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And People Think Wright is Crazy?!

In an AP feed from 30 minutes ago, Michelle Roberts reports that 31 of 53 teen girls at FLDS ranch are pregnant or had a baby.

"More than half the teen girls taken from a polygamist compound in west Texas have children or are pregnant, state officials said Monday.

A total of 53 girls between the ages of 14 and 17 are in state custody after a raid 3 1/2 weeks ago at the Yearning For Zion Ranch in Eldorado. Of those girls, 31 either have children or are pregnant, said Child Protective Services spokesman Darrell Azar. Two of those are pregnant now, he said; it was unclear whether either of those two already have children.

"It shows you a pretty distinct pattern, that it was pretty pervasive," he said.

State officials took custody of all 463 children at the ranch controlled by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, saying a pattern of teen girls forced into underage "spiritual" marriages and sex with much older men created an unsafe environment for the sect's children.

Under Texas law, children under the age of 17 generally cannot consent to sex with an adult. A girl can get married with parental permission at 16, but none of these girls is believed to have a legal marriage under state law.

A call seeking comment from FLDS spokesman Rod Parker was not immediately returned. Church officials have denied that any children were abused at the ranch and say the state's actions are a form of religious persecution.

Civil-liberties groups and lawyers for the children have criticized the state for sweeping all the children, from nursing infants to teen boys, into foster care when only teen girls are alleged to have been sexually abused.

No one has been charged since the raid...

The sect, which broke from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints more than a century ago, believes polygamy brings glorification in heaven. Its leader, Warren Jeffs, is revered as a prophet. Jeffs was convicted last year in Utah of forcing a 14-year-old girl into marriage with an older cousin."


 


Comments (22)

There are many varied layers of madness.
This one is admittedly much worse that Wright's, but does not dismiss his(madness) out of hand.
Didn't you hear that thing he said about Black people being right brain and White people being left brain and that we learn differently?

Did you actually hear the context or are you just parroting right-wing talking points? Cause no one can be that stupid.

I heard him say it himself this morning as I got ready for work on CNN. He did say something about different is not deficient , but that kind of talk about black brains being different from white brains is an invitation to trouble.
He said it , I saw it and I did not take it out of context.

Then you are that stupid...he was talking about a study. Did you bother to actually read the text of his speech or like all the other stupid sheeple in in this most ignorant of countries who got their undies in a twist over the 30 seconds of soundbites taken out of context. Goodness stupid should be painful. There is no way anyone could read the entire segment when he first mentions the doctor and her study, then get offended by what he said unless they're predisposed to just not wanting to listen to anything the man says. At that point, I'd have to say they're just weak-kneed crybabies who are afraid of The Scary Black Man.

He also said different does not mean deficient. So, he's not saying one way of learning is better than another. People do learn in different ways, I think that learning takes place in a cultural context. I don't know whether the theory he used has been debunked or not but I don't think what he said is crazy.

Ask any teacher, ALL children learn in different ways! Each child is an individual!
I mean , what point is he trying to make here? If I am bi-racial do I learn with my left brain or my right brain?
Don't you see that such thinking brings us back to "separate but equal" pre-civil rights thinking?

I didn't hear the comment Reverend Wright made about left brain/right brain. Do you have an actual quote I can look at?

My take on what Wright said about "different, not deficient", was that all people of all colors are the same. There are no deficiencies, no "greater or less than", there are just people.

(Full video of the address, is viewable at hiphopmusic.com.)

This is the part I heard that offended me

"Turn to your neighbor and say different does not mean deficient. It simply means different. In fact, Dr. Janice Hale was the first writer whom I read who used that phrase. Different does not mean deficient. Different is not synonymous with deficient. It was in Dr. Hale’s first book, “Black Children their Roots, Culture and Learning Style.” Is Dr. Hale here tonight? We owe her a debt of gratitude. Dr. Hale showed us that in comparing African-American children and European-American children in the field of education, we were comparing apples and rocks.( Which ones are the rocks?)

And in so doing, we kept coming up with meaningless labels like EMH, educable mentally handicapped, TMH, trainable mentally handicapped, ADD, attention deficit disorder.

