# Comments from people that have either shocked you or have left you pondering... **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [October 27, 2008, 7:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comments-from-people-that-have-either-shocked-you-or-have-left-you-pondering/469821 "2008-10-27T19:32:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![Zsofia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/7bcc69/32.png) [@Zsofia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zsofia)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2008, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comments-from-people-that-have-either-shocked-you-or-have-left-you-pondering/469821/101 "2008-10-31T18:47:57Z")
> [@Rube\_E.Tewesday](#): > > Well, his name was Washington, wasn’t it? Of course he was black! > > d & r Bwahahaha! Thank you, good sir. ---
**Author:** ![Sunspace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunspace/32/1250_2.png) [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2008, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comments-from-people-that-have-either-shocked-you-or-have-left-you-pondering/469821/102 "2008-10-31T19:00:52Z")
> [@The\_Tooth](#): > > I work with an official adult who insists that spiders are insects, not animals. Insects _are_ animals! (What would they be otherwise? Plants?) ---
**Author:** ![MadTheSwine](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9fc29f/32.png) [@MadTheSwine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MadTheSwine)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2008, 7:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comments-from-people-that-have-either-shocked-you-or-have-left-you-pondering/469821/103 "2008-10-31T19:03:44Z")
A friend of mine(who is black) told me there are no black racists. ---
**Author:** ![Hostile\_Dialect](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e495f1/32.png) [@Hostile\_Dialect](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hostile_Dialect)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2008, 7:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comments-from-people-that-have-either-shocked-you-or-have-left-you-pondering/469821/104 "2008-10-31T19:25:56Z")
> [@Frustrated Wonderer](#): > > Yeah, well over here its a pretty common term. Nobody would get offended if you called them mulatto. I would recommend “mixed” in English-speaking contexts. It’s a much more neutral term. Here, “mulatto” is a slur that compares the person to a dog. > [@Frustrated Wonderer](#): > > I find it curious now that the word “black” can be considered offensive It isn’t, really, it’s just informal. Barack Obama is often described as potentially being “the first black president”, and that’s not offensive to just about anyone. > [@Elendil's Heir](#): > > Almost 30 years ago, when I was on a Boy Scout summer camp’s staff, I got to talking about music with a senior counselor who I thought very highly of. I mentioned a number of groups I liked, including Manhattan Transfer. He said offhandedly, “Eh, I haven’t liked them much since they started doing all that nigger music.” > > Totally out of left field. Ugh. I never saw him the same way again. That’s the interesting thing about some white racists – they seem to think that all other white people feel the way they do and are just faking acceptance to the “negroes”. A recent Esquire article that featured interviews with four noted white supremacists about the presidential election was fascinating; three of them endorsed Obama for (among other things) bringing racial awareness back into our national dialogue, while the fourth claimed that white people are telling pollsters they like Obama just to be nice and will actually shoot the \_\_\_\_\_\_ down at the election in massive numbers, leading to a landslide victory for McCain. He said that other white people talk about how unacceptable the black president would be at their dinner tables, but keep a lid on it in public. Nevermind Obama’s decisive victory in the primary. > [@MadTheSwine](#): > > A friend of mine(who is black) told me there are no black racists. To be fair, it’s easy to say “racism” when one really means “institutional racism”. I’d need more context to tell you if I’d be shocked, anyway. ---
**Author:** ![Sternvogel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bc79bd/32.png) [@Sternvogel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sternvogel)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2008, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comments-from-people-that-have-either-shocked-you-or-have-left-you-pondering/469821/105 "2008-10-31T19:46:14Z")
> [@Ted\_Y](#): > > Umm, my dad thought the first US president was black so he didn’t know what the big deal about Obama was. I’m guessing that your dad meant John Hanson, who’s sometimes referred to as the first President of the Unirted States because he presided over the Continental Congress. Many myths exist about Hanson. The claim that he was of Negroid descent has been attributed to [comedian and activist Dick Gregory](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Hanson_(myths)#Hanson_was_of_African_descent), who apparently confused indentured servitude (of whites) with chattel slavery (of blacks) and/or mistook the eighteenth-century American Hanson for the nineteenth-century Liberian Senator John Hanson. > [@MLS](#): > > Actually, it’s not a bad deal to rent to people on rental assistance. I think the point **Annie-Xmas** was making was the woman felt that someone on rental assistance should AUTOMATICALLY be given the apartment even if there were numerous other applications. It’s like a qualified Mexican-American candidate being turned down for a job and saying “they should hire Mexicans” when the fact is that the company DOES hire people of Mexican origin, but just happened to hire a Chinese-American for that particular post. ---
