UPDATE: English apologizes: EMU's Ron English offends single mothers

Re: EMU's Ron English offends single mothers

Yeah, I can see in that circumstance. I was more referring to unmarried women or women who quickly marry a guy to latch onto him.

 

Re: EMU's Ron English offends single mothers

Boy, how I wish I could have been there in person.

 

Re: EMU's Ron English offends single mothers

I don't know if Dan did, to be honest. If there's any team EMU always seems to give a tough game, it's Central. Eastern's won four times in the last six years, all by a touchdown or less, twice in overtime (one in like four overtimes at Ford Field). In particular, the 2008 game included alleged taunting from CMU players and staff related to EMU's Jeff Genyk all but certain to be fired.

 

Re: EMU's Ron English offends single mothers

Same scenario here with a single-parent household. My sister and I grew up middle-class, lived in a decent neighborhood, and didn't go without the basic necessities. It would have been easy to go sideways, but I felt an extra sense of responsibility to help my Mom keep my sister in line, stay away from bad crowds, and be a good kid.

I've been thru two stepdads, three stepmoms, and I keep telling myself that I'm normal.

It wasn't the case for some of my childhood friends as they came from single-parent homes that were more dysfunctional than Betty Draper being married to Henry in "Mad Men."

I find it ironic that Ron English would be the guy to make those comments, and in the African-American community, he should know, as a black male, how difficult it is to find male mentors when there is no dad in the house.

While it's true that a two-parent home provide a stable culture, to say that Mom can't handle or teach her son(s) to be a man is a problem. I learned how to act mature, take responsibility if I messed up an assignment in class, and treat people with respect under my mom.

If that doesn't qualify me as a man under English's book, then I guess he needs to get out of the film room and spend a week or two in the rough areas in Detroit to get a better perspective.

 

Re: EMU's Ron English offends single mothers

You miss the fucking point, as has most people, because people get blinded by political correctness and get all fucking defensive.

I will state emphatically, he was a dumbass for saying this publicly, but he wasn't making a statement about manhood.

His point is pretty simple and correct - in general, boys who are raised in homes without fathers and who don't have strong father figures in their lives don't respond well to the direction and authority of other men.

They aren't used to it, they don't like it and thus they don't respond to it.

That's all he was saying - that if they can find kids who are already used to listening to the direction of males, they can get right down to teaching and coaching football and not have to spend a year or two breaking through those barriers and issues.

Again, he is a dumb ass for verbalizing it and mostly because most people aren't smart enough to understand and grasp what he was saying nor do thy have the ability to separate their own emotions or insecurities long enough to try and truly understand it.

And not too mention the fact that the politically correct among us have ruined public discussions and open discourse in this country forever.

 

Re: EMU's Ron English offends single mothers

Yes, I know life isn't fair. It sure as hell wasn't fair that my kids' mother - my wife of 20 years - suffered a stroke and died. It wasn't fair that my mother-in-law died just a few months before that.

You're missing my point: It's not the recruit's fault that they've only got one parent. They didn't choose the circumstance. Don't penalize them for something they can't control.

 

Re: EMU's Ron English offends single mothers

Not being chosen for a limited, merit-based award is not the same as punishment.

Like Stitch said, I didn't choose to be 5'6" and unathletic. Why penalize me?

 

Re: EMU's Ron English offends single mothers

So it's OK to discriminate against someone if they're in a circumstance they can't control?

Sorry, but I'm being a defensive father here. If ANYONE discriminates against my children just because their mother is dead, woe be them.

 

Re: EMU's Ron English offends single mothers

Yes. I can't imagine any functioning societal system that didn't allow for this.

We're not talking about situations where two kids are identical and the kid with two parents gets the scholarship.

It's the recruiters' job to filter a very large pool of candidates down to an acceptable number, and that has to involve making guesses and assumptions. They can't spend enough time with every single kid to get to know them deeply and personally. So one of the assumptions they use is that kids from two-parent households are more likely to have the qualities they are looking for. This is not an unreasonable assumption.

 

Re: EMU's Ron English offends single mothers

It's a flat-out generalization and a great stereotype but a totally unreasonable assumption.

 

Re: EMU's Ron English offends single mothers

The fact that it is a generalization and a stereotype does not make it untrue. Piles of sociological research tells us that children from two-parent homes will *tend* to have more desirable characteristics.

Stereotypes have gotten a bad name. They are fundamental tools for survival that we evolved for a good reason: In a world too complicated for our brains to fully comprehend and analyze, they will let us arrive at the correct answer more often than not.