Fat chance.
Actually, no it’s not. You didn’t ask a question in that post at all.
The main thrust of this post reads is “If you’re black I can see why you might think this was racist, but I think you’re possibly mistaken.”
Contrast that with a more polite response: “I’m sorry this happened to your daughter, Biggirl. That is rude behavior no matter how you slice it. But can you clarify why you think this was racial? I don’t see it based on the synopsis you’ve given us so far.”
Do you see the difference here? If you didn’t have enough info to go by to conclude that this was racism, rather than speculating on reasons why Biggirl might be wrong, you could have simply asked for clarification in a manner that doesn’t implicitly say “you and your daughter might be jumping to conclusions, and let me tell you why I’ve determined that from the limited information you’ve given us”.
I think its wrong for people to call you a racist or even an apologist, BTW. But I can understand why Biggirl went off on you. Whether it was your intention or not, you helped transform the thread from a legitimate rant against a jerk into a thread in which a black Doper is expected to prove to a skeptical audience that her perceptions were accurate and that she’s not crying wolf or being hypersensitive.
My fiance quite regularly gets complete strangers asking him things like, “Where are you from?”
He’s from Toronto. He has no accent (apart from his Toronto accent) and he dresses in regular North American clothing. There is no reason to ask him this, except that his skin is dark, which, frankly, shouldn’t pique curiosity in strangers as much as it does, as Toronto is an extremely diverse city.
He is also a target of racism in a lot of little ways that most people never even consider. When he does comedy shows, he gets the “black guy” parts. When he’s in a place that’s playing music, and a rap or hip-hop song comes on, people often turn to him to find out what song it is, or to say, “great song, isn’t it?” even though he’s no more likely to know the song than anyone else.
“That’s a nice necklace, did you get that from where you’re from?”
“Where, TORONTO? No, I didn’t get this in TORONTO. A friend brought it back from Holland.”
I’ve never had a stranger approach me and ask me “where I’m from”. I have red hair, and I could wear a kilt and a Celtic cross around my neck on a string made of twisted heather and people wouldn’t ask me if I got my outfit from “where I’m from”.
I’m sorry your daughter went through that. If there’s anything we’ve learned from the whole Michael Richards debacle, it’s that racism is alive and well – it’s just a whole lot quieter.
When I read the OP, I thought it was racism, even before Biggirl’s clarification. With the follow up, hell yes.
I’m sorry that your daughter had to go through this, Biggirl . Sadly, there are all too many jerks in this world.
(bolding mine)
EXACTLY.
That’s why it’s hard not to call this phenomenon that we’re describing apologist behavior. When someone immediately starts theorizing on alternate explanations for a particular behavior that is pegged as racist–even if their intent is not to defend the behavior itself–their efforts often end up invalidating the feelings of those who actually experienced the incident. So the conversation usually ends up going nowhere productive because one side is so hellbent on proving why the other side is wrong that nobody stops to listen and learn.
Correct spelling is sistah.
You know, I have to point out Kalhoun that I think it’s actually your comprehension skills that are lacking - you seem to be the only person in the thread that didn’t understand the OP.
It’s perfectly ok to ask for clarification, but suggesting that because YOU didn’t get it (even though everyone else did) Biggirl is a crap communicator is unfair in the extreme.
(speaking of comprehension skills) At least four other people on the first page agreed that YOU PEOPLE isn’t always a racial slur, even when directed at a black person. I understood the OP just fine. I simply didn’t agree with it.
Uh oh…
Oh, how I’ve come to love these threads. The tune changes slightly each time, but the choreography is always the same.
Kalhoun, you’re on a fool’s errand if you think further explanation, no matter how logical and sincere, is going to get you anywhere. I do have a nice brick, suitable for pounding against one’s own skull, left over from a previous thread where Biggirl and I attempted to communicate, which you are more than welcome to borrow. I found it a relief.
