Every time I have seen a mask refuser or any covidiot, especially online, they turn out to be trumpists.
A lot of angry assholes are angry at everyone. They are literally blind to race, creed, color, disability. intelligence or any other characteristic possessed by humans. They’re angry at “the world” in general.
I think you are blind. Just for the future when someone goes around being an asshole and saying “I am literally blind to race” you might look into it further.
I’m of the opinion that for many years racist were depicted as caricatures who were boorish, unintelligent, angry, often had a southern accent, and was overtly racist. These people do exist of course, but a lot of people who are racist aren’t any of these things. But this caricature gave people a lot of reason to avoid any self-examination on their part. People can safely tell themselves, “I don’t have any of the above traits so I must not be racist.”
I am not blind; in fact I am acquainted with a few angry asshole racists. All I’m saying is that there are some people who don’t need bigotry to be angry assholes.
I just had a look at “Is ~~~~ Racist?” threads on the SDMB, and it would seem that most people here don’t equate being, acting, or thinking racists thoughts with being an angry asshole.
But that’s not in question. What’s in question is how many racists are not angry assholes.
In actual usage, an action being called racist and a person being called a racist are different things, though. For someone to be labeled “a racist,” it generally has to be intentional racism. All of those threads are about, at most, accidental racism.
This is actually an issue some have–they think pointing out that an action they did might be racist is calling them racist, and they get offended. This makes it difficult to actually stamp out unintentional racism. It’s why I keep saying that the best response to being told you did something racist is not to get angry, but to ask for an explanation.
“Asking for an explanation” can be done with hostility as well, and unless very carefully worded and delivered may be received as such even without the intent.
“That was a racist thing you just did.”
“What was racist about it?”
That’s rather confrontational, and sets the first person up to have to defend their statement, and is how most such interactions occur.
If instead of asking for an explanation, the second person actually uses some introspection, contemplation, and empathy to work through their actions and to see what they did that could be perceived as racist, then that could make them a better person, without having to demand justification.
I’m just questioning the method under which this was discovered. It’s a wide category that includes people of conscience acting out inappropriately too. But being “evil” as in racist, must act as an intensifier for the claims of that person beng an “angry asshole.” IMO a racist evil asshole is worse as an asshole than an asshole who is chained to a tree, for instance. A person who is angry about black people being around, is more of an angry asshole than someone who is angry that a tree got cut down. YMMV.
I agree, and moreover if within the minority of assholish people and behavior which are related to ideology we wanted to count up asshole left v asshole right…that’s just going to just be reiteration of the left/right debate itself. How many people solidly on left/right think more people on their side are assholes than on the other side? I think that would be about 0%. So the question is just a reiteration of ‘which is better, left or right?’, the answer to which only tells you which side the person is on.
Also many ideological people view their anger as righteous, and other people’s perception that they act like assholes once they get going on politics as the listener’s problem with the truth. I have a feeling that’s omitted by previous responses claiming their side has fewer assholes. They aren’t counting when their side act like assholes to ‘people who deserve it’, or get angry about stuff ‘everyone should be angry about’.
Saying what this correlation is wrt ‘racists’ is even more difficult because while left and right are relative, imprecise and incomplete descriptions of a person’s political views at least most people fairly far to the left/right will accept one of those labels. Whereas the number of people being called ‘racists’ who don’t accept that label is many times that of the quite small % who do accept the label. If limiting it to self described racists then yeah there would be a high correlation to anger, and a large % of other people, not just one political side, would say the embrace of that label proves the person is an asshole. For the often far broader definitions of ‘racist’ used in various contexts against people who reject the label, there’s no way to answer the question. Racist according to whom, meaning what exactly? (no, it’s really not answered by linking to the dictionary).
I agree, and moreover if within the minority of assholish people and behavior which are related to ideology we wanted to count up asshole left v asshole right…that’s just going to just be reiteration of the left/right debate itself. How many people solidly on left/right think more people on their side are assholes than on the other side? I think that would be about 0%. So the question is just a reiteration of ‘which is better, left or right?’, the answer to which only tells you which side the person is on.
Also many ideological people view their anger as righteous, and other people’s perception that they act like assholes once they going on politics as the listener’s problem with the truth. I have a feeling that’s omitted by previous responses claiming their side has fewer assholes. They aren’t counting when their side act like assholes to ‘people who deserve it’, or get angry about stuff ‘everyone should be angry about’.
Saying what this correlation is wrt ‘racists’ is even more difficult because while left and right are relative, imprecise and incomplete descriptions of a person’s political views at least most people fairly far to the left/right will accept one of those labels. Whereas people being called ‘racists’ who don’t accept that label are many times more numerous than the quite small % who do accept the label. If limiting it to self described racists then yeah there would be a high correlation to anger, and a large % of other people, not just one political side, would say the embrace of that label proves you’re an asshole. For the far broader definitions of ‘racist’ used in various contexts against people who reject the label, there’s no way to answer the question. Racist according to whom, meaning what exactly? (no, it’s really not answered by linking to the dictionary).
Much of my perspective is age-related. I know a fair amount of elderly people who are perpetually angry about practically everything - taxes, kids playing in their yards, that loud music on TV programs, having cars with power windows that are just one more thing to spend hundreds of dollars to fix when the crank windows were perfectly fine, etc.
(IMHO I think a lot of it comes from old people being in constant low-grade pain from arthritis and other health problems.)
A lot of them will use terms of insult and bigotry when referring to their fellow humans, but they also insult dogs, cars, and televisions.
Younger people seem to be more focused in their assholeness.
Well if age is a factor that prevails under all conditions then it wouldn’t have an effect one way or another. Except that older assholes are more assholic when they were assholes as younger people.
Also the intensity of an old codger w/ sore joints vs a racist is not even comparable.
Not only that but the racists are becoming old codgers anyway. We don’t get a pass on that. They will go from being racists, to racist old codgers who hate and bitch even more than the median.
I disagree. I think the set of racists is way larger than the set of angry, loud, assholes (ALAs) and that there’s only a partial overlap even then - e.g. only, say, 50% of ALAs are racist, but only 10% of racists are ALAs, most racists are just quietly racist.
Of course, the set of racists is a complete subset of the set of assholes, when anger and volume are excluded as factors.
I agree there’s likely been a decline, but I don’t think it’s been as big as you seem to think.