To understand is not, by any stretch, to forgive, but I do understand how somebody gets here, and how he doesn’t get why it’s such a big deal. I grew up someplace where people used that word casually, and told each other things like “there are black people, and then there are n—s.” I’ve heard that from black people.. Which is in no way an excuse. When I was young, but old enough to have understood the impact of that word, I remember being distressed to hear my own father, an intelligent, educated man, use it. My grandmother, a woman who literally taught me that all people were equal, used it in reference to somebody who had cut her off in traffic, in the early stages of what we later discovered was Alzheimer’s, and it was downright shocking. It was one of the signs that we needed to take her decline more seriously.
It’s a poisonous culture, and otherwise good people steep in it, not just the willfully hateful ones. They’re also fond of defending themselves by saying, “it’s not race, it’s culture,” oblivious to the irony of what their “culture” has done to make them think nothing of picking a viciously hurtful word for dramatic emphasis.
If someone follows someone all the way home after a non-collision traffic incident, you’d have to imagine that the asshat doing that may mean to do you some harm.
Mr. racist a-hole is lucky that the guy didn’t get out of his car with a baseball bat or a gun.
I’d drive to the local range where they know me. Quickly duck into the shop and let them know that some a-hole was following me and probably meant to do some harm. Let the guy follow if he wants to be a racist a-hole in someone’s business where they’re all well armed.
I’m not above hiding behind someone else’s bulletproof glass.
“I don’t understand all this hatred. This just ain’t fair. That guy kept reminding me over and over and over I had to get that duct work finished today, so I got upset and called him a nagger. And that’s the truth so help me gawd.”
I am white, and I interact with people of all colors on a daily basis. Even though I live in a relatively progressive area I find that conversations with POC invariably start with something ranging from guarded politeness to damn near “Yes massa”, and while it only takes a few seconds of interaction for that to fall away and we can have a more normal conversation it breaks my heart that anyone should live in a society where, for their own safety, that must be the default mode of interaction.
He doesn’t understand the intensity of the hatred? Mate, I don’t understand the intensity of your hatred. Why would you think that’s the way to behave/an acceptable thing to say under any circumstance?
Wow it’s almost like a lifetime of bad behavior gone unquestioned and unchallenged can lead one to make decisions that have consequences one didn’t foresee. Maybe it’s time to finally grow up and stop being an asshole dude?
There’s going to have to be a point when this is no longer the typical outcome and when we start seeing that we’ll know we have made progress. Literally the only good I can find in the fact that I’m pretty sure you’re totally right. It’s frustrating that there is such a powerful group of people devoted to the cause of making sure white people are not held accountable for their own actions. Rewarding a people for refusing to accept accountability for their own actions sets up such a toxic social dynamic. It’s even bad for the people who are reaping the rewards from it, though they don’t know it. The people who manipulate and thrive in such a dynamic are honestly some of the worst humans on earth. They don’t need to be enabled.
While I grew up hearing the same horrible stuff (not from my Dad, and I probably would have had a heart attack if I heard Gramma say it) and I don’t disagree with what you are saying, this guy…he followed someone to his house. That’s not the result of growing up along with people too comfortable with hate speech. He also knew that he was being recorded. How would he have behaved if he thought it was really just between the two of them and his god?
