Welcome to DC, my friend got robbed in his alley at 7am as he walked from his back door to go to his car. Our criminals show a work ethic and drive that is both inspiring and terrifying.
The reference to Howard students makes me think that it probably is in NW near or in Shaw.
I like that quote and it rings true.
I asked about the two examples you put forth … why are you changing the subject?
C’mon…ask me for some better examples …please!!!
“But they are all the same color!” … in quotes. Who are you quoting? Can you do that in the pit?
Totally missed the Howard ref. :smack: Never mind.
You’re not very smart, are you?
Fine, let’s widen that net to include anybody who is a different race than you are – that you apparently dislike because they aren’t a member of whatever fucked up species you claim to be. Do you think that helps your argument?
I’ll take that as a request for the other groups I was referring to …
How about anybody who would go listen to Farrakhan or Sharpton rally their following?
How about Jeremiah Wright’s congregation?
Can I make the same judgements about them as you and your ilk would a Tea Party rally attendee?
Yeah, I assumed Shaw as well.
Jesus Christ, you’re dense.
Feel free to judge everyone who goes to a specific church (lord knows, I do), but where you leap from that to … “my dislike for a person of a different race is based on much the same thing…” is between you and your psychiatrist.
Does everyone of a particular “different race” think and act the same way, as you will generally find with everybody that’s meeting in a specific spot for a specific reason – like, say, a Tea Party rally?
Don’t get sucked in Jack! It happened to me. Learn from my mistakes!
Perhaps I am dense… instead of saying “dislike for a person of a different race” I had said “dislike for a person who happens to be a different race” would that have made a dif?
Would it make a dif if I pointed out that I dislike the white followers of Farrakhan, Sharpton, Wright and others equally as much regardless of their skin color?
Ok I’m a bit late to this thread, but I gotta say I think even sven is reading a bit much into the lady’s words (though without being there it’s hard to tell). It could be that the woman only sounded racist because of the situation of that neighbourhood - ie. it just so happens that pretty much everyone who is white in the neighbourhood is rich.
It’s possible that the “they” that the woman referred to are the muggers - who are just coincidentally mostly black. I highly doubt that the woman was saying “watch out for them blacks - even the rich ones” - which would be much more clearly racist. As for “robbing whites” - it could be analogous to saying “robbing people in suits.” If pretty much everyone who is white in the area is pretty well off, then they would seem like attractive targets to muggers, no? She didn’t say “they’re ONLY robbing whites” - so who’s to say that she doesn’t think rich black people also get targeted? If she said “they’re robbing people in suits”, would you appreciate the warning or would you think that she’s just a classist trying to bond with her fellow investment banker?
How about the muggers - maybe they are racist too? Sure, they might mug some black people, if they think they aren’t poor - but they’ll definitely mug any white person they see because they’re much more likely to have money than a random black person. Is that being racist? Is it racist to point that out?
So basically, I see plenty of room to doubt racist motivations behind her statement. Maybe she was being racist, but I think it’s being kind of prejudiced to assume so based on what was presented in this thread.
Yes. It would have.
But you came out bitching about the Tea Party stuff, and slid into, “people of different races.”
What does one have to do with the other? Why go to, ‘this is why I don’t like someone who just happens to be Puero Rican’, or whatever, when their Pruerto Ricanness doesn’t enter into the picture?
I learned something new today. I learned that I’m a racist.
I was telling my older son that when I went in to pay the cable bill there was nobody at the front desk but the name plaque said “Saqueesha.” 7/8 ths of the women who work there (what’s happened to the men?) are black. And I was complaining, “Why can’t other people get a job?” And he said, “Why do you assume that the person was black?”
I looked at him like he was stupid. White people don’t name their kids with words that include “keesha” “shon” kwenton" etc. Right?
He explained to me that in his generation lots of black people have names like that and nobody thinks anything about it. They don’t think it’s odd. And that made me think…
After every revolution, it takes at least one generation, and sometimes more, for the change to be accepted.
As somebody who used to pick up a sign in the '60s and work toward equality—for blacks, women and gays, I can truthfully say that I’ve fucked up. He’s right; in my way of thinking I might as well be Archie Bunker.
How did that happen? One of my earliest memories is of standing on the stoop at the back of our apartment in the housing for the local shipbuilders in Newport News, VA. (Way early ‘50s. My parents had previously worked on the Manhatten Project in Oak Ridge, TN.) One of my best friends would sit on the step right down in front of me. I was around three. He was “much” older, maybe 6 or 7. He was black. He had silky, springy hair. And I loved to run my hands thru it. Deep down, at the scalp. And he liked it, too. Must have felt like a massage. I never thought…well, anything, about black people. We were just us.
