OT Either stop locking threads or close the OT forum down

Oh good, semantics. If I say something that's not racist, and someone publically says "that's racist", I'm offended.

The person "who offended him" didn't offend him. What he said was not offensive, at all, let alone racist.

 

The person who said the thing doesn't get to decide what offends the person hearing the thing; if the person was offended, then that's where the conversation has to begin. Following it up by snarking about the black victim card probably didn't help either.

 

You can take yourself as seriously as you want and get offended over anything, that doesn't require me to apologize. And when someone does take it too seriously and overreacts, that's where the escalation begins.

 

Talk to me......

..... like lovers do....

 

And this lack of empathy, this lack of interest in thinking about the other person's feelings and why they reacted the way they did, is exactly why threads get locked, people get (temp) banned, and still even after all that nobody has learned any lessons.

 

I wish it were that simple. But I don’t want to have to apologize for every micro aggression that someone feels on here.

I’d rather people just not assume I’m a racist asshole.

 

How is it a lack of empathy? Because he didn't apologize for something he didn't need to apologize for?

 

Also, and be completely honest. What do you think his reaction would’ve been?

Do you think he would’ve accepted that as not being racist?

Or do you think he would’ve started out in all caps telling me how racist it is, and to gtfo?

 

Maybe I’ll just put a disclaimer apology in my sig?

I also think it’s common courtesy, and respectful, to not assume that other people are racist.

That includes: not interpreting everything they say, as the worst interpretation, then making you apologize for their interpretation; or risk being a racist asshole.

 

Empathy isn't apologizing.

Empathy is giving a shit about how you affect others.

If you say something, and someone else gets super angry about it, EMPATHY is not digging in and telling the other person to get over it because you weren't wrong to say what you did.

If you say something, and someone gets super angry about it, EMPATHY is taking five seconds and asking yourself "Why did that just happen? Maybe I should back off."

Apologizing isn't weakness, even if you're not wrong. Even if you don't have to apologize. It's part of the conversation that HOPEFULLY ends with both of you being happier than when you started.

 

I'm sure there are plenty of folks here who don't think you're a racist. Can't speak for the latter, though.

 

Do you want to be right, or do you want to be happy?

 

He's not required to meditate on the inner working of someone who called his comments racist.

But lets say your right and it's a lack of empathy. My only point is why can't the other party, the one who overreacted FIRST, show empathy first and understand what the actual intention was? Why can't they show an interest in thinking about the other person's feelings?

What locks threads is people overreacting to stupid shit.

 

Hillbilly isn't a race. And you keep moving in this hillbilly direction when we know why he said it. Context matters. Imo there's really no argument about it. He's not a hillbilly so why would we think that he's using hillbilly language?

Answer this for me:

My white side of the family (believe I have one or not) calls their kids "lil monkey" all the time. The Black kids (there are 4 of the 14) don't get called that. Why?

Because these forward thinking white folk understand that's why.

 

When your life experience is full of people saying things specifically to belittle you or people like you, in clever ways that are not directly, obviously terms associated with your race specifically to pretend you weren't being racist (i.e., dogwhistling), maybe your radar for dogwhistling is sensitive enough that sometimes there are false positives.

(if I'm speaking out of school, I'll edit or delete this)

Again, the conversation has to be one where an apology isn't going to end with the other person saying they won the conversation. That's not going to happen when the first person is doubling down on belittling the reacting guy as a victim.

 

You know what I just realized. All the guys who want to arm teachers, are the same ones that voted for Trump, and are on the same side of this argument....... that's interesting.

 

It’s not about being right.