Black People: Aren't They Annoying?
Dean
So here's a question for my white (and other) readers: Have you ever noticed how annoying black people can be?
I mean, seriously. Just admit it: sometimes black folks, they get on your nerves. You want to be all "color doesn't matter" and you want to be all "that nasty crap is in the past" and so on and so forth. You also want to sit there saying, "well I don't discriminate!" and "I don't care about color!" and all that. But come on, you big fat liars. Tell the truth.
Black people: don't they annoy you sometimes?
Tell me all about it. I dare you, you cowards. Come clean. Sometimes, aren't they annoying?
* Update * My God. Have you ever noticed what total wussies most white people are? I asked this question two hours ago and all I get is "hahahaha you're so funny Dean!" and "are you sure you want to ask this?" responses.
* Update 2 * My wife just walked in on me and said, "Are you sure you want to ask this question? Are you crazy?" To which my answer is: YES! Come on, you fishbelly-white, narrow-nosed, thin-lipped jerkoffs. What are you afraid of? What, will God smite you for speaking your mind? Do you really think race relations can get better in America if you don't honestly say what you think?
WARNING.
DOUBLEPLUSUNGOOD THOUGHT DETECTED.
PREPARE FOR REEDUCATION.
/MINISTRY OF TRUTH
Can't stand humans.
;)
1. Are you trolling right now?
2. Did you perchance get stuck behind a Black person at the grocery store checkout for 30 minutes, the same person you saw and heard in the theater earlier that day? Did you see him again in the store parking lot? Did his stereo, playing gangsta rap, drown out your own, just when you were enjoying the loud part of the 1812 Overture?
I mean, hypothetically speaking, of course.
Most white people are laughing nervously and can't even answer this question.
How sad that I can't even ask this question, eh?
Can't say I care much for the culture I associate with them, but I got no problems based on race. If anything, they may be superior to whites in a lot of respects.
First ones I ever lived with were in the US Army back in the late Korean war period. I took the trouble to get to know them. I found them friendly, if you didn't treat them with some fish-face hate stare. They were good soldiers and good workers. The black officers I served under in some of the training units were fair, and highly professional. The black non-coms, most of them combat vets back from 'Frozen Chosen'; tough as nails; knew their stuff. Some of them had served in the old segregated army in World War II. Fact was, these were nicer guys than some of the tough monkey white men I met from the northern big cities.
You've got to understand, though; we were all there to do our duty, serve out our time on active duty, receive orders and carry them out. Didn't leave much time for any racist shit.
Can't understand why any of these guys would support the Democrats, though. What in hell have the 'Crats ever done for them?
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Cut us some slack: some of us have job interviews coming up, and it's not unheard of for HR drones to google an applicant's name and email address and see what they find.
And, for the record, I don't think it's that bad (although it is getting humorless). After all, there are plenty of sites out there where one is, hmmm, encouraged to point out differences between races in a creative way.
When I was growing up in a suburb of Houston in the 1980s I was a very sheltered kid.
I never really ventured outside of said surburbia and thus grew up with other kids of my class. We were all the same. We had the same ideas, liked the same music, liked the same movies and all of the other things that kids of that era liked/said/did.
My peer group was made up of a variety of races. Yet, race was never a factor in how we related to each other. I never heard another kid talk about someone of a minority race as anything other than who they were.
Thus, I was unable to understand racism. I never understood how anyone could think that x-person of x-race was anything beyond the person that they were.
Then I moved to Houston and I saw the disparity in classes. Then I understood. The clashes aren't about race anymore, it is about class. It is about the haves and the have nots. It is about those that feel that they should follow the rules and those that feel that the should not have to do so.
The kids I grew up with (of all ethnicities) were in my own class. We all shared the same upbringing. Our environments were identical. Thus, we could relate to each other.
The people that populate various parts of Houston are not people that share my same environment, I can't relate to them. It isn't because of their race, it is because of their class.
All people annoy me. I have some race specific annoyances. Here they are:
1.
I hate it that "I" am automatically racist and bigoted because of my white skin. I hate that I was beaten to a pulp in High School because my ancestors owned slaves. Didn't seem to matter that my family lived in Poland until 1966 or that my ancestors WERE SLAVES. I'm still evil because I'm white. Now, I'm not evil in the eyes of all black people but I'm pretty sure Jesse Jackson would spit in my direction.
2.
I hate it when white people try to show how cool and enlightened they are by asking racially charged questions.
3.
I hate that no matter what anyone says there will ALWAYS be someone that misinterprets it and name calling will commence.
4.
I hate over sensitive, insecure people.