**Author:** ![Caricci](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/85f322/32.png) [@Caricci](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Caricci)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2008, 7:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comments-from-people-that-have-either-shocked-you-or-have-left-you-pondering/469821/106 "2008-10-31T19:50:25Z")
> [@Hostile\_Dialect](#): > > In the future, can you break this sort of thought down into, say, 2-5 sentences? I had to stop for a breather three times by the first comma. This type of comment leaves me shocked and pondering. ---
**Author:** ![Frustrated\_Wonderer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/a4c791/32.png) [@Frustrated\_Wonderer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frustrated_Wonderer)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2008, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comments-from-people-that-have-either-shocked-you-or-have-left-you-pondering/469821/107 "2008-10-31T19:55:16Z")
**Hostile Dialect** in my initial post a reffered to the DR population as mixed and then put the word “mulatto” in parenthesis. I had not even heard that term in an English speaking country to be honest. The funny thing is that Obama is not “black” he’s mixed, he had a white mother. Still, I sense that “African American” is becoming a more polite term than “black”, in the US. ---
**Author:** ![Hostile\_Dialect](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e495f1/32.png) [@Hostile\_Dialect](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hostile_Dialect)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2008, 7:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comments-from-people-that-have-either-shocked-you-or-have-left-you-pondering/469821/108 "2008-10-31T19:58:07Z")
Here’s what I mean. Try this: > [@InterestedObserver](#): > > A neighbor of mine whose daughter plays with mine got upset with me because after yet another instance of her daughter causing mine to come home in tears by being a bully/jerk/saying the meanest things, I said, ok, you are not to play with her anymore. She’s not a good friend to you. Now try this: > [@](#): > > My neighbor’s daughter says the meanest things to my daughter! The other day, she actually came home in tears. I finally said to my daughter, “OK, You are not to play with her anymore. She’s not a good friend to you.” And my neighbor actually had the gall to get upset with me! Isn’t that much easier to read? ---
**Author:** ![Lust4Life](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ecc23a/32.png) [@Lust4Life](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lust4Life)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2008, 9:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comments-from-people-that-have-either-shocked-you-or-have-left-you-pondering/469821/109 "2008-10-31T21:23:04Z")
> [@Sailboat](#): > > Sure, he thought I was a racist. > > See, that’s how it works – he assumed _everyone_ of his “race” shared his racist views, just that some of us were too polite to say it out loud. > > Remember, he was the one bubbling with excitement over a secret he was dying to tell me. To him, the knowledge of her race was itself a big deal. If he thought I was an abhorrent racist, why was he wiggling his eyebrows? No,no,no you’ve got it all wrong. Originally he hired a vampire for the position,but when he saw your decidedly vampirist reaction when informed of his enlightened employment ethos he was forced much against his views to let the vampire go(Probably gave her a payout though)and coincidently hired a AA woman as her replacement. I just hope you’re proud of yourself. Who else isn’t good enough to work with you eh.? OOOh no, Werewolves are too hairy,I’m not prejudiced against them,some of my best friends are WW and all the other lies ardent Supernaturalists come out with to stop other people looking on them as narrow minded bigots. And what about Ghouls eh? Ghosts,Golems? People like you make me SICK! ---
**Author:** ![jackdavinci](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackdavinci/32/3259_2.png) [@jackdavinci](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jackdavinci)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2008, 10:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comments-from-people-that-have-either-shocked-you-or-have-left-you-pondering/469821/110 "2008-10-31T22:41:59Z")
> [@Dung\_Beetle](#): > > My son told me last night that my grandma’s church has hatched a plan to get “In God We Trust” onto the dollar coins, by not accepting them until they have that phrase. Good luck with that! The only time I get dollar coins is when I use the ticket machines at the train station. I was shocked as a kid when my grandmother (a school teacher!) insisted that gravity was caused by the spin of the earth. ---
**Author:** ![lorene](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/65b543/32.png) [@lorene](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lorene)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2008, 12:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comments-from-people-that-have-either-shocked-you-or-have-left-you-pondering/469821/111 "2008-11-01T00:18:28Z")
> [@Hostile\_Dialect](#): > > Isn’t that much easier to read? Did you read the part where her husband died and now she is raising a child alone? I know it’s easier to read when people use punctuation, but I don’t think it was necessary to point out in this particular thread, to that particular poster. ---
