I’m hispanic and I hate loud noise; loud music, power tools, engines, people yelling. If my ear protectors aren’t fitted right, I come out of the shooting range trembling. My husband is white and not particularly sensitive. My sisters’ kids are half black and not particularly sensitive.
I’m just a sissy.
:eek:
** Homophobia !!!** burn the which …
Actually, no, I wasn’t ribbing you at all. I should have made my self clearer. I threw the dictionary definintion of “ignorant” into my post to point out that the OP was asking his question in an ignorant fashion and I wanted to be clear that I wasn’t using the word “ignorant” as an insult toward the OP. I wanted to demonstrate his faulty logic and then answer his question accordingly. I was not trying to be snarky at all.
Diamonds02, presuming your observations are correct — and that’s not a given — you could reason in the following way:
White and Asian people are more sensitive to noise than are black people. This is what you came up with. It’s the who part of the equation.
White and Asian people of my acquaintance are more sensitive to noise than are black people of my acquaintance. This goes a step farther and limits your conclusion only to the observed population without attempting to extrapolate it into a larger population. It limits the which factor — which people are sensitive and insensitive, particularly?
White and Asian people of my acquaintance are more prone to complaining about noise than do black people of my acquaintance. This limits your conclusion to what you, personally, experienced: not the level of noise itself, since you are not that person, but your experience of the complaint. This is the what part — what is the observed behavior, exactly?
White and Asian people of my acquaintance are more prone to complaining to me about noise than do black people of my acquaintance complain to me. Here you confine yourself to only what you observed at the time, leaving open the possibility that your white and Asian friends only complain about noise in your presence, or that your black friends simply don’t complain in your presence. This is the when part.
White and Asian people of my acquaintance are more prone to complaining to me about noise while we are out together than do black people of my acquaintance while we are out together. This limits the where part. Perhaps if you hung out in different places, they’d complain less. Perhaps they complain differently at home.
The unfortunate part is, you stopped at who and immediately leapt to why.
It’s not political correctness - after all, have you seen any of the threads here on “political correctness”? You’ll never see so much agreement as you will in one of those huge-ass piles of “Dopers” all shouting over one another how much they hate “political correctness”.
Personally, I think this is an interesting question and it’s something I’ve noticed too. I suppose there’s not much more to say about the subject than that it’s a cultural difference between white folks and black folks. It only becomes necessary to pretend no difference exists when you’re going around condemning some set of cultural practices because they’re different from your own. Statements like “BUT-we were taught how to act in public.” obviously require a pretense that black people aren’t more likely to be loud in public than white people - if being loud in public is inherently wrong, then you have to pretend it doesn’t correlate to ethnicity, or else you’re racist. On the other hand, if you’re able to be a bit more dispassionate and recognize that there’s a broad spectrum of human behavior, you can make the leap to thinking that your own style isn’t necessarily better than all the others.
It’s offensive only if you’re offended by the very suggestion that cultural differences exist between black people and white people in the United States.
Did you know that, on average, Asians eat more rice than white people? It’s true!
I haven’t noticed it. Which one of us is right? What different black culture are you seeing, that I’m not? Is the black culture, I’m seeing a fake one? Are they not really black or is the whites who I see shouting, not really part of this white culture, that’s different that the black one?
Why are you people determined to treat black and white culture like it’s some distinct line in the sand, unblurred by age, by proximity, by…shared culture.
I assure you, grab most any white and black from an “urban” environment and they will have more culture in common with each other regardless of their skin color, then they will with their color-based counter-parts from other parts of the county.
Do you agree? If so which “culture” is dominant? The “white/black” one or the “urban”?
The question is to they eat more rice simply because they’re Asian and not white? Because I quarantee you in my experience, 3 generation Asians in America are eating as many cheeseburgers and fries as the rest of us…am I now to consider them not Asian anymore?
Color and culture are not interchangible.
Hey, I resent that remark. I’m white and I can be perfectly loud and obnoxious.
