Maybe so. Still, “cowardly” seems inapt.
Yes, I have to give Starving Artist credit for standing by what he says and not doing a “post and run”. He may start a fire but at least he’s willing to face the heat afterwards.
Perhaps if you people showed the slightest ability at reading comprehension I wouldn’t have to use so many words.
Seriously. There is no one in this thread who has shown a greater desire for the end to racism than I have, and yet you’re all acting like I’m some racist asshole longing for the days of Stepin Fetchit. So naturally when you post things that show you have either missed the point or taken the wrong one entirely I’m going to have to try to set you straight, and around this place that requires a lot of effort. Still, if you object to the length of some of my posts no one is holding a gun to your head to make you read them. You remind me of people who rail against pornography yet make comments showing they’ve looked at every bit they’ve found. If you don’t like it, don’t read it. Simple as that.
And speaking of lengthy posts to set the record straight:
Jimmy Chitwood - I spent about an hour and a half last night going over and answering your last post and pointing to how you’re hearing things I never said and jumping to wrong conclusions as a result. Then the board went down and I lost it on preview. I’ll try to come back and reconstruct it later when I have more time. For the record, I did say I don’t think you’re a bad guy. I just think you’re too wrapped up in this issue to see what I’m really saying.
You’re an asshole who accused me of racism in “many, many threads”. Then when I challenged you to come up with even one example, you took the ridiculous position that you’d be happy to prove me a racist but only after I answered your questions - as if posting examples of my alleged racism were some sort of favor to me that you were going to withhold until I did what you wanted. Those two posts have caused me to dismiss you as not only a liar but a loon as well, and therefore not worth the bother.
No. Since in other threads you have stopped responding to me after I have deconstructed other weak arguments you have made, and you have already stopped responding to my questions in this thread, I am not going to go through your posting history to show your racism until you actually respond to the debate we are having.
In other words, I asked you first.
Did he say he was going to bed but would answer you in the morning? Seen that one a lot.
If memory serves, yes.
[QUOTE=Shot from Guns]
[QUOTE=devilsknew]
Mighty presumptuous of you to read that far into the implications and my intentions. I honestly wasn’t even thinking that deeply,
[/QUOTE]
I dunno, the kind of words someone chooses under pressure, when they’re not thinking and self-censoring, can say a lot about them.
[/QUOTE]
I’ll tell you what that says, that says that sometimes people speak rashly and stupidly out of anger and adrenaline, and in a fight or flight response people talk smack. That’s what that says about me and many other people. And I can even see that perhaps in all of my billions of years of evolution, instinctively, perhaps yhe reptillian part of my brain picked that particular gutteral response subconsciously in the classic play of male/ female domination. You see it every day… ask any animal behavioralist, sociologist, primatologist, or anthropologist and you’ll see this kind of “puffing” behavior constantly between males and females of all species including and maybe more pronounced and intricately in humans. Maybe my brain knew that instinctively to break through the one tracked bared tooth, and nail mentality of that pack of women to stop the escalation and to save that girl I had to make a show of male threat and domination and utter a succint call to both get their attention and break through those six women’s bloodlust, simultaneously cow them, and perhaps in the most uniquely human way, shame some sense into them. Whatever it was… while they were yelling “kick the spic!” it broke through and I spoke their language for a brief moment and saved a woman from possible serious injury or death.
In my mind, his job is only on the line if a) the boss decides the headache incurred by the boycott forces him to confront his racism, no matter how casual and b) if he actually decides that he’s gonna go out in a blaze of glory for his precious bumper sticker.
I think I can safely say, for people of color in this country who have been victimized in some way by racism, it is socially repugnant. I guess I see racism like a lot of people see pedophilia. I get kooky and irrational when I see it because shit like lynching didn’t happen that long ago (James Byrd here in Texas), and I see people constant acting as if there isn’t a correlation between stickers like this guy has on his car and dragging a guy to death as he screams for his life. I would wager a lot of White folks feel the same, too. Maybe some (of color and White) don’t. But that’s how you eradicate social ills. You make it so fucking uncomfortable for people who hold those views that they have no choice but to evolve into the 21st century (which I think most people will do) or go underground with their ignorant shit (can’t do shit about that, I guess).
And let’s be clear, if he loses his job it’s because his boss is tired of his dumbassery. The boycotters are merely pointing out his dumbassery to the boss.
And I differentiate between a conversation between friends that someone happens to overhear. I say a lot of stuff I’d never emblazon on my property to people in private.
Got it in one, Jimmy. A boycott is pretty innocuous, and honestly, unless you live in San Francisco or Cambridge, Mass, I doubt you’ll be able to mobilize people to the point that this place will go out of business. Some people are going to elect not to patronize the business because one of the employees expresses ill views and others won’t give a shit, at least not enough to change their purchasing decisions.
The ball is in the boss’ court. He can side with the moron he has working with him, or tell him that he has a job interfacing with the public, and he’d better learn to keep his idiocy private. He doesn’t have to have a heart to heart about how Obama is a great guy, or how racism hurts people.
Let me stop you right there, Starving. That’s one way to end racism, but it ain’t the only one. You are privileging the comfort of racists over those they victimize, until they get their heads around the fact that we’re all people, etc.