The Africans were of course annoying because they were far too social and nice, but you have to forgive them because those are good traits, and, well, you have to excuse the virtues that you dislike in foreigners. :-)
I really don't know why it is that none of my social circles have ever coincided with those of someone who is both black and born in this country; perhaps it has something to do with being in the upper-east US (Long Island, upstate NY, and eastern PA). Actually, I'd be curious to see how many geeks are also black americans; my being a geek may have something to do with it, too.
However, it is something that white folks have an easier time forgetting all the past injustices towards blacks committed by other people because we're not frequently reminded of them. Philosophically, it's a weird position, if you think about it.
I never owned a slave; so far as I know no one I'm descended from ever owned an african slave in the US — my ancestry is all pretty shallow in the US, and I can trace back on every side who the first on on the continent was, and it was all after 1900 and in the north-east. The only thing that slave-holders have in common with me is skin color, really.
So far as I can tell, it's similar to the position than I am in wrt German Jews -- I have no german in me, yet certainly I feel pity for them because they suffered grave injustice recently. I can't apologize for it, since I didn't do it. It's not my place to make resitution since it wasn't my wrong. Yet the injustice is so great that one feels the desire to do something.
What makes it so strange is that the retributive justice that one could perform on behalf of another is not in this case possible. If a man is murdered, you can hang his murderer and in this way achieve some measure of justice for him.
But if his murderer is also dead, there's nothing that you can do.
One can't avenge the social injustices against blacks for a variety of reasons (mostly having to do with not being able to separate the just from the unjust), and all of the slaveholders are already dead.
But at the same time, it's at the least extremely callous to tell people that they should get over this great wrong done to them.
That's the problem with groups — morality is really about individuals. Sometimes moral questions just don't even make sense when applied to groups.
Yeah. I live in Arkansas (which is a whole 'nother story) so race relations are always weird. Back when I used to be French (recovering Frenchman, guys - I haven't surrendered in 4 years), I had a discussion with a Black classmate. He seemed to think that being French freed you from the taint of automatic family slaveholding. so I should be 'all right'. After a brief history lesson on Haiti, he never spoke to me again.
Frankly, I loathe Black athletes and rap muscians. However, the same can be said about White athletes and rap musicians. Professional Blacks also annoy me, but they annoy most of my Black friends too.
A man sits at his computer (at which he seems to spend an inordinate amount of time), his wife "walks in on him," and asks him about blogging? Forget race relations - what's wrong with this picture?
I mean, have ever noticed how annoying wives can be? :)
Now, is it just my imagination that every white person who has commented on this post has done little but laugh nervously, and there are no black respondents at all?
Answer to the question, you pathetic white cowards!
Sure, black people annoy me. White people annoy me, too, and yellow people and brown people and red people.
But if you are digging for someone to reveal an unconscious prejudice, well, I'm afraid I am disqualified. Sure, it's so much easier to remember the negative behaviors of a group you consider "other", and especially a population with whom you don't interact much. But, having become aware of the human tendency to generalize and stratify and classify, I am careful to listen to my inner dialogue and cut short the type of conclusions you are looking for. On the other hand, I don't fall into the opposite trap of assuming that the typical recipients of stereotypes are noble and wonderful, either.
We're all just people, and I think the desires for love/power and security/wealth unite us far more than our appearances divide us.
Black people do not annoy me.
*Phew* Glad I got that off my chest. Now that we've got that cleared up, let me say that I know plenty of people who annoy me, but it has nothing to do with the amount of melatonin in their skin.
Plus, I'm not really white, but I play a white guy on the Internet.
When your race, situation, gender, or preference becomes 100% of what you are, all the time, it's irritating as hell.
I think the related thoughts I have about 10 times a day is "get over yourself", "get over it", "move on, it's the past."
I'm sure that 99% of people have some issue, handicap, skeleton, etc., that has in some way stifled them (in whatever way they choose to describe it).
Black people irritate me when they think they're the only oppressed people that ever lived. Or, that their Super A Level Oppressed Status™ means that society should in some way compensate them, so things are "fair."
Drives me insane. Life isn't fair. Things aren't equal. Get over it.
Oh, and that make up any name thing by stringing together sounds drives me nuts, too. Names mean something. There was an Black Olympic athlete with the name "La Something Colander." (Don't remember what the middle bit was.) The "La Something" translated (I'm sure by accident) to the brand name of a well known China company's salad bowl. Basically, they named their daughter "Salad Bowl Food Sieve." Cute! Names are words, like words in a dictionary. If you don't want a "slave master name" fine, but for heaven's sakes don't handicap a kid with a name that means "my parents were too fucking caught up in victim mentality to bother to give me a real name or look up what this made up name might actually mean in this language or another one."