And we were coming up with more meaningless solutions like reading, writing and Ritalin. Dr. Hale’s research led her to stop comparing African-American children with European-American children and she started comparing the pedagogical methodologies of African-American children to African children and European-American children to European children. And bingo, she discovered that the two different worlds have two different ways of learning. European and European-American children have a left brained cognitive object oriented learning style and the entire educational learning system in the United States of America. Back in the early ’70s, when Dr. Hale did her research was based on left brained cognitive object oriented learning style. Let me help you with fifty cent words.

Left brain is logical and analytical. Object oriented means the student learns from an object. From the solitude of the cradle with objects being hung over his or her head to help them determine colors and shape to the solitude in a carol in a PhD program stuffed off somewhere in a corner in absolute quietness to absorb from the object. From a block to a book, an object. That is one way of learning, but it is only one way of learning.

African and African-American children have a different way of learning.

They are right brained, subject oriented in their learning style. Right brain that means creative and intuitive. Subject oriented means they learn from a subject, not an object. They learn from a person. Some of you are old enough, I see your hair color, to remember when the NAACP won that tremendous desegregation case back in 1954 and when the schools were desegregated. They were never integrated. When they were desegregated in Philadelphia, several of the white teachers in my school freaked out. Why? Because black kids wouldn’t stay in their place. Over there behind the desk, black kids climbed up all on them.

Because they learn from a subject, not from an object."


Now, I fully realize the point he is trying to make. MY point is this is the same point racists make when they encourage segregation!
It is dangerous thinking that could backfire in a terrible way!
And again, What of bi-racial children?
Where do they fit in. What , exactly is he suggesting be done?

Okay, I can see that you're offended. And okay, I don't agree with his point either.

But isn't what happened to those teenaged girls more invasive?

Of course!
But, as I said, there are different levels!
We can't start encouraging separate , but equal, especially with Public Education under fire and o the ropes like it is!
The Republicans with their "school vouchers" are trying to repeal and dismantle the Public Education Programs and we cannot allow such thinking which they could turn around and club us over the head with!

The point he was making is the African oral tradition which uses the right part of the brain has been passed on to African Americans and since this is the culture they are coming out of, this is how many of them learn. Like I said, you learn in a cultural context and from your community before you ever step foot in school.

Yeah, those FLDS people are creeps.

I'm so sorry they ended up in Texas. They didn't start here. They moved here from Arizona. There's another colony in Oregon. They all follow those crazy guys who claim to be a prophet.

Jon Krakauer wrote a great book about the whole mess: "Under the Banner of Heaven."

I highly recommend it.

I have been trying for the last hour to change the picture on my profile to one of myself - just so people will know I'm not a monster. :)

It won't let me. Either I get a message that profile fields are limited to 255 characters - and I haven't added a thing; or I get a page of death that says the webmaster recorded 0 bytes of the file.

endlessly. Am I in trouble?

Open up your new picture in an image editor and either resize it or crop it to 64 pixels in width.

If I knew how to do that, I would. I'm really rather hopeless.

O my god - it changed. I don't believe it.

O my god -- you're more gorgeous than you let on.

O you're too sweet.

You don't have a close up!

LOL

Actually I have a closer one I think - but it took me a solid hour to get it changed to this one.

I'll wait.

LOL

DF - I actually might be able to get that accomplished - tomorrow.

I'm so hopeless I just opened my photobooth file the first time tonight by accident and discovered just how much fun I've been missing.

I'm totally not going to vote for Mitt Romney now.

Silly as that is, it's also true that as much as the LDS want to say that the FLDS isn't them - the FLDS didn't spring full grown from Zeus's head.

Basically, it's just old school LDS.

avatar

In response to Stravu9 and Spade.

Having read Wright's statement I don't necessarily agree with everything he is saying. I feel he puts too much emphasis on the physical development of the children and not enough on the cultural aspect of their upbringing. It becomes unclear whether he supports a purely biological cause for the "differences" between African/ African American children and European/European American children, or whether he supports a purely cultural cause (i would whole heartedly agree with him on the cultural aspect). Because of the ambiguity of Wright's wording (or my lack of understanding in the field), I am hesitating to completely agree with Spade on his/her argument. But given that, I think it is an utter over reaction to compare Wright's statements to white racists calling for "separate but equal".
His argument is pretty academic and bares none of the anger/hatred embedded in the racist defense of America's cultural atrocity.

plus--

The "apples to stones" comment is clearly not derogatory. I think he is trying to make a starker difference between two learning methods than the more frequently used "apples and oranges" phrasing would otherwise allow.

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