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Unread 17-09-2015, 01:00
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Greg Needel Greg Needel is offline
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FRC #2848 (All-sparks)
Team Role: Engineer
 
Join Date: Jan 2002
Rookie Year: 2002
Location: Dallas, TX
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Re: Can someone in the Irving TX area "draft" this young man?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Cory View Post
I don't mean this as a dig at you, as I think what you're doing is great, but the culture change they need is to stop seeing any non-white person as a terrorist. It's got nothing to do with being more aware of STEM activities.

The problem isn't that they couldn't figure out he had a clock and not a bomb...it's that they saw a brown kid with both "Ahmed" and "Mohamed" in his name and freaked out because they're either subconsciously or outwardly racist/Islamophobic.
I agree with you 100% about the racial issues at play here and while I agree with you that those are the much bigger ones to solve. Unfortunately I don't think that I am qualified to be the one working to proactively change people's minds in that regards. I will support those efforts how I can, but that is a situation where I will follow but can't lead (besides by example of my personal actions).

On the other hand technical mentoring and training is something that I can help with, and where I feel like my efforts can have a bigger impact.
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Greg Needel│www.robogreg.com
Co-founder REV Robotics LLC www.REVrobotics.com
2014 FRC World Champions with 254, 469, & 74