There! Call me a coward you nasty white boy!
So whenever I hear ANYONE whining about how they're a victim, or shaking someone down, or playing an angle for dubious motivations, or just being rude, yeah, it annoys me.
But no, I don't sit there and say, you know, this country'd be a whole lot better if it were only absent that special kind of annoyance unique to the black race.
It's not that black people are annoying.(Of course some of them are some of the time) It's that people are annoying. All of us have the capacity to act in an annoying manner at any given moment. Hell, my own mother sometimes annoys the hell out of me. So the answer to your question, is that, yes, black people are annoying. And so am I.
Steve Edge
1) The incomprehensible language of the rap culture.
2) Playing the race card as a crutch.
3) Black politicians that talk like preachers.
4) The concept of reparations.
5) That whole Uncle Tom / sellout routine.
6) Comparative weiner size.
I do hate black culture though. What else can I say about a culture that hurts its own people by encouraging drug use, avoidance of education, and having children out of wedlock, all actions that almost certainly bring poverty?
However, I am afraid of large groups of black teenager boys - I am not annoyed, I am afraid.
I was once a social worker. A large group of black teenage boys once surrounded my car and started rocking it. I was petrified. I cried. I screamed - there was no such thing as a cell phone back then.
So I am afraid of large groups of black men.
But am I annoyed with black people? No.
I went to an integrated private Catholic girls school from 1959 until 1969. Yes, there were black girls in my kindegarten class long before there were black children in public schools in St. Louis County.
I don't like rappers, white or black, who talk about ho's and gangs and killing. I love Dave Chapelle, because he is really funny.
Don't care for Jesse Jackson - but that's because he is an uberliberal preachy kinda guy who pretends to be religious - not because he is black.
I believe that the essence of self does not stem from the color of one's skin or one's sexual preference. My reality is not that I am a white heterosexual.
My reality, is that I am me - my essence is all I embrace in this world, and being a peach colored, chubby middle aged heterosexual woman does not begin to describe the me-ness of me.
So ... being black or white or brown or red or yellow or orange or green or purple does not describe the essence of anyone.
1) Why are older black folks living in fear, prisoners in their own homes?? Aren't these the very same people who fought for the civil rights that the gun-toting punks take for granted today?
2) Why am I automatically a racist just because I am white? I never felt this until I moved to the south, where there have been many instances where I was sure that I was being dismissed or guarded against because of MY color. Is this supposed to be payback? Hey, I'm Armenian, my people were murdered and oppressed too.
3) Why is the black community so afraid of changing from within and moving up the socio-economic ladder? Yes, there are great community programs that are easing the gang, teen pregnancy, etc. problems, but the truth of the matter is that most blacks I have seen commenting on the issue would rather condemn two of their most respected leaders (Cosby and Rev. Jackson) as educated classists and elitists than rally round their children to develop a healthy community for them.
Somebody explain to me how blacks are the only group that gets to wallow in fear and poverty with impunity......
Mrs. du Toit beat me to it! How weird that I was on the phone having a similiar conversation with my mother. She was talking about some study that found people with sounds-strung-together-instead-of-a-real-name have a much harder time getting a job.
But, we talked about children at her school and we noticed a trend that it wasn't just black kids with "weird" and "misspelled" names. It was poor kids in general. Even the name-thing isn't really a black-thing, its a poor-people thing.
The poorer and less educated the parents, the odder the name choices. Consider "Breezy" and "Neon". And "Bubba". (I swear to you, it says "Bubba" on his birth certificate. People in the office double-checked.) And then there's almost normal, but not exactly. "Madisyn" and "Hynri" and "Jeorge" and "Cyndi".
1. I don't like how they looked at me as if I were raised in a jungle the moment I said that I came from the Philippines. Then again I get that from stupid white people too.
2. I don't like how they treated me, my mom, and my sis as "chinks" who "steal" "their" jobs from them. As if they had a god-given right to an occupation, immune from any sort of competition. But I get that from stupid white people too, but they are of a smaller portion of the whole.
Conclusion? Most my gripes are hardly race specific more than their occurences happening more expectedl in a aprticular portion of the population.
1) I hate the "it's a black thing, you wouldn't understand" crap. BULLSHIT. I grew up in the city in a mixed race neighborhood. I slept over at my black friends' houses, I dated black girls as well as white girls, I've been the only cracker in the cracker box at parties so don't give me that crap.