I don’t believe for a second that most racists don’t walk down the streets of Watts or Detroit, say, calling the residents “nigger” because they have had revelations about the humanity of Black people. Most don’t do it because they’re scared of getting the shit beaten out of them, and I’m fine with that.
I’m perfectly fine with ignorant people being scared into behaving in a socially acceptable manner. They can have their cognitive dissonance on their own time, thanks very much.
Nope. When you make an accusation like that, you need to back it up. You took the discussion ion that direction, that was your choice. so you have to back it up or risk people viewing you as a dishonest poster. If you want to argue the issues, that’s one thing. But when you resort to ad hominems, you need to put up or shut up and apologize.
Getting someone fired isn’t ostracizing them.
Did you read my multiple explanations of what I meant by the term? I was using “personal setting” to distinguish private life from an employment or other official setting–i.e., what the guy is doing when he’s off the clock and not representing anyone but himself.
It is when they’re being a dick off the clock.
Calling for someone to be fired is the same thing. You’re just equivocating. Or did you think the point of the boycott was for the restaurant to buy the guy a bouquet of flowers that said “Please stop being a racist shitbag in your private life xoxo”?
There’s a bit of a difference between “I don’t want to be served by this guy” and “I want to make sure that no one else gets served by this guy, and his employer either gets him to conform to behavior I approve of on his personal time or fires him.” There’s also a *huge *difference between “I don’t approve of the way this guy is acting on the job” and “I don’t approve of the way this guy is acting on his own time.”
Not in the least. I just find “change your legal behavior outside of work or I’ll fire you” to be as objectionable as “I’m firing you for your legal behavior outside of work.” Let’s consider the same situation with something else that most of us would probably consider to be absolutely okay but a not insignificant portion of the country would find objectionable:
This is exactly the point I’m trying to make–what’s a clear distinction in acceptable “offensive” speech *to us *is not nearly so clear to other people.
They’re not seeing it “as his shop.” It’s in a parking lot for a large building. They stalked the guy to figure out where he worked. No casual observer is going to associate him with any one business.
I love David Cross so much.
Thank god you called those women niggers! What a hero. I’m sure you would have both died if your quick racist reflexes hadn’t saved you both. I wonder if you can get a medal of some kind?
Of course it is. But it feels like you’re being purposely blind to the fact that there are a lot of other things that other people feel just as strongly about, and *they think *that their objections are just as rational as yours. These people *truly believe *that same-sex couples are a threat to marriage and society, that all Muslims are terrorists that hate America, etc. From their perspective, the things they consider “socially repugnant” are just as bad as racism. And the only criterion you’re able to offer me is, “From my personal experience, this is a bad thing that deserves to be stamped out.” Well, from *these people’s *personal experiences, so are all kinds of things that we consider to be perfectly innocuous.
And we can’t run a country like that. We can’t pick one person and have their opinions on what’s right and wrong be turned into a national blueprint for how everyone else must behave. For a country to be free, people *must have the right to say and believe things that are completely fucking retarded. Because once your government or employer has the right to dictate what you are allowed to say, think, believe, and advocate for on your personal time… that’s no country I want to live in.
*Obviously there’s an exception here for public figures, whom it’s reasonable to hold to a different standard of behavior, given a different expectation of privacy for such.
So you’d be okay with someone boycotting a business because one of the employees was, say, in an interracial relationship, because the boycotters probably wouldn’t be able to get the person fired, or get the boss to make the person stop dating anyone who isn’t the same race?
There’s a difference between equivocating and pointing out a shade of gray, but maybe “stop disagreeing slightly about an implication” wasn’t combative enough.
A boycott is not calling for somebody to be fired. That’s why they call it a boycott, and not calling for somebody to be fired. A boycott is somebody not spending her money because she’s decided that business doesn’t deserve it. If I find out my barber is a contributing member to a white supremacist website, but he’s actually just an employee and doesn’t own the joint, am I obligated by patriotism not to change my mind about which barbershop to go to? Because that guy isn’t going to cut my hair anymore, even though he’s entitled to work just as much as I am. Maybe if it’s just me it isn’t the same thing as an organized boycott, but I don’t know how many people I’m allowed to tell before I’ve crossed the line from normal consumer behavior to being un-American. Finding out things changes how I value all the businesses competing for my money. The unabashed racism of the guy who makes my sandwich is a thing.
Anyway, a boycott can be resolved otherwise than by a firing, which you obviously know. So really the question is can Shot from Guns think of anything that could happen as the result of a group of people not eating at that restaurant which didn’t include either a bouquet of flowers or the person they’re angry at getting fired.
If you’re trying to point out to us that we’re making a moral judgment against racist behavior that we don’t make against all behavior that offends somebody, well, yeah; we’re doing that. Calling the president a nigger is a thing that’s bad. Not all things that offend somebody somewhere are equivalent by virtue of having offended somebody. And not that it’s required for there to be a point here that you aren’t acknowledging, but to go one step further: I’m pretty OK with redefining (to the extent that it has a definition) “anti-American” to include calling anybody, much less the president, a nigger.
