From NPR:
'Wringing' Out Personal Bias Is A Daily Exercise
by LINDA WERTHEIMER
July 20, 2013 7:39 AM
President Obama, in his speech on Friday, said that all of us should do some soul searching. Not a conversation on race organized by politicians, he said. He suggested smaller and more personal places for those conversations — families, churches and workplaces — and he suggested a conversation that each person could have with him or herself: "Am I wringing as much bias out of myself as I can?"
I think that's an important question, or perhaps more of a process, and not an easy one. Like most people who grew to adulthood in the civil rights years, I thought a lot about racism and believed it to be hateful. I admired the heroes of the civil rights movement — it has always been a point of pride with me to remember that I was on the Mall for the March on Washington. It did not occur to me to think of myself as a racist — I believed and still believe that I was not.
But when I married and moved to Washington, to live in a city that was mostly black, I surprised myself. Every once in a while a random thought would drift into my mind — what is he doing here? Where did she get that dog? Small, mingey * terrible little thoughts, which when I turned them over and looked at them, horrified me. I thought that I'd been giving myself too much credit.
Obviously I needed some wringing out.
One of the blessings of our fair city, which can be completely exasperating, filled as it is with argument and ego, is that it also offers its citizens the blessing of living together, in a relatively tolerant atmosphere. Here, wringing bias out of your mind and heart is not theoretical. And that has made it easier. Of course I am not perfect even after all these years. But to paraphrase the president, perhaps a little more perfect.
No comment.
* Okay, I do have a comment on Linda's apparently canine-related use of the obscure term "mingey," which follows the also opaque "Where did she get that dog?"
So, maybe Linda had a nipping, biting, perhaps mangy dog? And then it got stolen and now every time she sees a black woman with the same expensive breed, she wonders if the black lady bought it from a stolen dog fence?
* Okay, I do have a comment on Linda's apparently canine-related use of the obscure term "mingey," which follows the also opaque "Where did she get that dog?"
mingey
Web definitions
nip, pinch, bite (of bird); nipping, biting, pinching.
So, maybe Linda had a nipping, biting, perhaps mangy dog? And then it got stolen and now every time she sees a black woman with the same expensive breed, she wonders if the black lady bought it from a stolen dog fence?
Or, did she mean:
min·gy
/ˈminjē/
Adjective
Mean and stingy: "you've been mingy with the sunscreen".
Unexpectedly or undesirably small.
Synonyms
stingy - niggardly - miserly - mean - skimpy
Maybe Linda started out saying N-Synonym, but then got worried about getting David Howarded, and just improvised a new word, free association style.
Commenter AMac writes:
Commenter AMac writes:
Linda Wertheimer lives in Northwest DC -- the nice part. Her Zip Code is XXXXX, which comes in as SuperZip #67 in Charles Murray's ranking of Zip Codes (data here). Median family income is $175,000; people there rank above 99.6% of their fellow Americans by Murray's centile score. George Zimmerman's gated community (or crime-ridden condo complex, if you prefer) is in Zip YYYYY, which Murray ranks in position 12,435 (of 23,948 total). Median family income is $53,400, and 32.8% of Americans live in Zips with worse centile scores. Trayvon Martin's mother lives in Miami Gardens, whose ZZZZZ Zip sits at #15,776. Family income $52,600, centile score 22.1%.
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38 comments:
Trayvon was just trying to wring the bias out of Zimmerman.
Yeah, all that soul-searching led to his and media's railroading of Zimmerman.
He acts the fool and then preaches to us not to act like fools.
He acts the politician and tells us not to politicize the issue.
Scumbag.
How about he steal lots of beer like Thorton and hand out free beer to all Americans so we can all relax and have a nationwide beer summit and discuss race?
Of course, DC is more 'tolerant' and 'wonderful' place it wrung out lots of its Negroes into other areas. Wrung them out physically.
It used to be 85% black and run by the likes of Marion Barry. Now, there are many more whites and many more fancy mulattos who are preferable to 'inner-city' blacks.
I guess race mixing will produce more 'nice mulattos', and white libs will integrate with them, the 'white blacks'. It will be 'liberal integration'.
They get the sweet milk chocolate and others get the bitter chocolate.
Unseeing what one sees is a daily chore... no, daily obligation.
See Trayvon as a young black thug? Unsee it and see a baby with skittles.
See Zimmerman as brown guy defending his life? Unsee it and see a white KKKiller.
Each White individual must turn his thoughtcriminal insides into a Party Reeducation Camp! But even this obligatory lifelong self-examination and reeducation, into which empirical observation and fact must never be allowed to intrude, neither can, nor will, remove from any White individual the everlasting Stain of Racism!
White individuals may not and cannot escape their sentence to eternal zekhood in the Conversational One-Way Bridge Building Gulag of Racial Atonement!
