Political Correctness: Make a Judgment

snood wrote:

If you agree that I'd be more likely than you to understand what it's like to be a black man in america, then we have common ground. I thought you'd already said as much. I feel like you're just baiting me with that stuff about "pouting" and "special privilege". If you don't think it's more likely for a black man than a white man in america to understand what it's like being a black man in america, then we completely disagree.

Now you're trying to dance, and it appears that you're not a very good dancer. I have already made, and tediously repeated, an agreement with the statement that a black man can reasonably be said to understand what it is like to be a black man in America. My only objection was on the nature of the scope. I pointed out that it is not reasonable for you to state that as a black man, you understand how all black people experience America. I've already alluded to blacks born in Africa or the West Indies who don't like black urban Americans, and the point of that was to show that you may know how most black people experience American, but not all of them.

But we shouldn't even be bothering with that discussion, because it is after we have reached that point that you begin your silly dance routine. You are attempting to avoid the core of my disagreement with the statement which you made which began this exchange. You also stated that being black qualifies you to speak to how other people regard you as a black man. You have no basis for that statement. You can guess how others regard you, but you can't know unless and until they tell you, and even then you can't rely upon the honesty of their statement. As a white man, i know very well from experience that whites commonly speak differently of blacks when only in the company of other whites than they do when a black man is present. I also know that there are white people who speak the same of blacks whether they are in the company of only whites, or in the company of blacks and whites, or only blacks. Being black simply does not give you any special insight into how others "regard" you (you used that specific verb). Now you are reverting to the first part of your statement, with which my only quibble was the absolute character of the statement (i.e., the inference that you know how all blacks experience life in America)--while studiously avoiding the charged topic of my denial that you being black gives you special insight into how others regard you.

Finally, i pointed out that references to skin color are superficial, and you took snotty exception to that. Seeing you, and noting that your skin is brown will not tell me if you are cheerful or gloomy, friendly or surly, generous or stingy, kind or cruel, fair or unjust. Therefore, noting that you are black is only taking note of a superficial condition.

It seems to me that you hoping we would "meet halfway" was a suggestion that if i really thought about, i would agree with everything you said. I don't.

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snood wrote:

I say again - being a member of a particular demographic group predisposes one, IMO, to be more likely to understand better what it is like to be a member of that group better than one who is not a member of that group. Gays understand life as a gay better than straights; blacks understand life as blacks better than whites, women know life as women better than men, etc.

Is there really anything to argue with here? I don't see how this can be disputed.

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blatham wrote:

Is that it, in a nutshell, boys?

No, and that was a pretty damned witless exercise, too.

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Setanta wrote:

blatham wrote:
Is that it, in a nutshell, boys?

No, and that was a pretty damned witless exercise, too.

Wasn't talkin to ya, sonny jim.

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So what, Mr. Mountie--when you say stupid things, i have the right to point out that you've said something stupid.

I know of no one here who is arguing or has argued that Snood's contention that being a black man gives him special insight in the experience of being a black man in America is invalid. The only objection which i have seen anyone raise was raised by Lash and by me, and that was to point out that his special insight is not absolute. It doesn't apply to the experience of America of all blacks, although it could reasonably be said to apply to most blacks, or the general character of the experience of most blacks.

Your snide comment seeks to ridicule anyone who would contend that they know more about being black in America than Snood does. Who, precisely, do you allege has said that they know more than Snood about the experience of being black in America?

If you don't have a plausible answer for that, your remark was stupid, and snotty into the bargain.

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Setanta wrote:

So what, Mr. Mountie--when you say stupid things, i have the right to point out that you've said something stupid.

I know of no one here who is arguing or has argued that Snood's contention that being a black man gives him special insight in the experience of being a black man in America is invalid. The only objection which i have seen anyone raise was raised by Lash and by me, and that was to point out that his special insight is not absolute. It doesn't apply to the experience of America of all blacks, although it could reasonably be said to apply to most blacks, or the general character of the experience of most blacks.

