Friday before last, a group of loud black teenage males in urban street wear started following me on a sidewalk in a “up and coming” neighborhood in town, while I was walking back to my car carrying an expensive laptop. I didn’t cling onto my laptop bag tighter, cross the street, or dive into a store or restaurant, even though I felt a little bit nervous. Can I get a prop too?
And not very hard. :dubious:
Riddle me this, Batman: Do you think there is a difference in intelligence between black and white people, and if so, is it race that accounts for the difference?
The answer to both of these questions is yes, by the way, so I’m not sure how you’re claiming you don’t find there to be superiority of one race over the other. I already understand that you don’t hold intelligence makes someone a good or bad person, or that it’s a measure of their value, or that it says anything about their personal ethics, how they should be treated, or anything other than how smart they are. Got it. Some races are superior to others, but that doesn’t mean the inferior races are bad people or that we should be mean to them. Being the smarter race is no different than being the race with, let’s pull something out of thin air here, shorter fingernails. Just an objective fact, don’t see what the fuss is all about.
Now back the cookie I was given earlier.
Edit: No Prop, but A- for effort.
Understood. Thank you for your consideration.
I know I may not ever qualify for a keeping it real, but can I at least get a respect? It would mean so much to me.
I’m claiming that because I’m not making a value judgment at all. I’m just reporting what the preponderence of the evidence says. I’m not saying that the results mean that one race is better than another race.
If I were to say “men on average can bench press more than women on average,” would you assume I believe that men are better than women? Why or why not?
I’m not saying that because I don’t make the value judgment in te first place and I’m not talking about whether one person should be nice to another person.
What would it take to convince Ýou that I’m not making a value judgment?
Maybe try batting your eyelashes and twisting a ringlet of your golden curls.
This place is very, very, very different than California.
I hope I never get complacent about racism. It’s dumb and it has no place in any city. I’m not going to be burning down every racist’s house or anything, but I hope I still get that prickle in the back of my spine that says “Hey, wait, that’s wrong!” when someone says some dumb racist thing.
Sure, a little respect for you. Make sure to tell all your white friends I gave it to you.
No, just smarter. I get it.
This is retarded and you know it.
I’m not sure why I’m engaging in this tedious ass argument. When you convince me that you don’t find intelligence to be a good thing, fuck the Props, I’ll buy you a round of Chicago’s fanciest scotch. If you regard claiming “black people are less intelligent than white people” the same as “black people have darker skin than white people,” then I don’t ever want to hear you call anyone an idiot again as if it were some sort of insult, the way you’d never hurl, “well your skin has a lot of melanin!”
How so? I haven’t spent any significant period of time in California so I don’t have that point of reference, but how is it different? Not being snarky, merely curious.
Part of the tension that you may feel in DC is that in the city, race and class tend to be somewhat more correlated than in other parts of the Metro area. You aren’t going to run in to very many poor whites in DC like you would in Prince William or some of the other suburbs. Much of the black middle class has left DC and have moved out to the suburbs. DC itself is mostly black and white with a small Hispanic population. The odd thing about DC is that neighborhoods tend to go majority black or majority white, but with the exception of a few places, tend to not reflect the overall composition of the city.
Yup, it is very different than California. It is its own city with its own culture.
I was gently trying to suggest that perhaps you are seeing racism where it doesn’t exitst and that in a city like DC where race is ever present in all interactions, hypersensitivity to racism that may or may not be there will leave you exhausted. I suggest that if you can’t find a way to navigate race in DC, move to the close in suburbs where you can pretend to be from the city.
As for the suggestion that I am complacent about racism, allow me to respond in a less gentle way: holier than thou, condescending, hyper sensitivity to race is in fact a type of racism. In fact, I think it might be a more damaging type of racism. I think it is tied up in the idea that certain races are in fact noble savages who can’t get along without the eternal vigilance of enlightened whites.
DC has been getting along one way or another for quite some time, so I think we’ll manage to stumble on.
