Racist Backtracking at its Finest
Posted on April 23, 2004 Posted by John Scalzi 1 Comment
I thought I’d elevate this out of the Unassimilated Hispanic Menace comment thread, mostly because I find it amusing to watch racists wriggle. Be warned there’s some bad language coming up.
Let me first note that by and large, the comments in the thread there have been interesting and thoughtful, as is par for the course for the Whatever readers and commentors. But occasionally someone likes to come by and be a feculent, draining asshole. Meet “Mark,” who came over by way of Drudge Retort, which had posted a cropped picture of Athena as part of a link back to the entry. Mark felt compelled to come over to say:
“Cute little wetback girl. I wonder if she’ll grow up to do donkey shows like her whore mother.”
To which I responded:
“Probably not, Mark. She’s not your sister.
Further note to the folks who wish to display their flagrant and abject racist stupidity: Try to have a little more creativity about it, please? If you’re going to be a flagrant racist asshole, you need to stand out from all the other flagrant racist assholes out there. Try to exhibit a little style. I know, it’ll be difficult, given the general inability of your neurons to fire on a regular pattern. But do make the effort, why don’t you. ”
Mark then backtracked:
“Sorry. Didn’t realize she was your daughter. My apologies.
I’m outta here! Best wishes!”
This implied he was leaving, so I was content to leave it alone. But it appears he did in fact not leave, because when Phillip J. Birmingham made the cogent comment:
“Yeah, because it’s okay to spew vile insults about little girls if you don’t know anybody they’re related to, right?”
The presumed-disappeared Mark responded with:
“Depends what race they are.”
To which I responded:
“Try the human race, Mark.”
Which apparently prompted the following backtrack from Mark:
“Well, race isn’t so much a factor than is culture. Some cultures raise children that are destined to be criminals. The black culture in the U.S. for example. It’s a culture that embraces failure as success and sees success as failure. It’s really not genetic that this will happen. It’s a cultural problem that is embraced by the colored folks here in the U.S.
To succeed in life is to be labeled an ‘Uncle Tom’ or as ‘giving into whitey.’ When a black is successful, he/she ‘loses’ his race and is labeled a sellout (e.g., Clarence Thomas, Colin Powell, C. Rice, etc.) It’s a shame that blacks are so racist against their own race.
So, no. I am not a racist.”
I responded:
“Otherwise known as the ‘there’s black people, and then there’s n—ers’ argument, which in my experience is usually offered by people who want to find a plausible way to try to dodge their racism, and usually aren’t fooling anyone with it.
I agree that’s there’s a cultural strata that tends to look down on its members doing better, but in my experience it has far less (indeed, near to nothing) to do with race and quite a lot to do with economics and education; in other words, poor and willfully ignorant people of all colors, creeds and nationalities will strike out at others doing better, even within their demographics. White trash don’t much cotton to their own puttin’ on airs, either, and I say that as a former recipient of tubs of government cheese.
So, yeah, Mark, you still smell like a racist to me. Of course, you tipped your hand the moment you called my daughter a wetback and my wife a whore. I hope you’ll understand I find it very unconvincing for you to try to backtrack from that. ”
Which earns a denial, a backtrack and a second denial, because Mark’s all about value:
“I never called your daughter a wetback nor your wife a whore. Well, if I did, it was unintentional for your daughter’s picture was posted on a Communist website for all the world to see earlier.
Still, I’m not a racist. I am black.”
Which kind of got me going:
“Well, no. You intentionally called my daughter a wetback and my wife a whore, and you intentionally came to my site from another site to do so. You just didn’t realize they were my wife and daughter. Since it’s very clear in the essay that she is my daughter (all those parts where I call her “my daughter” are a dead giveaway), and yet you say you didn’t know that fact, this suggests very strongly that you didn’t read the article, so your only reason to come to my site was that you get some undefined pleasure out of calling little girls racist names wherever you can, regardless of context.
I appreciate that you wouldn’t have called my daughter a wetback and my wife a whore to my face, had you known they were my wife and daughter, nevertheless less you did call my daughter a wetback and my wife a whore. So now I know what you think of my family. Thanks for that information.”
As for the ‘Still, I’m not a racist. I am black” bit, I say:
“Uh-huh. Because it’s not racist to go out of your way to visit someone’s website to call a little girl in a picture a ‘wetback’ if you’re black.”
At which point I closed the thread, because I felt like having the last word there (I can do that, it’s my site) and because I’m elevating the comments here, since they paint such a lovely picture of Mark that I just felt I had to share.
Here’s a helpful note to racists: Please don’t bother trying to pretend you’re not. It’s embarrassing. It’s embarrassing for you, because you’re not fooling anyone. And it’s embarrassing for us. Being in front of someone who is obviously racist and declares that they’re not is like being with a child who has a mouth full of jellybeans yet swears he hasn’t touched the jellybean jar. They’re just so fumblingly stupid and false you hardly know what to say. In the case of Mark, let’s review: Man travels to a Web site he’s never visited before to type a racial slur (and a sexist slur, to boot) about a picture there. But, he’s not a racist. Honestly, I couldn’t be more embarrassed for this fellow. It’s just sad.
It’s not like I want racists puttering around the site — I dislike people who dislike other people purely on genetic grounds, and I encourage them to play in their own vile, badly-plumbed pools of hate and leave me well the hell alone — but look: If you are racist, just have the cojones to own up to it. I won’t respect you any more than if you try to hide it, but at the very least you’ll save us all a lot of time. Be who you are. And then please head back to your racially-pure enclave. Us mongrels have better things to do.
Backpeddling Racists
John Scalzi, a blogger you really should be reading, has a post on his blog that is both amusing and appalling. It’s about the appearance of a racist on his site in the comments, but even more about his ham-handed backtracking he tried to do. It began …