A rather small group… Funny how folks IRL don’t have this much trouble.
Then why to you keep feeding the troll?
Amazing how the troll definition comes up when there is just a difference in opinion.
That’s good - I was getting tired of you snipping the hell out of my posts to just the bits you thought you could twist up.
Thank you! Hubby thinks so too.
Let your slave cat type or GTFO.
Still drunk?
Only drunk on your effervescent wit and sparkling intellect, darling.
Seriously though, smash and eat your computer, please.
I think I can explain this. Apparently, curlcoat’s husband misheard the question as, “What percentage of blacks in the US now do you think had a slave for a parent?” Realizing that anyone of an age to have been born to an ex-slave father or mother would have to be in their nineties at youngest, he then estimated that blacks of at least ninety years of age make up no more than one per cent of the total population of American blacks.
I’m sure the Klan meetings are very civil.
No, he heard and understood ancestor, tho he did think at first I meant that *all *of their ancestors were slaves. Once we cleared that up, he still thought the number had to be very low because he was also unaware that there had been essentially no immigration from Africa until recently.
I wouldn’t know, never seen one. Does it even exist on the west coast?
curlcoat, going from the page you linked to with your kitty on it, I looked at the rest of your website (lovely dogs, by the way) and I don’t think you are a troll. However, I honestly also don’t think you are looking at the larger picture with regards to your knowledge in this particular area. This’ll probably be rambling, but consider if you will…
I’m about a decade or so more behind you in age and I can understand that your education from that time period was incomplete. Much the same thing happened to my mother and she’s vastly lacking in knowledge on issues you’d think would be common place. However, since you do seem to be taking up the mantle to learn the things you’ve missed, a possible better way to go about it is to not make even vaguely absolutist statements about your perceptions thus far. It’s the thing that trips her up and that usually people take the most umbrage at.
So, if you believe due to experience, that a group of folks behave in a certain uniform manner, investigate your reasoning first and then turn it around on yourself second. See how that fits and if it’s truly applicable. For example, if one thinks that rap “isn’t music,” then it behooves them to wonder why. Is it because it’s too loud / the words are offensive / the themes alien / whatever? Next, think about how your own music is percieved. Is it equally okay for you to blast country from your car windows versus rap from theirs? In my humble opinion, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. And on it goes. If you can uncover your oppositional stance and why a double-standard might be okay, you’re on the road to getting past some of the problems in the discussion here.
Now, I’m positive that once that approach to discerning things has been taken, I usually think of the stuff in my own life that is misinterpreted. If we just go by this thread, you say you are as you present yourself. Ergo, the assumptions of others are incorrect and they ultimately hinder what you’re attempting to learn from this whole situation. Since misperception can obviously happen to you, the same can be applied to your beliefs about others. And I do not in the slightest take you as stupid, I’m sure you can understand that thinking needs to be examined, challenged and replaced with a healthier attitude. As in jali’s example in this thread.
Finally, although I have no doubt you’re extremely busy and have only a limited amount of time to research items of interest, you’d be doing yourself a great service just by initially viewing others with respect until given a reason to individually feel otherwise. Therefore, one sees the loud rap listener as someone who solely likes his music and didn’t realize it possibly bothers you instead of taking it as an affront. At heart, I see that as the crux of the issue here. Assuming motives is disrespectful and I’m sure you really have no desire to be that way. It just takes time and inclination to move forward over something difficult. Considering the things you’ve already overcome in your life, surely this small step in the right direction will be worth it.
I apologize for the length, but hoped I could help. If you view this as so much hot air, then please disregard. If not, I wish you the best at seeing all of us as being from one big family only trying to do our best.
One of the ironies of this is that I rarely make absolutist statements, so I can only assume that people are skipping over the modifiers like “in my opinion”, “my experience”, “I think” and whatever else.
music
–noun
- an art of sound in time that expresses ideas and emotions in significant forms through the elements of rhythm, melody, harmony, and color.
Apparently there is some musical rhythm under the spoken words in a rap “song”, but the bulk is merely someone talking (or yelling). When rap first started it appeared to have some musical qualities to it (at least the little bit I heard back then) but nowdays what I hear coming from these stereos on wheels is merely heavy bass and someone screaming obscene words. If indeed there is still musical rap out there, I would suggest it get itself a different name as it is being drug into the gutter by what is far more popular here.
As far as I am concerned, it is not ok to blast anything from any car windows. The extremely few times I have done this has been as a last straw response to some window rattler I am trapped at a red light with.
I have no idea what you mean here. I oppose things that I find offensive, such as having my windows and spleen rattled, and I also oppose a double standard.
I do. Occasionally my patience is not what it should be and it takes less time for me to decide I am not interested in dealing with some individual however.
It would take quite a bit of lack of awareness of one’s surroundings and a healthy dose of no clue as to what bothers the average person to assume that having one’s stereo up to ear-bleed wouldn’t bother anyone. Which is actually being kind since so much of the rap, um, lyrics are at best negative and at worst homicidal, which would make it easy to assume that all people who listen to it at that level are sociopaths. At least I begin with assuming they are merely unconcerned with others’ comfort.
Sorry - past experience has taught me that there are far too many people out there who are only interested in getting by with as little effort as possible.
Well, you’re certainly making as little effort to think as possible.
Apparently at least some of my assessment was wrong. 
Well, at least I tried. Carry on as you were.
I’m certainly not going to spend any time thinking about someone’s throw away comment.
Gee thanks. I’m sorry that I am not the sort of person that changes just because someone on the internet wants me to.
No, it’s not that I expected you to chante just because I wanted you to. It’s that I thought when presented with something that wasn’t a simple “throw away comment” that you’d at least consider some of it without completely discounting all of it.
What makes you think I didn’t consider any of it? Simply because I didn’t agree with you?
No, because of stating things like this; “Sorry - past experience has taught me that there are far too many people out there who are only interested in getting by with as little effort as possible.” in reply to suggestions to think outside your own experience. If your own experience is the only thing necessary to form your opinions, then all other attempts at discussion are futile.
Further, and this may just be me although I see similar things all over the board, if one does consider the things someone posts in effort to help another, they usually say so in some way. Acknowledgement alone is a very nice social lubricant. If nothing is alluded to except to say how much they disagree with that point of view, than I’d say it’s at least somewhat reasonable to guess that they probably aren’t considering much outside their own feelings.
Explain how one is to form opinions based on the experiences of others? And, how one person’s post is enough to change an opinion formed over years of experiences?
Sorry, I don’t tend to spend much time “lubricating” responses to people who are telling me I’m wrong just because I haven’t come to the same conclusion they have.
It’s what you must do if you work in any field based on scientific research (medicine, for example).
People used to pour their fortunes into alchemy in the hope that they would find the secret of transmuting ordinary metals into gold. Eventually enough word got around about the bad experiences of previous fortune-seekers (along with the basic understanding of chemistry and physics developed by other individuals) so even the diehards decided to listen to outside opinions.