Progs say Martin got killed cuz our society spread the notion of 'dangerous black male'.
But who's most responsible for spreading the dangerous black male trope? Cons had to stop after the Willy Horton controversy.
Most black thug trope comes from black power movement, black panthers, blaxploitation movies produced by Jews, and rap music culture.
White cons have been putting forth the Ideal Negro image of Thomas Sowell, Dr. Carter, and Colin Powell.
Negroes and libs have been mocking it as 'uncle tom'-ism.
Also, news media have been covering up the fact of black crime by suppressing lots of black violence or by calling it 'youth' or 'teen' crime.
Btw, I think many more people have gotten killed because we suppress the fact of black violence and criminality. Lots of naive white liberals got hurt, robbed, raped, or even killed by entering into black areas without full knowledge of racial realities.
Zimmerman would have done better to break totally away from blacks and choose a community with no blacks at all. But he lived with the hope that all races could live in peace cuz he was a Obama Democrat.
Linda Wertheimer lives in Northwest DC -- the nice part. Her Zip Code is 20016, which comes in as SuperZip #67 in Charles Murray's ranking of Zip Codes (data here). Median family income is $175,000; people there rank above 99.6% of their fellow Americans by Murray's centile score.
George Zimmerman's gated community (or crime-ridden condo complex, if you prefer) is in Zip 32771, which Murray ranks in position 12,435 (of 23,948 total). Median family income is $53,400, and 32.8% of Americans live in Zips with worse centile scores.
Trayvon Martin's mother lives in Miami Gardens, whose 33056 Zip sits at #15,776. Family income $52,600, centile score 22.1%.
Linda Wertheimer has no racial bias against blacks, as long as she doesn't have to live around them. Those NPR types are all a bunch of hypocrites.
If you go here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/nation/census/2010/?tid=grpromo
you can see the census figures for her area. The highest percent black is 5.5%.
Steve, you need to do an article on Eve Carson. Show the photo of the two "hoodies" and understand that a Nice White College Girl saw them in her parking lot, got scared and drove off. She never called the cops and Eve Carson paid the price.
Understand also that this remarkable story didn't get any real outrage and that it happened I think around the time of the Duke Rape Hoax.
The Good White People who run the media had other priorities.
I think one saw one mingy headed dawg.
http://www.npr.org/people/1931801/linda-wertheimer
Look at this precious pic.
"Don't be Mingey when writing to the Factor."
Albertosaurus
Actually, a zip in the 50,000's for blacks or Hispanics is not bad. The highest income for Hispanics is Anaheim around 56,000 since the city is over 50 percent. Its expensive city though.
Has anybody claimed
http://ex-army.mingeythoughts.com/
yet?
I would assume Ms. Wertheimer would believe it is wrong to look at what a person is wearing and decide that person is a gang member. In fact,I believe she would consider it RACIST to do so.
Some years ago, lil' ol' white bread me was at a bus stop in the "diverse" part of town. A young black male, whom I estimate was around 11-12 years old, had a question for me.
"Pardon me sir, but are wearing those blue running shoes because you are a member of the Crips?"
I doubt that Ms. Wertheimer considered that black boy a racist for wondering if I were a gang member.
Profiling can also be seen as a way to avoid danger. If someone is a gang member, stay away from him. I also doubt that Ms. Wertheimer would deliberately put herself in the path of someone she concluded was a gang member.
Judging from her zip code, I imagine that Ms. Wertheimer would have a different opinion about profiling if she lived in a scruffier part of town. It is very easy to be enlightened when you are relatively protected from the hoi polloi.
After that question, I avoided wearing blue running shoes when I was in that part of town.
I lived for three years on the "diverse" side of town. I often walked a mile to and from the bus stop. I never feared for my personal safety, though I did fear about my bicycle getting stolen.
NPR: the gift that keeps on giving.
I subscribe to their "story of the day" podcast and this beauty popped up on Friday.
How To Fight Racial Bias When Its Silent and Subtle
Folks, if you just keep hitting your head with a hammer, everyday, you too can erase those nasty little (common sense) thoughts that pop into your head. I honestly don't even know how these people live when themselves. It's got to be a joke, right?
In England 'minge' is a rather vulgar slang term for the female 'naughty bits'. I believe it is of ultimately Romany gypsy derivation, relating to Sanskrit. Most probably 'pikey' Cockney types introduced it into vernacular Englosh. See 'Historical Slang' by Eric Partridge for a full discussion. Incidentally one of my favorite books of all time.
"Lina Wertheimer has no racial bias against blacks, as long as she doesn't have to live around them. Those NPR types are all a bunch of hypocrites."
I know. I live outside DC and work in DC. Have done for over 30 years. I know exactly where this goofy woman lives. NPR has long sounded goofy to me, although at one time I thought it was oh so cool and sophisticated. Now I realize what a set of hypocrrites and controlled info they are, although admittedly I don't listen much anymore and so maybe they do some things occasionally I might like.
