Anyway, those weren’t my words. The young Korean Private First Class is the one who uttered that inanity.
Annecdote: Last month, while I was on the phone with my father, I mentioned that my school had purchased a number of table tennis tables for the students and placed the tables in a couple of the halls. Dad said, “Well, Koreans are good at ping-pong.” I said, “Dad, did you ever consider that it’s not a racial trait but rather an economic one? There’s just not that much room here for something that requires more space than ping-pong. If I were in a more affluent area, that school would have more space for sports and other activities.”
How many loud Black people does one need to observe before the number becomes statistically significant. I actually want an answer, if any smart math guy can help me out.
For the record, I’ve observed many loud Black people, but I’ve heard lots of loud White/Hispanic/Eskimo/Alien people be loud too. The only group I’ve personally never heard be super loud is sober Asian people.
I agree. “Black” is an adjective; it only describes a person. To use it as a noun is to limit that entire personhood to a color. I haven’t been able to read John Grisham since I cringed my way through A Time to Kill, where he kept referring to “the blacks” as they mobbed the courthouse, or whatever. It just struck me as blatantly racist.
I’ve noticed a tendency for people to comment that all sorts of other ethnic and cultural groups, but their own, are loud. People say the Germans are loud, people say Asians are loud, people say the Scots are loud, people say the Australians are loud, people say the South Africans are loud, and so on.
What people never say is “Hey, I’ve noticed that my own ethnic/cultural group, as a whole, is loud”.
Pretty sure there’s a big wedge of confirmation bias at work here.
And using, say, “Australian” as a noun isn’t reducing an entire personhood to a nationality? [Repeat argument with terms like “Spaniard” or “Caucasian” or “Arab” or “Native American” or what have you]. I don’t think there’s any inherent offensiveness in using “white” or “black” as nouns denoting white or black people. It may strike some of you as odd, but for many people, it’s just a totally natural way of speaking that they’ve grown up with or otherwise absorbed with absolutely no racist connotations. And simple Google searches reveals it’s hardly an uncommon or unsophisticated linguistic quirk on the decline; on the contrary, the words “blacks”/“whites” (used in this sense as nouns denoting people) appear to actually be much more popular than the equivalent “black people”/“white people”, and there’s no apparent reason to attribute that frequency gap to pervasive subtle racism.
Oh, just in case it comes up, I wouldn’t go around saying “A Chinese once told me” but I’d happily say “An Asian once told me”. Why? I don’t know; that’s just the way the common usage around me happens to fall. Nothing more to it than that. Common usage (at least in my dialect) sanctions saying “Whites do this, blacks do that, Mexicans do this, blondes do that” but not “Chineses do this, Frenches do that, balds do this, freckleds do that”. Just random, arbitrary quirks of language with no deeper, hidden implications to be afraid of.
I have only read the first page, but my guess is the same as Larry Borgia’s. My theory is that the OP is black, and that’s why he will be more prone to noticing other black people and be more critical of their behavior, because he will feel it reflects back on him.
Bear with me as I give an example of this confirmation bias concerning my own countrymen.
Dutch people travel abroad a lot. Now, the funny thing is that whenever I’ve heard a Dutch person comment on his fellow countrymen’s behavior abroad, it is always negative, with shame and annoyance.
*"We were sightseeing in the Cathedral in Santa Santissimo, and sure there it was again: the typical piercing, loud Dutch Mom’s rallying “**Yohooo, guys, come back here !! ** call for her family. We were mortified. Hoping she wouldn’t recognize our Dutch accent and start some booming small talk with us, we made our getaway.” *
I think Dutch certainly aren’t less loud then other folks. Anyway, I have never noticed any criticism from other nationalities. Yes, I’ve read in American commentaries that the Dutch are direct to the point of rude, and yes, we are too tall, but I have never read “The Dutch are too loud” from an American.
Contrast this with the very common complaint of Dutchies about other alledged loud Dutchies, and I think it is a matter of confirmation bias.
We are just much more likely to hear anything in our own language when we are abroad, just as we are more likely to hear our own name spoken in the midst of a humdrum of conversation (this is known as the “Cocktail party effect”. So we Dutch will notice a Dutch womans voice when sightseeing a cathedral abroad, and we will think we noticed because she spoke in too loud a voice, and we will worry irrationally that the other people in the church have similarly noticed the “loudness”, and associate this annoying woman with us.
Where the heck is **VC03 **in all this? He takes the time to start the thread AND get it re-opened.
Folks have made it clear that while there may or may not be differences in cultures and some people within come groups, they have a problem with VC03’s “graceless” and arrogant phrasing. VC03 has the ability to either work to get us, the folks on this message he seems to want to interact with, to get us past his gracelessness and re-frame his topic in a way worthy of discussion, or to defend his tone.