Here is a map of my hometown, Sacramento, showing racial/ethnic distribution.
Here is the map of DC.
I’m not sure what that is supposed to prove. Yes, you have moved into a different city with a very different culture, with a different history. As a foreign aid worker who has worked in over 20 countries, I can tell you that ff you expect your new culture to adjust to you, you are in for some disapointment.
Looking at your OP:
I think you may be living in my neighborhood or one of the neighborhoods adjacent to mine, I’ve been here about 7 years. Lately we’ve had an influx of people who on the surface act like good little liberals, but the weird thing is they don’t really interact with anyone. It’s like they think the rest of us are just extras in a movie playing in their head, don’t be one of those.
I think you are pretty cool, so I’m not going to say much more than it’s a little harsh to hold being new in town against me, don’t you think?
I don’t appreciate casual racism from a stranger on a nice Thursday night, that’s basically it. I don’t even really care that she is apparently comfortable with low-grade casual racism- that’s her business. I don’t even know her. But I don’t appreciate her sharing that with me unbidden. I don’t appreciate her assuming I would want to hear that.
For all she knows, I’m a really light person who is partially black (admittedly, pretty far-fetched). She has no idea. It wasn’t appropriate, and put a nasty taste into what should have been a nice little neighborhoody interaction.
I just want to reinforce what DC area residents madmonk, Larry and caffeine addict have said; DC has a long, hard, complicated racial relations history. I’m from the South, and despite living here for 20+ years, am still struck by how segregated it is, and continues to be. The racism cuts both ways, at least amongst racism-tending folks of all colors. A lot of folks embrace the diversity and wish everyone would just get along. I don’t agree with what the woman even sven encountered said, but at street level, you just aren’t going to hear a lot of Kumbaya. A lot of generic suburbanites and liberals come here expecting to encounter the same head-in-the-sand attitude towards race here as where they came from, but sorry, folks, shit’s real here; deal with it.
I think I see where you are confused. I agree that being smarter is better than being dumber, just like being stronger, faster, taller, nicer, prettier, etc. etc. are all better than their opposites. But being smarter than average (or than another person) doesn’t make a person a “better person” or a “superior person” or anything like that. And if a group of people on average is smarter (or whatever) than another group of people on average, that doesn’t make the first group a “better” or “superior” group.
So, in short, you are still inferring a value judgment on my part that does not exist.
Yep. This attitude goes hand in hand with other race-based typical liberal douche themes, such as affirmative action. Liberal douches don’t think black people are really people–they are more like pets who need to be coddled, fed, and trotted out to the doctor when they get sick.
Are you ever going to define what you mean by the word “racism”? You must have used that word 100 times in this thread, yet I’m the only one who’s provided a definition for it.
…he moves like they do!
facepalm
All right, Randy, let’s not fight again.
So do you understand now that “Rand Rover believes in racial superiority” is a completely ridiculous thing to say?
Um, no. 
Fair enough, and I think you’re okay too. I had kind of a shitty day at work and some of it bled onto the Dope, my apologies.
But, I mean this sincerely: race is a complicated and multilayered issue in DC and is more complex than in any other place I have lived within the US. One factor is that while people of different races live side by side in other cities, they often come from very similar economic backgrounds, but this is not the case in DC right now; working class neighborhoods have an influx of new, affluent people, some of whom are white, but not all. Black yuppies are coming to live in DC in new numbers, too.
DC is in the middle of a pretty big change and it is about old DC losing political power to new DC. Old DC is often black (but not always), new DC is often not black (but not always). Because race is very complex in DC, people sometimes speak clumsily about it. It is really not in your interest to write off a neighbor as racist based on one comment. DC is great, but it is not the west coast, something new is coming in DC and it is creating tension, the tenisons slip out in weird, sometimes unpredictable ways.
Care to explain? At this point it really looks like you are pretty desperate to portray me as a racist, but you can’t actually explain why I am one–you just take it as an article of faith. Why is that?