# Pitting Max\_S **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [February 8, 2022, 12:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pitting-max-s/959074 "2022-02-08T00:26:15Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 12
**Author:** ![DavidNRockies](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/davidnrockies/32/6279_2.png) [@DavidNRockies](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DavidNRockies)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2022, 7:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pitting-max-s/959074/221 "2022-03-10T19:13:46Z")
> [@Max\_S](#): > > I am making no connection whatsoever between what you wrote, and what I wrote. More’s the pity. ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2022, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pitting-max-s/959074/222 "2022-03-10T19:37:12Z")
So, if I am hearing you correctly, you are saying that black people are more resilient because the suffer more abuse? There’s a number of things wrong with that, but even if it were entirely accurate (which it is not, not even close), it still doesn’t make it okay to be abusive, since they can take it. ---
**Author:** ![Jimmy\_Chitwood](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f475e1/32.png) [@Jimmy\_Chitwood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jimmy_Chitwood)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2022, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pitting-max-s/959074/223 "2022-03-10T19:53:24Z")
This kerfuffle, on the other hand, is an example of something being taken out of context and words being put in your mouth, for what it’s worth. Max is certainly not the first person to suggest that people of color demonstrate better resilience than others. There are fucked up things you can say about that, but he didn’t say them. ---
**Author:** ![Max\_S](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/46a35a/32.png) [@Max\_S](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_S)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2022, 7:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pitting-max-s/959074/224 "2022-03-10T19:59:23Z")
Suffering does not inherently create resilience. Suffering can actually work both ways, it can end up sensitizing or desensitizing; a person who goes through trauma can come out with thin skin or thick skin. I said I believe people of color are more resilient than others. This is based on observation, not deduction. Observation of people of color bouncing back from, overcoming more shit than, like, white people. ~Max ---
**Author:** ![DavidNRockies](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/davidnrockies/32/6279_2.png) [@DavidNRockies](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DavidNRockies)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2022, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pitting-max-s/959074/225 "2022-03-10T20:13:19Z")
Or maybe it’s meaningful because it’s being taken _in_ context. ---
**Author:** ![74westy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/74westy/32/3950_2.png) [@74westy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/74westy)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2022, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pitting-max-s/959074/226 "2022-03-10T20:22:55Z")
> [@Max\_S](#): > > I said I believe people of color are more resilient than others. This is based on observation, not deduction. Observation of people of color bouncing back from, overcoming more shit than, like, white people. In other words stereotyping. ---
**Author:** ![Max\_S](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/46a35a/32.png) [@Max\_S](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_S)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2022, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pitting-max-s/959074/227 "2022-03-10T20:23:47Z")
Yes, that would be a stereotype. ~Max ---
**Author:** ![74westy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/74westy/32/3950_2.png) [@74westy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/74westy)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2022, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pitting-max-s/959074/228 "2022-03-10T20:24:43Z")
And they sing and dance better than white people. ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2022, 8:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pitting-max-s/959074/229 "2022-03-10T20:26:59Z")
> [@Jimmy\_Chitwood](#): > > Max is certainly not the first person to suggest that people of color demonstrate better resilience than others. There are fucked up things you can say about that, but he didn’t say them. No, but he is repeating them, and not through any form of coercion, they are words that he has chosen to use. > [@Max\_S](#): > > I said I believe people of color are more resilient than others. Shoulda held onto that lifeline I tossd you. It would be wrong, but at least rational to expect that those who endure more suffering are more able to resist it better than those who haven’t. Instead, you just went ahead and threw down confirmation bias, pure stereotype. ---
**Author:** ![Max\_S](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/46a35a/32.png) [@Max\_S](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_S)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2022, 8:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pitting-max-s/959074/230 "2022-03-10T20:31:49Z")
> [@k9bfriender](#): > > Shoulda held onto that lifeline I tossd you. It would be wrong, but at least rational to expect that those who endure more suffering are more able to resist it better than those who haven’t. If I had, I would be lying. I reached my belief through induction, not deduction. ~Max ---
