Judging from your use of the terms “drug abusers” and “illegal drugs” to describe *pot use * shows your feelings on this issue, and may explain your level of offence at the mere idea of someone implying you would have them. You do know simple possession is about the same as a parking ticket in most parts of the US now, right? I know nothing about you, but can’t imagine anyone in this day and age who would refer to a pot smoker as a “drug abuser”.
Are you saying would I be offended if someone asked me if I wanted the services of a whore? It happened to me in Rio twice and Bangkok, oh every five minutes? And not only did it not ruin my day, it was an interesting part of my day. Hell if I knew I wasn’t going to be robbed I would have done it.
I’m aware of the phenomenon of marijuana smokers overestimating societal acceptance of their past time.
No, if you had any whores for them. And it only works, insult-wise, if there’s an obvious racial reason for them asking. If it were seemingly random it could only be amusing.
What about plain ol’ normal users rather than abusers? Are users capable of understanding? How do you know they approached you because you’re black? Maybe it was your clothing or hairstyle.
Who would be better to estimate the number of dope smokers, a dope smoker who associates with dope smokers, or a non dope smoker? I have a basis for my saying its common and no big deal- what is your basis for thinking otherwise? Most people I know smoke pot, and those who don’t very very few would have a hang-up about being around it or hanging around someone who does.
Someone coming up to me asking I have any whores? I would think it funny, but
I see your point is that to a black guy it would be an offensive racial stereotype. But I find that more of a waaay outdated 1960’s stereotype- I think people nowadays deal directly with the girl these days, not a pimp, 99% of the time.
You can hold your victim status close to your breast for as long as you want. It’s neither here nor there to me, but if you have the where-with-all to go to a gay bar in Florence, then I’m sorry, but I’m not going to perceive you as one.
We all get stereotyped, what about the stereotype that assumes that white people have some responsibility to care about your cultural angst? That we have no right to be insensitive, ignorant, or unsophisticated because some person who vaguely resembles us in the past was mean to your Granddaddy?
We all have things that hurt us in ways that other people cannot comprehend, things that seem trivial to others but matter to us because it triggers our past trauma, but a lot of these things are relatively benign, like being asked if you know where they can buy some pot. Your moral outrage at being approached despite a ludicrous social convention is certainly your prerogative, but in this world people bump into each other all the time, and have different cultural perspectives. That’s the nature of a multicultural world. We have nothing else to navigate by other than cultural stereotypes for the most part.
Being mad at the vulgar for being vulgar is quite vulgar.
Not only is this a cop-out, it’s also just plain wrong. Popular music lyrics reinforce an idea by repeating it over and over and over. A newspaper article or a televison report about something is a refection; song lyrics that send wrong messages are very much to be blamed for being part of the problem, whether it’s hip-hop, rock’n’roll, country-western or grand opera. A song played on the radio or on an mp3 player is a commercial for whatever that song is about.
Does this mean that when the Rolling Stones were singing “Let’s Spend the Night Together,” it sent a message to my generation that it was perfectly fine to screw our brains out and then walk away? Bet your ass it was, and we ate it up. The reason I hold artists responsible for promoting violence today is that I remember the message I got from song lyrics when I was a kid, and how eagerly I received it.
I’m not saying rappers should only record lyrics about learning to read and staying with your baby’s mama (although I’ve never actually heard of hip-hoppers singing about such things), but it would be greatly encouraging to hear them demonize criminal behavior in at least some of their lyrics.
Okay. Didn’t realize merely sharing an anecdote about an obnoxious racial situation when the topic came up was as dramatic as me adopting a victim status.
I was actually acting on the stereotype that a black person will join a conversation with a racial anecdote that might offend the sensibilities of some white person hypersensitive to stuff like that. Read my post again. I responded to Wee Barin directly, and with what, a plea to his sympathy for downtrodden blacks? No - a threat for action the next time someone tries out his strategy on me.
And if I’m uncomfortable with someone bumping into me with their insulting cultural perspectives as a rule, then it’s my prerogative to try to make them slightly less comfortable with doing so by not letting them get away with it as cleanly as they’re used to.
You made it sound like you thought that they somehow did something that hurt you.
Right, but you expect them to care more about your cultural comfort than you care about their’s. Your solution is to lash out and hurt someone, or at least make them fear that you will hurt them because they were slightly culturally insensitive. You want to travel the world, but you don’t seem to want to take responsibility for accepting the cultural confusion that goes along with it. You are asking for sensitivity but offering none. It’s ok though, because they are drug abusers, they deserve what they get for trying to violate an arbitrary social convention. You still haven’t told me what made you think they approached you cuz you were black as opposed to approaching you because you were a fellow American.
Sure, that is your prerogative. Lets spread a little more cultural discomfort, I am sure that will teach them their lesson. It’s very important that they learn to fear black people irrationally rather than have an irrational comfort level.
What are you saying? That all vulgarity is acceptible and should never be criticized? Sounds like nonsense to me – within every civilization some behaviors are acceptable, and some are not, and there’s no problem with society reinforcing those guidelines, within reason.
Again, what are you talking about? This is not about some cross-cultural confusion; these are people from the same country – the fact that pizzabrat was travelling is almost irrelevent. (I say “almost” because I don’t know 100% what the drug laws and culture are in Italy – it may be looser than in the US, but I know it’s not completely open and legal. If this story took place in Amsterdam, it might be a different matter.) It was rude of these two punks to assume that pizzabrat was a drug-dealer, or into drugs, assuming he gave no external clues to the contrary – in his dress or manner, etc. It is not rude of him to be annoyed with them. I don’t know where you’re getting the idea that he was threatening them with violence; sounded to me, rather, that he wishes he’d told them off, which seems like a legitimate response to me.