That’s a ridiculous comparison to make. You can prove how much rice is consumed in Asia via statistics. I defy you to prove that black people are less sensitive to noise than are white people via statistics.
One is a racist assumption. You guess which one.
No, neither one is inherently racist. It’s not racist to notice that, on the whole, different groups of people tend to conduct themselves in slightly different ways. Neither group is homogeneous, but that doesn’t mean there’s absolutely nothing that much of the group tends to have in common. This idea that there’s something wrong with noticing what’s going on around you is creepy.
Wouldn’t you agree that there is something wrong with noticing what’s going on around you and leaping to conclusions you then apply to large groups of loosely-connected people based on a single shared trait?
I would agree that there’s something wrong with deciding all black people share a certain trait, or that it’s something inherent about black people rather than due to what they share as a community. Obviously the experience of any given black person is their own, and there’s more variation than similarity in any large group. That doesn’t mean, though, that as a whole certain tendencies can’t exist for a group of people.
Of course they can, but it’s not enough just to say that. (Where does ‘culture’ come from if not the values of the people? You can’t attack a ‘culture’ without implying traits that are either inherent or willful.)
Frankly, the whole way the thing was done set off my alarms – the disingenuous tone of the title compared with the content of the OP. He clearly means to say that black people are louder and more obnoxious than whites, but he’s framed it as if he thinks it’s possible this is due to the fact that whites…or let us say, white culture values peace and quiet more than black culture. Which is ridiculous, and offensive.
And you have to have some kind of good reason for asking the question in the first place. It’s the very fact that the OP would make such a conclusion based on an extremely limited sample, and stereotypes perpetuated in the media, which speaks of racism, not even so much the question itself, I think.
This thread is teaching me how *inaccurate * it can be (well, yeah, I guess I already knew that but the point has been reinforced) but I also think it’s natural to tend to draw conclusions based on what you observe on a consistent basis.
What about the positive conclusions that are leapt to? Please don’t shoot me for the following:
In my limited observation(ya know; life in general) it seems to me that more black people seem to age better (i.e. wrinkle less / get wrinkles later in life) than white people.
I realize that statement is the very definition of racist. I’m learning to live with my new title 
My point is, just from living life and looking at a lifetime of faces, I’ve always been struck by this phenomenon (real or imagined).
Have I offended anyone by saying that? (No, I’m really asking)
Please. It’s not even controversial that some cultures and ethnic groups are louder and more prone to arguments than others. Eastern European Jews, Southern Italians, Cantonese, and so on are uncontroversially pointed out as groups that value a good argument and tend to be loud. It’s not completely ridiculous to imagine that some general traits are normal in one group and not so in another group.
See, here’s where the offensiveness comes in: you have framed the idea that one group is louder than the other in the context of a value judgment. No one argues that it’s *-ist to say that, say, Southerners place a good deal of importance on “tradition” - and traditional manners, or that Jewish people tend to place particular value on education, or Thais tend to like spicy food. There are certain things that are expected or valued in different cultures. It’s only when race comes in that people are unwilling to acknowledge cultural differences. When you decide that one trait is somehow inherently obnoxious, you’re the one making a value judgment. There’s quite a number of countries where people tend not to form lines as Americans do; are they “obnoxious” for having different practices than Americans? Likewise, different groups within the United States sometimes have different habits. Acknowledging that doesn’t have to mean demeaning one set of practices or the other.
So there’s a media stereotype about this?
Sorta puts the lie to all the people who claim to have been utterly mystified, huh?
I’ve never seen this stereotype conveyed in the media, not to my knowledge. Nor do I think it’s a particularly strong tendency; it may only be a practice within certain parts of the African-American community as well (I wouldn’t be surprised if social class did play a role in it, either, as someone suggested earlier.)
You notice what you did here? You specified by culture, not color. Why didn’t you just say you noticed that white people are argumentative and tend to be loud?
So there’s no such thing as African-American culture?
