June 2013
Arguing with a Racist: A Drinking Game
I posted this back on my old blog awhile back. The list itself was inspired by an actual argument I had on twitter with a defender (Johnny Argent, Roseanne Barr’s partner) of avowed anti-Semite Gilad Atzmon. And by “inspired”, I mean pretty much all of these examples occurred over the course of one conversation. But I’ve also experienced these events in many conversations about other minority groups (Blacks, Latinos, Gays) — as I said, it’s basically transmutable to any -ism you want. Anyway, it was one of my more popular posts back then, so I thought I’d unleash it on the tumblrs.
* * *
You ever had a conversation with someone hell-bent on defending a racist (him/herself or someone else)? There are some predictable moves they’ll make — and by “predictable” I mean “virtually all of these conversations could track my anti-discrimination syllabus class-for-class”. So I figured, if I’m going to be driven to suicide by these idiots, I may as well go down via drinking game. But let’s be clear — actually playing this game? Will kill you. Nobody’s tolerance is high enough.
That said — here are the rules! Note that I’m using “Black” as my stand-in minority group, but you can substitute pretty freely (Jews, gays, Latinos — try it, it’s fun!). And feel free to add your own rules in the comments.
* * *
“I don’t have a prejudiced bone in my body.” (1 sip)
“I asked him and he said he wasn’t racist.” (2 sips. But if he says “let’s ask him and see if he admits he’s racist,” replace alcohol with juice because he’s too naive to be older than 11 and you’re in for a long night)
“I think he’s really brave to even ask these questions.” (1 sip)
“Oh there you go, playing the ‘race card’” (1 sip, 3 sips if you haven’t actually called the person racist yet, 5 sips if you haven’t even spoken yet)
“So I guess anytime someone criticizes a Black man, it’s ‘racist’?” (1 sip)
“CRITICIZING AFFIRMATIVE ACTION IS NOT RACIST.” (1 sip, 3 sips if nobody’s arguing that all such criticisms — as opposed to this particular criticism — are. Which is to say, 3 sips).
“I’m not saying I agree with everything he says, but he makes some astute points” (1 sip to start, 2 sips if he won’t say which things he disagrees with, 3 sips if he won’t say which parts he agrees with, and down the bottle if the “astute point” is “Blacks were better off enslaved”/”Jews do run the world”/”gays are basically an armada of child molesters”)
“But I have Black friends/family!” (1 sip) “…and they agree with me!” (another sip)
“Not every Black person agrees with you!” (1 sip)
“You’re the real racist….” (1 sip)“…. for thinking about race so much” (1 sip)
“…. for even thinking race is a thing” (1 sip)
“…. for holding yourself out as different. Why do you think you’re better than the rest of us, huh?” (down the bottle)
“You’re just afraid of hard truths. Stop being so PC!” (2 sips)
“I’m just asking questions okay? Stop being so defensive!” (1 sip) “…. do you have something to hide?” (another sip)
“Oh, so I need a lifetime of study before I opine about your group?” (2 sips, but down the bottle if it would have taken less than an hour of “study” to know what was said was idiotic).
“It is true! I know because …”“… I read it on the internet” (1 sip)
“… my Black friend said so.” (1 sip)
“… well, everyone knows that it’s true.” (3 sips)
[multiply drinks x2 if what’s “true” is a well-known urban legend/conspiracy theory; x3 if upon being informed of that the response is “sure, that’s what the Mossad wants you to think.”]
“TRUE OR FALSE: THERE ARE BLACK PEOPLE WHO HAVE DONE BAD THINGS!” (1 sip)
“Who made you the knowledge/PC police? What makes you so sure you know what you’re talking about” (1 sip if you’re a member of the group under attack, and/or 1 sip if you actually do have an academic or professional specialty in the topic under discussion).
“I’m not saying racism is okay, but I understand it given that Black people do [whatever].” (1 sip)
“I don’t have a problem with Black people. I have a problem with ….” (1 sip, but brace yourself)“… their music, clothing, and culture.” (1 sip)
“… the 80% of them who disagree with me.” (2 sips)
“… institutions populated primarily by Black people.” (3 sips)
“… the uppity ones.” (down the bottle)
UPDATE
Some more:
“All I’m saying is how about a White History Month for a change?” (1 sip — thanks Bill)
“You see racists behind every bush.” (1 sip, add another if they accuse you of it being a hobby)
“Louis Farrakhan exists. Therefore….” (1 sip)“…. until you condemn him to my satisfaction, shut up.” (2 sips)
“…. racism is totally justified.” (2 sips)
“…. anybody who talks about racism is Louis Farrakhan” (down the bottle)
[x2 if Farrakhan is replaced with Jesse Jackson, x3 if he’s replaced with Kanye West]
“So I guess Black people are perfect in every way?” (2 sips)
Listen
美丽的稻穗 - 杨弦
“The emergence and success of antisemitism in the late 19th and 20th centuries cannot be understood without recognition of the large part played by a centuries-long heritage of Christian doctrinal hostility to Jews. This ‘anti-Judaism’ was an inherent part of Christianity after Paul, and was virtually inevitable once Jews had rejected the essential Christian claim that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ. This conflict over beliefs led to the institutionalization within medieval European Christendom of the Jews as a protected, but oppressed minority. Doctrinally, Jews, cast in Christian theology as ‘Christ’s killers’, were to be held in a subordinate and wretched state in order to act as evidence of the consequences of their blindness toward the truth of Christ’s divinity, but this also meant that they were to be preserved, so that they could eventually act as witnesses, at the Second Coming, to that truth. As such, Jews were the sole minority faith tolerated within the confines of Western Christendom; and Jews also clearly played a central role, as the original Chosen People of the one God, to Christian understanding of the world.”