What got me about that show initially was the music. I'm not a musician so can't describe what I mean teachically, but it sounds like a know-it-all snob telling you that s/he'll be telling you what you need to know to be a good NPR mouseketeer. I can't stand that music.
And yes, the NPR woman does indeed live in the whitest part of the DC area. Even the downtown area is remarkably white during the day; of course there are loads of governmetn workers, but they don't seem to be a majority when during rush hour when the streets are bustling. I have almost never felt unsafe in the parts of DC where I've worked, even at night. The area where that Iglesia guy was mugged is getting into the dangerous part. I remember a woman was murdered in that area circa late 80s; also a terrible case of a young girl raped and her head beaten into the alley, around Capitol Hill. Girl white, killer black who lived on the streets and had been in prison.
If only she had had a gun for self-defense.
When I think of all the whites murdered, assaulted horribly by blacks, the thought of apoligizing to THEM at this juncture of time, seems downright ludicrous.
Even a lot of blacks (you'd be surprised) would find Matthews sort of ridiculous. Almost all would find him contemptible. I think that's what some of these mentally ill people like him don't realize. That the vast majority of blacks do not care what he thinks personally, and tend to sneer at that kind of groveling. It's stomach-turning for all concerned.
Let him apologize for himself if he feels the need, but leave the rest of us out of it. I'm still waiting for some of them to apologize to me.
I doubt very much if Barry Obama,
growing up in adolescence in an upscale home in Hawaii, ever had to wring out any washing at all. BUT if he wishes to "wring out" something, why not disclose whether he personally has seen the full transcripts of the three dozen or so persons interviewed by the FBI (ATF? Homeland Insecurity?) regarding their experiences/knowledge of/ George Zimmerman. If the President has read all the three dozen interviews, then he might affirm whether there are any skeletal parts within them or whether a whole lot of excessive interviewing and excessive expendture of time/money was devoted to a dragnet effort to dig up dirt on George. The President could get Ophra in on all this "wringing". Might even be a book deal in it!!!
...."Of course I am not perfect even after all these years. But to paraphrase the president, perhaps a little more perfect."
I could imagine a blog - or a twitter feed - that would be strictly composed of New York Times pieces bordering on self-parody. The twilight zone where The Onion meets The NYT in a hazy but telling fog.
Perhaps the media should have a conversation with themselves about using baby pictures of dead teenagers to incite violence and racial polarization.
Don't you ever get the feeling that Obama and his mainstream press suck-ups are like a bad semester at the Iowa Writer's Workshop?
Obama wants to be a much better writer than his talents allow. He reaches for oratorical heights, yet always comes down with a thud. "Wringing out" is on par with "the swill of civil war and segregation" from his inaugural- the construction is too contrived and non-idiomatic to hide the fact he is swinging for the literary fences, yet it just doesn't work. Honestly, most of Obama's attempts a Lincolnesque grandeur come across as bad spec scripts for Dead Wood.
And, of course, there are all these dweeb suck-ups in the media who pretend his clunky writing is good writing. Back at the writer's workshop, it's like the one attendant everyone knows was once published in The New Yorker a couple years ago, and so everyone kisses up to him, including doing him the flattery of plagiarizing his lame turns of phrase in their own class assignments.
"Obama wants to be a much better writer than his talents allow."
Yeah, he's competitive, but not terribly good. But not terrible either.
This is silly teenage girl thinking from watching too much Disney Channel, Oprah and Green Mile Magical Negro programming. We really live in a high school world these days.
I cannot describe how Soviet this sounds.
I just got back from Mass (my wife is a practicing Catholic) at a local convent. Beautiful, contemplative service -- in ways, surprisingly similar to a Quaker meeting.
Just before the breaking of the bread, congregants ask for God's blessing to the refrain of, "Lord, hear our prayers." Along with calls for healing of the sick and for world leaders to value life and strive for peace, one person offered, "May Trayvon Martin's family file a successful civil suit."
Lord, hear our prayers.
George Zimmerman is a latter-day witch. It feels right to wish for his burning.
NPR types are all a bunch of hypocrites."
ridiculously disproportionate number of scots-irish too.
I lived in zip 20016 for a while growing up and then later in life. I will tell you that if it is even 5.5% black, then 90% of those blacks probably are assigned to some foreign embassy (the other 10% being Jim Vance, Washington Redskins or black power couples)!
I think that's an important question, or perhaps more of a process, and not an easy one. Like most people who grew to adulthood in the civil rights years, I thought a lot about racism and believed it to be hateful. I admired the heroes of the civil rights movement — it has always been a point of pride with me to remember that I was on the Mall for the March on Washington. It did not occur to me to think of myself as a racist — I believed and still believe that I was not.
