i am pretty racist and i say it proudly

also lauryn hill can go to hell

this thread:


+

been sittin' on those images for awhile, haven't you?

actually i just found em on google

further proof I'm not a racist: I just ate a piece of fried chicken from Church's with hot sauce on it.

damn

This thread is so poop. What makes me (and maybe Haq, and others?) a little shaky is that while the idea of 'no topic/opinion being off limits' is appealing, we don't necessarily have a hugely diversified forum going on here. Pretty lily-white, for the most part.

So the ones of us who don't quite get the inside-humor that comes off as absolute raunch to the outside world are stuck in the position of either speaking out against it, or letting it slide and possibly allowing it to define us to others.

POOP i say

I think that needed to be said. I also think it's necessary to challenge casually racist remarks, no matter what the context, in order to maintain a precedent - but then again, I'm north to your north and we got a different reality on a lot of this shit (and I also think comics like Eddie Murphy do more to perpetuate racial stereotypes than combat them).

paranoid.

look, i've NEVER seen anything blatantly racist on this board. been plenty of jokes thrown around, maybe sometimes a bit harsh, but definitely nothing meant to hurt anyone.

pot shots are thrown at whites all the time in film, comedy, and in real life and it's perfectly fine. it's only -racist- when a white person takes a crack. that's nonsense IMO.

maybe it's folks like you that need to loosen up a bit and stop taking everything so damn serious.

wait, I thought you were black...

and if you're gonna make fun of race, you gotta make fun of all of them or none of them, otherwise you're just pickin' on somebody.

But whatever, I'm staying the hell out of this thread unless someone needs some good dothead humor.

yea but lauryn hill should be added in with condaleeza on teh racial draft

ME CHINESE, ME PLAY JOKE, ME PUT PEE PEE IN YOUR COKE!!

Wow, you miss a day, you miss a lot. As one with the benefit of not having watched this trainwreck unfold slowly, some quick thoughts:


Take a step back and look at this again, and a few things ought to be obvious, whether anyone cares to admit it or not.
1. Busty's analogy wasn't racist. Neither is Busty. He noticed, correctly, that Lauren is starting to talk like she's trying to impress everyone (including herself), going in bizarre circles and reaching for top-shelf diction that has no place in a casual interview, and generally taking herself way the hell too seriously. It reminded him of that skit, it made him chuckle, he posted the analogy. He did NOT explain where the analogy came from, and Haq, freshly insensed from the infamous Spade thread, pounced. Had the analogy come a day earlier, we might not've had 4 pages of this, though perhaps it was a good thing. Had Busty mentioned what he was referring to, ditto.
2. I do not condone throwing "spade" out there, for what it's worth. Funny with the 2 or 3 of you sitting around at Redlands, where you can imitate Keef's drawl and it's obvious, sure. In print before the masses, sans helpful accent? No. But it doesn't make me think Yail's suddenly a racist (and has managed to artfully hide it from me since 1988). He's just crass, and that's why we love him. I think he knows full well where the backlash came from. But those who do not have this 17 year backlog of experience with him are free to question it... I wouldn't have it any other way. The first time someone I don't know drops some over-the-line shit here (mucks up my nice board, in other words) I'll be the first to respectfully request clarification. Old K is correct in that what we let slide here (within reason) reflects on us all.

If any of this strikes anyone as unclear, do what I do... take it to an extreme to see where it goes. For example... start with seeing "spade" in a thread. Offended yet? No? Ok, then up it to the infamous N word (when not part of quoted rap lyrics). Offended yet? Figure out where the line is drawn for you (if at all), and then realize that not everybody's line occurs at the same spot. And then realize that you can't cop out and say "all" or "none," as in "it's all ok because race shouldn't matter" or whatever, or "it's never ok" because then we really will be calling Loog a Polish-Italo-Norksi-Anglo-Gargantuan-American, and that's just stupid. Now have some goddam common courtesy, be nice to one another, and imagine that not everybody thinks the way you do... all of you.



Go dawgs.

That's another notion that's been rattling around in my noggin for a little while now. Seems like growing up in the south, where (less so in our town but still) there is a much higher percentage of minorities vs a lot of (but not all, pipe down already Detroit) northern towns, you have to come to terms with other kinds of people in a much different way. It's hands-on instead of just talking about it. Madison is the most racially tolerant place I think I've ever seen. They make an art form of not offending anyone (Dalen, you would move after three days). But it's not a fair comparison, because the minority population is relatively very small, and sadly enough fairly concentrated in the worst 2 parts of town. I guess my point is, it's vastly easier to be a progressive, tolerant liberal when you don't really even see very many people who aren't white. It's all theory. Ok, not all, but you get where I'm headed with that? I noticed the difference when I moved here, within weeks. I say the whole notion of the "people" in the north being fundamentally more open-minded is bunk. People are people. They just have a different set of circumstances to work with.

well, it is wisconsin...to compare madison to the rest of the north is like comparing florida to the rest of the south.

Cap'n,

that's pretty much my thoughts. In the South whites live closer to and interact more with blacks. Fact.

More ancedotal arguments. I rarely heard anti-semetic comments growing up. Went to a leadership conference in high school and the jew jokes flew around the table of Chicagoans. Also never even met a jewish person until I was like 19.

Don't know if I am ready to defend my thesis to Haq just quite yet.

I live in a town in which caucasians are now statistically a minority, with over 30% of the population of Asian descent, and it still seems pretty easy to be progressive, tolerant, and liberal.

But it's different racial realities for everybody. This talk of "niggas" and "spades" hits me fairly hard, but probably because, out of all the black people I've either been friends with or worked with, exactly none of them have talked in the stereotypical "ebonic" dialect and exactly all of them would be highly offended by the assumption that they did (...although, come to think of it and with thanks to MTV, the upper middle class white kids talk like that now, so eventually there'll be a whole new level of irony to contend with). I'm sure I'd be shocked silly if I spent much time in the American south.

As easy as you think it is, trust me when I say it's easier to the average guy when he doesn't have to live it out. And even then, it's just harder, not impossible. In those situations it takes more courage, more determination, not to take the easy way out. And come on, you're not average, you're Uncle Cockmonger! I expect nothing less than tolerant perfection of you.

Why did this thread return to a rational discussion of race?

I guess it goes to show that when you constantly drop nukes on folks, people may just think the worst of you automatically, and when you are usually a rational, maybe even quiet person, you get the benefit of the doubt.

...can that seriously have just occurred to you? Did you know that the stovetop stays hot for a while after you turn it off?

I once got a badass concentric circle burn on my fingers because I put my hand on the burner that should have been off.

No it didn't JUST occur to me, it did just occur to me that board is mostly populated by people like you (PUSSIES) who instead of taking the time to understand something/someone will naturally assume that they are scargy, or stupid....or in other's cases, misconstrue bluster with racism or whatever.

...see, this is useful information.

edit: I really get lumped in with that crowd because I don't love Spade being thrown out? Seriously? And I'm a pussy now too? Who are you, Sherrif Busty Brown all of a sudden?

np: Skrewdriver, "Johnny Joined the Klan"

Thanks for the download, dnorwood!