I agree, of course. I was merely trying to illustrate how many people of all races and incomes exploit loopholes to justify their end.
If the folks you’re working with are anything like the white Englishmen in Dalrymple’s experience as a national health doc, developing prejudice against them is almost inevitable.
I work in an environment where is it dead easy to stereotype nationalities, and grew up in an area that would reinforce this, just by looking at the individuals and attitudes around me.
I could quite easily believe that all travellers are thieves who will prey on the most vulnerable, or take anything that is not screwed down.
I could readily think that all Pakistanis are drug dealers, specifically heroin, and that not one has a driving license and never insures their car.
All black people are loud, deal in crack and cocaine, and are quite willing to go to extremes of violence, until confronted by another person who is at least their physical equal, then they will back down almost dramatically, unless they have a few buddies to back them up.
All poor whites are in it for as much as they can get and as little effort as possible.
None of these groups are interested in work, none value education and few of them have literacy above an 11 year old.
You would not be surprised to know my working environment is a prison, but it would be all too easy to approach my job in this manner, and to take it home and out on the streets with me.
All I am saying to the OP is that you are exposed to a small subset of the population, and it is not easy to realise what it happening to your own way of thinking. It can be very difficult to isolate yourself from these thoughts. It does help to get involved in community work where you get to balance all this out. The gratitude of those whose lives you touch, the struggles of many as they try overcome immense hurdles are all good ways of learning how to handle the cloying clinging stereotypes that you exposed to.
When you work in these types of environments with a small subset of the worst aspects of humanity it is corrosive, it really does eat into your soul.
casdave, it must be hard to remain sane in that environment. All you see are wasted lifeforms who prove they are not fit to live in a free society. Throw away the key I say.
The OP is seeing the culture of poverty, and mistaking it for black culture. It’s easy to do. It took a trip to Kenya, where every social class is black, for me to really see this. Poverty has a profound effect on behavior. In the US, poverty and being a minority are correlated, so we tend to confuse them.
Essactly! “Be” is not used to refer to the present tense. It refers to a consistent occurrence. Think of it as the difference between “She is lying” and “She lies.” One means at this moment she is telling a lie, and the other means that she consistently lies. “She be lying” means she lies, and does NOT indicate that she is lying right now. If someone says to me “My thumb be hurtin,” that means he has a chronic thumb pain. There’s no way this exchange happened as the OP describes. My blackness is my cite.
Ha!
Man, white people be total pussies.
The Dope is filled with a lot of self-righteous people. One of the common (American at least) PC thought-memes is “You menioned Race, therefore you’re a Racist”. People program this into their heads so that 1> They don’t have to think, and 2> “Hey, free self-righteous outrage! Yay me!”
Consider it less signal and more noise.
Now having said that, a lot of racist people attempt to code their words to discuss their racism without discussing their racism. But that doesn’t mean that every discussion involving race is inherently racist. But you know, back to 1 & 2 above…
On this one, I’m going to agree with the poster who said it was about Poverty Culture, not Black Culture. The guy in the 99.9% White area saw the same thing and I’d bet anyone else anywhere in the world sees fairly similar behavior. Hell, when I worked in the inner city cellphone store I saw people of pretty much all ethnic groups who were clearly very poor or on welfare and yet had the latest greatest phones and 3 digit monthly cellphone bills - and a very entitled attitude about everything.
The OP stated that he lives in a predominantly white area, and ALL (not some, but ALL) of the examples he sees are black. How is that reconciled with “Poverty Culture, not Black Culture”? Are there no poor whites in that “predominantly white area”?
This is true. People might also think you’re racist if you say “I’m not racist, but I don’t like black people anymore.”
Yup, and everyone else wants to call you a liar and think the worst of you should you dare speak of it, which eats still more of your soul.
Seriously people, arguing on whether or not one of the persons he quoted used a specific word in a specific context? You have too much fucking time on your hands and you’re just looking for things to be outraged about. Go find something else to do that doesn’t involve Pedantic Internet Douchebaggery.
