More trolling instead of something better, featuring Netflix :)

Timsup2nothin said:
:lol:

Don't give him any ideas.

The same course that provided that excerpt provided another one, from a slightly later text, with this incredibly harsh condemnation full of "inherently lazy," "must be closely supervised in performing labor" and on and on. The expectation, which was met, was that the students would react to this obvious racist crap cribbed from some pamphlet decrying abolition in 19th century USA. The shocking reveal was that it also came from an Oxford university textbook, and was a scholarly (in its day) description of the Irish.
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English treatment of irish people was appalling by all means. :/
 
Kyriakos said:
English treatment of irish people was appalling by all means. :/
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English and Irish, Serbs and Croats, Greeks and Turks, Russians and Ukrainians, Danes and Swedes. That list is endless.

Read A Canticle for Leibowitz.
 
Timsup2nothin said:
There is no "victim who is the target of the statement."
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The vicitims of a bigoted statement are the protected class of people being referenced, whether it's African Americans, Christians, Muslims, or whoever.

I don't really understand how you could say that a racist statement has no victims. Expected a lot more from you, to be honest, unless there is some sort of misunderstanding here that I'm missing
 
warpus said:
The vicitims of a bigoted statement are the protected class of people being referenced, whether it's African Americans, Christians, Muslims, or whoever.

I don't really understand how you could say that a racist statement has no victims. Expected a lot more from you, to be honest, unless there is some sort of misunderstanding here that I'm missing
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There is a bit of a misunderstanding. You are responding as if I had said "bigoted statements have no victims" when what I was trying to figure out is where you were seeing a bigoted statement to claim victimized you...and as you point out, me, since I am indeed at least as white as just about anybody. I already said, early in the thread, that I wasn't offended or victimized, so not recognizing where you have been is certainly consistent.
 
You were saying that a statement in the form of: "{all people of this colour skin} {claim about all those people}", puts the onus on the people being referenced (i.e. all white people, all Asians, all Christians, etc.) to stand out of the group and differentiate themselves from it, and not the person making the stereotypical statement.

That's backwards. It's up to the person making such statements to stop making them and to stop generalizing entire groups of people like that. Pointing to the people being referenced and saying: "You're all the same unless you can show me that you're not" is offensive.
 
warpus said:
You were saying that a statement in the form of: "{all people of this colour skin} {claim about all those people}", puts the onus on the people being referenced (i.e. all white people, all Asians, all Christians, etc.) to stand out of the group and differentiate themselves from it, and not the person making the stereotypical statement.

That's backwards. It's up to the person making such statements to stop making them and to stop generalizing entire groups of people like that. Pointing to the people being referenced and saying: "You're all the same unless you can show me that you're not" is offensive.
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No, I said that anyone who wants to be treated as an individual needs to distinguish themselves as an individual, because in the absence of that there is no option but to distinguish them by whatever trivial cues are available...and what they look like, how they dress...these are trivial cues that will be used if nothing else presents itself.

We actually are all the same until we demonstrate that we're somehow not.
 
^In Europe, where most white people live, it doesn't mean that much if you are white. Look at how bigoted some english are against romanians and bulgarians, who usually are similarly white anyway.
 
Timsup2nothin said:
No, I said that anyone who wants to be treated as an individual needs to distinguish themselves as an individual, because in the absence of that there is no option but to distinguish them by whatever trivial cues are available...and what they look like, how they dress...these are trivial cues that will be used if nothing else presents itself.
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I'm sorry, but if you want to judge me by the colour of my skin alone then you are free to do so, but I will not think very highly of you for having done so. It's on me to "not act white" so that you don't do that.

Kyriakos said:
^In Europe, where most white people live, it doesn't mean that much if you are white. Look at how bigoted some english are against romanians and bulgarians, who usually are similarly white anyway.
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About a hundred years ago in the U.S. you weren't considered white if you were an Italian or Irish immigrant.
 
warpus said:
I'm sorry, but if you want to judge me by the colour of my skin alone then you are free to do so, but I will not think very highly of you for having done so. It's on me to "not act white" so that you don't do that.
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I'm not going to judge you on the color of your skin. You've posted more than enough words for me to have a sense of you as an individual...a fair portion of them before i ever knew your skin color.

But it's a fair bet that if you walk into a liquor store in an urban center in the US no one is going to quietly slip their hand under the counter near the gun thinking "get ready, it's a black guy." They are going to judge you by the color of your skin and say something friendly instead, and you'll "think highly of them" for it.
 