Your snide comment seeks to ridicule anyone who would contend that they know more about being black in America than Snood does. Who, precisely, do you allege has said that they know more than Snood about the experience of being black in America?

If you don't have a plausible answer for that, your remark was stupid, and snotty into the bargain.

I'm not playing this game with you set.

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It's time to go back to the well:

snood wrote:

Well, I know of some people who would tell you that being african-american doesn't grant you any special insight or perspective or voice about issues specifically involving african americans.

To that, Lash replied:

Lash wrote:

If all blacks had exactly the same opinion, it would be valid.

And she further commented:

Lash wrote:

You wouldn't take my word for gospel about women's issues, would you?

To which Snood responded with:

snood wrote:

I'd say you know more about being a woman than I. And that was my WHOLE point, in its ENTIRETY.

Now, i'm not going to quote what i've written, it was too prolix, and involved several long posts. However, i basically agreed with Snood that being black gives him insight into what it means to be black in America, but i also agreed with Lash that it would not apply to all blacks. Anger and hilarity both ensued.

It is worth noting, though, that Snood was being disingenous in the second post of his in which he claimed that: "And that was my WHOLE point, in its ENTIRETY." That is false, because he also wrote:

Quote:

I had someone on this forum tell me that being an african american man gave me no better idea about how african american men are regarded in america. Still trips me out to this day...

That is an unwarranted statement on his part. The color of his skin will not inform him about how others regard him. I've been physically attacked by a black man, and when other black men i knew learned of it, they offered to find the joker and beat hell out of him. I've had black men attack me verbally, and i've had black men defend me verbally. You simply cannot know how someone regards you by looking at the color of their skin, and you simply cannot know how someone regards you because of the color of your skin.

Finally, i remarked that the color of someone's skin is a superficial characteristic, at the end of a long post:

Setanta wrote:

The point is that black people's experiences in America are no more monolithic than are the experiences of any other people who are described by a superficial trait.

In response to that, Snood wrote:

snood wrote:

What two native born black men who have not lived their lives in isolation have in common that is not in common with a white man is not all, I would argue, superficial.

Either Snood misunderstood what i had written, or was unwilling to understand what i had written. My reference to a superficial trait is a reference to skin color. The color of one's skin is something on the surface which tells you no more than that that is the color of that person's skin. It tells you nothing about the "content of their character," and it is, therefore a superficial trait. Nothing i had written said the that the common experiences of black men in America are superficial, and Snood was unjustified in making that inference, although i am willing to acknowledge that he simply misunderstood what i had written.

This is the point i was making about a superficial trait:

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."

I am sure everyone here recognizes that quote of Martin Luther King, Jr.

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blatham wrote:

I'm not playing this game with you set.

I don't consider it a game when you falsely characterize what people are saying in a manner to ridicule them and to bring them into disrepute.

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I honestly don't remember the exact thread or group of posts that I said it in, but I did say that I, as a black man, would know better about how black men are regarded. Set has explained at length why he thinks that's ridiculous.
I know how it feels to be the only black man in a roomful of whites, in a school full of whites, in a part of town full of whites. Although that might be very similar to being white surrounded by blacks, I think there is an added social dynamic peculiar to black/white relations that makes the two scenarios different. I still think another black man would understand better than Setanta or Lash if I described the looks and whispers and tones of voice and general reception by the crowd..in other words, how we are "regarded". No, I don't know what they'd say when I wasn't there, and the other things Set mentioned, but I still think that in this and many other situations, no one would understand what I was experienceing from the whites I encountered than another black man.

If I have said this would be true in every single case, I was wrong. If I have said this means my words should be held in some special regard on matters of race, then I was arrogant to say so. I hold that I haven't said any such thing, but if I had, I'd be wrong. If I was "snotty" saying so, then I need an attitude adjustment.As it is - saying that black men understand better than anyone else how black men are regarded (maybe a word that would fit better would be "treated") in predominantly white society - I still think I'm right, and I doubt I've been "snotty" anywhere in this, or the referred to thread.