How do you explain African-American Vernacular English, then? it’s a variety of English mostly spoken by African-Americans - so, if they share their own language variety, why is it impossible that they share any other cultural features?
Notice what you did again, you specified an ethnic group. African-Americans, which is not the same as being black…ALL blacks. Further, are you telling me that ALL African-Americans, regardless of the state, country and town they live in, speak the exact same language?
Are you telling me that African-Americans in Georgia speak the EXACT same variety of English, as do African-Americans in the Bronx? word for word, term for term?
Do you think if you say most women are wider in the hips than most men, you’ve offended someone rational?
The mistake that people make in these types of threads, is the assumption that when someone questions the logic of some race-based observations, that you’re one of the offendi or a PCnesser or trying to deny that there are differences between groups; that’s the not what “we’re” trying to do. We’re trying to get people to see there’s a difference between skin color and culture and that your preceptions may be extremely limited by your own bias.
There’s an old saying: “black don’t crack…” and that’s exactly what you’ve noticed; that in general, people with darker skin don’t show the effects of aging as those with lighter skin.
Well why is that? Is it matter of biology or culture?
When I was younger, it was common for white people to get tans, and I mean TANS as in putting iodine and baby oil on your skin and sitting in the sun. That will of course damage your skin; but that was a cultural thing. By cultural I mean a ‘city’ thing, I don’t mean a white thing even though mostly white people did it, because all whites didn’t desire to sit in the sun. I don’t think the kids in rural America were doing that (but I don’t know)…but because they worked outside, they too exposed themeselves to the sun and damaged their skin; because they were white. So we’re talking biology as well, ligther skin: less melanin.
Now since people with darker skin, really had no real cultural moviation to get even darker; they didn’t develop a culture based on having a really good tan. Since they have more natural protection, even when they did work outside, they on average, showed the effects of sun damage and age to a lesser degree.
However, if you’ve ever seen some of the old photos of the African-American slaves, who did work from childhood till way past middle age in the fields, what do you notice? Really tough and wrinkled old skin, an effect of the ‘culture’ of slavery, because had they lived in Africa, they certainly wouldn’t spend the majority of the days working in the hot sun and white people tried to keep out of the sun, because white skin was culturally desirable, and they didn’t age as badly as we do now…of course they didn’t live as long either…
The point being we don’t really know what white skin would look like if Americans had stayed in Europe and didn’t subject themselves to the Sun in certain parts of North America or developed the culture of tanning…all we know is that people with darker skin have a natural protection (all things being equal) and age better…in North America.
So do you think your quesion should offend anyone?
Of course we’re talking about African-Americans. That’s what “black” tends to mean in the United States, isn’t it? In my community, there aren’t nearly enough Afro-Caribbeans or African immigrants for me to guess at whether they tend to be louder than white Americans.
As for your second point, I have to wonder if you’re deliberately being obtuse. Obviously not all African-Americans are exactly the same, nor are all the members of any other cultural group exactly the same. You’ve proven absolutely nothing with that argument. Do you have some reason to think that magically, all African-Americans would speak exactly the same way? Or that all the members of any other culture would? Obviously that’s not the case in any culture.
The point being, how could you tell and would it matter or would you simply add loudness to their blackness and ignore the fact that they have an entirely different culture than African-Americans?
You said this:
Your statement suggests that African-Americans en masse share a variety of English unqiue to them as a group. Right? That is what you meant, is it not? And that unique variety of English is what ‘proves’ that they can share other ‘cultural’ features…such as being loud.
How does one have to speak in order to qualify as having AAV? What words do I have to say? How must I pronouce them? If I don’t do any of it, does that mean I’m not an African-American or do the “culture” of loudness not apply to me?
The point being, if All African-Americans don’t speak exactly the same way, as you admit, it’s possible that they don’t share other ‘cultural’ features either…such as being loud and IMO it’s an extremely biased leap to assume that just because someone is black and loud, the loudess is an part of the culture being black; since being loud is a trait all groups share; why would anyone ascribe it to skin color?
In my opinion, of course.