I think it's an annoying question, designed to embolden people who hate me and (more importantly) would like me thrown in a gulag. Like many people who have taken to the Internet and joyously stepped around the hippies still lying in the gutter covered in their own puke, I've thought a lot about racism and believe it to be a moral imperative. I couldn't care less about the aforementioned puke-covered hippies' "heroes." It has always been a point of pride with me that I do all of my own thinking, and don't farm it out to the media-gov't complex, hippy know-nothings, or anyone else.
I have come to the conclusion that the average white person, who spends no time at all thinking about anything, much less politics, is better served by simply doing and thinking the opposite of anything libs say. Sure, it'll be wrong a lot of the time, but it'll still be better than doing what libs say.
Trayvon was just trying to wring the bias out of Zimmerman.
Haha, nicely done.
I don't think the problem is that our "national" media organs, e.g. NPR, aren't aware of their own absurdity. They embrace it and play it to the hilt, as a social signifier. Almost as if to illustrate the critique Good Morning America today began with the East Cleveland corpses, at least 3 bodies wrapped up by a black serial killer (following in the footsteps of an earlier black serial killer, but such facts barely rise to dog-bites-man level for a true Journalist) then seamlessly, witlessly segued into the several hundred professional protesters whooping up the Zimmerman verdict. They brought in Stephanopoulos to comment on the latter, before shifting to Middleton's baby.
"I doubt very much if Barry Obama.." Indeed, the total government resources devoted to interviewing persons (those acquainted with George Zimmerman, some 36 or so, of them ) is probably at least $36 dollars a minute. By usual standards governing the FBI, ATF, etc, if several persons are interviewed in such an instance, and nothing incriminating turns up, the interviewing is stopped on cost-effective bases. It sure seems that interviewing about Zimmerman went on and on and on, as though desperately seeking some mud?? Congressional oversight on the fed
law enforcement agencies is supposed to exist (does it?). If so, this is the sort of question that should be looked into, in camera.
I disagree. NPR is surrounded by a bubble of people who think like they do, with similar experiences and schooling and models of the world and values. In that environment, a lot of things sound perfectly reasonable which, from outside that bubble seem completely nuts or silly.
This is why it's so damned dangerous to get captured by an ideology to the point that you never talk to anyone outside it. NPR is mostly relatively bright people with mostly good intentions--always with an agenda, but one they pursue thinking it's good. They aren't stupid, and neither are their listeners. And yet, they sometimes say breathtakingly silly or crazy things, which most of their listeners absorb and accept with little comment. It's probably worth understanding why, instead of making up a story in which lots of people are listening and volutarily sending money in despite knowing they're spreading crazy nonsense.
Wow, the NPR comment section is an absolute mess. The mods are whacking comments left and right, but not deleting the replies made to those comments. The end result is a disaster where it's impossible to understand what the hell anyone is saying. Although I'm sure they're not saying anything interesting.
I also like the sidebar which features "Do Racing Snails Drive Racial Stereotypes In "Turbo"" Well, Miss Random NPR Overpaid Executives, I don't know but considering the movie is currently bombing I don't think anyone cares to find out.
Linda Wertheimer, Scott Simon, Ira Glass, Nina Totenberg, the late Daniel Schorr; am I sensing a pattern here?
"..nd, of course, there are all these dweeb suck-ups in the media who pretend his clunky writing is good writing. Back at the writer's workshop, it's like the one attendant everyone knows was once published in The New Yorker a couple years ago, and so everyone kisses up to him, including doing him the flattery of plagiarizing his lame turns of phrase in their own class assignments."
Please. His book was ghost-written, mostly by Ayres. This has been discussed here, and obliquely admitted to by Ayres. Most experts who study this sort of thing have agreed it doesn't read like BO. Whatever that is, since BO mostly reads what others have written from a teleprompter. The spontaneous press conferences, full of pithy back and forths and witty repartee (JFK springs to mind) are not a part of the Obama experience.
He's not a writer. Some seem to think he's a speaker, but I've never been able to sit through a sentence without feeling nauseous. I have been totally immune to his "charisma", which seems a total media contrivance. Even if he were not in the position he's in I doubt I'd feel anything other than a creepy-ass revulsion toward him, mostly because he's a sociopath and serious ill, but also because he's gay (well known in certain Chicago circles) and the media will not allow this to be spoken of above a whisper, to paraphrase Woodrow Wilson.
Just my opinion.
While brie-munching latte bubble boys and girls are busy wringing the bias out, the rest of America, particularly white America, is getting its necks wrung out by the one and only group of people who get a pass on that whole self-examination thing.
We know that somewhat more holes are dangerous than are usefully benign (although you have to understand the context of holes, the volcanic history of early Earth), but if you approach an unknown hole cautiously, then you're the problem.
I try to maximize my bias on a daily basis.
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