I hate to admit it but, Veera’s post verbalizes thoughts I’ve had while visiting Baltimore/DC. After several yearly summertime visits, I’ve concluded the problem is NOT the race of the people working, it is the weather. The weather in Baltimore, DC, and the area, is so horrid and humid that people move like they’re walking through water. They get used to moving like that and rarely feel the need to change. Veera, if you looked around at her coworkers, I’ll bet you would have seen the trademark momentum we call, ‘the baltimore crawl’. My advice to you is to move west before it affects you and your family.
Thanks Egads, have heard of the NAACP. They were formed in 1909 when nomenclature was totally different. Also, they are not just working for the advancement of black people, but people of all colors, thus for them black is not necessarily synonymous with “colored”.
If you want to split hairs, I have not heard of the NAACP referred to by it’s full name in more that ten years. It’s the N-double-A-C-P to me, bucko.
Also, I’d like to point out that I didn’t mention the factors that lead to rampant racism in this country, I was just addressing what may have contributed to veera’s impressions. I spent some time speaking with a British friend before posting the message about racism is Britain and he was in full agreement. One of his close friends in Britain is a pediatric surgeon from Sri Lanka and he says that not a week goes by that someone doesn’t call him “Paki” in a derogatory manner - Pakistan is another major source of immigration into Britain that seems to be resented by the lower classes. See “My Beautiful Laundrette” for details on this one. In my mind, looking at someone from Sri Lanka and deciding that they are from Pakistan and they deserve to be punished for that is a double dose of racism. 2 intolerances for the price of 1.
I certainly don’t deny that racism exists here, and did not quantify whether there is more or less in the US or UK. I was just making an observation based on veera’s linguistic habits - and I was right, wasn’t I?
Some mornings, it’s just not worth chewing through the leather straps.
– Emo Phillips
Oh, and isn’t anyone from Tennessee going to flame middsy?
Be very careful about hearsay. I have not heard of this at all in the 21 years of my life living in the US. Perhaps it happens, but i wont say for sure that it does, like you seem to be saying.Also, we have these large racist groups because, well we have over 270 million people, so we are going to have very large and prominent organizations. I have even heard of Pakistani immigrants being threatened in England by racist groups (From the ITN news service on PBS. it’s been a while so i am forgetting a lot of the details). ANY place the locals feel threatened by immigrants, racist groups often pop up.
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English people are the best in the world, and most interesting but you my friend sound very pompous.
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Hmm well i hate to break it to you, but everyone on this planet thinks their countrymen are the best and most interesting (Ask any Japanese, Chinese, Lao, Hmong, Hutu, Hausa, etc. person on the planet :)).
On the original topic, since i live in what is one of the most diverse cities in the US, i have met quite a few service people from all ethnicities. I can tell you i have had crappy service from all creeds, and ethnicities. Some of the best service is had in mom and pop stores, or in small businesses. Some of the slowest service is in large chain stores. often the rude and lazy behavior of employees reflects the attitude of the employer ( i should know, i worked in a stationery store, and the owners were hardly around so everyone there got quite lazy on the job. We were good to the customers however :)).
To sum up most of the points I’ve read:
Don’t judge people on what they look like; skin color, weight, height, age, clothing, affects. Don’t judge people at all!
Accept. Understand. Appreciate. Move on. Sometimes a banana is just a banana.
We’re all in this together. So let’s just do our best to get along!
This message has been brought to you by the “let’s just cut the crap council of life.”
Thanks!
To trash me personally please click on my e-mail!
The moon looks on many flowers, the flowers on but one moon.
Yow!
The primary characteristic of a stable and robust network is that it is fault tolerant.
There are about 875,000 police in the US to keep an eye on us 270,000,000 teeming masses spread across 3,500,000 square miles of territory. Do the math & then have a squint out the front window. If 99% of your fellow citizens weren’t just plain nice folks, your neighborhood would currently be on fire. If it is, then stop reading this and run!
My roomate several years ago was black, and overall I am proud to call him my friend. His family’s pretty good people too. Good thing, he’s 5’8" / 255 lb of gristle and whalebone. He’s also a university level scholar and an athlete. Knows how to throw quality dorm parties. (Only guy I ever met who could carry a keg of beer up four flights of stairs, quietly…)
I’ve also been on the recieving end of some serious discrimination involving getting my ass kicked repeatedly over a period of years. And I’m about as whitebread as you can get, I like girls not boys, etc. Right here in America. Guess away, I see no constructive purpose in pointing fingers now. Having been there done that, I can say that you start to work up a 'tude after awhile.
The people with heart tend to get over it, but I don’t have it in me to hate those of us who aren’t that strong.
As long as they aren’t shooting at me, that is. Besides, I’m bigger than all that now (I carried the ice for that keg…)
Vaya con dios -
The biggest rudeness/efficiency factor I’ve seen is the place itself, as others have observed. The second biggest is definitely age. Not that I’m ageist, either. There are plenty of nice teenagers out there. But there seem to be quite a few who don’t want to work, don’t need to work, and thus act like they are doing me a big favor by getting paid to serve me. I don’t blame them; I was probably a jerk in my own ways.
I think that we notice negative behavior in people who are different from us more readily. We subconsciously attach their looks to their behavior. When it is someone we are comfortable with, we will write off bad behavior as attributable to some outside cause.
Back in 1980-82 I went through a “punk” phase. Mohawk, multiple piercings (before they were common), offensive buttons, torn clothing, etc. I was treated very rudely by mainstream folks, even though my own behavior had not changed: a polite guy, really. Now, I got a kick out of it all…but had I experienced that sort of treatment my whole life (for a trait I was born with) I bet I would’ve developed a hostile attitude of my own.
P.S. Yeah, I’m still not well-accepted by mainstream folks, but people are much more tolerant in the 90’s than any other decade I can remember.
Hey middsy ("…in Tennessee it(lynching) still goes on…") Where do you get your information? I assure you it does NOT still go on. That would be big, big news.
This will anger some, but I would also submit that Tennessee is the least redneck of the Southern states. Remember, it was the last state to join the Confederacy and the first to rejoin the Union. Also, TN cast the tie-breaking vote that ammended the Constitution to grant women the right to vote.
As a poor white Southern Appalachian, I suppose I should be outraged at the lies perpetrated about me. I’m not. Ignorance is everywhere.
Oh, and one more thing:
GO VOLS
There is only one race. The human race.
Get over it.
That’s true. The Human Genome Diversity Project has demonstrated that often, there are more genetic differences between two people of the same “race” than between two people of different “races.” That means in some cases, a white person will be genetically more similar to a black person than to his white nextdoor neighbor.
The 2 most dissimilar peoples, DNA-wise, are Africans and Australian Aborigines.
Sooooo true.
It’s not a problem endemic to the governmental service industry either, it’s rampant everywhere. Where do these people come from that expect to be treated differently from the next schmuck in line?
My only question with regard to this thread is why do people associate a bad experience with the race of the person or people involved? Why dwell on the fact that the perpetrator of the mistreatment was any particular color? Poor typing skills and M&M-smudged fingers can be found anywhere, as can a myriad of other bad habits.
Yup, there are some people out there who are rude, badly-raised and just generally objectionable. It’s been my experience that there’s no ethnic grouping that has a monopoly in this area. Humanity is an equal-opportunity boor.
Gotta go, some asshole’s at the front desk…
Z
“Always forgive your enemies, but never forget their names.”
- John F. Kennedy
Quote from Patty & Selma(they work at the DMV) of the Simpsons to Bart
Somedays we don't let the line move at all. We call those * weekdays.*