CS, overall I agree with your analysis-in fact, I think it’s brilliant. However, you say:
and I have to disagree. For many people, allowing bigoted remarks to pass unremarked on feels like condoning them, which is simply unacceptable. If it weren’t for the bigotry, they would have simply ignored her once they realized that she wasn’t going to pay attention to advice. We’ve had others like her, and that’s what happened (remember KayKay)? The frustration comes from the fact that many people feel they have a duty to stand up to bigotry, and it is not a duty they can lightly abandon, no matter how fruitless it feels.
I, myself, tend to assume that people are listening even when they are on the defensive, and I hope that even as IDBB is seemingly failing to internalize any of the things she has been exposed too, some of the ideas are taking root. Perhaps it will be a couple years before they flower, and even then she will think they grew their on their own, but just because we’ve never gotten her to cry “uncle”–and we never will–doesn’t mean that her time here has had no impact. She is obviously very young, and has the potential to grow a great deal in the next few years.
Oh, man. Why on Earth would you start one of these threads? Wasn’t there one last week that turned out just like this one?
No offence IDBB, but that’s like asking everyone who doesn’t like you for a guilt free shot in the nuts.
Also no offense, but Boldface Type, the issue with ghetto items is that it’s largely a derogatory racial term used to insult a particular group. I’m sure you are familiar with the term being used for the areas of the city in which Jews were confined as early at the 16th century, later rising to popularity again under the Nazis, and more currently with black and hispanic neighborhoods. The term ghetto blaster is an extention of this.
So, the term ghetto is a PC term itself. I’m sure if she’d used the term “beaner store” it wouldn’t have flown so well with the PC wagon, right? So you call it a ghetto store instead. Judging by the context, I think that’s basically what she meant.
IDBB when I started here I copped a big bad attitude. Yelled and screamed and picked fights… then in the middle of one train wreck I suddenly realized what I was doing and bailed out! I was off SDMB for months, when I came back I went to a new name for a new start. I have bad days like anyone but that time away really helped. Try it.
You know what? You’re absolutely right. Bad bit of posting. I meant to refer only to THIS particular thread (and assumed everyone else would follow my “blond logic” :D).
No, bigotry shouldn’t be allowed to go unremarked upon, what I meant to say with that remark, as it was a reply to **wring’s{/b] (paraphrased) “perhaps no more time should be wasted on her”…was that (referring only to posts that, like mine, were an attempt to help IDBB) that people had the choice not to join in that.
As to the “soggy potato chiip” syndrome? It’s an expression used in psychology to explain how people who clamor for attention ANY attention, even if they get negative attention are like children for whom any potato chip, even a soggy potato chip, is better than no potato chip at all.
Personally I disagree, but then, I’m not real “hep” on potato chips, now soggy CHOCOLATE??
IDBB, one of the things that sticks with me more than anything else is that you have given away some of your power. You say that your husband won’t let you go to school. Ask yourself why he is making the decision instead of you.
I agree with what CanvasShoes is saying, and I’d like to add that her live journal seems to show a person who is going through a severe depression-if only because she sounds just like I did.
Not being able to be at work without constantly crying? Dude, that was so ME before I finally quit Kmart.
I’m with you on this one Daisy. I think this whole thread is a little sad, even though I could predict from the OP exactly what was going to happen.
Reading IDBB’s LJ, that is one seriously depressed woman - and nobody deserves that. Just because she’s come out looking for sympathy and attention and only that rather than advice doesn’t excuse the pile-on in my opinion. That’s not to say that some people don’t - I just think this person warrants pity instead.
I don’t think she’s a malicious bigot at all. I think she’s sad and lonely and is lashing out at everyone around her in a vain attempt to get control. And yes, we all know there’s better ways of getting that control, but she FEELS powerless (for whatever reason - depression does that to you).
So you know what, I’m not advocating sympathy, but I’m not condoning everyone pitching in with a few well-placed kicks themselves. Show some compassion people.