2) Now let's talk about why you can't get a J-O-B. Here's a clue, when you show up for the interview dress like you want the job, not like a hood rat who just got bounced from county. Don't show up with your pants around your ass, your drawers hanging out, and a doorag on your head. Oh, and don't smoke a blunt before the interview either. If you do, don't expect me to hire you.
There's a whole lot more but like I told a friend of mine, "The only problem with being white is we don't have any Sharptons, Jacksons, or Farrakhans to make excuses for us when we fuck up...on second thought, that's not a bad thing."
The reason "white pussies" are afraid of answering your question is that we fear we will be used as some sort of object lesson in post tomorrow.
But only my relatives.
(Dean, you are a straight-up feces-stirrer. Do you have a twin brother?)
But, as a Chicago Jew, certain kinds of New York Jew DRIVE ME NUTS.
It is a cultural thing. And don't get me started on Israeli drivers in Encino. I mean, Je-hee-sus.....
As for my being a racist descendant of slaveowners, my great-great-grandfather Thomas Burgess (né Thomas Chamberlain) was born in England. He jumped ship in Virginia in 1840, changed his last name to Burgess, fled up the east coast, eloped with a 15-year-old girl he met in Rochester, New York, and settled in what was then the Wisconsin Territory, where they farmed and raised horses. Thus I am a fifth-generation Wisconsinite. Thomas Burgess served in the Union Army in the Civil War. Traumatized by what he had undergone in the war, he went out to the barn on July 4, 1867, and blew his brains out.
Thomas Burgess was also, by coincidence, the illegitimate son of an English nobleman who was instrumental in the passage in Parliament of the 1807 Abolition of the Slave Trade Act and the 1833 Abolition of Slavery Act.
So yes, I am annoyed if someone (usually a white Leftist) presumes that because I'm white, I'm somehow automatically a racist descendant of slaveowners. Or whatever.
She did this via hard work, tenacity and believing in herself, name notwithstanding.
Now, believe it or not, I'm a little afraid of young white male adults who get to close to me on the street or stop to ask me the time or where the downtown drugstore is. Having said that, I reflect that I'm only just a little afraid of white guys and not afraid of black guys at all.
Am I annoyed by blacks. Yes, sometimes a lot but not because I fear them or feel superior to them. They annoy me just like they annoy Bill Cosby. Stop whining already and change your culture to promote the betterment of your people. How? Care about your kids, make them go to school and do their homework, stop with the drugs, the serial impregnation of teen black girls by teen black boys, dwelling on the horrors of slavery, making whitey pay and scorning other blacks who achieve a measure of success and a better life for themselves.
I acknowledge that not all blacks have the above mentality. Plenty don't. I know many who don't. But too many do. Many groups of oppressed people (lots of non-whites too) have come here and after a generation or two (sometimes more than that)have prospered and been accepted.
I freely acknowledge that the stigma of slavery is the wild card in the hand dealt blacks and is a source of rage. I say, you're right. It was an outrage. I'm ashamed that blacks were treated so disgustingly by my forebears. What annoys me now is that too much of black energy is wasted on this rage. NOTHING will undo the outrage perpetrated against you. Quit looking back. Quit looking to even the score. Just get on with getting your families and future generations educated and equipped to share in the potential this nation has for a good life for those who want to live it.
Because I grew up in a city that is apparently one of the most racially integrated (not by numbers but by neighborhoods) in the country. Where I'd have classes with the Japanese Italian girl and the Asian girl with the British accent, and not have to worry about sending people "back where they came from" because it was down the street.
So do black people annoy me? Only inasmuch as I USED TO BE COLORBLIND, just like MLK dreamed of, and there's some twerps out there who've made it their bounden duty to teach me to see the differences. And yes, some of them are black.
Thank goodness I'll soon be moving back to the land of blended marriages, where the whole purpose of inquiry into someone's heritage is to get to a point where you can say, "Interesting," or "Cool."
What's annoying, really, is what's portrayed in that link.
The trouble with the question is that it's a little undefined [for me, anyway]. Black people, per se, do not annoy me.
At least not in the way that a black youth said to one his friends when I sat near them: "Sometimes I got to get away from all this white &get loud, you know what I'm saying?"
Did I take offense? Yes. Was I annoyed? Yes. Did I say anything? No.
So I'm not annoyed by the persons, I'm annoyed by the relations between the persons, the *assumed* irrevocable differences.
I could go on about the lilly white roomates I had who annoyed me as well, and "all the people of color I know whom I love" but that's not your point. What is your point?
NO you cannot cut across three lanes of traffic to get to the 7-11 dude! Go around like everyone else!
No, I don't "hate black people." I don't hate anyone because of the color of their skin.
