Fail of Your Day

Good luck with it!

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They don’t read news. At all.

Or they only watch right-wing “news” which is basically the opposite of news.

The right-wing run up to midterms was that Hispanic immigrants were evil. How do you sell that to the aforementioned Latina coworker?

Probably the “I’ve got mine, so fuck everyone else” mentality.

Dude, I meet people who aren’t quite clear on what “left” vs “right” means, or who don’t realize that the GOP is the Republican Party.

People who don’t know how to vote.

People who don’t actually know anything that Trump’s done in the last two years.

People don’t know things.

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This is biased, but I’ve only ever heard that from people born in the US. My work puts my into contact with a lot immigrants and none of them think like that.

There’s plenty of Hispanic citizens who have lineages in the US going back generations now. Totally possible for them to have such mentality.

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My work puts me in contact with immigrants and “reasonable people” exclusively. I can grok people who think otherwise, but that doesn’t make them right.

Exactly. Not everyone who is Hispanic is an immigrant.

I think it’s also that our education system is so poor in so many places that people can’t understand the news. They don’t have the vocabulary and weren’t taught base concepts, and culturally aren’t taught to think, in fact thinking is discouraged. I’ve been on rants about the rural south before but in many places down here thinking and curiosity are met with perplexion at best and most often hostility.

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It’s not even that. They don’t consume it. At all.

Most people don’t look at news on a regular basis. Especially not political news. They just don’t consume news.

But yes, the problem you describe is also a major problem. Especially since we’ve concentrated poor schooling in the areas that need it the most =(

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You know, seeing you say that about the US almost makes me upset, but I’ve been spending almost 6 months deprogramming Chinese students. The fact that their “history” books are so biased does make it easier.

We were talking about this a bit on Facebook, IIRC, where internationally, the Moon landing is looked at as a massinve group effort, but in the US it’s taught as USA 1 everyone else 0.

No no that’s my point I think a lot of people don’t consume because they can’t (or think they can’t) understand and thus don’t bother. I’m sure a lot of people could understand and just don’t bother as well because of I’ve got mine mentality.

True story: I was in the process of enrolling in a program to study abroad in Japan when we moved from suburban Upstate New York to rural Virginia when I was 17. When my mom and I met with the guidance counselor at my new school to make arrangements about credits and being away for a semester, the first thing out of the counselor’s mouth was “…why? Why would you go all the way to Japan? What for? No one’s ever done that before.”

I know that feel, but for none of those reasons. I applied for foreign study through the Key Club and got denied because I said that I had tried alcohol in a family setting (at ~12 years old). I know the feeling of being told no for bullshit reasons.

I wasn’t denied anything the administration just had no idea what to do with me. But wtf like every kid has sneaked a taste of something at some point, that’s super bullshit.

I didn’t learn anything in school in 5th and most of 6th grade. Not one thing.

I’d been at a Catholic school previously, and it was in every subject (except evolutionary science…) a year or more ahead of the public schools. So my education basically reset for a year and a half.

I remember asking if I could just be put in 7th or 8th grade, and the school guidance counselor called me an elitist.

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How do people from other countries feel when their families move to the US. Other than the language barrier holding the back, they are like 4+ grades ahead.