I was surprised that the Smith president responded. Normally, you just let people rant because 1.) You don't want to be dragged into a stupid argument and 2.) There are HR considerations regarding confidentiality.
But this was a nice teaching moment, and the Smith president didn't offer any information that wasn't already a matter of public record.
With all the Trump judges, what are the odds that a couple of decisions come down that effectively make largely pointless white people a new protected class?
I'm already censoring myself with "largely pointless."
I will not rap. My promise to you.
What is the largest point of a white person?
Fourth grade Zoom out here seems to have settled on something called Flocabulary to deliver the entire language arts curriculum. Every time I'm writing a refrain / It's to Persuade, Instruct, or Entertain. Boy do we hear a lot of Flocabulary day in day out.
6:
"She turned around and gave that big booty a smack
She hit the floor (she hit the floor)
Next thing you know
Shawty got F - L - O- O -R."
I was a little too tall, could've used a few pounds
Tight pants, points hardly renowned
She was a black haired beauty with big dark eyes
And points all her own, sitting way up high
Way up firm and high
9:. 40 or so years that I have listened to this song and I never understood what he's saying in the 2nd line there. Genius says the points refers to his pointed shoes. But "hardly renowned" ? Is he just saying he wasn't a famous rock star yet?
Isn't Bari Weiss, the Queen of the Intellectual Dark Web, responsible for this story becoming a big fucking deal? Did she call the would-be rapping librarian, the Joan of Arc of our time or did I make that up?
Life is stupider than you can make up (without drugs).
I always thought he had 'points all around' but the internet doesn't seem to agree with me.
I think he just means she had nipples.
14:. She has points aka nipples - that's in the 4th line. But he points too - see the 2nd line. Pay attention, Moby!
15: Don't criticize Moby, when you can't even write 3 sentences without leaving out a word!
I feel like that the claim that the librarian demanded a large settlement must be true, because otherwise Smith would be in legal jeopardy. But I'm not actually a lawyer, so is that actually true?
That why it was front-page drive-in news.
I heard about this a while ago. I was initially sympathetic to the librarian, because I'm happy to assume that administrators are the bad actors until given evidence otherwise. But the more I read about her story, the sketchier she started to seem.
The New York Times recently had a somewhat more serious take on the atmosphere at Smith College.
I admit to a fairly significant prejudice against people my age who have never been professionally involved in making music who decide to use "rap" to make their topic of concern more interesting to young people.
Also, I don't get Post Malone. He doesn't rap, he sings ballads. At least so far as I ever hear on the radio.
20: That article made some very strange choices (and by that, I mean the NYT appears to be lying again). After reading it, I thought the student had entered an area where she wasn't permitted to be because it was reserved for employees of a particular summer program; blown off a dining hall employee who politely told her she wasn't allowed to be there; and then made a huge fuss when a security guard asked her what she was doing there. Then, because I had a brief to write that I was avoiding and someone linked it on Twitter, I read the Smith report on the incident: https://www.gazettenet.com/Smith-College-releases-investigation-into-apparent-racial-profiling-case-21189323
The student was employed by the relevant summer program, was permitted to eat in the dining hall where she ate and explained that to the dining hall employee who spoke to her about it, and doesn't seem to have been in the wrong about anything in the initial incident. You can still disagree about whether the incident reflects racism or just confusion, and she seems to have directed social media opprobrium on some low level employees who didn't deserve it, but the NYT framing of the story is all fucked up.
23: It seems that, as usual, the upper level administration were the real villains (see 20.1).
Unless I'm reading it wrong, the employees were following procedure and when there was a stink on social media the president & co. reacted by throwing them under a bus.
21: You just need to remember that rap isn't music.
If he's talking about tight pants but with small points, is he saying he's not well endowed? Not sure why points would be plural in that case.
Or maybe that he's got a bony ass, where having points would be bad.
24: My read is that the student wasn't doing anything she wasn't permitted to, and there wasn't any procedure requiring anyone to hassle her. There is certainly a plausible argument that the hassling she suffered wasn't that bad and wasn't necessarily the result of racism, which is where the Smith College investigation came out, but it seems to me to misrepresent the facts, as the Times did, to suggest that it was the necessary result of carrying out normal procedures.
The answer to comment 5 is "the one on top of their head" which also my interpretation of the lyrics in 9. God that song is the worst earworm.
Although Smith didn't find conclusive evidence that "The Caller" (aka the janitor) was being racist, it seems extremely likely that was the case. Calling security (at a women's college) without actually looking to see that the person was a woman (she's 5'2"!) and without seeing whether she was awake is pretty ridiculous and just wouldn't happen with a white student. Not the most egregious case, and I'm not sure whether discipline is appropriate, but a pretty textbook case of implicit bias. I agree that the NYTimes article seems quite mendacious to the point where it's hard to take it at face value. What remains unclear to me is whether Ms. Blair (who I assume is the "Dining Employee") got a raw deal, it's hard to tell whether she's lying to the NYTimes or whether the student jumped to a conclusion that she was involved. Both seem plausible given.
wait. The real villains are or aren't the librarians who rapped along the way?
Why didn't the librarian just stay and be shittier to management and students until she got fired? I'm not a lawyer, but that seems like a much better case than resigning.
