I'll come right out with it - I have been accused of being a racist. Rather than defend myself against this woeful injustice, I have chosen to respond in a far superior manner - attacking the person who accused me.
As someone who grew up in the age of computers, I spend a decent portion of time "on-line." This necessarily involves some degree of interaction with other people who spend time "on-line," and, of course, when people come together under condition of anonymity, disagreements must necessarily arise (The folks over at Penny Arcade lend their insight to this issue here, if you are interested). During one of these interactions, it seems that I fell victim to Mr. Gabriel's theory and said something that came off the wrong way. Frankly I don't see the offensive quality of my comment - I said "peace niggas!" before going "off-line" one day - and if anyone is really offended by that, they have much bigger problems than my racism to deal with. But anyway, that is actually not my point.
I was later contacted by someone who had heard of the incident. The first thing he asked me - and I laughed about this for quite some time afterwards - was "are u black?" Despite the aforementioned warm blanket of anonymity, I chose to tell this man the truth (if some random blogger is reading this, I'm about as white as it gets), after which he proceeded to chew me out and inform me that I should never say anything like that.
I have been waiting to see this person - who, I'm told, is black himself - again, so that I can ask him this question: "What would you have done if I had lied and said that I was black?"
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
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4 comments:
Are you really so popular that strangers contact you to ask about your instant messages?
I'm kind of a big deal. People know me.
Really. I'm very happy for you.
Racism: "Discrimination or prejudice based on race," (dictionary.com).
This means that all discrimination based on race is racist. Saying that a member of one race or another cannot use certain words or terms is a form of discrimination. Ergo, stating that you cannot use the above term on the basis of your race is itself racist.
You may want to carefully consider the possibility of insulting people before you run away with this little proof though. You can insult people even if you aren't being a racist.
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