FairyChatMom, thanks for the invitation. If I’m so unfortunate as to lose this battle, I’ll definately take you up on it. I’ll bring my daughter along, if that’s ok – she hated Disney even more than I do!
Scylla: No – his class was home already by 6:00. I was able to use your thread here to mess with him, though:
Me: Hey, Nick – one of the guys on my message board was at Busch Gardens on friday. I asked him if you behaved yourself.
Nick: ::shocked and horrified stare:: Uh… ::suspicious squint:: Well, how would he know it was me, anyway?
Me: I told him what you were wearing.
Nick: ::the shocked and horrified look back in place:: Uh… ::again with the suspicious squint:: Lots of kids wear Quicksilver!
Me: Yeah, well I scanned a picture of you and e-mailed it to him.
Nick: ::the now familiar S&H look:: Uh… ::suspicious squint:: Oh, you did not! ::S&H whisper:: Did you?
Now, this is going to make me legitimately Cranky, here. It’s “PC” to say “kids” instead of “young black adolescents?” Ugh! Being black explains more about their socioeconomic class and upbringing?
I understand completely about describing things as you saw 'em: I too have long had the tendency to describe people’s race when they are anything but white, because to me (white and raised in a predominantly white town) this is a very significant facet of what I observed. I’m sure if I grew up never wearing shoes, I’d be including detailed descriptions of people’s footwear in stories. But I’m trying to do that less because others tend to take the mere inclusion of race and use it to assume I’m implying other things–including stereotypes and unfair conclusions–about the situation. Which is what I thought you might be doing, and I think, if I’m reading you right, you’re saying you were and it wasn’t exactly inadvertent. Okay.
Anyway, the only reason I’m responding again is that I bristle at the “PC” label. Not to offend people who wear that brand proudly, but I find it as small-minded in its own way as the other more offensive belief systems I eschew. Being thoughtful about language and curious about how details change the implied meaning of a story isn’t PC. At least I hope not.
Actually, I think some of your points would make good “Great Debate” fodder – if it hasn’t already been done to death. I’ll bet a lot of people have some interesting thoughts on this and I’d like to hear them, but I’ve already hijacked this particular thread more than is fair.
Syclla - While I can understand that you were upset by these young people’s offensive, aggressive and dangerous behavior, the fact that they are black and possibly urban (how did you know that?) is completely irrelevant. And I find it interesting that you didn’t state the race of the kids that were behaving decently. Were there no young, black children in any of those school groups? Were there no children of other races misbehaving?
Yes I agree with you that they were brought up poorly - no one, no matter what their socioeconomic background is, has the right to behave like hooligans in a public space and endanger others.
I think that the important distinction between these groups is the amount of supervision. The school groups were more likely to have attentive supervision than the others. And I’m sure that it is more likely that unsupervised children/kids/teenagers (no matter who they are or where they come from) will behave poorly, especially if they think they can get away with it. If Busch Gardens security had either threatened to or actually kicked them out of the park (which they should have) then I’m sure someone in that group would think twice before behaving like that again(atleast at BG). Yes I know that the chaperones of the school groups probably weren’t with all the kids all the time, but if one of the kids were kicked out or whatever then that information would definitely result in some type of discipline either by the school or the students’ guardian. But for the kids there anonymously, there is very little risk of that happening - providing much less incentive to “be good”. Which, as I said previously, does not excuse their behavior.
I also mentioned that the bad kids tended to have basketballs and the good kids tended to be wearing tshirts representing the group they had arrived with.
Nobody seems to be giving me shit about pointing out those aspects.
I neither emphasized nor ignored the racial aspects of the problems that day. Nor did I draw any conclusions from them other than that bad kids were generally unsupervised.
As I said, had the problem been a mass of adolescent Polynesians running amok, I would have identified them as such.
That said, I think the problems with this issue aren’t mine, and I have no intentions of playing word games and attempting to couch and reinterpret what actually happened along the lines of political correctness.
I pointed out a descriptive characteristic of the troublemakers. The expectation that I’m supposed to selctively ignore certain facts is bullshit.
I’ll address it in GD soon.
dbl:
It was “The Trellis.” I misremembered the name as “The Terrace.” My bad.
Jess:
Heh, heh. Anything I can do to further the illusion that dad’s eyes are everywhere, let me know.