of the story. Would Tyson have been a physicist with Sagan's influence? Of course. Would he have ended up teaching at an Ivy League school? Maybe, maybe not. I have a hunch the answer is no. Tyson, like Sagan, is more famous than he is accomplished. Sagan was Tyson's rabbi, as they say. I had one in my field. I got where I am in my profession in part because this professor took an interest in my career, even after I graduated. He opened doors for me. I would have succeeded on some level without him, but I achieved greater success with him. The same is true of Tyson and Sagan. Tyson had a world-renowned physicist as his rabbi. That, IMO, more than overcame the influence of any high school teacher who thought Tyson should pursue athletics as a career because he was black.