Lower class life,

This is a pretty shocking study. A group of British researchers concluded that social class categorization has a profound effect on the biological aging process. I'll let you guess which social classes tend to age the fastest...

The shorthand version: out of 1,552 women, all from various classes and all with an average age of 46, those in lower classes were seven biological years older on average. This resulted from the high levels of stress that lower classes were subjected to on a daily basis.

This study may have been based in Britain, but the results can be applied anywhere. Stress is stress, whether you're a British manual laborer or an American one. I think this is all the more reason to invest in a more nationalized healthcare system that would also encompass some of the psychological aspects resulting from social class-induced stress.

Racebook?

I realized something very interesting recently. The Facebook group "1, 000,000 Strong for Stephen T Colbert" has become a sounding board to contest--or reinforce--racial stereotypes.

To give you just a little bit of information about the group, it does have more than 1 million members. In fact, the group's membership is nearly 1.5 million. You need a Facebook account to visit it, but if you have an account, you can view the group here.

But why, in such a large and unmoderated venue, do members feel comfortable discussing race and racism? I know, I know, Stephen Colbert is all about sarcastic stereotypes. But I belong to a few Facebook groups myself and I've never seen anything like this before. In an age when almost any Internet comment can offend, why in this group are members grappling with such a difficult issue?

There have been several controversial topic names and discussions on the message board for the group, some of which must (or at least, I hope they must) be sarcastic. But sometimes, one sarcastic, inflammatory comment prompts another member to respond with the opposite...and not always sarcastically.

Particularly noteworthy is a post titled "Why are all white people racit?" No, I didn't spell that wrong. The original poster, apparently (I say apparently because it's hard to confirm anyone's actual identity on the Internet) a black man from Detroit named Plaxio Towers, posted the question and created a definition for the word "racit" on www.urbandictionary.com. While some people saw it for what it probably was--a statement meant to be partially sarcastic and partially truthful--others saw it as an unacceptable condemnation of white people.

The controversial post has since been removed, either by Facebook or its original poster. But when it was up, Towers made good on, what I assume, was his goal. Many people who believed he was being serious attacked him by using racial slurs and parroting stupid, baseless stereotypes about black people. Ironically, of course, this proved that they still held on to some ugly stereotypes. I like to think of Towers sitting there at his computer, smiling as he watched his post prove itself.

But what good does it do to discuss racism and stereotypes on the Internet? Well, I'm going to go ahead and say that I don't advocate it. In particular, I think looking at the demise of the Chappelle Show would provide us with a good argument against it.

Dave Chappelle's show was very successful, but it hinged on one principle: contesting stereotypes from within. With this tactic, the Chappelle Show intended to show viewers the absurdity of stereotypes by overexaggerating them. It's a hard tactic to master and unfortunately, Chappelle wound up canceling the show in its third season primarily because he believed people were laughing with the stereotypes and not at them.

So how does this relate to the Internet posts in the group I mentioned above? Well for one, even sarcastic posts can give those who still believe in stereotypes a sense of affirmation. And to those who don't understand Internet sarcasm, the result is usually even worse--they come away believing that others share in their stereotypes.

It may seem rather Spartan of me to think that discussions of race and racial stereotypes should be saved for face-to-face discussions, but I think that in the long run it could save us a lot of misunderstanding and inadvertent reaffirmation of stereotypes.

What the? A high school ROBOTICS CLASS?!

Yesterday, a friend of mine completely blew me away with a description of her high school education. She divulged that she had a high school robotics class. A robotics class. Jeeeesus. Did any of you have a robotics class? I didn't think so. What surprised me even more was how nonchalantly she mentioned this. I wondered what she'd spring on me next. Aircraft design? Alchemy? "Yeah, you know, plain ol' robotics," she almost seemed to say. "I just HAD to complete it before I could get to what really interested me--transmutational logarithms."

I found myself choking back some unexpected envy. I honestly thought that my suburbian refuge was the epitomy of educational opportunity. I thought of how much I could have benefitted from a robotics class. Perhaps the mathematical concepts involved in robotic creation would have helped me with my SAT scores. Hell, at the very least I could have made some ungainly creature that hobbled around. Okay, okay...convulsed violently. I'll admit, I'm not much good with electronics and programming, but the option would still have been nice. It was the principle of the thing.

Then it hit me. If I felt like my exemplary high school education put me at a disadvantage, what was offered to students at low-income schools? That really put things into perspective for me. I was always told that my high school gave me an excellent education, and I certainly don't disapprove of that assertion now that my friend told me about her uberprogram. I'm doing just fine; I made a relatively smooth transition from high school into my freshman year at college. But it is true that I could have had other high school courses to prepare me for the kinds of things I'd do in college.

But what about economically disadvantaged kids? I'd hate to think about their predicament. I know, I know but the Robin Hood clauses really help things out, don't they? Yeah, right. It's no joke that wealthy public school districts have sufficient funding to provide teachers with stipends and incentives that reward specific teaching qualifications or achievements. This is all completely state sanctioned, of course. And just look at what happens when someone wants to buck the trend and teach "undesirables." This disconcerting story makes its way to us from Westlake High School in Austin, Texas. If there's that much hell to pay for helping kids from the other side of the tracks--literally and figuratively--I can see why it's so hard for low-income school districts to recruit high-quality teachers. Not only do they not have the money to offer incentives and update facilities, but the heavy-hitters keep their acquisitions in check, even with legal measures.

Let's face it, folks. All education is not equal. It's getting harder for some districts to find or recruit good teachers and pay for new materials. I think it's kind of sad that some public schools offer high-tech robotics classes while others struggle to come up with enough money for a new set of chemistry books.

Something just doesn't seem right here. For someone with my relatively privileged education, it took the lack of a robotics class to make me feel inadequately prepared. Spurned by the lack of a robotics class. Go figure, eh? Imagine what the kids with broken desks and 30-year-old textbooks feel like...

Welcome, all!

This will be the new site for my various rantings, ravings, and a little bit of everything in between--but all about the lacking news coverage of the "undesirables" in our society. If you're looking for "fair and balanced,"go to Fox News. This site is built upon the premise that the media is not being fair and balanced enough. We hardly acknowledge that there's a segment of our society that we regularly cull from news coverage--the poor, minorities, women. But our egregious fault is no longer deniable.

Occasionally, the media come through and actually comment on substantive subjects for the economically and socially disenfranchised. It's been happening a little more recently, which is encouraging. But I want to make sure that I get the message out to as many people as I can. I believe that it's our obligation as a society to relate paramount social issues to readers, even if the subject material isn't considered "viable" by most traditional media. So buck up, buckle down, and enjoy the blog! And please let me know if you see anything that catches your eye or have any problems, arguments, or refutations of your own. I love interactivity!

Dude who posts,
Tony