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Notice, though, that you just put white people in charge of it.

toomanyrichies 6y ago
How so? If my goal is to learn about under-represented groups, a wide swath of content produced by those people already exists. True, I'm the one choosing what content to consume, so in that sense I guess you're correct that I'm technically "in charge". On the other hand, if I limit my choices to content produced by those same groups, then any choice I make is likely to be the right one. And if I rinse-and-repeat this process, consuming a diverse-enough cross section of said content, I'm well on my way to expanding my worldview.
- rdiddly 6y ago
  So far so good, but now picture someone raised with racism doing all that. We can hope, but I guess I'm not optimistic. I feel like they need to be "acted upon" by someone or by some experience. I also don't have the same faith in content. Unless you can reduce all human interaction to content, and hell nowadays we're probably closer than ever to making that be the case, but that's another whole topic we could spend hours on. My point is that if there's any value at all to in-person university over online university, it's in precisely those experiences that can't easily be reduced to content: actual human interaction, and in particular, preferably coming up with shared solutions to shared problems. That always seems to go a long way toward building a community whether it's a community of people who are all the same or all different. Even people involuntarily thrown together like prisoners, or draftees into the army let's say. How many whites went into WWII and stayed racists after a black man in their platoon saved their ass? Just a particularly dramatic example but you get my point. The white & black soldiers both had the same problems and worked on the same solutions. And in that example, the black soldier was "in charge" of re-educating the white one. I dunno it's just the neighborhood my thoughts have been running in lately.

How so? If my goal is to learn about under-represented groups, a wide swath of content produced by those people already exists. True, I'm the one choosing what content to consume, so in that sense I guess you're correct that I'm technically "in charge". On the other hand, if I limit my choices to content produced by those same groups, then any choice I make is likely to be the right one. And if I rinse-and-repeat this process, consuming a diverse-enough cross section of said content, I'm well on my way to expanding my worldview.

rdiddly 6y ago
So far so good, but now picture someone raised with racism doing all that. We can hope, but I guess I'm not optimistic. I feel like they need to be "acted upon" by someone or by some experience. I also don't have the same faith in content. Unless you can reduce all human interaction to content, and hell nowadays we're probably closer than ever to making that be the case, but that's another whole topic we could spend hours on. My point is that if there's any value at all to in-person university over online university, it's in precisely those experiences that can't easily be reduced to content: actual human interaction, and in particular, preferably coming up with shared solutions to shared problems. That always seems to go a long way toward building a community whether it's a community of people who are all the same or all different. Even people involuntarily thrown together like prisoners, or draftees into the army let's say. How many whites went into WWII and stayed racists after a black man in their platoon saved their ass? Just a particularly dramatic example but you get my point. The white & black soldiers both had the same problems and worked on the same solutions. And in that example, the black soldier was "in charge" of re-educating the white one. I dunno it's just the neighborhood my thoughts have been running in lately.