It definitely sucks what happened to her daughter, though. Presuming the transcript in the second post to be accurate, particularly the repetition of “you people,” I don’t think one can really question whether it was intended as a substitute racial slur. If those details had been included in the OP, this thread would look very different—but then we wouldn’t get to do our traditional dance, and what fun would that be?
The point you keep missing is that we also had the added element of the target of this particular attack understanding it clearly as racism. Who are you to say that someone else can’t recognize racism when they encounter it?
Bingo! That’s exactly how I’ve perceived the course of this thread.
White broad from a suburban New England background here, and “you people” sets off all my bigot-o-meter alarms from the git-go. Further, the bitch’s facial expression and tone of voice would speak volumes about her intent. I think one would have to be really stretching to argue that Biggirl’s daughter was misreading the message.
Some one asked waaay upthread, what did my daughter say when the bitch complained to the manager. My daughter was not present when the complaint was made. She found out about the complaint much later when her manager asked her what happened.
No disrespect Carlyjay, but I’m having difficulty seeing this as racism. Stereotyping maybe, but not racism. If the role allocation or the enquiry is made without malice, then I can’t see how that is being racist.
But then again, maybe my understanding of racism is different.
So again I have to wonder if you found the OP lacking in information that would effectively prove the validity of Biggirl’s impression, why did not you simply ask for more information before deciding that doubt was in order? It was obvious to me, just judging by the length of the OP, that Biggirl wasn’t giving us a blow-by-blow account. So why would you assume that was all to the story?
I’m wondering why Biggirl should be expected to write OP’s in excruitating detail just to ward against skeptics concluding that she doesn’t know what the hell she’s talking about.
Seems to me that it isn’t always easy to tell where stereotyping ends and isming begins. Is it, for example, sexist or stereotyping if a guy assumes I can’t pick up that bale of hay and offers to help me? Or just courtesy? The words offering possible offense, within the context of body language and tone of voice, can often but not always help me distinguish the intent.* I’d argue that I’d also be more attuned to sexism or stereotyped attitudes than the average guy would be in such a situation, simply because I’ve had enough experience with them to pick up on the signals.
*Unless the sexism is blatant, I always react to such offers assuming that they were born of simple courtesy.
Fair comment.
And I’m glad to see you assume courtesy first. 
When I opened the thread it already included her follow-up post.
She doesn’t have to do anything, but her description of the conversation supported the conclusion (that the customer was being racist) convincingly, while the OP left some room for other possibilities, as Kalhoun felt, among others (including myself). Perhaps Kalhoun could have said what she did more politely, and maybe this whole brouhaha simply derives from a lack of sufficient niceties on an inflammatory topic, but I disagree that her initial impression itself was out of line or that she deserves to be labeled “naive” for it.
This is my issue with all the replies that said, in essence “maybe it wasn’t racism”. If the target of a veiled insult, who was there, saw the face, heard the voice, experienced the “vibes” recognizes it as racism, it WAS. Period. No over-sensitivity involved, no need to offer other interpretations.
And maybe it’s being from the South that makes me extra sensitive to that type of thing. Veiled or not veiled, it happens way too often down here. I almost swallowed my teeth when the nice, elderly white-guy at the gas station told me he has to lock up the car-rims he stocks because those n-words would steal him blind if he didn’t, “you know what I mean?” I was too shocked to even answer him. And I opened a pit-thread here about how angry I was he assumed I would agree with him and got slammed for it.
So yeah, I think some inhabitants of this board do have a definite tendency to pick apart OP’s in the Pit just for the fun of it, or to be argumentative, or just trying to be so damned open-minded their brains fall out (as my granny used to say.) We try to be so intellectual about everything that we don’t give others the benefit of believing they can correctly interpret the world around them without the benefit of our analysis. Some situations don’t call for analysis. They call for support.
So, in your opinion, have race relations really improved, or is it the same content, different packaging?
I like to think that the derogatory remarks you had to endure were not only more harsh, but more frequent because that means that things are, in fact, improving.