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Setanta wrote:

blatham wrote:
I'm not playing this game with you set.

I don't consider it a game when you falsely characterize what people are saying in a manner to ridicule them and to bring them into disrepute.

Here's the last thing I'll write on this.

I had/have no intent to ridicule you nor lash. Nor are your reputations in any danger from anything blatham might write here. You've taken offense at what you apparently perceive as "tone" or some such in my previous posts. On the other hand, you've referred to me as "snotty", "witless" and "stupid". None of this bothers me, set. How about we just call it a draw between two narcissistic and over-inflated arseholes?

Here's where I disagree with you and with what I understand Lash to be arguing...

Quote:

[Snood] also wrote:

Quote:
I had someone on this forum tell me that being an african american man gave me no better idea about how african american men are regarded in america. Still trips me out to this day...

That is an unwarranted statement on his part. The color of his skin will not inform him about how others regard him. I've been physically attacked by a black man, and when other black men i knew learned of it, they offered to find the joker and beat hell out of him. I've had black men attack me verbally, and i've had black men defend me verbally. You simply cannot know how someone regards you by looking at the color of their skin, and you simply cannot know how someone regards you because of the color of your skin.

I don't think it is unwarranted at all. We can't 'know' what another is thinking, sure. And it must be true that the multiple others out there will demonstrate a range in how they regard you or me or snood or anyone. But even though we can't make truth-claims about the specifics of how person A will regard black person B or gay person G or muslim person M, it is a denial of the truth of things to suggest we can say nothing about the general. A week after 9/11, neither of us would have wanted to board an airplane in the US if we happened to look like an arab or a persian. That arab or persian, after a few hours in airport security, could very surely tell us things about how he is regarded by others, even if the statement refers to the general or the statistical or the probable. Denying such a claim as that arab might make in that circumstance (or in snood's circumstance) seems to take us, even if inexact, far further from the truth of real states of affairs than if we acknowledge that inexact or foggy claim.

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Set--

Thanks so much for finding the patience for your post #2617308.

Tired of the dancing. We were responding to the same contention--only, as usual, you do it so much better...

~L

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You are very kind. However, in all honesty, i usually use three words where one would do, if i were only more clever.

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But then you'd be intolerably perfect.

We can't have that s.hit.

(LOL)

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blatham wrote:

I had/have no intent to ridicule you nor lash. Nor are your reputations in any danger from anything blatham might write here. You've taken offense at what you apparently perceive as "tone" or some such in my previous posts. On the other hand, you've referred to me as "snotty", "witless" and "stupid". None of this bothers me, set.

Your remarks about Fox and motorcycle gangs seems to me to have been a very obvious attempt to suggest both that people here were responding to Snood by suggesting that they would know better than he what it means to be a black man in America, and that you wanted to ridicule anyone making such a claim. As i pointed out, i know of no one here who made such a claim. I did not refer to you as snotty, witless and stupid, i was referring to the remarks you had made, not to you. It's a cheap rhetorical trick to charge me with insulting you personally when i was commenting on the content of your posts.

Quote:

How about we just call it a draw between two narcissistic and over-inflated arseholes?

I do not consider myself or you to be narcissitic, over-inflated arseholes, and have never characterized you as such, and don't care to be characterized in that manner myself.

Quote:

Here's where I disagree with you and with what I understand Lash to be arguing...

Quote:
[Snood] also wrote:

Quote:
I had someone on this forum tell me that being an african american man gave me no better idea about how african american men are regarded in america. Still trips me out to this day...

