5385

These are people who are triggered when a cup tells them “Happy Holidays.” They don’t need logic or facts to see conspiracy everywhere.

5386
5387

I will say this: if your intent was to make people see that playingwithknives had a point, you succeeded magnificently.

I’ll agree with that. So why aren’t you following your own advice?

Communication involves engaging in the conversation in good faith. That involves letting the other person talk, even … especially … when I disagree with them.

Communication involves always entertaining the possibility I might be wrong.

Communication involves being able to imagine and acknowledge that the other person may know and understand me better than I understand them. (Which is not to say either understands the other perfectly.)

Communication involves listening - actually listening and absorbing what is said, not just impatiently counting the seconds until I can talk again. (This is true even if the other party isn’t listening themselves; just because they aren’t doing it doesn’t mean I get a pass on doing it myself.)

Communication involves acknowledging the right of other people to be themselves, without telling them every single time that I’d find them more convincing if they thought, acted, and felt exactly like me.

Communication involves acknowledging that communication may make me uncomfortable, because not everything is about making me feel comfortable.

But here’s something that has fuck-all to do with real communication or sweet reason: saying I am free to diminish or dismiss your arguments, suggestions, or feelings simply because there are more of me than there are of you. Especially when it isn’t actually true (we white males make up a mere 31% of the US population) and what I must really mean is, “My group has more money and power than yours, and we can shut you up if we don’t like what you say. So get in line.”*

The name for that is not communication or reason. It’s thuggery. It’s the sort of thing Karens and Trumps do. And you don’t want to be a Karen or a Trump.

Do you?

*“But its just a cold, hard fact of reality!” I might think. Perhaps; but in a reasonable conversation do we have to automatically accept it? On closer examination it might not turn out to be a fact at all (circa 1985 I would have taken it as a “fact” that no black person would be elected president in my lifetime), or it might not turn out to be relevant to the conversation. If we’re trying to be reasonable, isn’t it better to ask the other person how they would accommodate the alleged fact into their narrative then simply dismiss theirs and substitute my own?

5388

I learned kindness and sharing from Mrs. Butterworth.

5389
5390

Yes …

… in about 1968 or so. I remember the controversy as a wee 'un. (In practice they kept the name, gave the character a less-yikes makeover every few years, and skated by until now.)

5391

I mean of course you only trust the free market until it makes a decision you don’t like. See the NRA, protections for fossil fuel companies, blanket immunity for businesses re-opening during a pandemic, etc.

5392

This.

It certainly should, but rarely does these days. As a society, we have largely lost the ability to think critically. People don’t know how to have a discussion anymore. If someone expresses a different opinion, people frequently feel like they are under attack, rather than consider the opinion being expressed and show willingness to reconsider their beliefs.

Opinions and views that are outside a person’s normal experience should be cherished precisely because they are different. Learning and progress come from exposure to new thoughts and ideas. You don’t have to agree with every new idea you are exposed to, but challenging your own beliefs on a regular basis will lead to changing them or strengthening them.

Timex effectively said “White ideas matter”. I don’t think that’s what this community wants to be.

5393

One wonders if they will start thinking Log Cabin syrup is named after the Log Cabin Republicans and demand it be renamed…

5394

I don’t see her saying that at all. Funny.

5395

In the case of Baseball, they might not have to worry about playing until 2022, so they have time to figure it out.

5396

It’s very hard to read tone in text, goodness knows, so it could absolutely all be in my head.

5397

I got a whiff of that as well. Maybe not to that degree, but kind of an assumption that most white people have a past anything like hers. I never shoplifted, ran from the cops, drove while drunk, etc. Her experiences definitely show how different those things can be for a white person rather than a minority but I don’t think her history is representative of white people in general which seemed to be the implication. Her larger point and sentiment are spot on, though.

5398

OK, not just me at least. I think what really tripped that for me was this bit:

I’m asking the white people reading this to think about the crimes you’ve committed. (Note: You don’t call them crimes. You and your parents call them mistakes.) Think of all the mistakes you’ve made that you were allowed to survive.

I’m just sitting here thinking I’ve never committed a crime of the sort she’s describing and if I had my parents would most definitely not have minimized it as a mistake. I get the sense she had a very rough upbringing (or a very indulgent one?).

Absolutely, and I don’t want to detract from that, it was just kind of jarring.

5399

That girl is scary. She conked someone in the head with a wine bottle. She could have killed that person.

5400

I managed to get up to some very lame but absolutely illegal hijinks when I was young and I certainly had friends who did much worse things that included run ins with the law on multiple occasions and all these (white) friends are alive and free of criminal record so I think her point is a pretty good one.

5401

I assumed she’s holding herself up as an extreme example, but yes the matter of fact way she rattled that off does make me want to move a few seats further away from her on the bus.

Meanwhile, while Minneapolis seems to be making moves to improve things in Louisville not so much.

5402

Hopefully it’s clear that I’m in no way disputing that. My issue is with some fairly brazen assumptions she seems to be making about her readers, not with her underlying point.

5403

She is humble-bragging about how much shit she got away with as a juvenile delinquent, basically.

5404

Very much so. I didn’t do much as a kid, but I sure as fuck knew a lot of people who did. And I knew people in their 20’s who did some fucked up shit and got away with almost all of it. The worst anyone got that I ever knew of was a DUI.

I think the point is, look at this insane fucking shit I did and I have no record. But if a black kid steals a bag of Skittles they’ll probably have one. If they survived it.