Not everyone does. I get people semi-regularly that rant about ‘you people’ to me on the phone. Meaning everything from you people at that particular company, companies that send advertising in the mail in general, insurance agents and so on.
Firstly, I’m not Jamaican but racist are usually too dumb to notice such subtlties.
Let me give you the conversation as completely as my daughter related it to me.
Customer (indicating a sweater she had not yet purchased): There’s a stain on this sweater.
My daughter: I’m sorry. Would you like to go get another?
Customer: There are no others like this one. Why would you have a sweater with a stain on it on display?
My daughter: I’m sorry (they are trained to apologize no matter what) but I don’t really see a stain. But if you don’t want the sweater. . .
Customer: Of course YOU people would wear a piece of crap like that.
My daughter: Would you like me to ring up your other items? Yes? Do you want a single gift receipt or one for each?
Customer: Of course I want one receipt, I don’t know how it is YOU people shop but I don’t walk around with thousands of receipts.
My daughter rings everything up and puts two blouses on one gift receipt.
Customer: Well, only one blouse is a gift! How am I supposed to give this as a gift?
My daughter: I’m sorry but once the gift receipt is made I can’t make another.
Customer: I don’t even know why they let YOU people behind a cash register! YOU people may like to give gifts as classless as that but I would never do such a thing. Just take everything back!
As my daughter rang up the refund, the customer continued her tirade against YOU people. Calling YOU people classless, stupid and unable to do the simplest tasks. And if YOU people believe she meant anything but YOU black people, YOU people are all naive.
I agree with you. I don’t see how it was meant as anything other than racist.
By the way, the way to handle an ambiguous use of “You People” is to say, politely but unsmilingly, “I beg your pardon, ma’am [or sir], which group of people are you referring to?”
The basically decent person who intended no racial slur will explain straightforwardly “You people who cut in line!” or (somewhat less decently) “You incompetent clerks at The Unlimited!” or something like that. The not-so-decent person is more likely to stammer and retreat to “Never mind that, I’m talking about you personally!”
The really not-decent types will shamelessly give you the RaHoWa Hate Glare and hiss “Oh, you know exactly what I mean!” To which the response is a level unsmiling stare in return and a cool “Actually, I didn’t, but I certainly do now”.
There are some ultra-not-decent foiks who will actually respond to the question with an explicit racial epithet that removes all doubt, but IMO the situation then becomes one for store security and/or the cops, not individual etiquette.
I have no idea. The question is not whether she would have expressed rage to a white clerk, it is whether she would have said “you people” to a white clerk.
Clearly, to you, the phrase “you people” is not racially charged. Fine. To others, it is. In my experience, for the reasons I have given, and also, for the reasons others have given, it is. None of us know what was in her heart, but, whether or not you acknowledge it, she said something that is extremely offensive to Blacks. Was she justified in saying “you people,” whatever her motivation"? Hell no. Was Biggirls’s daughter rightfully upset? Hell yeah.
On preview – Damn, Biggirl. The manager should have invited the customer to never come back. Please tell your daughter that such assholes are beneath her attention, and their power over her will be fleeting.
I agree, now that I’ve seen the dialogue I don’t think that was a case of ambiguous “You Peopleing”. Not in the least.
Que es RaHoWa?
I’m simply trying to illustrate that “you people” can mean more than just “you BLACK people.” It can mean “you Banana Republic people”, “you Best Buy people”, “you holiday help people”, “you uneducated clerks” or any number of things. It’s not NECESSARILY a racial slur. Again…no excuse for bad behavior, but I didn’t read it as an automatic racial slur.
“Racial Holy War”. Fetid stinking white supremacist shit. Can be googled, but trust me, you’d rather not.
And if YOU would have given us the whole story from the beginning, YOU might have gotten the response you wanted. What the Ever Lovin’ Fuck.
Textbook example of the subtleties of modern racism, though this doesn’t even qualify as subtle in my book. I got it. Biggirl’s detail makes it even clearer.
Kalhoun, you’re presenting a perspective I’ve often observed on this board. People are awfully generous at granting leeway or alternate interpretations of behavior that can be construed as racist. I guess my racism detector is less forgiving. I’d grant this customer a racist in abeyance penalty, and see what she’d do to extricate herself from the situation. At the very least she is a pompous ass who has no problem generalizing negative traits to a group. Pretty shitty, whether that group happens to be teenagers, workers at The Limited, or Black folks.
I’m sorry. I didn’t know I had to focus my rage in such a way that meets your approval. Obviously I’m too sensitive to make the judgement myself. You know how it is with us people.
Look…I’m the last person to grant leeway to racist behavior. The absolutely last person who would give blatantly racist behavior a pass. I simply did not see it as an automatic racist bash. I use “you people” all the time with regard to various groups; NEVER with regard to race. I’ve already acknowledged that it could be interpreted that way, but there were other possibilities that would keep me from jumping to that conclusion flat out. I’ve also already acknowledged that her rage toward BG’s daughter, or ANY clerk, regardless of race, was out of line. I still say it’s not as bad to “you people” a group of store clerks as opposed to “you people-ing” a person of color. I’m not alone in my perception of how it could have been intended. There is obviously some room for interpretation and disagreement here.
Biggirl. You’re out of line. Who the hell do you think you are?
She looks to me like somebody who’s snarking at somebody who snarked at her OP. What’s wrong with that, in the Pit at least?
If she had used racist epithets or insinuations against any other posters in her snark I’d agree with you. But she only used a racist insinuation ironically/facetiously against herself, so I don’t see a problem.
It is NOT difficult in the least to know when someone is being just insulting to you and someone is being insulting to you because of your race! Having been the recipient of both, I know when someone is trying to insult/ignore me because I’m Indian and when it is because they’re just annoyed.
Biggirl, I am sorry your daughter had to go through this, I really am. It’s tough - it doesn’t help but please tell her there are lots of people who have been there and know what it feels like.
and
Whoa! Ease off the caffine, go punch a punching bag, take some laxatives, or have it out with the person there IRL that has been getting under your skin! What’s gotten into you?! 
Seriously, you ok? Been under more stress lately? What gives? 
I didn’t snark at her OP. I offered another interpretation of where the customer’s rage was coming from. She omitted information from her first post that would have made her outrage clear from the start, and faulted the other posters for not seeing it as the racial slur it was. Her snarky retort was a backdoor insult to me.
I see no clear reason to cry racism based on the first post. To be called “naive” when we weren’t given all the information is unfair. The “You know how it is with us people” comment is coming dangerously close to insinuating I’m a racist and THAT pisses me off.
The alternative is to assume that all matters of questionable interpretation should be assumed to be examples of base behavior, which is equally intolerable.
The irony of this thread is that most of us have at one time or another held a job like this, have been the targets of customer vitriol, and have undoubtedly been referred to by the epithet “you people”, yet because I am not black race is not assumed to be an issue. Why is it in this case?
This is just me taking a shot in the dark here, and it will undoubtedly get me in trouble, but what the hell… can it be that the institutional racism that is presumed to exist does not exist to such a great extent, and that flawed assumption colors peoples’ perceptions? Were I the target of this it would be ludicrous for me to call it racism, why are we so quick to jump to that conclusion here?