A question of perspective on "my black friend"

[civvver]

Great. Not at all the point, or what the thread was about, but great.

To try to get back to the point, the "my black friend" in the thread title doesn't refer to any actual person. It refers to the standard debate tactic racists routinely employ of attributing whatever absurd rhetoric they are spouting to "my black friend" as a way to make it seem credible.

I don't think this is at all limited to discussions about race.

This is basically one person offering anecdotal evidence to support their position. Which happens in all arguments constantly.

It happens in politics, you can take any argument you want like health care. Either side, someone will say well my one friend had no insurance and because of aca was able to get covered and it saved his life, while another guy says well my insurance premiums tripled under aca and my coverage is worse.

The only difference here is they are trying to legitimize their anecdotal evidence with the precursor about the person's color.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

I don't think this is at all limited to discussions about race.

This is basically one person offering anecdotal evidence to support their position. Which happens in all arguments constantly.

It happens in politics, you can take any argument you want like health care. Either side, someone will say well my one friend had no insurance and because of aca was able to get covered and it saved his life, while another guy says well my insurance premiums tripled under aca and my coverage is worse.

The only difference here is they are trying to legitimize their anecdotal evidence with the precursor about the person's color.

Yes, second handing anecdotal evidence is not limited to this particular topic. It is a unique subset though, in that the claim of "my black friend" is intended to build credibility in itself, as well as through the subsequent anecdotal evidence. Generally speaking the person saying "my black friend" has already said enough to make me doubt that they could possibly really have a black friend, and whatever they then attribute to their "black friend" happens to match up with whatever baldly racist thing they themselves happen to be claiming.

"I hate black people, and my black friend does too" would be an extreme example, and is actually not all that far beyond things I have heard. I have seen, with my own eyes, a guy claiming certain knowledge of how the LAPD really treats black people and citing his 'black friend' as corroboration...while he was arguing with a black guy from LA.

 

[Broken_Erika]

I suppose if his black friend lived in LA before they reformed the LAPD.....

 

[Timsup2nothin]

I suppose if his black friend lived in LA before they reformed the LAPD.....

Admittedly there is a time element at play there. In the conversation I was observing all participating and referenced people were talking about current LAPD.

 

[Hygro]

"I hate black people, and my black friend does too" would be an extreme example, and is actually not all that far beyond things I have heard.

Reminds me of a series of Maddox posts from 15 years back.

 

[Bamspeedy]

That's more on point...thanks. I intended this to be a way of looking at, and possibly working past, the "I have a black friend" gambit.

Point of interest...the guy you carpooled with might be exactly what I was referring to here, because I can easily see the possibility of him saying "the white guy I carpool with" or "used to carpool with." Because I know these kind of conversations happen among people other than white people too. If there are a number of black guys and someone gets saying "white people this and white people that" your former car pool mate may very well say something like "I used to carpool with this white guy and he..." He might even overplay it a little bit and say "my white friend..." because people do that.

So the question (this is general, not specific to BamSpeedy, even though he gave a specific example situation) becomes, did you give that guy ammunition to fight the good fight? Is he saying "my white friend is a stand up guy"? Is he saying "man, I know this white guy that always treats me right enough, but the dude is just f'ing clueless about what's going on, and seems like he refuses to see anything outside his own white bread point of view"? Or is he the one saying "I work with this white guy and we talk about basketball on the breaks, but man he is one racist POS...and probably thinks I'm his friend because I put up with him so I don't get fired"?

If one is able to keep his racist opinions to himself at work to prevent himself from getting fired, wouldn't he also keep them to himself when talking to his black friend about basketball? At work I've heard more negative things about hispanics ("they all look the same", "I just call them all Jose") than I've heard negative things about blacks (can't recall ever hearing anything racist against blacks at my current job that I've been at for over 15 years).

There is so much about a person besides how they view race. Don't believe that topic ever came up in the carpool. The co-worker who helped hook me up with a date did tell me about his experience with police (every time there is a new officer on the force they will pull him over, check his ID, then leave him alone now that they know who he is).

For the first few years of our marriage whenever my wife was nagging me about something that she doesn't like she would say "Americans do this, Americans do that" and I had to repeatedly remind her "I do that, not 'All Americans' do that. Despite Chinese people having a reputation for viewing blacks more unfavorably than White Americans view blacks, I have not heard her say anything bad about black people.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

If one is able to keep his racist opinions to himself at work to prevent himself from getting fired, wouldn't he also keep them to himself when talking to his black friend about basketball?

I'm not suggesting that the racist is making up their "black friend" out of whole cloth. As you suggest, they might very well have friendly conversations there at the water cooler. But that doesn't make an actual "friend," at least in my opinion. It also doesn't qualify the racist as an expert on "the real black experience," which is what they are trying to present themselves as when they make the claim.

Admittedly, there are probably a more than reasonable number of people who try to be on the right side of racial issues who also have no legitimate claim to such expertise, or any more valid "black friends" than the racist does.

 

[Ryika]

In my experience, the "black friend" is usually brought up in online discussions as a way to counter people who have either just called you a racist, or to counter people who are black and have painted themselves as the ambassador of the black community.

I don't think I have ever seen somebody bring up "their black friend" as a way to make statements about black people in general. That probably happens every now and then, but it doesn't seem very common.

 

[cardgame]

Half the answer is simple demographics. The other answer is the success of social justice to empower minority voices; even if they might disagree on broad levels, these white racists under discussion at least concede that they can't simply make the statement, because it would have no validity. In a sense, a privilege check that they acknowledge. A moderate win?

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Half the answer is simple demographics. The other answer is the success of social justice to empower minority voices; even if they might disagree on broad levels, these white racists under discussion at least concede that they can't simply make the statement, because it would have no validity. In a sense, a privilege check that they acknowledge. A moderate win?

Good point.

 

[metatron]

BLM is met with truncheons and tear gas, and its energy quietly diverted into the deranged bourgeois cosplay of campus activism. This isn't a collective pathology, it's exactly how things are meant to go.

I agree with your sentiment, but would like to nit-pick that last part.

It's kinda both. It's also a collective pathology. And it's in flux and unstable and only going halfway "as planned".
Like, this is not a brilliant design, but rather the sum of the adaptations that both conservatives and campus-ish liberals have come up withon the fly. And it's not that stable at all.