As others have said, I dislike certain people, or groups of people, with annoying traits. For example, white kids who drive down the street with 1,000-watt car amps cranked all way up annoy me just as much as the black kids who do the same thing.
On the other hand, I don't think I've had a black driver try to run me off the road, or see how close they can get to me, while I'm on my bike, even though I stay on the shoulder as much as possible.
I grew up in an Ohio suburb that was nearly 50/50 mix by the time I graduated high school. IIRC it's definitely 50/50 over there, now. Most of the young black men I knew in high school, and those I've worked with over the years in restaurants, are generally polite and curteous, although many of them are more used to street language and manners than the suburban white approach.
I imagine that a white person who is uncomfortable with different cultures or styles put them off, causing them to be uncomfortable as well. This could result in a percieved antagonism.
I still think Dean has some ulterior motive for bringing all this up, as I can't imagine him insulting his entire readership for no good reason. And yes, I consider someone calling me a "white pussy" insulting.
urthshu: why do you find that site annoying? I think it's hysterical.
Dean, Dean, Dean, Dean, Dean, Dean, Dean, Dean, Dean;
I'm not sure which annoys me more; the implication that people are race-whipped sissies because they would rather discuss individuals than paint an entire race with a broad brush, or the idea that you are, in many cases, right.
For the record, I find loud hip-hop, baggin', and any theoretically artistic work that uses the phrase, "muh niggas" somewhat off-putting. These things have crossed cultural and racial lines, though, so they are no longer specific to blacks.
And as to fhare's comment, bad driving isn't racial, it's geographic. People from Georgia and Pennsylvania are the worst drivers in America, but I had a lot more trouble on the streets of Seoul.
I don't find the site annoying- its one of my faves. I find the real-life ppl like that annoying [erm. I'm in NY. They do exist.]. Hope that's clearer.
Poverty is not racism or oppression or exploitation or injustice of any kind. It is man's default, natural state. In a free society, if you're poor it's nearly always your own damn fault. All the Jim Crow laws were abolished long ago.
2) I never owned any slaves and my ancestors fought on the Union side in the Civil War. If you're a white Southerner you can start hitting me up for reparations. Not that I'll pay.
3) I hate (c)rap "music". It's nothing but yelling and cussing.
Call me whatever you want, but all the great music was composed by Dead White European Males with names like Bach and Beethoven, or Tchaikovsky and Mussorgsky, or Verdi and Puccini. At least one was a Jew (Mendelssohn) while another (Wagner) was a ------- proto-Nazi.
Before you start equating me with William Shockley, let me remind you that my own blonde, blue-eyed ancestors weren't composing any classical music when the Egyptians (Africans) were building the temple of Queen Hatshepsut.
4) I admire Deroy Murdock, who is the ideological opposite of Jesse Jackson in every way I can think of.
5) The one man I know of who has done more than any other to study racial/cultural inequalities among men is Thomas Sowell. He also wrote "A Conflict of Visions", one of the great milestones in the study of ideological spectrums.
6) I admire Manning Johnson and other Negroes who broke with Communism in the 1950s.
7) Black is Beautiful. Some of the sexiest women I've ever beheld are Negresses. I love dark skin, large noses, thick lips. Captivating.
8) My own experiences with black people? I knew very few when I was growing up in Monmouth, Oregon. It wasn't a racist milieu, there just weren't very many living there at the time and they were very quiescent. I later knew some of my Dad's students from Nigeria, who were some of the friendliest people I knew while the white students there were cold as ice (do I sound like Leonard Jeffries now?). I also got to know a very good man by the name of Romeo Connell. Later, in the early 1980s I lived for a few years in Portland with a black couple who were deep Christians. Unfortunately, I also had my first negative experiences with some criminally-oriented young black men at that time. So, I've known all kinds. All kinds of people generally. I generally dislike people, regardless of their race, sex, sexual orientation, religion, blood type, etc., but I like a few of them, those who earn my liking, regardless of their race, sex, sexual orientation, religion, blood type, etc..
Black people don't annoy me - annoying people annoy me. Actually, I cannot imagine getting through an American day without having black people around me at some point. I really can't define it, but America without a strong black influence just isn't America in my view - one of the things which annoyed me about living in Florida way back when was how black and white people didn't associate with each other much...and one of the things I love about my current home of Las Vegas is how its about the most unhungup on race places I've ever lived; I'd bet I've seen more inter-racial friendships and relationships in tens years living in Las Vegas than I've seen elsewhere in my whole life.
