When my son was in pre-school, he mentioned a kid we couldn’t identify. My ex finally said something like, Oh, he’s the black kid. My son had a fit because the child in question wasn’t Black, he was Brown. My son was very indignant about the whole thing; I think he was maybe four at the time.
My co-worker’s family had immigrated from Mexico to California when she was an infant. She married an Afro-Cuban man. What’s the first thing her mother said to her upon the birth of their daughter? “It’s a good thing she didn’t come out black like your husband.”
Upon discovering my political affiliations, a gentleman at an art show (of all places) chose to regale me with a recitation of how immigrants in general and Muslims in particular are ruining Canada and should all be deported and/or arrested. (Time has mercifully dimmed the precise details.)
It was some time before I recovered myself enough to be able to euthanize that particular conversation.
I was talking to my BIL one day, years ago, and asked “What was the deal with his friend X?”
X, upon the first second of meeting him a few years earlier, broke my Gaydar. Off the Charts. He matched every stereotype of Gayness there was. Lisp. Fabulous dresser. Beard girlfriend. Flamboyant.And a bunch of other little things that set off the Gaydar. It was almost as if he was a characature of gayness. He is/was alot like the gay friend of Carrie’s in Sex in the City. Not wanting to jump to conclusions about X, over the course of several years of socializing, my opinion never changed on him.
So, when I asked my BIL the question, and he never really said X was Gay, but said, " well, he is taking ice skating lessons with a bunch of other guys." All over the age of 25. Pretty much sealed the deal.
The conversation deterioriated when I mentioned wrongly that X needed to come out of the closet and be honest.
Something to the effect, “People choose to be Gay…” came out of my brother in law’s mouth and I realized what a steaming pile of ignorance he was when, years later he mentioned how X was going to some therapy to help him Pray the Gay Away. They are Evangelical.
To that, I replied something like, “You can’t pray the Gay away any easier than you can pray the Black away.” (But in really biting - you’re an asshole - tone.)
X married a beard girl and I really feel sorry for both of them.
Well, I’m not sure this is so much a “comment that blew me away”; rather it’s one I wished had blown away . . .
When my eldest son was three I took him on the subway to an appointment downtown. At the time, like all little boys, he was into anything that smacked of a super hero. For reasons that escape me - he thought The Man from Glad (does everyone know that product/character?) was a super hero.
The Man from Glad single-handedly banished all trash issues with his plastic bags. The Man from Glad dressed all in white (which one can only have the moxie to do if one’s trash issues are under control). So my son called him the “White Man”.
Picture a crowded subway car in which we were only lighter skinned people. My son chose that moment to leap around in three year-old enthusiasm hollering, “I love the White Man!! The White Man is best!”
Anyone who’s had the pleasure of parenting a three year-old knows that the harder you try to ‘shush’ one, the louder they become. I was totally mortified. There really wasn’t a way I could explain to the car full of horrified passengers that I wasn’t a supremist of any sort . . .
I slunk out of the subway car at the next station and boarded the next one - thankfully my little darling’s attention was on to other things.
My aunt told me that Jews are liars and thieves a couple months ago. I’m Jewish, she’s Catholic. She was just casually talking and mentioned how you can’t trust “them” and the only people who have backed out of contracts with her husband were Jews.
Years ago I walked into my regular corner convenience store to discover the (Pakistani) clerk being harangued by two young white men for refusing to sell them beer without identification.
One of the men turned to me and made some really nasty remarks about sand niggers in particular and immigrants in general. How they were taking over the country and ruining it for the rest of us.
You know the spiel.
I looked at him and said “I’m an immigrant. I didn’t become an American citizen until I was 8. You’re talking about me. Why? What have I ever done to you? Do you really want me to go back to where I was born?”
He started sputtering about how I was ok and that his remarks weren’t directed at me and that’s when I asked “Why?’ Cause I’m white? Is that the difference?”
He and his buddy left immediately and the clerk wouldn’t let me pay for my Coke or smokes that afternoon.
What’s a Beard girlfriend? 
Much like a beard covers up a chin, a beard girlfriend is supposed to cover up the fact that one is gay.
A “Beard girlfriend” is a female friend of a gay man whose primary purpose (IIRC) is to give him the appearance of being straight, As in, “he can’t be gay, he has a girlfriend”.
I believe that the lesbian equivalent is called a “purse”, although I’ve only heard the term used a few times.
My work brings me in contact with many of the ultra-wealthy citizens of New York City, most of whom made their money in finance.
In general they are very nice people and I have developed “professional friendships” with many of them.
So one morning I am working in some 20 million dollar Upper east Side penthouse apartment on Park Avenue…actually I was having coffee and danish with the lady of the house prior to starting work. We are chatting and I told a story about one of my clients who is not a nice person, a royal bitch in fact…the story was about my observing her in a not so pleasant interaction with one of her housekeepers. This woman ( the bitch ) lives in a 20 million dollar or so penthouse on 5th Avenue.
My Park Avenue client rolled her eyes and said “Oh yes, those **5th Avenue people **are so totally full of themselves, I can’t stand them”.
Thanks LurkMeister and StoutHearted. The term was unfamiliar to me.
THAT is freakin’ hilarious.
Unintentionally funny combination of user name and post content!
You said they were mild. I suppose it might depend on intonation, but I can’t see anything wrong with asking those questions. I’m looking in the proverbial mirror here. I was raised in a “mildly” intolerant household, if such a thing exists. I can easily imagine my parents believing and telling me that blacks have denser bones. How could my ignorance be fought without asking that question? If it weren’t for your post and someone asked me that, I’d suggest we consult with an anthropologist. Not to confirm some racial bias… just to know if it were true. That said, I’ve have strong suspicions that it was racist propaganda before getting the answer.
But with gay men’s skulls, I think this is a reasonable question. While there’s some debate, it’s certainly a widely held opinion that being gay is genetic or congenital. Some might even speculate that a gay man’s brain is similar to a woman’s brain in ways that a straight man’s brain is not. To a lay person, it doesn’t seem like a bigoted question or leap of reasoning to think that the bone structure of the cranium might also be affected. I know I couldn’t easily differentiate between a complete adult male or female skeleton, let alone a skull.
It would be funnier if I was a guy. 
I don’t doubt anything about your uncle, however he may have been passing along knowledge that he gained in school. I learned in Montgomery County Maryland public school system in 1977 that negroids had denser bones than other racial groups. We had a test, and I know I picked mongoids as having the densest bones and I got it wrong. The correct answer was circled in green, and it was negroid. The class was Social Studies and Mr. Brubaker was the teacher. Quite frankly I has assumed (I know it makes an ass of me) that one of the tests done on skeletons was bone density. That helped let the CSI person know what race the skeleton was.
Thanks for fighting my ignorance.
The other night I was at my sister’s (not monstro) and we got on the subject of gay parents and letting your kids have sleepovers at their house.
Her: I wouldn’t send my girls to sleep at a house with two moms. What if one of them tried something?
Me: And a heterosexual dad* won’t*?
Love her, but sometimes she doesn’t think things through.
Surely your aunt knows your culture/religion?
Was this her way of calling you a thief?
Did you stand up for your beliefs to her or just let these comments slide?
Well, thanks for filling me in on the details. Your original post was a little vague. Sounds like an ass who got just what he deserved and sounds like you all handled it rather well.