It’s an offensive word. I’m not generally comfortable saying or typing it out in public discourse unless I am venting to a friend about a * black person that manifested enough traits consistent with that particular negative racial stereotype to be applicable* who did something that made me extremely angry or frustrated.
3 elements must be met before I’d use that word. None of them have been met, thus you do not see me use the word.
I never said anything about having “no qualms calling a black person a nigger”. I said that when I am expressing extreme anger or frustration about a given person among friends I may very well refer to that person by any and every applicable name in the book I can think of.
He believed she tried to hit it. My comments are predicated on what his perceptions and emotional state were at the time he made the post. You don’t believe he had an accurate perception of what happened. This may be true. Personally, I don’t know if it was accurate or not. If what he said is accurate, then his anger and off-color remarks, while unfortunate, were understandable.
If one takes him at his word, then a lady tried to run over his dog and then took off. If his perceptions of this were accurate, then I do not fault him for driving after her and confronting her. According to his account, he does this, and she lies by denying it. Her companion approaches him threateningly with a yard implement. OP makes no threats and says nothing racist.
He returns home, finds that the camera he installed- at one of the few times it would have done a great deal of good- didn’t have a tape in. Frustrating. The companion of the lady driver comes to his house and makes “terrorist threats”. The police arrive, talk to the lady and her companion and they accuse the OP of threatening them and calling the guy a ni**er. He didn’t though. He’s got it all on tape that he said nothing threatening or racist.. and that her companion did.
You suspect that portions of the post were outright lies. Fair enough. But if he is telling the complete and honest truth, and his perceptions were entirely accurate, then he’s the good guy, IMO, and his anger was understandable. If his account is not true, then I think it’s perfectly legitimate to criticize him for his actions and chide him for referring to the guy as a ‘negro’.
Is he telling the whole truth? Are his perceptions entirely accurate? I don’t know. I am skeptical of parts of it myself, which is why I predicated my comments on the accuracy of his perceptions and truthfulness of his account. And why I say I’d be interested in seeing the videos. But I don’t know one way or the other, so I’m just giving him the benefit of the doubt.
I have never in my life been angry with a person that I thought to trash them via their ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion. If a friend was venting to me and felt that fag, nigger, kike or ANY slur was justified that person would no longer be a friend because I’m not friends with racist/homophobic/ bigoted assholes.
And for the record, my husband was raised in rural South Carolina and saw the racism thats been described and rejected it. I was raised in suburban New York, saw different types of racism and rejected it too.
Not everyone, in fact most people I know don’t, choose to express themselves using bigoted language. Call someone an asshole, but leave their race or religion out of it.
Obviously, reading compression is not one of your skills. If you had actually read the OP, you would see that he didn’t say he believed that the driver tried to hit the dog.
Also, he said that the dog wasn’t hit by the tire, so if there was contact, the driver would not have felt it, so taking off would not be in appropriate, especially from a raving lunatic, if one declines to give him the benefit of the doubt.
Hmmm. You sound like a large, angry negro. No offense of course. Some of my very best friends are negroes, some of them quite large, but none as angry as you.
Afraid I’m not that familiar with Eminem’s music, but if it’s part of his art, or whatever, then that’s his problem to deal with. On the other hand, if he is off with his lilly white buddies in the back room telling stories about how some nigger pissed him off - like you do - then yeah, I’d have no problem with that statement.
And he apologized for this youthful indiscretion, as I found out in 30 seconds of Googling. Note that it’s a classic non-apology apology, in which he attacks his critics in the same metaphorical breath, but getting past that poor form, he recognizes that it was a dumb thing to do. So yeah, if you want to be someone Eminem considers dumb, keep on truckin.
I said that someone making offensive statements in the midst of venting about something in anger is, unfortunate, but understandable. Further, I said that it is not necessarily indicative of some deep-seeded hatred for a certain sex, a certain race, a certain religion, a certain sexual orientation, etc. Women call other women cnts, blacks call other blacks nggers (pejoratively), gays call other gays fa**ots, etc. It’s not an attack on a whole race, but an individual of that race. I never said using offensive language while venting was a “smart” thing to do. But I disagree with the significance and the specific meaning that some assign to it.
Never said he was a ‘role model’ (no pun intended.) I’ve explained what I meant, and now I will leave you to your straw men. I wouldn’t willfully deprive you of the satisfaction you get from beating them up, but you don’t need me here to do it.
Never said he was a ‘role model’ (no pun intended.) I’ve explained what I meant, and now I will leave you to your straw men. I wouldn’t willfully deprive you of the satisfaction you get from beating them up, but you don’t need me here to do it.
Dude, you’re the one who brought him to the party! You shouldn’t just ditch him now, that would be rude!
Perhaps he did believe this, but that’s not what he said in the OP. He said “I’m not sure she didn’t do it on purpose”, which indicates that he merely suspected that she might have attempted (and failed!) to hit the dog. Nothing in the OP gives me cause to believe that this was even a reasonable suspicion, it seems to be just part of his paranoid worldview.
You didn’t only say his behavior was understandable though, you said he was the “good guy” in this situation. If all that’s required to be the “good guy” is that the person’s actions seem justified to them based on their own perceptions and emotions – no matter how irrational or excessive – then everyone in this story was the “good guy”.
As for being understandable, well, if we grant that ducati suffers from the delusional belief that strangers are deliberately trying to harm him, and additionally that he is unable to control his anger, foresee the potential consequences of his actions, or make rational decisions, then sure, it’s understandable that he’d decide to play neighborhood vigilante over quite literally nothing. But people aren’t criticizing ducati here because his behavior defies all explanation, but rather because the obvious explanation for the behavior described is that he’s a dangerous psycho.
Even if we consider only the act of posting the OP, ducati’s behavior was neither good nor rational. He claimed to have been falsely accused of using racial slurs in the same post that he used an (at best) outdated term for African-Americans to refer to his accuser and a couple of obscene, sexist slurs to refer to the female driver. Did he not foresee that this was likely to both cause offense and make his readers wonder whether the accusations were really false? I mean, if you want people to believe that you’re innocent of doing X, it’s pretty dumb to skirt very close to doing X while telling them the story! If we assume that he is in fact a stupid bigot then his behavior makes sense, but again, that’s why this thread has turned against him.
For him to be the “good guy”, in my mind, his perceptions can’t be irrational or excessive (at least on the important parts.) If the driver did not try to hit the dog, and the driver actually drove off because the OPer came out of his house screaming, then his actions in chasing her down (as well as coming out of his house screaming) were not reasonable or good. The “good guy” label definitely depends on the accuracy of his perceptions and honesty of his version of events.
This is true, but I don’t expect someone’s actions (or posts) to be rational (or good) when done in an extreme state of anger.
As long as it turns against him not solely because he used offensive language in his venting, then I think that’s OK. I only came to his ‘defense’ (in a way), because I thought his critics were missing the forest for the trees. Your criticism of him appears to be of the ‘forest’ variety in that you disbelieve fundamental parts of his account.
If you believe that he really did call “LAN” a ni**er or that “LAN” never really made terrorist threats then I think it’s fair to ‘call him out’ on it. I say this because (if he’s telling the truth) it’s within his power to defend himself by simply linking to the videos.
If he posts the videos and it completely backs up his account, then I still say he is the ‘good guy’ and his ‘colorful language’, while unfortunate, is understandable and you should cut him some slack. But until he does post them, I will assume he either doesn’t really care to defend himself or he is lying. In neither case would I feel any further obligation to defend him on anything.