**Author:** ![Hostile\_Dialect](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e495f1/32.png) [@Hostile\_Dialect](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hostile_Dialect)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2008, 9:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comments-from-people-that-have-either-shocked-you-or-have-left-you-pondering/469821/112 "2008-11-01T09:49:31Z")
> [@lorene](#): > > Did you read the part where her husband died and now she is raising a child alone? I know it’s easier to read when people use punctuation, but I don’t think it was necessary to point out in this particular thread, to that particular poster. :smack: Sorry **InterestedObserver** , I feel like a douchebag…I have been grieving recently myself, and I’m not really firing on all cylinders lately. I didn’t think about the possibility that…well, I’ll just go ahead and say I was a douchebag and I’m sorry. ---
**Author:** ![Zoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a4c791/32.png) [@Zoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zoe)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2008, 10:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comments-from-people-that-have-either-shocked-you-or-have-left-you-pondering/469821/113 "2008-11-01T10:11:41Z")
> [@](#): > > **Sternvogel** : The claim that he was of Negroid descent has been attributed to comedian and activist Dick Gregory, who apparently confused indentured servitude (of whites) with chattel slavery (of blacks) and/or mistook the eighteenth-century American Hanson for the nineteenth-century Liberian Senator John Hanson. The link leads to a Wikipedia article which is contested on the discussion pages. I have met Dick Gregory and he is not the man to confuse an Eighteenth Century figure with someone from the Nineteenth Century. (Nor did the Wikipedia article specifically claim that _Gregory_ did.) And he would not have trouble in knowing the difference between a slave and an indentured servant. The suggestion that he would in the Wikipedia article is evidence of its poor quality. I doubt that the author of the article has any knowledge of who Dick Gregory is beyond the link provided. ---
**Author:** ![Zoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a4c791/32.png) [@Zoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zoe)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2008, 10:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comments-from-people-that-have-either-shocked-you-or-have-left-you-pondering/469821/114 "2008-11-01T10:32:44Z")
When I was a young single woman in my late twenties, I was being pursued by a Dane who lived in Nyborg on the island of Fyn. I went to visit him with his family a couple of times in 1972. It must have been on my December visit that we had such heavy fogs. The family lived in a house overlooking the sea. The father of the family liked to have his second cup of coffee in the living room at a table that provided a good view of the ships and boats coming and going into the harbor. He spoke only a word or two of English and we had communicated mostly with smiles and Al Jolson music during both visits. One morning I joined him in the living room with my coffee. He looked very much like my idea of a weathered sea captain and I knew that was part of his family heritage. On this particular morning, we couldn’t see past the end of the garden because of the fog. We could hear horns and whistles and the call of sea birds, but that was all. So we sat smiling again and drank our coffee. Finally, the old gentleman turned to me and said , “Much fuck this morning.” ---
**Author:** ![Pullet](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/edb3f5/32.png) [@Pullet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pullet)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2008, 10:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comments-from-people-that-have-either-shocked-you-or-have-left-you-pondering/469821/115 "2008-11-01T10:56:21Z")
> [@Frustrated\_Wonderer](#): > > The funny thing is that Obama is not “black” he’s mixed, he had a white mother. > > Still, I sense that “African American” is becoming a more polite term than “black”, in the US. There’s a weird thing in the States where someone who is only half black is referred to as black, regardless of what the other half is. For example, Tiger Woods is Black and Asian, but he is commonly referred to only as black. There have been discussions (generally fruitless and lead by idiots) on exactly how long ago the black ancestor needs to be in someone’s family tree for them to still qualify as black. It doesn’t seem to happen as reliably for folks who are other kinds of crosses. It’s a something that I, as near complete mix of every major race on earth, do not understand. Use of the term “black” as a polite racial description instead of a slur is making a come back. “African-American” is beginning to have an excessively polite tone to it, like the person using the word is too uptight and nervous. I think, once we have a more thorough mixing of multiple races throughout the US, we’ll see all this sort of tripe dry up. People start worrying about more important things. ---