Timsup2nothin said:
I'm not going to judge you on the color of your skin. You've posted more than enough words for me to have a sense of you as an individual...a fair portion of them before i ever knew your skin color.
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If you're not, that's great, but your previous posts seem to imply that you would. I am talking about the "In order to stand out (as a white person) you're going to have to do something that will differentiate you from the rest of them" position you took on a couple posts ago. Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you were trying to say, but that seems offensive to me. Again, maybe I'm misunderstanding what you're trying to get across there but that is me being judged by my skin colour - assumptions made about me based on my skin colour alone, until I "differentiate" myself and "prove" that I'm different.

Timsup2nothin said:
But it's a fair bet that if you walk into a liquor store in an urban center in the US no one is going to quietly slip their hand under the counter near the gun thinking "get ready, it's a black guy." They are going to judge you by the color of your skin and say something friendly instead, and you'll "think highly of them" for it.
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I don't get what racists working in liquor stores have to do with the way you yourself act towards people. Racists exist, yep, I get it, but we were talking about you, and not racists working in liquor stores.
 
How often do you guys have a person walk onto an elevator, or around a corner, see you and gasp in terror and assume some defensive position... clutch their purse, hold their bag out in front of them, jump back in fear, before "apologizing" with "Sorry you scared me" LOLs, I scared them, like I'm walking around with a Jason mask on... I literally, at least once a month, have someone do this to me, it happens to me all the time... not once in a while in some dark hallway or parking lot at night... all the time, in the middle of the day, in broad daylight... keep in mind that I wear shirt and tie everyday and work in an office building. Now in fairness, when I was a teenager, and I dressed very differently, I would get this reaction on a weekly, sometimes daily basis... so I just got accustomed to the idea that people are terrified of you and there is nothing you can do to change that... for me that's normal. Is that normal for you? Or do people assume that you're safe and harmless? Do you resent them for showing this preference to you, or do you regard it as "normal"?
 
Sommerswerd said:
How often do you guys have a person walk onto an elevator, or around a corner, see you and gasp in terror and assume some defensive position... clutch their purse, hold their bag out in front of them, jump back in fear, before "apologizing" with "Sorry you scared me" LOLs, I scared them, like I'm walking around with a Jason mask on... I literally, at least once a month, have someone do this to me, it happens to me all the time... not once in a while in some dark hallway or parking lot at night... all the time, in the middle of the day, in broad daylight... keep in mind that I wear shirt and tie everyday and work in an office building. Now in fairness, when I was a teenager, and I dressed very differently, I would get this reaction on a weekly, sometimes daily basis... so I just got accustomed to the idea that people are terrified of you and there is nothing you can do to change that... for me that's normal. Is that normal for you? Or do people assume that you're safe and harmless? Do you resent them for showing this preference to you, or do you regard it as "normal"?
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I actually do get that sometimes, though nowhere near monthly or weekly. From biggists. If you are well over six feet and well over two fifty people get edgy without knowing you at all, until they pick up on some non-trivial cues that set them at ease. I make it my business (usually) to put out those cues as continuously as possible because I don't (usually) like being surrounded by edgy people. Note that I make it my business, even though I could say that their unfounded assessments are their problem.

That was my point, Warpus. People will start making assessments. They can't help it. If they have nothing more to go on than trivial physical traits like skin color or sheer size then they will make those assessments based on trivial physical traits. You and I have the advantage that one obvious trivial trait that can be immediately identified often leads to the guy in the liquor store taking an easy breath and saying hello rather than doing a quick gun accessibility check, or leads the cop at the traffic stop to greet us with some level of reasonable respect. And I find it highly unlikely that you would "think badly of" that liquor store guy saying hello to you or that cop not hollering "outta the car, hands on the roof" before giving you a traffic ticket.
 
Timsup2nothin said:
That was my point, Warpus. People will start making assessments. They can't help it.
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We're not talking initial assessments, we're talking "well past the initial first impression stage, we've gone past first and second base and are quickly approaching third".. Okay that's overstating it, but you get the point. Sure, everybody has initial reactions to people and initial things that pop into their heads that they can't control. "THAT GUY LOOKS ITALIAN I BET HE EATS A LOT OF PASTA"

Sure, whatever, happens to everybody. That's not what I'm talking about at all. I'm talking about the very conscious and well beyond that stage decision to continue to judge people based on nothing but the colour of their skin. That takes conscious effort to remain bigoted well after you have regained control of the situation.
 
warpus said:
We're not talking initial assessments, we're talking "well past the initial first impression stage, we've gone past first and second base and are quickly approaching third".. Okay that's overstating it, but you get the point. Sure, everybody has initial reactions to people and initial things that pop into their heads that they can't control. "THAT GUY LOOKS ITALIAN I BET HE EATS A LOT OF PASTA"

Sure, whatever, happens to everybody. That's not what I'm talking about at all. I'm talking about the very conscious and well beyond that stage decision to continue to judge people based on nothing but the colour of their skin. That takes conscious effort to remain bigoted well after you have regained control of the situation.
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Sure. But how many interactions get that far? The majority of your world and mine is made up of people passing by that make their assessment in a second or less and go with it. They smile at you, and usually at me, and then duck when Sommerswerd happens along. So, clearly, despite the seemingly obvious similarities we live in different worlds. Is it so remarkable that as a result we have different views?
 
