Why can't black people be like this?

[Sapo]

@pizzabrat

While that point is valid, and has been made before, that wasn’t even the point that RTFirefly was making there.

I know. Hence my parenthesis. Still, it pushed me in the right direction. That is the great injustice of history, that we don’t get to choose how we will be remembered.

That’s not what I was trying to do at all. I was trying to get you to be specific about what you’re railing about in the OP, since that’s the only way we can have a real discussion. If you were specific, you’d probably prove my point that your complaint is meaningless, since if I’m right and the threads you’re talking about are the ones where someone ultimately starts off insulting some group (black people), then people being defensive is quite justified. Your question was why can’t we have a discussion about certain ethnic traits. My question is what makes you say that we can’t?

My apologies for snapping at you, then.

I guess the best statement of where my mind is can be found in my post #26:

Is it necessarily true that group perceptions are always wrong? Isn’t it possible to identify traits on groups that are observable?

Let me choose another hopefully innocuous example (and if it offends someone, please change it with your mind’s eye to something that doesn’t). “Soccer moms drive minivans”. Once we define “soccer moms” and wade past the list of all the “soccer moms” who drive sports coupes and pickup trucks. If we found some statistics that correlate “soccer motherhood” and minivan usage, could we safely say that “soccer moms drive minivans”. Could we say it without offending soccer moms who drive family sedans? Without offending those who DO drive minivans?

Would we be forced to always say “The HSD made a study in 1998 that shows that 52.7% of women with children who play soccer in the 48 contiguous states, drive a minivan”?

My point is that even in total wrecks of an OP as the “loud blacks thread”, there is something that could be salvaged if we just roll our eyes at the present bigotry and try to focus on what little merit the stereotype might have (if any) instead of trying to pile on the bigot. A rational debate that dispels the stereotype with reason is better than a lynching, since it not only stops the present bigotry but might prevent some future recurrence.

Although I really had no particular thread or issue in mind when I posted my OP, some brain squeezing brings to memory an anti-Asian thread (Pit, maybe. Banned member, I think. The word “yellow” might have been used. No idea how recent). The OP was total bait but the first round of respondents somehow managed to step around it and make some meaningful observations. Then it got locked (can’t remember if it had gotten ugly in between). I though it was a shame that a sensible conversation (even one that started from a crap OP) got locked. Just one random example if you force to come up with one.

[Sapo]

@Hippy Hollow

Well, duh.

Well, if it weren’t for us duh-types there would be no need to the SDMB and you would be watching sitcom reruns.

[Sapo]

@pizzabrat

Saying dancing skills and worshiping skills are of little value has nothing to do with judging any actual person.

I am sure that there are plenty of people out there whose lives revolve about dancing or worship who would be very offended to read this. Then again, there are plenty of people out there who would be very offended at just about anything, so feel free to carry on.