Oh, and devilsknew: when you originally told the story, you said you dropped the bomb after you got the victim to safety. Good for you that you told the story in the first place, but don’t kid yourself about what happened there, and jesus, don’t try to defend it.
Amen. And it isn’t a bad thing if that level of fear spreads beyond Watts and Detroit.
I only have to back it up if we’re having a debate. If you will notice before I rightly called Starving a racist, he had already stopped responding to me.
Nope. I already said I’m quite willing to post some quotes of his that I found racist, but he has to respond to the things I have said first.
I don’t feel like I need to prove my ad hominems to someone who won’t debate me. The offer still stands, if he actually responds to my questions that prove he has a double standard for black behavior as opposed to white behavior, I can go find the posts I remember that I found racist.
The point of a boycott, when you publicize it and ensure that the ownership/management knows why you’re refusing to patronize the establishment, is to effect a change in behavior on the part of a business: in this case, employing someone who publicly makes racist statements, but on their own time and in a way that isn’t directly associated with their place of employment. The people organizing the boycott want the racist’s *boss *to force the racist to make a change to his behavior outside of work by using the leverage of his continued employment with the company.
Pointing out that the guy won’t get fired if the boycott successfully gets him to remove or cover the bumpersticker doesn’t help your case at all–in fact, it’s exactly the thing I’m objecting to. The idea that someone can be forced *by their employer *to curtail their legal expression of ideas *outside of work *is something I find unAmerican, no matter how disgusting and factually incorrect I find those ideas to be.
You keep saying what the point is as if you’re the one doing the boycotting. The point of a boycott is to lodge a protest, yes. How the business responds to the protest is something else entirely. What if the boss is a smart guy and he says, hey, now that you mention it, we’re going to have a big black history special in February, and I’m going to make sure my fry cook understands what that’s all about; in fact, I’m going to put him on the poster and have him hand out the fliers? What if he said he was going to make a donation to the UNCF in recognition of his employee’s ignorance? Or jesus, what if he just put up a Malcolm X poster or played some Public Enemy in the dining room?
If I’m the customer in that situation that guy becomes my favorite burger man in the city. And the guy with the bumper sticker is still an asshole and can have his bumper sticker; all he’s lost is whatever little bubble of distance he thought he could keep between his own terrible character and the community around him.
If none of that works for the owner, maybe he does nothing, or maybe he fires his worker, if the business he’s losing is more important than the worker is. Just to be clear about why that is an unacceptable outcome, would it be more American to stop going to the place because it’s staffed by a terrible person *without *giving the owner a chance to do anything about it? Or are Drain Bead’s friend’s actually required to keep eating there and act like nothing happened?
Oh, so if I don’t feel you’re answering me to my satisfaction, I can call you a racist, or a pedophile, or rapist, and I get a free pass until you do what I want. so I get to blackmail you into answering. Are you out of your friggin mind. You think that’s a good, sane, or honorable way to debate?
Unbelievable.
It’s not like I have the power to walk into any place of business and command them to fire any employee. Obviously I should but for some reason other people don’t see it that way. So I can’t personally get someone fired.
Now if a couple of hundred people agree with me, then it’s a community action and maybe the owner of a business might decide Joe Redneck is a liability.
As for Joe Redneck himself, if he decides that his freedom to call a black person a nigger is more important than maintaining gainful employment then he’s an idiot. And he might decide that because being a racist he already qualifies as an idiot.
I do feel sorry for Mrs Redneck and the little Rednecks. Bad enough they have a racist idiot for a husband and father. Now they’re stuck with an unemployed racist idiot. But I also feel sorry for every black man, woman, and child who had to read that bumper sticker.
How about this, Jimmy Chitwood:
The point of a boycott is to lodge a protest, yes. How the business responds to the protest is something else entirely. What if the boss is a smart guy and he says, hey, now that you mention that same sex marriage equality bumpersticker, we’re going to have a Christian special over Easter, and I’m going to make sure my fry cook understands what that’s all about; in fact, I’m going to put him on the poster and have him hand out the Jack Chick tracts? What if he said he was going to make a donation to the Westboro Baptist Church in recognition of his employee’s ignorance? Or jesus, what if he just put up a “Adam and Eve, Not Adam and Steve” poster or played *The 700 Club *on the dining room TVs?
As I keep saying, my point is this:
It is ***none of my employer’s fucking business ***what opinions I express on my own time, so long as I do so in a legal fashion and don’t allow it to interfere with what I do on the clock.
Yes. Refusing to be served by someone whose personal opinions you disagree with is your personal choice; trying to get the person’s *employer *involved is where I think it crosses the line.
Maybe I don’t want to shop at a local store because a cashier there was a bitch to me in high school. Should I call up the manager and say, “Hey, just so you know, I’m never going into your store again because Stacy threw spitballs at my head in AP Calc”?
Side note: Either there are few enough people involved that it won’t make a difference to the restaurant’s bottom line; or there are so many people boycotting that they are trying to get the guy fired or close the restaurant. You can’t have it both ways.
Again, we loop back to my main point: it’s none of my employer’s fucking business what legal activities I engage in on my own time.