**Author:** ![Jimmy\_Chitwood](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f475e1/32.png) [@Jimmy\_Chitwood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jimmy_Chitwood)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2022, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pitting-max-s/959074/231 "2022-03-10T20:35:42Z")
> [@k9bfriender](#): > > No, but he is repeating them, and not through any form of coercion, they are words that he has chosen to use. Coercion? Of course there wasn’t any coercion. The point is that “black resilience” is something that is studied and is commented on in both positive and objective lights. Not everybody who observes (as for example, [during Covid](https://www.brookings.edu/blog/how-we-rise/2020/06/24/resilience-in-the-face-of-a-pandemic-covid-weighs-unevenly-across-racial-lines/)) that black communities are often more resistant to certain harms than white communities, is doing so to justify further harm. It would be a completely uncontroversial, at worst, kind of observation for most posters here to make. It’s akin to saying white privilege exists. ---
**Author:** ![Mighty\_Mouse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mighty_mouse/32/7776_2.png) [@Mighty\_Mouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mighty_Mouse)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2022, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pitting-max-s/959074/232 "2022-03-10T20:51:22Z")
Holy mother of god, our white knight has embraced his damsel and is “rescuing” her by carrying her down the staircase to hell. Bravo! ---
**Author:** ![Jimmy\_Chitwood](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f475e1/32.png) [@Jimmy\_Chitwood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jimmy_Chitwood)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2022, 8:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pitting-max-s/959074/233 "2022-03-10T20:53:48Z")
Good one man ---
**Author:** ![Max\_S](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/46a35a/32.png) [@Max\_S](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_S)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2022, 8:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pitting-max-s/959074/234 "2022-03-10T20:53:52Z")
When did I get on your shitlist anyways? I don’t remember us ever having a back and forth. ~Max ---
**Author:** ![DavidNRockies](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/davidnrockies/32/6279_2.png) [@DavidNRockies](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DavidNRockies)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2022, 8:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pitting-max-s/959074/235 "2022-03-10T20:55:09Z")
[**LONG**] I remember, years ago, visiting a friend who worked for an NGO in Central America. I mentioned that – in traveling throughout that country – I saw very little evidence of people with disabilities. I asked her if it was ‘simply’ because there was no infrastructure to allow them to be mobile and independent. Were they simply housebound, and cared for by their families. “Bingo,” she said. She mentioned that others who had visited her surmised, instead, that the ‘healthy’ (read: no money) diet that they ate made them stronger, more robust, and less likely to have these conditions. Not true. I’m thinking of something like “New houses just aren’t built like old houses. I mean … how many new houses can you point to that have been around for a hundred years ?” It’s a nonsensical proposition on its face. Max isn’t a sociology or social sciences researcher – not by a country mile. Deciding who has “resilience,” and at what level _based on_ who has suffered how much shit is … specious … sophistry. And it leads, incrementally, toward deleterious effects. It ignores the myriad effects of trauma that – as I said upthread – don’t always confine one to the bed, eating Cheeto’s, and watching soap operas. It presumes to have some quantifiable metric to understand the losses that one has inexorably endured … presumably at a quick glance … and the toll it all has taken. Is there a tire pressure gauge or thermometer that can accurately assess the effects of trauma on a person ? It presumes the binary state of dead/100% intact. I used to know a young lady who was bright, bubbly, energetic, and charismatic. She also happened to be stunningly beautiful. Early on, I thought she had the world by the short hairs. But she had been gang raped by the high school football team. I made some remark about how ‘together’ she seemed. She told me that she was, indeed, FINE – Fucked up, Insecure, Neurotic, and Emotional. She showed up at my house one evening … with a BAC of something like 0.40 (I took her to the ER), begging for vodka and sex. Shifting gears slightly… Max may very well be denigrating majority people in a similar fashion. Just because most of us don’t _go through_ what many minorities go through doesn’t inherently mean that the levels of harm would be vastly dissimilar. We don’t yet know how long that new house will/won’t last. We’re lacking data. Max is lacking **tons** of data, but he’s trumpeting his facile conclusions loudly and proudly. ---
**Author:** ![Yookeroo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yookeroo/32/323_2.png) [@Yookeroo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yookeroo)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2022, 9:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pitting-max-s/959074/236 "2022-03-10T21:23:09Z")
> [@Max\_S](#): > > And it’s been a long time since I’ve talked politics with a Black person (in person) myself. This is probably a smart decision on your part. Doesn’t excuse the extreme (willful) ignorance of the history of black people in the US. Or, more likely, the ignorance that your racism demands you fake. > [@Jimmy\_Chitwood](#): > > But someone else would look at the words in them and think to himself, “ah, I see… he thinks that the specific context of being a black woman in an extraordinarily racist American state and receiving pictures of literally the literal Klan constitutes a type of intimidation that I am not able to personally understand, and that my personal incomprehension is not evidence of what is reasonable. Perhaps I am not as good at divining the meaning of the experiences of other real-world beings as I believed.” People who aren’t racists think like this. We’re not dealing with that kind of thinking here. > [@Atamasama](#): > > Does he live in a cave? No, he’s racist. ---
