Posts made by silverfox

@Ganymede

You said the other day I should make more work for you.

Could we get a weed thread?

@GreenFlashlight

Wait, what?

I wasn't rebutting you. I was stating the academic terms that people use for those beliefs which underpin much of the decision making processes that we as citizens of the United States of America don't think about but that we very much hold to until called on our bias.

I dunno how to RP drunk or high but I once had the pleasure of being in a sceen that Puffin ran where the characters brought haze. Some of us had it, some of us didn't. Those who smoked got a lower composure difficulty! So that's a thing!

@GreenFlashlight

What they said, but in academic terms.

"Resistance to equitable funding for schools has also been supported by several belief systems about the causes of poverty. One of these, the ideology of individualism, holds that success and failure result mainly from individual effort rather than social circumstance. The people of the United States are known around the world for their strong belief in the power of personal effort, but this can lead to associated beliefs that blame impoverished persons for their lack of success in life (see Kluegel & Smith, 1986).

A second belief, essentialism, has it that less-privileged groups (such as African Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans, or women) inherit genetic characteristics that account for whatever lack of successes they have experienced. This thesis has appeared repeatedly, in Europe as well as the United States, for more than a century. Advocates such as Arthur Jensen (1972) or Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray (1994) still promote this theory today. When applied to the poor, essentialism asserts that poverty results from intractable genetic flaws.

Another belief system, the culture of poverty thesis, argues that minority persons fail because of inappropriate traditions in the subcultures of their homes, communities, or ethnic groups (see Moynihan, 1969). When applied to the poor, such beliefs suggest that persons in impoverished communities fail because they possess only “limited linguistic codes” or are handicapped by lack of appropriate “cultural or social capital.”"

I went on a rant elsewhere not long ago about absolute inequity of education funding in our country and how it has its some roots in racism.

(Source: http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/may02/vol59/num08/Unequal-School-Funding-in-the-United-States.aspx#:~:text=Funding in the United States,between wealthy and impoverished communities.)

@saosmash

yeeessssssssss

@Ganymede

Ty for the kitties put in appropriate break points. I motion that all posts from now on do this to help us combat compassion fatigue.

I told a Trump Supporter I wasn't a Democrat and got called a Troll for it.

I missed an opportunity to be a REAL toll to idiots.

@HelloProject said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:

I can't imagine someone complaining to you that "RPing as a black person is basically blackface" outside of like a random 13 year old on Twitter whose entire understanding of social issues is memes.

While they did not use these words, individuals in this thread have made a very strong insinuations that white people playing PoC is wrong and that they should stay to their own color.

I'm hoping that is not what they meant but that's how it came across to me.

@AeriaNyx

I'm so sorry.

@Ganymede

I mean, we all have a little cat bot with us if we are here, so anyone at two can claim it, imo.

@Ganymede Thank you! I might just do so on my second read through.

@Sunny

I'm sure it is all very important and so I will read it! It's also very... conservative Colorado biased. So that'll be fun.

I am reading the Declaration of Covenants, Conditions, and Restrictions for the townhouse we're in the process of buying and damn. I can read the word. I know individually what each of the words means. I'm not always totally sure what they all mean TOGETHER.

I'm not necessarily sure that the lack of representation in MU*s is a PROBLEM.

I do think it's worth thinking about, and discussing for ME personally. If conversations don't happen then there's no way for me to realize my biases.

@plov The Bluest Eye as just recommended to me by my aunt today! It's next on my list when I finish Bad Blood.

@Kestrel's post represents all of my fears about how people would react if I attempted to place my PB as a PoC.

I don't want that directed at me if I end up playing a steryotype I wasn't aware existed because no one had confronted me on it before. (I was literally 21 before it hit my dumb ass that cotton picking fingers was RACIST AS FUCK and I SHOULD NOT SAY IT.)

I got through college on a scholarship through the kindness of a single man. He was on the committee that awarded several scholarships to my high school self. My application had actually been rejected, but he knew my family. When he heard I had applied he dug through the rejections and pulled me back out. Then he proceeded to tell my family's story to the committee. In the end he convinced them to award me the FULL scholarship, and didn't split it that year. Not only that but they agreed to renew the scholarship all four years of my education so long as I proved I was in academic good standing. (In years past the award was split between three individuals and only for a single year.) This allowed me to not take out a single loan for my college education.

And he just responded to a facebook post of mine regarding currently events with:

"ok for you. I guess that all school teachers are racist and abuse children because a few of them do even though they all go through training."

It is all I can do to take a deep breath and not respond with vitriol because I know at one point he was a good man who I owe so much to.

***=NSFW content***

@saosmash

100%

I think the only thing that IS unequivically wrong is to paint people who think differently than you personally as a "bad person" for having that viewpoint. It's okay to coexist with different viewpoints.

Er, I shouldn't hit enter before I finish my ideas.

@Sparks said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:

Because when there are a lot of people out there who seem to think they can find more common ground with and more easily imagine seeing the world from the POV of literal alien species in Star Trek or Star Wars or Mass Effect or whatever else than they can with their neighbors who happen to have a bit more melanin content to their skin, it's demonstrably sure as hell something we as a human race could stand to work on.

So this is a thing I'm going to have to spend a whole long time thinking about. This resonated with me.

Is there a bridge between this and the fear of "getting it wrong" that several of us have expressed? Are they possibly the same idea just wrapped in different colors (which is a weird metaphor in the context of this conversation but I'm gonna go with it anyway because I don't recall the actual idiom)?

I don't know. I'm gonna go think a bit.

@Tinuviel said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:

I really hope that I'm not coming across as bigoted or bullying here, as that's not my intent. Gaming is an excellent tool to explore all kinds of things, I just don't care to be told that I must think about X, Y, or Z all of the time always or else I'm a bad person.

Oh god, no. And I am so sorry if what I typed implied that you are a bad person for thinking differently.

@Tinuviel

I think that's a valid point, re: This is our escapism. (Have I said the word valid to you two or three times today? I don't know. But I do appreciate where you are coming from and respect what you're saying about it as reasonable points.)

I think I'm going to be with @Sparks though. I think it's important for us to think about representation and factors of race in all areas of our lives, even our pretendy fun-times. These are places were we CAN confront those issues - provided people aren't choosing to be dumpster fires at the moment (tb clear, I'm referring to people in general and how we turn into dumpster fires so super easily... not specifically anyone that's spoken so far) - where the stakes are exceptionally low. If we get it wrong we CAN retcon/erase what has happened and then move forward and DO it better.

EDIT: Oh god my grammar. I know there should be something other than a regular dash in there, and that my ()s are wrong but I DO NOT KNOW HOW TO FIX IT and still keep all those ideas together.