The black people I know personally rapidly figure out that I'm a dyed-in-the-wool conservative Republican - and while this does sometimes cause a bit of a shock (since I'm clearly not a racist; and, trust me on this, the GOP has been successfully painted as a racist political Party - isn't that a great bit of uniting the country on the part of the Democratic Party, or what?), its something swiftly gotten past; perhaps, though, this is due to my facile ability to instantly get along with anyone (I don't know if it was learned or just natural, but I rapidly start to talk in the same accent and idiom of whomever I'm conversing with); it also, perhaps, is helpful that the thing I use for a brain is crammed full with things most people might find useless - but for some black people, its important that I already knew what "Juneteenth" was about.
So, Dean, the answer for me is "no"; black people don't get on my nerves and this is no mere attempt to dodge a difficult sociological question.
Not a single one of those people fell into the specific classification because of their race, skin colour or melanin enhancement (well, not quite, I have a thing for redheads with freckles).
I have a feeling that this boy from south-west England might not be the right person to ask on this subject though. Where I grew up we all knew that there was only one group worthy of hatred and discrimination: the Welsh.
Being Estonian, I live in a country with maybe a few dozen black people in total, and I've only met two of them. And only one is from the US so I really am uninformed.
But as to the phenomenon of 'urban culture', I have not been spared. So here goes:
People who say they want to 'Aks a question'. What, for the love of god, is up with that?
And I hate anything 'funky'. It's elevator music for ADD sufferers.
The rest doesn't have much to do with 'black people' as much as the whole issue of race and racism.
I hate the 'Babylon' school of thought. I'm referring to the Jamaican rasta whining of whitie persecuting Zion. The same idea permeates gangsta rap and the Jesse Jacksons, etc. Not to mention white leftist douches everywhere.
The attitude of 'the white man put the gun in my hand and the dope in my pipe' bullcrap is a combination of racism, evasion of responsibilty, factual errors and strawman arguments all rolled into one. No one put a gun in your hand, you have full motor control of your appendages and picked it up yourself. The dope in your pipe was grown in Columbia. It got in your pipe by you buying it and putting it in there. Black and white don't enter into it.
What Rosemary said: I'm white, yet neither I, nor any of my ancestors, who spent the better parts of the second millennium (ca. 1100-1800) as slaves, never even met a black man before the 20th century, let alone do anything to them. They were enslaved? Tough shit, so were we. After the end of slavery, they were second-class citizens, segregated from the ruling class? Tough shit, so were we. Lord help him if an Estonian peasant got uppity with the German (or Russian, or Swedish, or Danish - we've had a few) masters, they could kill you with impunity.
Slavery is not an African-American monopoly. Neither is enslaving a European one. The year is 2004, no one in either America or Europe has been a slave for well over a century. Get the fuck over it.
Racism has long since become the ideology of pariahs - the general consensus of the entirety of Western Civilization is that racism is an exercise of ignorance. Yet this collective guilt-tripping of people because of what their great-great-great-great grandfathers, or just people who had the same skin tone as their great-great-great-great grandfathers did a hundred and fifty years ago is accomplishing nothing but flipping the racism coin on its other side.
Yet, reading the above, any self-respecting race-baiter will be going out of his way to paint me a racist. Insofar as nothing I said can factually be called racist, it's good for him that I'm white (not to mention right-of-center), because all it takes for me to be a racist in the eyes of some people is to be called one.
I think that's enough.
Mikey
But I would rather not do a lone bayonet charge uphill into machine guns thankyouverymuch.
Tsk, tsk, you LOVE to stir up trouble don't you. I have to say that I get annoyed on the job (police work) when victims who happen to be Black, automatically assume when I get out of the car that because I am White, I am racist, and will not handle their problem in the way they would like.
Rather than try to argue with them about it, I usually just do the job the best I can and let job performance do my talking for me.
Black people don't annoy me. Annoying people annoy me -- for lots of different reasons, because I'm a curmudgeon. Some annoying people happen to be black, but most of them are white. Black people who don't annoy me include Thomas Sowell and Walter E. Williams. White people who annoy me include Chris Matthews and Bill O'Reilly. See, I'm an equal-opportunity curmudgeon with respect to race and politics.
Now I live in San Francisco and people mostly keep to themselves in that urban way. But an amazing percentage of the white people you run across are phoneys. They are so caught up in their wealth and their prestige and the new designer clothers they are wearing they forget what really matters, which to me is just basic human decency.
This is less likely to be true with the Black people that I meet. On average, they are less fearful, so friendlier, and more concerned with normal day-to-day concerns, so more "real," at least in my book.
Of course there are rude people, crazy people and drug and alchohol addicted people of all races, all of whom can be annoying in their own way. I particularly get annoyed when some stinky guy with no self respect who hasn't showered in a month gets on the bus and sits next to me, but that is just one of the joys of urban living. And is about as likely to be white as black.
