Hey we all do it. That is why I just pointed and didn’t get snarky. I did the same thing earlier in the week.
Of course I used the [Emily Litella] coding instead. 
Jim
All right, you owe me a new keyboard for that one. 
That’s hamstas, yo. 
Sorry, I know I’m late to the party, but I couldn’t resist.
Janx, I’d have posted sooner but the ice storm in South Carolina had me without electricity for two days, and laid up in bed with a busted knee yesterday (I slipped on some ice. NOT fun.) and I’m just now getting internet access back.
You make some good points. But what you fail to realize is that ALL of this caught me off guard. I didn’t start out actively trying to piss anyone off. My job often requires me to eat on the run (which I didn’t do that day) and I’m used to being alone in a crowd. How often do you strike up conversations with strangers in the food court in the mall? I work there. I see strangers everyday. On my lunch break, or at the end of the work day, I reeeeeeeeally don’t want to be bothered talking to customers which is why I usually change out of my uniform. I ate at my usual table, eating food from my usual fast food joint, listening to my usual music, when the unusual happened.
I wasn’t actively invading anyone’s space. I was in my seat, at my table, listening to my music with my headphones on and boogie-boy got out of his seat at his table and started dancing next to ME. Granted, the music was louder than I realized but boogie-boy and his Mom seemed to be the only ones to notice.
The Spongebob T-shirt, the fact that he was a blond-five year old, the fact that we were all at the mall food court, really happened.
Your biggests point have to do with the racial double standard of my little story – but I could have easily crossed the line in some of my descriptions where the story no longer amused. I try to dance right up to that line without crossing it. “Tow-headed” is neutral in a way “nappy-headed” is not. BTW, I say all little kids have narrow asses, not just white kids.
I’m not really bothered by your last statement. Yeah, I have a pretty broad sense of humor that intellectually appreciates a bon mot and a verbally acrobatic witticism, but it also tends to wallow in humor of the low class, the low down, the low brow and above all else – keepin’ it real.
Richard Pryor did co-write the movie.
Well,
Askia, and everybody else for that matter, lets get a couple of things straight. I don’t think for a minute that you are a racist. I also said that I think the story was pretty damn funny, and this was even funnier!
That was lost on me at the time. I think the thing that got me going was the whole thing about –specifically- white women moving away in terror, from a “thug” who has a chip on his shoulder. Like pulling up to a stoplight, and the car next to you has the base jacked up so loud it sounds like a pile driver, you look over at that car and its full of “Gangstas” looking at you like “What are you going to do about it muthafucka!” That pissed me off. And I left it at that, as far as YOU were concerned.
The bigger issue that I wanted to illustrate was that there was no way in hell that a guy like me could ever get away with posting something like that around here. That bothers me, even more than the images you evoked. I think further illustration of this is that when I had taken a very sour note regarding the post, I was told to lighten up, I “didn’t understand”, I was a grumpy snarker (Cute pot shot BTW Eddy but TOTALLY irrelevant), had I written a post like that the same people would have been throwing eggs and rotten tomatoes at me. And you know it.
Last, there was some reference above to the effect that white people don’t have any equivalent to make fun of. Heh, yes we do. Its that stereo type of the Ball cap wearing man, he has gun racks in his “rig” and HUGE mud grip tires, his wife shops at wall mart, and all that. And at the stoplight, he usually looks at you with the same “what are you looking at ass hole” expression. There are comedians out there who have made millions talking about this too.
I ended my rant, by making a statement about “class”. I have seen your posts around, but I don’t think you have seen any of mine, since I generally lurk, ($15 bucks a year? Cheap at 3 times the price), but classicism is one thing I am no stranger to, in a hell of a lot of ways. In any case, I think my closing remarks – directed at you – were driven by the rest of the things I had written. That was cheap, and I apologize, but I still stand by my conviction; I could have NEVER posted that, and that, I think is WRONG.
Ok…/soap box off
Janx? I think you’re hitting bedrock there. You can climb out of that hole now.
Ooo. A soapbox. I wanna pimp one of these things with some hydraulics and some Bose bass speakers.
/stands on soapbox.
Janx, when I shared that little anectode, I wrote it as carefully as I could not to antagonize too much in some ways. I exaggerated some aspects, downplayed others – I was never really thinking, “the motherfucker is shaking his narrow ass!” – but in relaying that image those are the words I chose because, well, I thought it was funnier. (Also I was very possibly channeling Richard Pryor that day.)
I agree, the subtext of my anectdote – “gangsta-music loving black guy trying to scare white folks” doesn’t really work in reverse, because it’s socially unacceptable for white people to deliberately provoke black people in nearly any context, and perhaps even more egregiously so on this message board. But angry black males bugging white people is a given, so is more easily lampooned.
But, I think, a similar anectdote - say, “creepy white Goth-loving white guy trying to spook black folks” would work --written the way I wrote it, to upbraid my own expectations, would be funny. Well, to me anyway.
I’d argue that my choice of words and images were by design a lot less racially provokative than your counterexamples, Janx. “Buckwheat-looking” and “nappy-headed” are hurtful in a way “Dennis the Menace-looking” and “tow-headed” aren’t. More equivalent would be something more innocuous like “Emmanuel Lewis-looking” and “bushy-'froed.” I can let “big-assed” slide.
Now, my “thug mug” line and “clutch their purses and move to the other side of the elevator” may have crossed a line and rankled some nerves, at least as much as “go to the back of bus” did me. But I’ve ACTUALLY had (older) white woman do that shit when I wasn’t doing ANYTHING. The “back of the bus” thing sounds forced and fifty years out of date.