**Author:** ![Max\_S](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/46a35a/32.png) [@Max\_S](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_S)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2022, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pitting-max-s/959074/237 "2022-03-10T21:24:01Z")
> [@DavidNRockies](#): > > Max is lacking **tons** of data, but he’s trumpeting his facile conclusions loudly and proudly. That’s how beliefs work. That’s how opinions work. That’s how _knowledge_ works. You draw conclusions based on incomplete data - what I can perceive is always lacking data. You can’t get through life without making stereotypes of people. It is _literally_, trivially impossible. What you can do, is fight the urge to treat people poorly based on a stereotype (or lack thereof). But in order to do that you have to first acknowledge what stereotypes are in play. I do not advocate treating people of color poorly because of a belief that they are more resilient. I do not advocate treating white people poorly because of a belief that people of color are more resilient. If I had a theory as to the reasons behind my observations, it would be speculation until tested. It would be an “error in cognition” to take my belief that PoC are more resilient, plus **k9bfriender** ’s unproven hypothesis (which neither he nor I subscribe to) that suffering produces resilience, and go out and advocate a regimen of suffering in schools to build character. Or to take your observation that the Central American country has less disabled people, and the other traveler’s unproven hypothesis that the local diet wards off disability, to go out and advocate a Central American diet to ward off disability. ~Max ---
**Author:** ![DavidNRockies](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/davidnrockies/32/6279_2.png) [@DavidNRockies](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DavidNRockies)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2022, 10:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pitting-max-s/959074/238 "2022-03-10T22:06:56Z")
> [@Max\_S](#): > > That’s how beliefs work. That’s how opinions work. That’s how _knowledge_ works. You draw conclusions based on incomplete data - what I can perceive is always lacking data. You can’t get through life without making stereotypes of people. It is _literally_ , trivially impossible. The word you’re looking for is _**[prejudice](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/prejudice)**._ And one of the admirable qualities that’s out there is the ability to course correct in the face of new information. “A wise man can learn from a fool but a fool cannot learn from a wise man.” ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2022, 12:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pitting-max-s/959074/239 "2022-03-11T00:35:49Z")
> [@DavidNRockies](#): > > “A wise man can learn from a fool but a fool cannot learn from a wise man.” So, what have you learned from Max and Jimmy? ---
**Author:** ![Ann\_Hedonia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ann_hedonia/32/319_2.png) [@Ann\_Hedonia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ann_Hedonia)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2022, 1:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pitting-max-s/959074/240 "2022-03-11T01:08:32Z")
> [@Max\_S](#): > > Well, what’s obvious to you isn’t obvious to me. And I don’t think it’s going to be obvious for an all-white jury who have little to no interaction with Black people, which is almost assured. > > ~Max Perhaps you are forgetting how trials work? The jury will get to hear at least one, and possibly more, black people explain to them how this imagery caused trauma, and those people will try to present it in a way that carries maximum impact. Even if it is an all white jury - which is no means guaranteed, there **are** black people that live in West Virginia, you know- not all white people are shitstains that bend over backwards to give some unapologetical racist asshat every benefit of the doubt. Some of them are very empathetic and sensitive to racism, some of them may even be liberals. And while an ordinary garden variety asshat might believe that the woman that claims to have suffered extreme emotional pain is a faker or a snowflake, it takes a very special kind of high-achieving asshat to attempt to argue 11 other people into that position. While it’s easy enough for some random dude on the internet to argue make the argument that the emotional distress claim is ginned up, it’s not going to go over well in a courtroom in front of the victim and -possibly- prominent advocates from the black community. I actually think a civil trial for the intentional infliction of emotional distress could be a slam-dunk if the evidence is well-presented. And as to [intention](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intentional_infliction_of_emotional_distress)- _It is not necessary that an act be intentionally offensive. A reckless disregard for the likelihood of causing emotional distress is sufficient_. Plus, if it’s civil there is a lower standard of proof than guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. They should take this to trial, I bet she’d win handily. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pitting-max-s/959074.md?page=11) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pitting-max-s/959074.md?page=13)