I disagree, this is a message board. You can “just walk away”
Learning to change and living a better life is great advice, but IDBB needs time and support - this probably isn’t the best place for her AT THIS MOMENT IN TIME. We can be supportive (Canvas Shoes has been a saint in regards to IDBB), but we will always have people who are blunt, who tire of the same rants followed by the same excuses on why life isn’t any better. We have some people who have gone through really crummy times and gotten plenty of support, but they don’t start complaining about their lives in the Pit to get the support - they post to the more touchy feely MPSIMS. IDBB wants a place to vent, not to interact, and her livejournal is probably a more appropriate place for that.
I guess I just don’t quite understand what the offense was. “Ghetto store”? There are ghettoes. There are stores there. Stores in small towns which seem like they belong in the ghetto are “ghetto stores,” right? (Ever heard someone say, “That is sooo ghetto!” I have. By the way, one could say I used to live in the ghetto, but gentrification made it stylish to live here, so I no longer live in the ghetto. )
As to “TX being integrated into Mexico because there will be more Mexicans than white people by the end of this century” - there are several levels on which one could respond to the fallacies in that statement, the racial one being only one of may four or five different ways. Instead, people choose to just say, fuck you. Good, folks. :rolleyes:
CS I understand the point you’re making very well. My entire work history of 25 years deals w/folks w/huge issues of the sort you describe.
and I absolutely disagree w/your assesment of the best way to effectively help in this situation.
There was a nasty thread some years ago from a poster (I don’t want to give too many details about it 'cause that person has in fact gone on and changed for the positive). She’d posted some comments about the way her life was going at the moment. There were a series of poor choices she was making, and kept insisting that it was the ‘best’ or ‘only’ thing to do. Many folks got royally pissed at her, and really started piling on her. a few folks posted relatively sympathetic stuff of the sort you’re suggesting here, and she routinely rejected all of the help offered, to cling totally to those who did the ‘poor baby’, you’re just misunderstood etc.
it’s called enabling.
she ultimately left the board for a while, came back later, admitted that she’d been making some seriously bad decisions, and moved on.
I do believe in offering help to people in need. hell it’s what I do for a living.
but when I see things like I saw here, where a hand offering assistance was turned into a pat on her back, where the person continually looks for sympathy, and agreement with her vested position of “the reason your life sucks has nothing to do with what you’ve chosen, it’s totally The Other Dude’s fault”, not only are you not helping by offering her further fodder to continue the delusion, but you may be actively assisting her in maintaining her status quo.
As long as she’s getting her dose of sympathy, she has no incentive to actually change. As long as she continues to hear the ‘poor thing’ message, she can justify her position that her lot in life wasn’t her fault, and others are to blame, therefore there is no reason for her to alter her behavior.
Well, I think it may have been IDBB’s posting history that caused people to question her use of “ghetto.” Hell, we’ve named my husband’s boxy, crystaless, unrechargable cell phone “Ghettophone.” No disrespect meant either to modern day inner-city dwellers or medieval European Jews. But I wouldn’t use our affectionate nickname in front of anyone who doesn’t know me well enough to know that I mean no disrespect. Uh, yeah, and you guys.
She was called on “ghetto store”; she clarified that it meant a store that catered to white trash and Latinos. White trash is a term she knows insults some people; as far as Latinos, what, is anyplace catering to Latinos automatically ghetto? And with one throwaway sentence, she decreed all Latinos to be no better than this grouping called “white trash.”
I see IDBB’s apparent bigotry as an elaborate defense mechanism meant to stave off rejection. I understand that tactic completely. I am the Queen of Arm’s Length myself. But sometimes, like now, it backfires.
Um, wring, i was subtly trying to point out to you that there is no such word as “prominate” in the English language as far as I (or Webster’s) know. Maybe you meant “prominent” but “predominant” would be a better choice.
I think that whether she’s depressed, alone, locked in a dungeon or whatever, she is able to read. She KNEW from not even a week ago, that using the term White Trash (even in a ‘humorous’ way, whatever that is) would rile up some posters and in fact hurt a lot of people’s feelings, and yet, there she goes using it AGAIN, and not in a sympathetic or explanatory way, but to describe a less than desirable store which she then went on to make fun of.
That is not a result of isolated, small town ignorance on the subect. It’s a refusal to learn a lesson.
Remember how you said school would be a waste of time, Gothy Mouse? This is exactly why it ISN’T.
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