Here’s the deal, asshole: You asked the Board if you were an asshole and got a unanimous response in the affirmative. Now you’re in denial about it. You sound like the kind of guy I would push into a lake.
I can’t say whether you’re racist or not, but you are a bit of a condescending prick, if your story as presented is true. C’mon, you told the employee that “The mouse don’t work” isn’t a proper sentence? Well, first of all, I disagree, second of all who the fuck cares? You can’t handle a little dialectical variation? Hell, I’ve got a B.A. in English, white as can be, and even I’ll use “do” and “don’t” in the third person singular on occasion. Christ, if you ever move to the big city, your head will implode from all the varieties of English being spoken. If I overheard you talking like that to an employee, whether black or white, I’d think you’re being a willful jackass.
Why?
Presumably, it’s part of his native dialect, or one he’s been influentially immersed in at some point. No more use asking “why?” than asking why other people use “does” and “doesn’t” in the third person on occasion; people speak the way they do because they’ve known communities of other people who spoke the same way.
Why couldn’t you have asked for somebody smarter?
Wait, I know…the smarter clerk saw you coming and went on his lunch break.
But seriously, dude, Robert had already told you he’d cut you a break. So why didn’t you go back to Robert to finalize the deal? Or tell the second guy Robert had okayed giving you a replacement without the packaging?
I accidentally lost a word in my previous post, so now I’m reinstating it here in bold. While I was at it, I decided to add some more words as well. It’s no use asking why.
Actually, can you just go get a white Doper to post it for you?
I doubt he’d be able to understand me; I heard a rumor that when a white person hears a non-white person talk, all they can perceive is a stream of indecipherable gibberish.
Actually, what I heard is that non-white people can’t talk properly at all, so I doubt anyone could understand me, come to think of it.
The point of asking why was that she went out of her way to stress that her degree is in English and that she is culturally white. I have no degree in anything and I am culturally red, yet I know how to conjugate verbs. And so I asked why. I had no idea that my question would be perceived as somehow illegitimate, and even less that it would rally people to whom I did not ask it to rise up and defend the person to whom it was addressed. I apologize that the question offended you, but the question still stands.
Liberal, it seems logical to me that she was stating her credentials in English to make the point that she has officially met certain standards of accomplishment. There is no implication that others aren’t as accomplished. Her statement is not about those people. She stated that she is white so that there would be no mistaking that her opinion was coming from the point of view of a black person. Her statement had nothing to do with you personally.
If I have misunderstood her motives, I hope that she will correct me.
The information she provided may not have been relevant to you or to me, but it may have been relevant to the person she was making the point to.
What does the part of the country you were born in have to do with grammar anyway? Why would you assume that a person from the North wouldn’t need those fucking subtitles to be understood also? Do you really think that your own running commentary about Southerners is any less warped than the OP’s?
I suspect that you get just as much pleasure out of the trolling that you do slamming Southerners yet again as the OP does putting down blacks. But you really do put stock into it too. You’ve been to visit your ignorant relations in Louisiana one too many times and that just has to be all there is to the South. So what difference is there in the two of you? You are both self-satisfied bigots.
All right, I’ll take you seriously.
First and most importantly, the grammatical construction you objected to isn’t limited to black people. Neither is poor grammar. I have family in Lancashire, England. If you had trouble with the sentence, “the mouse don’t work?”, I suspect you’d find the dialect up there much harder to deal with, and Lancashire used to be even whiter than Vermont. As others have pointed out, there are regional variations which sound like poor grammar to people who aren’t native to the area such as “The table needs wiped,” which Rilchiam mentioned earlier. In my experience, these regionalisms are used by people regardless of race. By the way, some of the people who’ve responded to you in this thread are black. Can you tell who they are by grammar alone? If you can’t, then that’s more evidence that your premise that grammar is linked to race is false.
The race of the employee is meaningless in my opinion which is why I’m not a racist. You became a racist most people’s opinion when you showed you thought race did make a difference by asking for a white employee. A white employee doesn’t guarantee good grammar, or even fluency in English. What, I wonder, would you have done, if you’d been directed to a white employee who had recently immigrated to the US, whose native language was not English, and spoke English poorly. For that matter, I wonder how you’d deal with someone who spoke Cockney, which is a variation of English.
What do you mean by “enough white people to work in customer service?” Companies hire people based on who applies. If the majority of your applicants are black, the majority of your employees will be black. Are you seriously suggesting that Circuit City should set aside a certain number slots for various races and ethnicities? Also, what happens when the white guy – or gal, excuse me – can’t come in? If you have to replace that person, are you limited to other white people? I suspect even Circuit City might not have that large a pool of customer service reps. What do you do if no white people are available?
Out of politeness, I didn’t say it earlier. However, since you asked directly, I will say it now. You are not only an asshole, but a bigot. If I had been the white person you requested, I would have repeated the policy the other two customer service reps had cited, that returns are not accepted without a receipt and the original packaging. I would also have told you that my black employees are every bit as competent as the rest of my employees. If you want to deal only with people of your own race, I believe there are organizations which will cater to your prejudice. I suggest you deal with them.
:smack: Thank you, Zoe. I don’t know how many times you have rescued me from myself. As Bernie Taupin wrote: I thank the Lord there’s people out there like you. The question is hereby withdrawn.
Originally Posted by copperwindow:
I am an African American, and I don’t understand your speech pattern. Perhaps it would be best to allow a member of whatever culture speaks this way handle your issues. Please save an African American a headache by always dealing with your own species.