—Steven Beller, Antisemitism: A Very Short Introduction (via lazersilberstein)
Ghosts of the Rio Grande →
prospect.org
On the hundreds of corpses that go unindentified every year along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Brendan Borrell | The American Prospect | Jun 2013
Give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day. give a fish a man and you appease the Fish-lord who has terrorized coastal communities.But at what cost? the people will not be happy that one of their own has been given to a fish
Two Pessimistic Outlooks on Fixing the Nation's Bridges | Planetizen →
planetizen.com
Politicians uninterested in helping fix the situation, leaving repairs to emergency funds. And endangering the public…
NPR’S Scott Simon introduces the topic (on the audio version) with this somber revelation: “[C]hances are 1 in 9 that a bridge you drive over has been deemed structurally deficient, or basically in bad shape, by the federal government.” Worse yet, “there is no consensus on how to tackle the problem or pay for proposed solutions”.
In the aftermath of the collapse of the Skagit River Bridge, NPR’s Brian Naylor interviews Barry LePatner, a New York real estate and construction lawyer and author of Too Big to Fall: America’s Failing Infrastructure and the Way Forward, that analyzed the collapse of the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis, Minn. in August, 2007.
“
Six years ago, I had a deal with Lifetime Television to develop my bestselling novel, The Dirty Girls Social Club, as a TV series. It soon became clear that the relationship wasn’t going to work, when two executives insisted that my pilot outline “wasn’t Latin enough,” because it told of middle class, educated American women who happened to be Latina.
“This reads as if it were about me and my friends,” complained one executive in disgust.
I didn’t know how to respond, so I asked her what she’d prefer.
“Why don’t we make the girls debating whether or not to date men in prison? I know that’s what Latinas talk about, just like it’s what black women talk about.”
people always want to talk shit about us when we complain about f—-d up representation…but these are the conversations happening in board rooms….
(via alienswithankhs)
I love how potato in French is pomme de terre, which pretty much means “earth apple.”
like what stupid frenchman saw this:
and said “zis petite légume looks like a, how you say, APPLE! hmmm… but it grows in ze earth… HON HON HON! MAIS OUI! C’EST UNE POMME DE TERRE!”
j’adore comment ananas se dit pineapple en anglais, ce qui veut littéralement dire “pomme de pin”, genre quel type anglais a vu ça:
et s’est dit : “ow cette étrange big fruit ressemble à une, how do you say, POMME! hmmm… mais plutôt une pomme qui pousse dans les pins… HU HU HU! OH YES, IT’S A PINEAPPLE!”
(z’avez vu, on peut le faire aussi… hon hon hon!)
“Do not say, “How was it that former times were better than these?” For that is not a question prompted by wisdom.”
—Kohelet (Ecclesiastes) 7:10 (via tzilahjewishcultureandhistory)
In which I read gangster memoirs
My favorite part of The Last Testament of Lucky Luciano is when he admits that on one occasion when he was nervous about a sexual encounter he was effectively seduced by the prostitute revealing that she was Jewish and feeding him bagels & lox.
May 2013
Random fact of the day
“Blood is thicker than water”, when used in the context of family over friends, is in fact a wildly incorrect bastardisation.
The true, full quote is “The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb,” and refers to relationships forged by choice holding deeper meaning than those of mere biology.
I like the full quote better.
There is no source that I can find for such a ‘full’ quote other than recent posts such as this claiming it is the original and some older religious sites and books where it is a rather obvious distortion of the familiar proverb to suit their needs (the use of ‘covenant’ should be hint).
The Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs on the other hand has the first recorded version as being daz sippebluot von wassere niht verdirbet (“kin-blood is not spoiled by water”).
Edited to add: this person has an interesting theory as to what “spoiled by water” refers to, and it’s the exact inverse of what those who would put covenant before family are proposing the proverb means.
