Originally Posted by tonkovich

the same thing happens on college campuses; minorities and women marginalized themselves in the 60's, when instead of changing the existing history, sociology etc departments, they insisted on setting up their own separate departments. when i was in college, you didn't find any whites taking uh black studies classes, men in women's (oops, womyn's ) studies etc. i am supposed to be the "liberal" on this forum, but on this issue i am, well, something else.?

Originally Posted by tankdriver

I took a class on MLK, Malcolm X and Vietnam, and a couple classes on Civil Rights and the media. My classes were pretty mixed.

The Black History Month is a thorny problem. Without it, there's no black history taught. OTOH, it's an excuse to not teach it any other time of the year.

Originally Posted by strelnik

Everyone is ignorant of something. The word ignorant literally comes from the Latin word meaning " not knowing something."

Since no one knows everything, everyone is ignorant to a degree.

But "ignorant" as we use it in English, comes to use by French where it comes from French slang word "ignare" which is a negative term, meaning someone who doesn't know much and doesn't care if (s)he knows anything.

On the other hand, the word "ignorant" in French is translated in English by the neutral word "unaware."

Maybe if you had used the word "unaware" in talking about what this woman knew ( BTW the past tense of "know" is spelled K-N-E-W, in case you were ignor, oops, UNAWARE of that) this thread might have taken a different turn...And so it goes....

"Well" said the dervish, " The answer is ' well..' "

Originally Posted by The Swede

... or am I being too critical?


I have this 35 year-old female part-time employee.

Today we were talking about 1980's punk bands and skin-heads. I mentioned the term "anti-semetic" and she asked, "I'm not sure what that is? Anti-jewish???"

I just about fell off my chair.