*.
Hmmmm. Is this phrase similar to “tag - you’re it!” I didn’t realize that “I it” was proper. Thanks for the education.
- Another ‘hmmmm’ from the African American woman. Please tell me: what language is this? I would love to be multilingual and will take classes to learn.
Playing along with the best case scenario, that you’re a troll, you seem to be using living someplace not very racially diverse as an excuse for being a racist asshole. I just want to put that idea to rest. I’m from small town western Canada - I was 12 before I saw my first real, live black person. There still aren’t a lot of black people here. And yet, somehow I got the idea that saying things like you said are indeed racist and bad.
Copper, you ignorant slut. You had people going for awhile and you couldn’t just let them stew in their own sense of self satisfaction, could you? You had to push things so close to the edge they’d topple right over. I’m not going to tell you how to best run your little troll game, but c’mon. No one serious would write what you did above. Show a little respect for the character you created, will you?
Ok, let me try to break this down for you:
Asking for another employee when you don’t think you’re getting good customer service = Okey-dokey. (If a little dumb; I’d have asked to speak to Robert again, since he promised you what you wanted.)
Asking for an employee by race = racist.
Considering yourself entitled to a return without packaging or receipt, in violation of not only *this *store’s policy, but every store I’ve heard of since my grandfather stopped returning rusty lawnmowers to Sears 20 years ago = priceless. I mean, assholish.
There was no reason to ask for a person by race. None. There is nothing inherent in a black person’s DNA or culture which makes him incapable of providing reasonable customer service. From your report, this guy was not using a particularly obscure version of AAVE or “Ebonics” that was not intelligible to a speaker of SAE (Standard American English) - that’s why it’s a dialect, not another language; dialects are mutually intelligible.
That fact that you thought you weren’t getting good customer service (asshole) did not give you the grace to request other help by race (racist).
And really, don’t be a fucking idiot. There’s no indication in your OP that you didn’t understand what “The mouse don’t work?” meant. There’s nothing saying you didn’t understand his language. You understood him very well; you understood that he didn’t want to give you the refund, because he wanted to follow store policy. You didn’t like what he said, but you understood what he said just fine.
Coming to stir up the pot again this morning after this admittedly fun little thread started to slow down - that’s what makes you a good little troll. Thanks!
I’m embarrassed for the state my ancestors hail from. However, I have a racist cousin in Vermont who expressed concerns to me once that Vermont (which is about 2% non-white) is becoming too diverse for him.
He said that he wanted to move to West Virginia as a result.
(Yes, yes, I know. You don’t need to tell me.)
I do get your point, and I agree in principle. However… I do wish people would differentiate between bigotry and racism, because racism is beginning to lose its sting as a result of conflating the two. In my experience (which given my parochial existence might not be typical), what you have described is a bigot. And there is loads of bigotry within people of all races, noticeable for example whenever people segregate themselves voluntarily in a lunch room, or go to a predominately black college just because it is predominately black, or go to a predominately white church because mostly white people are there. The OP fits that category, in my opinion.
A racist, on the other hand, is not content with separation. He seeks annihilation. He doesn’t just prefer to associate with his own kind; he has no compunction about enslaving, oppressing, or eliminating other kinds. Maybe one could argue about a slippery slope or something, but there are lots of bigots who go through their whole lives associating with the people they prefer while condemning such acts as slavery, lynchings, and such.
I’d just like to have a word reserved with enough fire to differentiate the truly evil from the merely ignorant.
I don’t have a problem differentiating between the two, but I would have defined (or "connoted’) them exactly oppositely. A racist being one who makes comments and decisions based on prejudice around race, and a bigot being a violent thug intent on the extermination of a person or group of people based on a single attribute: race or creed or orientation or gender or… Basically, I wouldn’t limit bigot to race, and I use bigot when I mean someone acutely dangerous to the physical well-being of other people.
I didn’t learn that from the dictionary, though, just from learning English the way most of us did - listening and reading it. Maybe what you perceive as “beginning to lose its sting” is people using “racism” the way I learned it - as bad, but the lesser of two evils (quite literally).
I think that my use is closer to at least this dictionary’s definitions, though:
www.thefreedictionary.com defines them as:
big·ot·ry (bg-tr)
n.
The attitude, state of mind, or behavior characteristic of a bigot; intolerance.
bigot: One who is strongly partial to one’s own group, religion, race, or politics and is intolerant of those who differ.
rac·ism (rszm)
n.
- The belief that race accounts for differences in human character or ability and that a particular race is superior to others.
- Discrimination or prejudice based on race.
I would disbelieve, but I’ve worked customer service for too long.
Two stories:
When I was an administrative assistant, I received a call one day from one of those fellows who comes in and sells cheap Christmas tchotchkes to offices. He said he’d come to the company years before when we were in another building and was curious if we desired his services again. I said I hadn’t the foggiest notion if we were doing something like that as it was July and I’d been working there for about a week, but I could certainly ask around and get someone to call him back.
“Oh come on, you must know,” he says. “You’re a woman after all. Women are always more interested in this stuff!”
I wanted to beat him to death with my prodigious lady-chest, let me tell you.
And then came the fellow who, when refused a completely unreasonable refund, requested my supervisor. He then told her he wouldn’t talk to her because he thought a man would be far more reasonable and wasn’t there a man we could speak to?
In the usual thread of such things, of course, the further up the chain you get the less likely anyone was to give two shits. They’re more able to bend policy and simultaneously less likely to.