I agree that it’s hard as hell for white Dopers to write observational comments and attempts at humor based on race, class and ethnicity in a way that doesn’t draw (sometimes blatantly unfair) rebukes from the mods and other Dopers. I agree: there’s definitely a double standard at the SDMB as far as racial observations are concerned. It doesn’t bug me much because I’m on the side of the extra leeway.
That said, I protested when a poster was recently banned for using the phrase “society’s niggers” for shock value; if you wrote something I didn’t think was intended to be mean-spirited or actively racist, I’d have protested, too.
/ empty soapbox
**Guinastaisa **! What in the hell is THAT supposed to mean? Like I should dig myself out now? Why do you have to be so sanctimonious? Jeezus. :smack:
Any way…
You think I didn’t see that? You think I just fell off the turnip truck and had NO idea what your post was about?
Come on.
BINGO! That’s the fact, and it pisses me off to no end. I have to watch myself at every turn, but others don’t. Well, I happen to be in the set of people who must constantly be on guard, even if my observations ring true. But the very same observations coming from a guy like you are excusable, coming from a guy like me- no way, BZZZZ – “ beyond the line you must not state the obvious “ … And that sucks. As far as I am concerned.
I would not. The culture that came from all the ill will of slavery, up until recent times, has not had the time to define any particular stereo type. I think as time goes by it grabs what it can, socially speaking, to build an ugly counter part to the things that it has had to deal with for hundreds of years.
Yeah, it sure was, but then again, seeing the world through my eyes, how else would you have put it? It was the same damn thing. A person with a “look” and an “attitude” which communicates “here I am and if you do not recognize me as your superior there will be negative consequences”. Is that so tuff to noodle out? It has to do with power. I’m gonna get you if you don’t behave!
This is a tremendous understatement.
The really pathetic part about these righty offenderati is that they have to invent hypotheticals to get all upset about. They’re so anxious to prove that they’re oppressed, that they have to invent alternate histories in which they got excoriated and then get pissed off about those alternate timelines.
Askia, you did just fine.
I haven’t got time to wade through the whole thread, but I liked your OP. Something tells me that you have a face that, even when you’re trying to look bad, a 5 YO kid can see right through it. That’s your problem, haha!
I think that race relations are harmed more by sticking your head in the sand and trying to ignore race rather than being frank about it, revelling in the differences, and moving on. There’s probably a line somewhere, but I don’t think you crossed it.
Another white guy with children around that age.
I was going to ignore this thread—and this asinine post in particular—but recent activity brought it up on my screen tempting me to see how the discussion was going. Subsequently, I reread this stupidty and thought I’d point out the plain dumb-fuckness of this entire post.
Look, just because I focused on another aspect of the post doesn’t mean I didn’t see the humor. I did and acknowledged so. Did I find it knee-slappingly funny? No. But humor is often appreciated by different people to different degrees. You, for instance, might find Howie Mandel or Emo funny. I don’t.
And if you think that most reasonable adults would conclude that it is acceptable—acceptable. not survivable—for a five-year-old to hear the lyrics this kid did, I’d say you are woefully out of touch with the average parent. If you doubt this, I suggest you do a little field research. Take a boom box to your local mall filled with kids and their parents and play the music in question loud enough for passers-by to hear it. I think you’ll be in for a much-needed education.
:rolleyes: Oh, I see. Because there are kids that have seen bloated bodies foating in the fetid waters of Katrina, we needn’t be concerned with anything less than that. And since there have been children that have witnessed their parents being killed and have still managed to grow up to live normal, productive lives, therefore, we shouldn’t be concerned with anything less traumatic than that, right? That’s what this imbicilic paragraph boils down to. Just because kids are resilient (Thank God) doesn’t mean we don’t make an attempt to protect them and limit the things they are exposed to. :smack:
And why they might not appreciate the meaning of the words and their power, it doesn’t mean they can’t and won’t repeat them. Or did they not cover that little-known phenomenon in you developmental psychology and child psychology training?
:eek: Oh, so cutting. I may never recover.
magellan for godsakes, I think that probably most of us would agree that that song was probably a little much for a five year old. But what was Askia supposed to do-start giving the woman a lecture about it?
I wasn’t about to say nuttin’ to a white girl whose kid’s favorite song is C-Murder’s “Fuck Them Other Niggas.”
What to do…what to do…what to do…hmmm…giving a lecture to the boy’s mom doesn’t seem like the right thig to do, especially since it makes no fucking sense…hmmm…there must be soemthing else…hmmm…well…I guess I’m stuck…there’s absolutely nothing that could have been done…if only there was some way to prevent the child from hearing the inappropriate music…hmmmm…perhaps a switch or dial of some kind…something that would give the listener the power to control the volume of the music…if only such a thing existed…
I wasn’t about to crank down the volume on C-Murder’s “Fuck Them Other Niggas” right in the middle of my bad mood.
Clearly we have a dilemma of Gordian proportions.
I know how to cut the Gordian knot.
Send me your MP3 player. I can always use a spare.
No. It’s one thing to NOT have the sword or other tool to solve a problem. It’s quite another to have the tool (volume control) and refuse to use it. One points to a lack of equipment or resourcefulness. The other, in this case, to a lack of manners.
asterion. I thought you were gonna cut the cord on my headphones.
magellan01. Shit. I got plenty of manners. I just wasn’t using them motherfuckers.
Yeah, but that’s not cool. Especially if they’re a nice pair of headphones.
On the other hand, I love my iPod, so I don’t really care what kind of MP3 player you have. I just need a portable hard drive and I’m running out of room on my iPod as I keep adding music.
Might I suggest you try whistling “Fuck Them Other Niggas” next time instead?