That is an unwarranted statement on his part. The color of his skin will not inform him about how others regard him. I've been physically attacked by a black man, and when other black men i knew learned of it, they offered to find the joker and beat hell out of him. I've had black men attack me verbally, and i've had black men defend me verbally. You simply cannot know how someone regards you by looking at the color of their skin, and you simply cannot know how someone regards you because of the color of your skin.

I don't think it is unwarranted at all. We can't 'know' what another is thinking, sure. And it must be true that the multiple others out there will demonstrate a range in how they regard you or me or snood or anyone. But even though we can't make truth-claims about the specifics of how person A will regard black person B or gay person G or muslim person M, it is a denial of the truth of things to suggest we can say nothing about the general.
Quote:

Nor have i claimed that we can say nothing about the general. What both you in this case, and Snood in many of his responses are ignoring is that the color of his skin does not confer on him a special insight into how others regard him. As i will point out in my response to Snood's last post which i have seen, there are many, many other things which may condition his perception, and the color of his skin is not one of them. The reaction of others to his skin color might be one of them, but the mere fact of the color of his skin is not one of them.

Quote:
A week after 9/11, neither of us would have wanted to board an airplane in the US if we happened to look like an arab or a persian. That arab or persian, after a few hours in airport security, could very surely tell us things about how he is regarded by others, even if the statement refers to the general or the statistical or the probable. Denying such a claim as that arab might make in that circumstance (or in snood's circumstance) seems to take us, even if inexact, far further from the truth of real states of affairs than if we acknowledge that inexact or foggy claim.

However, any Arab of Persian who did not have the physical appearance, or what others consider the physical appearance, of an Arab or a Persian would not have evoked that response. Not long after September 11th, as i was leaving the United States to enter Canada, an Immigration officer ran after the jeep and stopped me, and demanded to know if i had been born in the United States. I was obliged to show him my birth certificate to show him that i was born in New York, with Irish surname, and mother's Irish maiden name printed thereon. His mumbled excuse was that i look like an Arab--and i was leaving the United States, not trying to enter it. So you may allege that i am ignoring a basic truth in not acknowledging people's biases, but i would point out that you are ignoring a basic truth in not acknowledging that looks deceive, and just as someone might misjudge Snood because he is black, so Snood might misjudge how someone regards him both because that someone is white, and because he is black.

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That's a good point, Lash. Let us just say that i am tolerably near perfection, and let it go at that.

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Eh, no.

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Perhaps there is an added social dynamic in being black among whites as opposed to being a white among blacks, Snood, but i suggest that it is more apparent than real, and may well be as conditioned by your attitudes toward whites, and your self-perception, as it is by any real response on the part of the white people to whom you refer. It is certainly not comfortable to be the only white face in a black neighborhood, and that sense can be heightened by a preconceived notion that black people can be expected to hate white people.

Can you honestly say that you have never approached a group of white people with no preconception of how they will regard you? Although it may be true that another black man can better understand what feelings you experience in the company of whites, it is not necessarily true that the mere color of your skin confers on you a special insight into how whites regard you. Are you certain that you could not be wrong about how they regard you? Are you certain that all whites in any given group will regard you in exactly the same way? Are you certain that no previous negative experience has affected your view of how whites regard you? Are you certain that your opinion of how you are regarded would never be conditioned by resentment, by paranoia, or by mere ignorance? My point is that just being black doesn't mean that you know to a certainty how you will be regarded. I know that you did not claim that you know to a certainty, but since your original statement does not at all qualify the possible scope of your perception, you did not either deny that you know to a certainty.

And i consider that this is important, because one thing which impedes the improvement of "race" relations, and gender relations, and all other such specially noted relations, is the baggage which we all bring with us when we encounter others. Many Africans whom i have met seem not to have automatically assumed how they would be regarded by whites, and in their own native lands in Africa, African whites were a minority from whom they had no reason to apprehend any trouble. Many of the Africans i have known (and i learned to speak French from African friends, and thereby got to know quite a few) have expressed surprise at the simmering undercurrent of racial resentment and hatred in American society. Even knowing in advance about the civil rights movement and the violence attendant upon that era in our nation's history, they were not prepared for how that history conditioned the responses of both white and black people to one another. I would suggest to you that it is entirely possible that being black, you might habitually misjudge how white people regard you, at least to the extent that not all whites will necessarily regard you in the same manner.