Gonna try to make a long story shorter. I’ve only been in the Pit a couple times, mostly by accident. I dont’ know if people make long posts or not so…
Flash forward to mid '60s. We live in a rural area. Some of the kids on the bus are black. (Really? omg lol) Anyway, in my science class the teacher is on another tirade. This time Whites are good, Black people are bad. (He might have thought himself progressive because he didn’t say colored.) Near the end of the class he asked if anybody thought black people had the same rights as white people.
To my right, sitting near the back, was the younger brother of one of my friends from the bus. Black. I was embarrassed for him, about the whole thing. I raised my hand.
The teacher had me stand up and stand next to my desk. And he called me a nigger lover. In school. (A place of learning?)
And yet, 45 years later, I am guilty of assumption.
I learned something new today. And that makes it a good day.
Wow.
Some of you are idiots. Some of you are racists. Listen and be educated.
If I have a bucket of apples, and I am looking for the ones with worms so I can throw them out, and it just happens to be the case tha all and only the yellow apples have worms in them, then it is TRUE that I am targetting wormy apples, and FALSE that I am targetting yellow apples.
If I am a robber, and I am looking for people with fancy gadgets to steal from, and it just happens to be the case that all and only the white people have fancy gadgets, then it is TRUE that I am targetting people with fancy gadgtes, and FALS that I am targetting white people.
“You know how it is, they are stealing from white people,” when uttered in the situation described in the OP, is by far most plausibly interpreted as making a claim that people who are white should be careful because they are white, because black people are maliciously targetting white people because they are white.
No other interpretation of the utterance makes sense out of her as a human being attempting to communicate helpful information.
The only interpretation other than that which seems the least bit plausible is that “they” means “robbers,” not “black people”–but that seems dubious given that she lowered her voice and stumbled over her phrasing as though she felt a need to be careful how she says it. No one needs to be careful how they refer to “robbers.” But everyone knows to be careful how they refer to “black people.”
The post quoted below appears to have been passed over. Wanted to draw attention to it, as it is basically right on the money.
Thanks for the sanctimony. Unfortunately, your thesis is false. It is true that in Washington DC, at least–and I suspect this is true of other cities as well, though I don’t have much direct with them-- thugs will target whites, not because of gadgets, but because they are white. This has been pointed out by many people who actually live here, but I guess you must have missed those posts.
You’re complaining about this in the pit?
I haven’t seen any such posts. And I doubt their veracity if they exist. What’s the evidence?
YOU, Straight Dope Message Board Poster What the … !!!, are the one who made the comparison in the first place. You said in our earlier exchange that you have trouble making yourself understood from post to post. That’s fine. I’m no great shakes in the debate department myself, but for fuck’s sake, before you call somebody a dolt you might want ensure that you aren’t the original source of what you later attribute to idiocy.
I hope I don’t make you feel uncomfortable.
But I’m honestly surprised when people act as if they are immune to harboring racist beliefs. You’d have to be some special supernatural being to not be tainted by racism. This goes for everyone regardless of race. Regardless of how intelligent they are or who they hang out with. Even who they are married to. Everyone has crazy, ill-formed, mean-ass beliefs about another group. I won’t go as far as saying it’s natural, but I know one thing. A person who says they are truly “colorblind” is someone I don’t want to be around. Because that person is either delusional or a liar.
People I like are people who are constantly challenging their assumptions and correcting their prejudices. So I agree with you that your realization was a good thing.
Now I commence to rambling…
I was upset one day because on my way to work, a guy had exposed himself to me in an alley. I told my therapist–someone I really like and trust. The next time I had a session with her, she had a surprise for me. A newspaper article about a guy who’d been arrested that week for flashing a woman. Now granted, the guy had been caught not that far from where I had been. But he looked nothing like my flasher. The one who had gotten caught had been driving around in a car, stalking one specific woman; mine was standing in an alley, butt-ass naked except for running shoes. I told my therapist that the guy in the paper wasn’t “my” guy. She insisted that I was mistaken.
“How many white guys are flashing people in Richmond!? What are the chances that there are two of them!?”
It was like she’d thrown hot sand in my face or something. Richmond is not exactly the whitest place in the world, but it’s a predominately white city. And I was on the “white” part of town. It was like her assumption was that this guy was analomy or abberation of some kind–a white criminal! OMG! We all know that black guys are the default criminal! She said this to me even though she’s fully aware that I’m black.
I blinked the hot sand out of my eyes and focused on her humanity, not her fleeting stupidity. She was trying to make me feel better. Yes, she had revealed her racist slip to me, but this doesn’t make her an evil, hateful person. I could have told her that I didn’t appreciate the insinuation–how dare she!–but it didn’t occur to me at that moment.
But we have talked about race since then and I have been able to highlight her faulty logic on matters. Just as she has highlighted mine in other matters.
I don’t blame even sven for not being confrontational. If I got confrontational every time someone said something stupid around me, my head would be spinning around like Exorcist Girl’s.