Timsup2nothin said:
If you are well over six feet and well over two fifty people get edgy without knowing you at all
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I am both of those and was the first one even when I was a teenager... so yeah, there's that...

@warpus - I said "you guys"... it was directed at everyone who is included in "you guys"
 
Timsup2nothin said:
Sure. But how many interactions get that far? The majority of your world and mine is made up of people passing by that make their assessment in a second or less and go with it. They smile at you, and usually at me, and then duck when Sommerswerd happens along. So, clearly, despite the seemingly obvious similarities we live in different worlds. Is it so remarkable that as a result we have different views?
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I mean, we were talking about a specific instance of you asking me to "try to stand out" from the rest of all the other white people I'm assuming. So in this instance we were discussing here, yeah, that interaction got "that far".

I totally forgot Sommerswerd is black by the way, hey there Sommerswerd, I hope my earlier message to you didn't come off wrong! I barely read your post because I really did not know who you were responding to. It does have to suck living in a place where people will look at you sideways just due to the colour of your skin.

I try not to do that.. and I think I succeed, for the most part. I live in a rather multicultural part of this city, there's a LOT of international students here, a lot of students from different parts of Asia, from the middle east, from Africa, from South America, etc. The bus I take to work is usually packed with all sorts of different races. I treat all of them the same, more or less. If anything the people that scare me the most in this city are white trash douchebags. One of those guys, just over 2 years ago now, was harassing a black guy on the bus on New Years Eve. I got punched in the face for getting involved in that little... engagement. The whole bus ride, including the 20-30 minutes before I got punched in the face, I felt a lot more safe sitting in the back with all the brown/black guys who were back there (international students I assume, but didn't confirm), as opposed to closer to the 4 white douchebags who were drunk and one of whom was harassing that lone black guy sitting further up the bus. You could look at the back of the bus and at the guys sitting there and immediately pick up that they were "good". Meanwhile you look at the white guys in the front and you could sense that there was trouble coming.

So I mean usually this city is pretty quiet in terms of racial tensions. There really aren't any major ones that I could mention. This sort of stuff doesn't happen very often. When I'm downtown most of the troublemakers are white. Meth and heroin addicts, all sorts of sketchy people hang out at busy intersections.. When I'm making my way through this city, I get more afraid of them than anyone else. I'm sure race plays into it in some way subconsciously, but all in all I first always look at the way the person is dressed and how they.. move. If someone's dressed in a civilized way and carefully walks down the street in a straight line, the race doesn't matter. In my mind this person is "probably safe". Meanwhile take someone who's wearing dirty clothing that doesn't fit, being loud, walking down the sidewalk in a certain way, no matter what this person's race is, my first impression will usually be to be careful around the guy... or girl even. Nothing will probably happen but my initial reaction is to be ready.

That's obviously just my town. I can't imagine what it's got to be like to be a black man in a lot of places in America. No way could I ever put myself i those shoes and pretend I can understand what it's like.
 
warpus said:
I mean, we were talking about a specific instance of you asking me to "try to stand out" from the rest of all the other white people I'm assuming. So in this instance we were discussing here, yeah, that interaction got "that far".
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I was generalizing there, not talking about you specifically at all. I apologize that that wasn't clear, and for the subsequent belaboring of the point that ensued.

Anyone who does not want to be lumped into "the group" based on trivial cues like skin color offhandedly by people they encounter needs to demonstrate individual traits to be judged upon...because people will make judgements.


The fact remains that you and I are the beneficiaries of those judgements based on trivial cues. So there is a pretense in "I will think less of people when they make those judgements." Summerswerd illustrated that really well. Neither of us walking down the street can say that the person offering a friendly smile "sees something good in us." And we don't know if that smiling person would look skittishly at Summerswerd and cross the street if it was him that was there instead of one of us.

It is unfortunately really easy to wander around being smiled at by everyone you meet and say "hey, there are no racial tensions here," even if there are. Maybe there really aren't. But from that perspective there's really no way to tell. In my opinion the "white guy error" is to argue the point based on having no way to tell, and I see that happen a lot. A black guy will come in seething about having been roughed up by a cop, having a liquor store owner wait on him only using one hand because the other never came above the counter, and a white girl sit in her car with the door locked until he had left the parking lot before she "felt safe" enough to get out and walk into the store...and a white guy will say " what are you talking about, there are no racial tensions here?"
 
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