"Actually, I cannot imagine getting through an American day without having black people around me at some point. I really can't define it, but America without a strong black influence just isn't America in my view"
Absolutely. The abundant presence of the Negro is one of the things I love most about America, these men and women give America its special flavor.
Mark Noonan wrote:
"The black people I know personally rapidly figure out that I'm a dyed-in-the-wool conservative Republican - and while this does sometimes cause a bit of a shock (since I'm clearly not a racist; and, trust me on this, the GOP has been successfully painted as a racist political Party - isn't that a great bit of uniting the country on the part of the Democratic Party, or what?),"
Right again. Questions: Which President both saved the Union and put an end to slavery? Which political party was he, Democratic or Republican? Which political party enacted the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments? Conversely, with which political party did the Ku Klux Klan identify? Which President racially segregated the executive branch of the federal government and praised the movie "Birth of a Nation"? What political party was he?
Which President called for a federal anti-lynching law, and which political party was he? Under which Chief Justice was Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education decided? In whose favor? And by which President was he appointed? Which President sent the National Guard into Little Rock, Arkansas, to enforce integration of the schools there? What party was he?
What was the political party affiliation of Herman Talmadge? Theodore Bilbo? What were their views on segregation? What was the political party affiliation of Strom Thurmond just before he ran for President on a segregationist platform? What was the political party affiliation of the Alabama Governor who said: "Segregation today! Segregation tomorrow! Segregation forever!"
Which political party voted for more Civil Rights bills, and which party opposed them? Who voted for more Civil Rights bills, Senator Everett McKinley Dirksen or Senator William J. Fulbright? Which parties were they, respectively? Who voted for more Civil Rights bills, Senator Barry Goldwater or Senator Lyndon Johnson?
When Jesse Jackson tells you that the Republicans are the party of racism, slavery, and Jim Crow, while the Democrats are the party of Civil Rights, he either knows no history or else he is counting on you to know no history.
"Call me whatever you want, but all the great music was composed by Dead White European Males with names like Bach and Beethoven, or Tchaikovsky and Mussorgsky, or Verdi and Puccini. At least one was a Jew (Mendelssohn) while another (Wagner) was a ------- proto-Nazi."
That's one of the reason why Nietzsche broke with Wagner.
"Before you start equating me with William Shockley, let me remind you that my own blonde, blue-eyed ancestors weren't composing any classical music when the Egyptians (Africans) were building the temple of Queen Hatshepsut."
As Thomas Sowell pointed out, this has more to do with which continent, Europe or Africa, has more navigable rivers than the degree of melanin in your skin. Egypt has the Nile, the Sumerians and Babylonians had the Tigris and Euphrates, the Aryan and pre-Aryan cultures of India had the Indus, China had the Huang Ho and the Yang-tse. Sub-Saharan Africa had the Niger and the Congo, but those weren't the most navigable of rivers. If Europe had not been blessed with the Danube, the Rhine, the Elbe, the Seine, the Thames, we would still be the barbarians Aristotle thought we were.
I'll now just sum up all my thoughts on race with this credo of mine:
Holy Dawn and her holy Negro wife Norma vs. wicked Wanda....
I may be the only white woman on the thread that will profess a fascination with black culture; I actually like rap, hip hop, etc. Yes, *some* of these artists send out a negative message, but the genre is changing. As for folks who find it simply a bunch of loud hollering - well, diffrerent strokes and all that. Personally, I like "black" hollering and screaming music a whole lot better than I like our "white" versions - Metallica, Marilyn Manson, Rob Zombie, etc. At least you can dance to the rap.
Besides, music is not all there is to black culture. Black culture can also cook. Black culture still respects religion. Black culture still respects poetry. Black culture has problems (see Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, insert politically-charged-race-baiter-here), yes - but people who let one cocky athlete sour them on all black folks are just reductionist fools. In my opinion, most of the bad things associated with black culture are functions of economic status, not of some essential "blackness" they possess. Black culture, at its core, is still seeking the American Dream.
Look - a black man saved my life. A black, gay man is my best friend and closest confidante. A black woman taught me how to cook. A black woman taught me how to love myself for just exactly what I am. How'm I supposed to reject all that? I see the bad, yeah - but my overwhelming experience of black people is a positive one.
I can go into lengthy diatribes about the problems that the black community does have - mostly regarding the "victim" status discussed at length above - but that's been done. And I think that's not what you want to hear, anyway.