Yeah, telling anyone that they’ve done something wrong is “spreading cultural discomfort” and should be avoided. :rolleyes:
Did tomndebb post in this thread because somebody snitched? 
Sure, what I find interesting is that he assumes it is race related. As far as civil offenses go that’s the kind of thing that wouldn’t even register on my radar, so it is interesting to me that it garnered such strong reaction. To each their own.
I don’t know what America you live in but people ask each other for pot on the street all the time. Asking any black person for pot shows a lack of sophistication. There are other cultural signals that should give you more of a cue. If I saw a rasta, I might ask them, because they’d probably know how to get the good stuff. If I saw a black man in a suit, I probably wouldn’t. If I saw a guy wandering the street patrolling back and forth in front of a club, I would probably assume he was a narc. 
There are different levels of cultural discomfort. Showing someone that you are disgusted by their request is pretty easy without working to get them arrested for seeking a benign plant. He is of course welcome to do whatever he wants. I think that the extreme sensitivity to being culturally stereotyped is way overblown, and he hasn’t explained to me what makes him think that they approached him cuz he was black. If I were in a foreign country I would probably feel more comfortable approaching an American too.
Baloney, blaming rap music is lazy thinking, like blaming video games for violence. You think people didn’t start selling crack until NWA started rapping about it? The violence goes with the trade; rap music is a reflection of what’s happening on the streets.
I’m sorry you’re so easily influenced. When I screwed my brains out I didn’t blame Luther Vandross, not that I wasn’t happy to have him on the radio setting the mood.
I won’t argue with you there, I’m not a fan of most of the current crop or rappers. I’m old school, Run DMC, Kool Moe Dee and the Fat Boys were more my thing, although I loves me some BEP. The difference between us is that I’m not blaming fiftycent for broken homes, I recognize that Oakland had problems way before Too Short came along.
Stuffy Didn’t you know that everyone lived in Leave it to Beaver and the Brady Bunch before Hip Rap came along?
If we just let some skinheads get away with lynching one of these black rappers in front of a crowd of people (all of which have “stop snitching” t-shirts on), then maybe the black community will wake up.
I’m going to presume this was intended as humor.
I will then point out that it was not particularly funny in a thread where several posters are already on edge.
It’s possible that that wasn’t the reason, but it’s also a reasonable assumption. EDIT: And even if that wasn’t the reason why, still get the hell away from me. BTW, do I need to remind you again why this story even came up? I didn’t just decide to get indignant about some old story; it was a response to someone sharing their strategy of bothering strange black men for drugs because they’d be cool with it either way.
I wasn’t dressed like an American, so there’s no way they could have known, and they were approaching me to buy, not to see if I knew where to get some.
And it wasn’t a strong reaction. I was annoyed - that’s it. And then again when I learned about Wee Barin’s strategy.
It was in this thread, being Wee Bairn’s explanation that, as a white person, he seeks out black people when looking for pot. Since you missed that i suspect that maybe pot really does have an impact on short-term memory & critical thinking after all!
Now you’re really exaggerating the threat. Of course, cannabis use has been known to induce paranoia.
My first thought: Several thousand gallons of Word.
My second thought: Not that it would matter, or make any difference at all. The key here is the the word “brother,” as in the above cited phrase, “See a cop, warn a brother.” To the subculture in question, one is “in the club” by virtue of birth. Blacks are “brothers” & “sisters” & protected as such. It’s tribalism, racism, racialism, 99.44% pure.
If white skinheads committed such a crime, there would be an uproar–and it would be directed at the government & white majority, conflated in the black mind as “the other tribe,” in anger that “the other race” let its members do that to “our race” “like they always do.” And black rage would wish for the ability to do “black on white” crime in revenge–& most of the time, never think about it any deeper than that.
If the skinheads who committed such a crime were black, they would be “brothers,” & clearly more powerful, therefore effectively like “*big *brothers”–& in this decadent & childish construction, one doesn’t cross his big brother not because big brother looks out for you, but because he can whoop your ass. This is the same culture that popularized “bad” as a compliment among persons over the age of 15.
The sad thing is, nothing is going to wake these people up. They can’t equate black-on-black crime to white-on-black crime, because they see the world entirely through racialist definitions. So this nonsense, which to outsiders looks like the self-destructive behavior of the developmentally arrested, will continue interminably, all the while giving the Charles Murrays of the world more credibility when they imply that blacks are children & savages–because this subculture is that decadent, is savage & childish.
And if you want to join Geoffrey Canada, & say that blacks need to work with wider (heard as “white”) society, then you’re just an “Uncle Tom” in their eyes, & they’ll think, “of course you’re obviously wrong,” because you’re asking them to go against their basic definition of reality; they know as definition #1 about reality itself, that race is primary, race is all. (Anderson Cooper blithely left that out, along with any serious discussion of racial consciousness.) You may as well ask a Southern Baptist to join the Church of Satan.
I didn’t mean for it to be funny humor, but rather eye-opening satire.
By the way, anybody know what the serial killer community feels about this? If I ever feel an unstoppable urge to kill people I’m moving to a black neighborhood, not because I hate black people (I’m part black myself) but apparently because I can get away with it there.