Racist, no. Rude, I don’t know, it depends on the situation. It’s just along the lines of other personal questions that may or may not be rude to ask in a given situation, like asking someone’s age. If you’re chatting with the person about yours and their personal details then I wouldn’t consider it inappropriate. If you’re talking about the weather, probably not appropriate.
This crap happens all the time, and it sickens me.
News story about white serial killer, white guy shooting up a school, white woman who killed herself and her kids, the usual comments, nothing about the race of the person.
News story about any black person committing a crime, and all of a sudden, it’s the 1950s, and every single fucking ignorant cretin you can imagine slithers out of the woodwork to leave a racist comment.
It’s not just a troll or a series of trolls, it’s the bottom 20 percent of our society having a field day.
I’ve written several rants about the 20 percenters, as I call them. The folks who believe 9/11 was an inside job. The approval ratings for Dick Cheney at the end of his term. People who believe Obama is “Arab” or “Muslim”. Etc. No matter how obviously wrong, tasteless, dumb, or embarrassing something is, there’s a good one out of every 5 people who are completely gung-ho about it.
Your average moron is at the very least civil enough to understand that he is a moron and to shut his yap. These people don’t even make the cut for that elite club. They’re dumber than you’d think was humanly possible, and much, much more outspoken than anyone else you’ve ever met. It is as if their function in life is to personally counter all the arguments made by brilliant rationalists, philosophers, economists, scientists, and fact-checkers, by spamming utter nonsense day in, and day out.
I practically live on the internet, and most everyone who does tends to develop a thick skin and an understanding that other people out there think very differently than they do. And you just learn to deal with the weird, strange, different, obscene, and obviously very wrong.
And still, it makes me want to puke when I see the kind of obscene garbage that is posted in the comments of news articles when it’s not a white person committing the crime.
I realize there are ignorant hateful morons out there, but there’s a level of ignorant and hateful and moron that is a class unto itself.
It’s not even the dedicated Christian who believes everyone else is evil, and the Devil, and going to hell, and it’s their business to tell you that all day long. It’s not even the partisan political hack who cannot shut up about the opposition for five fucking seconds, and has no integrity whatsoever, and a firmly established set of double standards. Oh, I’ve learned to deal with the fact that these assholes exist.
But the vile racists who thrive in the anonymity of the internet and come out whenever there’s a black person in the news, or apparently, in a friggen Superbowl commercial…
I don’t get it.
I mean, I’m more of a live and let live kind of guy, and yet, if they all marched themselves into the path of an oncoming freight train, it would be very, very difficult for me to even frown convincingly.
Eeeeeee!! Fully agreed! The daughter’s look when she demanded the puppy with the final Cheerio was priceless. Adorable!!
So someone lost a job over a tweet that reince took offense to, but I haven’t heard a peep out of him about the weber tweet. Msnbc should not have caved.
In what circumstances would it be a relevant question?
Why do you ask this?
By what definition? Your posting history is the opposite of laid-back.
Eh, I can remember on more than one occasion having this discussion with friends. Especially white Americans because there is such a wide variety of mutt here.
Are you part German? Part Indian? Part Irish? Everyone has there own unique brand and it’s interesting to talk about sometimes.
I can see that with friends whom you have known a while who probably have volunteered some info about their background, especially to the extent that it has shaped who they are. He mentions chatting (presumably with a new acquaintance?) for a few minutes and then asking.
I would be very upset. My weekly box of Cheerios might be on that train!