I agree that it’s mostly poverty you are seeing, and in your community, the poor people happen to be black. Being poor, generation after generation, has a profound effect on how you behave and interact, and what you do to get by. A lot of what you are seeing are survival behaviors, and have worked for them and their families in getting what they need to get by. It’s sad and frustrating, but people who have lived their whole lives in poverty, surrounded by everyone else in poverty, it wears them down and it makes for a bad personality.
I’d say a lot of it stems from them feeling like society has let them down, and in many ways it has. This lets them build a lot of anger and feeling of entitlement. They don’t have a lot of positive role models in their lives, and they haven’t got a lot of help from people who were very happy to give it.
Ultimately, it has nothing to do with their race, and everything to do with the lives they’ve lived up until the moment they met you. It’s unfortunate, but poverty tends to bring out people’s worst behaviors and attitudes.
Obviously I am speaking in generalities. I don’t mean any offense to lower class people. If anything, I sympathize with them and work hard to understand their frustrations. I do not look down on the impoverished as lesser people, no matter how they act. They are doing what they know how to do to get by, and make the best of their lives.
Yeah, don’t worry, newcrasher. Other middle-aged white guys don’t think you’re racist; those are the only opinions you care about, right?
Not really. DC is full of educated white workers who live in Virginia and surrounding environs. They generally have gainful employment and health insurance, and rarely need to visit the ER unless having an actual E. The inner city residents are diverse, but tend to congregate by culture in different sections of the city.
I’m the one who lives in a region where poor whites reside in equal numbers with poor blacks and poor hispanics. Our ERs are full of (often entitled and ill-mannered) poor people.
Gosh, what a pleasant fellow you are.
I do look down on people who behave like assholes, no matter what their economic status is.
It was more of a case of calling him out on mocking black English. You understand, that is what people are doing when they pretend to talk like black people and say, “My thumb be muthafuckin hurtin yo!”
I expected him to come in and say, “Oh, wait, he didn’t say it like that…maybe I quoted him wrong” or even, “Oh, I guessed I hammed it up a bit, but yeah, he was speaking very loudly and using lots of slang and profanity” or something like that.
The fact that he didn’t address it just convinces me that yes, his intention was to mock black English, and he just got called out on it.
Further, in that same post, I agreed with him that it is hard to not have racist thoughts when you are surrounded by people of a different race who are behaving poorly, and I commended him for recognizing the issue and wanting to nip it in the bud. My only regret is that I don’t have advice to help him, since, as I said, I’m in a similar boat.
So, nope. Don’t see any douchbaggery in my post at all.
Ha! Girl, you be too funny!
That’s the wrongest I’ve ever heard it used.
And mocked it in a way that so obviously did not happen. He may as well have said a guy walked in there and said, “Ah, yessuh, I shol’ is mad ‘bout you not fixing my thumb. It be hurtin’, ah yessuh, hurtin’ real bad.”
“Yo.” I forgot to add the “Yo” part which also didn’t happen. People, please, if you’re going to tell me some true story about the shiftless negroes you’ve encountered, get the speech patterns correct. “Black people use the word ‘be’ wrong, right? Yeah, okay, so this guy totally said, ‘My thumb be hurtin,’ and then he said ‘yo.’” Yes, we do use “be” wrong, but that’s now how we use it wrong. Get it right!
All any of us have is the experience of our own background and perceptions. Where we run into trouble is when we try to define another through our own filter.
Understanding issues of race, or any other difference, requires personal research, patience with each other, commitment to continue to try even when we feel confused or hurt, and a willingness to be open to what we don’t understand.
That’s a damned big order for any mere human when we’ve all got immediate personal pressures of day-to-day living.
It makes sense to take a break if you feel stuck, OP. You sound like someone who is trying to grow and when you are ready you will make the next steps.