So, no, as a group, black folks do not work my last quivering nerve. I'm sure that there are some individual black people who annoy me, but none are springing to mind at the moment. No nervous laugh, and if my answer makes me a "white wussy", then so be it, Jedi. It's the God's-honest truth.
And as for the bad-driving comment someone made above - black folks are not the worst drivers, either. It's them Asians...whole 'nother post! ;)
Gaah! Sorry for the book, Dean!
The impression you leave is that it's not serious to you so why should anyone be serious back.
Mr. Sensationalist.
So long as con men like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are considered leaders of the black community there will be a racial divide in America. Some day race won't matter, but so long as so many professional minorities have so much invested in tension, that day is far off.
I'd rather that Dean's question puzzled me.
1) I don't like people who act like trailor trash (roughly defined as "no work ethic," and "not valuing education"). Most of these people are white, but a few are black, and that's relevant when we're discussing the black component of the underclass in America.
2) I don't like people who appear to overreact to the supposed perception that because they are black they might be more likely to be trailor trash--that is, middle-class black people who won't cuss (for reasons other than because they are Christians and it would be against their values). And black women who won't sit on public toilet seats, and therefore pee all over them, which sometimes leads to one sitting in someone else's urine because one forgot to check before sitting down. (I haven't seen any studies that back up my notion that black women are slightly more likely to do this than white women. But my observations suggest that there may be a slight statistical edge in this particularly obnoxious form of prissiness.)
3) I don't like getting mugged. It happened to me three times: two black men, two black men, a Latina woman. In fact, any time black people use their physical superiority to intimidate white people, I feel it's out of bounds. You've proven nothing by besting a 5'1" female--other than your own moral bankruptcy. After the muggings, I started assigning "danger points" to people I saw on the street. I didn't let anyone get near me unless they were carrying groceries or a baby. Men got more points than women, and black men got the most points of all. Sue me.
4) I don't mind slang, but I think we should all have one common language that we can all speak. I worry that hearing too much ungrammatical English when they are young holds many black children back as they get older. Life is hard enough as it is: why make kids learn two different ways of speaking?
5) I'm enraged by those black kids who tell other black kids that when they are studying, they are "acting white."
I'd qualify this post by elaborating on my various friendships with black people (as a child, and as an adult), or the several black men I dated when I was in my twenties, but that's bullshit. You were asking about potential or perceived group characteristics, and that's what you got.
You seem to not have much exposure to black culture. Your article is just as valid as a black man creating a "white people are so annoying" blog entry.
try this site for a little humorous education. Read it carefully, my friend.
www.blackpeopleloveus.com
Heh heh heh...
The same thing that annoys me about Muslims, that being that the vast majority are hard working and honest people that disagree with their self-apointed leaders. If the ture majority were to denounce these so called leaders, the world would be a better place. Of course, they can't after seeing Justice Thomas' confirmation hearings or what happens to informers on Islamic Extremeists.
Yes Oliver, I just equated Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson with Osama Bin Laden...
And Dean, you can be highly annoying when you go into your "blog-manic" personality and start being contrary for the hell of it.
In my defense, I'd been distracted by the fact that my brother and my nephew have permanent suntans, which look to me like a continuation of my Creek Indian mini-ancestry. (I don't have that: I'm pale pale pale. My brother and I look like we're different races.)
been, annoying at some point.
Allow me to rephrase:
Have you ever been annoyed by Black people, because of the color of their skin, more than you would have been annoyed by someone of your own race who was acting in exactly the same way?
My answer is, Yes.
1972, on liberty in Memphis, Tennessee. Just walking around downtown, looking at the buildings, suddenly realized that I was the only white face
in sight. I felt .... vulnerable.
The realization that I felt vulnerable definitely annoyed me because I have always tried not to be a bigot. Oh, well, guess my gut says I am one.
I still TRY not to be a bigot. I'm usually successful, because when I'm annoyed with someone, it's because that INDIVIDUAL has acted in an annoying manner, regardless of his skin color. (My internal reaction, on the other hand, has a DEFINITE racial/gender/religious/minority/etc tinge to it, because when someone annoys me, I feel no need to be 'sensitive' in my thoughts and I'm obviously NOT thinking pleasant thoughts about such miscreants.
Yup, I'm a bigot. I do try to maintain an equality of hate, though.
Would I still have a similar gut reaction, given the same circumstances as 1972? Possibly. Don't know. So long as I recognize the possibility of my
bigotry, I have some defense against allowing same to influence MY actions.
Of course we all lose our tempers now and then. Dean freely admits to being imperfect in this regard, which is why regulars to this establishment will generally be cut more slack than people who we don't know very well.
Still: behave like an adult, or go find somewhere else to play. Thanks.