**Author:** ![Caricci](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/85f322/32.png) [@Caricci](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Caricci)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2008, 1:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comments-from-people-that-have-either-shocked-you-or-have-left-you-pondering/469821/116 "2008-11-01T13:32:17Z")
> [@Hostile\_Dialect](#): > > Isn’t that much easier to read? Yes, sure. I am a grammar and style nazi myself, but only when asked. And it doesn’t matter if someone lost their husband or won the Power Ball, it’s not such a nice thing to do. ---
**Author:** ![lorene](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/65b543/32.png) [@lorene](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lorene)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2008, 1:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comments-from-people-that-have-either-shocked-you-or-have-left-you-pondering/469821/117 "2008-11-01T13:50:02Z")
To be fair, \*\*Hostile Dialect \*\*did apologize. ---
**Author:** ![jackdavinci](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackdavinci/32/3259_2.png) [@jackdavinci](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jackdavinci)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2008, 1:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comments-from-people-that-have-either-shocked-you-or-have-left-you-pondering/469821/118 "2008-11-01T13:53:21Z")
[This](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=490602) conversation between a mother and daughter abut the election. ---
**Author:** ![jackdavinci](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackdavinci/32/3259_2.png) [@jackdavinci](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jackdavinci)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2008, 2:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comments-from-people-that-have-either-shocked-you-or-have-left-you-pondering/469821/119 "2008-11-01T14:17:26Z")
> [@Pullet](#): > > There’s a weird thing in the States where someone who is only half black is referred to as black, regardless of what the other half is. For example, Tiger Woods is Black and Asian, but he is commonly referred to only as black. There have been discussions (generally fruitless and lead by idiots) on exactly how long ago the black ancestor needs to be in someone’s family tree for them to still qualify as black. Part of this goes back to slave days in the US when we had the “one drop” rule - if you had any black ancestry you were considered black. But in reality racial groups do not exist, only racial clines do. And when (white) people use racial terms they are 95% of the time using them in a visual descriptive sense and not a ‘where my ancestors came from’ sense. For the particular ratio of racial difference we have here, visually most people are considered to fall into the white, asian, black, indian, hispanic, or arab categories in terms of visual appearance and to some extent context (arabs and indians probably confused for one another except when based on where they are, how they talk, and what they are wearing). More specific terms usually only get used if the person’s background is actually known, and then it’s usually more of a specific country than a generic racial term. So in visual terms, black is kind of the white American person’s default category for anyone with brown skin who isn’t hispanic or indian/arab. Having brown skin tends to visually overpower what people consider to be asian traits (being white with squinty eyes). Hispanics can often look black but have other distinctions like language or dress or neighborhood to differentiate them. So the thought tree often goes: White skin / no eye folds: white White skin / eye folds: asian Brown skin: Spanish accent/speaking or neighborhood: hispanic Indian accent or red dot on forehead or dress: indian Towel head / burka or works in convenient store but not indian: arab otherwise: black So with respects to Obama, no one cares what his actual ethnic particulars are. He has brown skin so he’s not white or asian. He doesn’t speak spanish or have an indian accent so they don’t apply. That leaves us with arab and black. If not for his name, that leaves us with black only. He doesn’t really look arab, but some people think his name makes him arab. Then you have the consideration of his candidacy. There’s been plenty of white presidents, so his whiteness is not anything special. There haven’t been any black (or partially black) presidents, so his blackness is special in this regard. ---
**Author:** ![ZenBeam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/3ab097/32.png) [@ZenBeam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZenBeam)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2008, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comments-from-people-that-have-either-shocked-you-or-have-left-you-pondering/469821/120 "2008-11-01T17:10:07Z")
> [@Lust4Life](#): > > I just hope you’re proud of yourself. > Who else isn’t good enough to work with you eh.? > OOOh no, Werewolves are too hairy, I’m not prejudiced against them, some of my best friends are WW and all the other lies ardent Supernaturalists come out with to stop other people looking on them as narrow minded bigots. > > And what about Ghouls eh? > Ghosts,Golems? > > People like you make me SICK! Quote For Truth. (But don’t hire any Zombies. Man, but they are slow!) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comments-from-people-that-have-either-shocked-you-or-have-left-you-pondering/469821.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comments-from-people-that-have-either-shocked-you-or-have-left-you-pondering/469821.md?page=7)