32. Moby, Moby, Moby. You need to get with the times.
29 Sorry about that Todd. I think the Dave Rawlings Gillian Welch song at comment 54 in the other thread will cure you.
Or better, go with this one. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_SiVabBvC4
I feel like you all aren't even trying to learn the Dewey Decimal rap.
Does the library at Smith really use the Dewey Decimal System? I've never seen a real library that didn't use Library of Congress.
17 was me.
I went to the econ rumors site again today in yet another fruitless attempt to reclaim it from racist undergraduates, and it's now genuinely disturbing to me how many math people are on it now. Apparently there's been a big breakthrough on the Langlands program (which is a long-running research agenda), and that's the very first place I saw it mentioned. Are there way more racist mathematicians that I imagined, and they need a safe space to discuss their twin joys of mathematics and white power?
38: The small library my wife works at still does. There is an internal move to replace it due to him (and in some folks view the system itself) being problematic. Alternatively trash the guy and keep the system.
Danger of a Single Story - TED talk by novelist Chimamanda Adichie. Thought of it because it was recently part of a program for the staff of the library in 40.
Awkward raps, Successsion style.
When I read the rapping resource staffer story, the first thing that came to mind was the godawful rap production of Moliere's The Miser that our honors French class saw when I was a senior in high school. Happily, the rap sections were summaries at the start of each act rather than replacements for the original French, but white French people in the early nineties were not, as far as I could tell, extremely gifted rappers. I mean, they were "gifted" in the sense that I still remember a few particularly horrible lines.
I mean, I think cultural appropriation might not be the totally correct frame here since the real issue is almost certainly "it's actually kind of racist to think that you in particular can produce a skillful, appropriate rap and that this is a good idea, because it shows that you have given very little thought to race and culture". I mean, I have not encountered many people saying that literally no white people ever should rap, through whatever changes in society may occur and regardless of their upbringing and experience. The issue seems really concrete - that under most circumstances and for specific articulable reasons, white people should not rap.
On another note, when I was a college student I absolutely loathed attempts to make information palatable through pop culture. The risk of cringe is pretty high. I think you'd need to be a pretty gifted rapper with a lot of charisma to be able to do this kind of presentation at all - not just more talented and thoughtful than whiny white staffer lady, which seems like a low bar to clear.
They might have actually thought 'don't do it, someone might think it's appropriation' was a kinder message than 'don't do it, you're awful at it.' Then again it's not just academia but Smith, from which, out of my fact-free speculation, one might expect an earnest overcorrection.
Honestly, I think it's kind of racist to assume a Black person couldn't also suck at rapping.
Is there a legal theory about how bad you have to suck at something before doing it in public is an offense against those who developed it?
Also, if she put in a tremendous amount of time and effort into a library orientation rap she should be trying to get a recording contract, not wasting her artistry on a bunch of bored freshmen.
I hope she used the word "bore-ientation" in her rap. To show what the rap is not going to be.
I vaguely wondered if the guy from the OP had become embarrassed by the rap he made, maybe back in high school, and how awful (and racist and even sexist!) it is, especially if it's gotten a life of its own in elementary schools.
Nope, not one bit embarrassed.
I can only assume racism keeps Death Row Records from signing him.
48: I think she actually is a recording artist, though folk songs. I saw a link to her Bandcamp or something. (She could also be terrible at that.)
43: It is obviously completely unproblematic in 2021 for a white person to do a rap, as long as it is approached with a minimum of respectfulness (i.e., you know more about rap than what you'd get from 90s sitcoms or something). In this case it sounds pretty cringe, though. A folk song about the Dewey Decimal System would also be cringe.
52 is me. The Name box is pretending like it doesn't know me.
Rap is artistic enough if you faithfully followed the form it would probably not reliably convey educational content to most listeners. And 99% of white people who think it's a good idea are also not going to follow the form, but rather decades-old snippets and misrepresentations of it ("I'm ___ and I'm here to say..."). So good to say "don't do it" as a rule of thumb.
The problem with white people rapping is when they feel like it's time to put on a black accent. If you want to rap and sound like a white person, there are plenty of talented white rappers doing so, cf Northern State or whoever you like.
I'm disappointed that her videos apparently don't include one of her rapping?* I don't see how I can evaluate this controversy without hearing her flow.
Anyway I'm guessing that Smith College's admonition re cultural appropriation was just a clumsy way to avoid telling her she had to stop because she was embarrassing herself and her students were dying of cringe.
*I didn't watch them, but I assume that if such a video were available my attention would have been directed thereto.
43: I absolutely loathed attempts to make information palatable through pop culture. The risk of cringe is pretty high. I think you'd need to be a pretty gifted rapper with a lot of charisma to be able to do this kind of presentation at all ...
Know anyone?
I believe this is the last word about white people rapping, and that was like, a million years ago.
I was so convinced that the link in 60 was going to be to this that I almost didn't click on it to check.
Why must you persecute me, Name box?
Anyway, I just discovered that my beverage is being deceptive, possibly in a cultural way. It says "premium Indian tonic water" and also is from the U.K.
So called, I believe, because made to a recipe devised for or by the Honourable East India Company to protect its servants against malaria.