I'm no hero, rather somewhat of a physical coward in fact (until i either get drunk, which i no longer do, or when my temper gets the better of me), and yet because of my background, i simply never assumed that black people were my enemy, and never feared to go among them. When that joker in the Army assaulted me, i was completely unprepared for the possibility that a black man would want to attack me just because i was white. Within about 15 minutes, i was back among friends, black and white, and when my black companions learned that i had been assaulted (someone else who had been in the NCO club told them, i wasn't looking for sympathy or revenge), they were enraged and wanted to hunt him down and kick his ass. That was actually a fortunate circumstance, because although they didn't do it, and i asked them to forget about it, that taught me that the guy who attacked me was conditioned by his own perverse personality, and not the color of his skin.

So i suggest to you that you might apply some of the commendable humility which you have consistently shown you are capable of applying to yourself, and ask yourself if you are correct to assume how you are regarded by white folks. How you are treated i would not dispute, and it is probably no more than wise discretion to keep that in mind when dealing with white people. But it would help not to assume that all whites will regard or treat you in the same manner as any other particular white man.

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Tip-toeing in to make a small point. Set, in your last post you said that a border agent ran after you because he thought you looked Arab. Then you said:

Quote:

I was obliged to show him my birth certificate to show him that i was born in New York, with Irish surname, and mother's Irish maiden name printed thereon.

Don't you think that is a huge difference? If you had been Arab, I wonder how long you would have been delayed? For hours, probably. You couldn't have known how that would have felt to an Arab because you would always know that you could prove your ethnicity and citizenship.

If you didn't have those documents with you, how much longer do you think you would have been delayed? You may understand how differently it would have gone without the documents, but you would never, ever be able to know how an Arab would have felt in that situation.

I think you might have been irritated by my expression of enjoyment of the writing on this thread, including how humorous it is at times. You'll have to live with it. There is seldom a thread that has lasted this long without insults spewing without regard to what has been written. You and Bernie, Snood and Lash are wonderful writers and it is a joy to read such good arguments. This is a refreshing change from the usual diatribes and I continue to enjoy reading every word.

I also meant what I said about Lash picking a fight with the bunny. Those two are among the most talented women on a2k and reading their arguments is like watching one of the great old movies when people acutally spoke with wit as well as conviction while flinging insults about.
So please just accept the compliment and I promise to keep out of the way.

Carry on.

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Snood, right about the glue, but it is the best glue to be found on a2k. LOL

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Diane wrote:

Quote:
I was obliged to show him my birth certificate to show him that i was born in New York, with Irish surname, and mother's Irish maiden name printed thereon.

Don't you think that is a huge difference? If you had been Arab, I wonder how long you would have been delayed? For hours, probably. You couldn't have known how that would have felt to an Arab because you would always know that you could prove your ethnicity and citizenship.

If you didn't have those documents with you, how much longer do you think you would have been delayed? You may understand how differently it would have gone without the documents, but you would never, ever be able to know how an Arab would have felt in that situation.

Sure, i don't deny any of that. My point in telling the tale was just to point out that looks can deceive. At no time have i claimed i know how Arabs, or blacks, feel in such a situation. I can and do know how a white boy feels when he is treated in a particular way because of his skin color--but that wasn't my point.

Quote:

I think you might have been irritated by my expression of enjoyment of the writing on this thread, including how humorous it is at times. You'll have to live with it.

I can live with quite well, because it doesn't happen to be true. I am not irritated with you.

Quote:

Carry on.

I usually do.

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Political Correctness: Make a Judgment

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