I thought this was the 21st century, but I must have been mistaken. Ashley Miller has been disowned by her father because she was…
…dating a black man.
It can’t possibly be what it sounds like, can it? I’m sure he has good reasons for casting his own beloved daughter away. Her mother explains:
Your father is an old Southern man, he was raised like that, he was raised to believe that races just don’t mix. It was the final straw. He loves you, he just doesn’t like you.
You know what? The “old Southern man”, that noble chevalier of Gone With the Wind and other such romanticized tripe, was actually just a bigoted asshole. Putting yourself in that box is not a good excuse for anything. Some aspects of the Southern heritage are simply not the province of decent human beings, now or ever.
The way I had read her account of it, he was already feeling virtuous because he didn’t disown her for being an atheist. This sounds to me like the match that set off the gasoline fumes of his growing resentment.
That is awful. My heart goes out to her and her boyfriend.
Well… yeah. Sometimes parents disown their kids for the stupidest reasons imaginable. Parents are people too, and people are stupid. The real question is, how much effort would you make to retain someone who wasn’t your dad if he’d behaved in such a backward fashion?
I suspect the answer is “none at all”, in which case why bother trying to mollify this little tantrum simply because it’s your dad who’s throwing it? Let him stew for a bit – he’ll see sense eventually. If he doesn’t… he’s a bigot. Fuck him.
Reading this I just thought of Gorkon line in ST6 “… I see we have a long way to go”. Same days it seems more appropriate then others.
That’s just… words fail, really.
I grew up in the heart of Missouri, in a little farming town with one gas station, no stop lights, where everyone was 99% white and went to the same Catholic church every weekend. My family has lived in that area for a century, on the same farm where I was born and raised, all descended from German Catholic immigrants. Nearly 5 years ago I first brought the woman who is now my wife home to meet my family (parents, brothers, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and 13 cousins). My wife is Chinese and moved to the U.S. for graduate school, which is where we met. I am proud to say that EVERY SINGLE ONE of them treated my wife with anything other than warm acceptance and familial inclusion.
The “old Southern man” in this story does not deserve his daughter, or the right to call himself a human being. My heart goes out to Ms. Miller, and I hope she can one day reconcile with her tragically benighted father, but I hope she does not feel even the faintest glimmer of guilt over the current situation.
oops :P
“anything” = “nothing” at the end of 1st paragraph
Evidently he was raised to not go back on his raisin’. I live in small-town southern Missouri, and I run across that attitude now and then, from some otherwise smart people—“that’s not how you were raised!” And it’s always about religion or some other form of hatefulness that they can’t imagine one giving up.
The father may not know any better, but he should.
Sad and depressing.
(Wondering if some trolling schmuck will post a rendition of ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ as a retort to PZ’s post of CSN&Y’s ‘Southern Man’.)
BTW,.. PZ, nice touch tossing in the video of CSN&Y doing ‘Southern Man’ in regard to your posted subject.
And the boyfriend isn’t even atheist!!!
I have five kids (all 19+), who drive me up the wall sometimes (as I’m sure I do them) but I can’t imagine any circumstances under which I would disown any of them.
Ashley has my sympathy.
You can pick your friends, but, unfortunately, you can’t pick the asshole whose momentary ecstasy forced you to become a life.
I bet he doesn’t consider himself to be racist either!
I…I’m speechless. I’m so sorry Ashley has to deal with this.
kreativekaos,
I have long heard the idea that “Sweet Home” was a retort to “Southern Man”. If it is, then it is weak sauce. The money quote is “Well I hope Neil Young will remember/A southern man don’t need him around, anyhow.” This response is nothing more than “I’m taking my ball and going home.” The writers of “Sweet Home” can’t respond to the nuts-and-bolts of “Southern Man” because that would involve standing up in defense of racism and treason, so they make it about tribal affinity.
I always turn the station, or the radio off, when that childish piece of trash begins playing.
My sympathies are with Ashley. I know what it is to be on the outs with a parent. My father and I didn’t speak for nearly 2 years.
I guess we can all be thankful that this sort of thing only happens in the South and not in the more civilized parts of the world.
From the link;
It speaks volumes about him that he believes himself entitled to ‘forbid’ his wife to talk to her own daughter in person.
So a misogynist as well as a racist.
He isn’t merely ‘not supporting her lifestyle’ – he is disowning her because she isn’t the kind of reactionary racist he wants her to be. He is behaving as if he owns her.
So, he ‘loves’ her but he is never going to speak to her again because his bigotry means more to him than his own flesh and blood?
That doesn’t much sound like familial love worth the name to me.
So its her fault that her father has disowned her now, because she refuses to exist as his personal property? Charming.
So, he was raised to be a bigot. That is unfortunate (and I have some understanding of what that may be like, given that my own family isn’t what you would call a paragon of progressivism), but the important part is that he has apparently never bothered to reexamine those bigoted beliefs. And this despite the fact that society has changed, and the evidence for how toxic such racism is is everywhere.
He isn’t a child any more. ‘My parent’s raised me that way’ is no excuse once you are an adult – it is reasonable to expect you to think for yourself, and if you remain a racist, then that is on you, and no one else.
More victim-blaming.
… Just using emotional blackmail to try to force you to do what we want.
Oh, can’t you just hear the sincerity?
‘Standing by’ someone when they are being an unreasonable bigot doesn’t do them any favours. It merely enables their prejudice.
Ashley miller and her boyfriend have all my sympathy. That her father cannot deal with the fact that it isn’t still 1940 is his problem.
Unfortunately Ashley’s father loves his racism more than he loves his daughter.
Some people, disproportionately due to religious leanings, have a warped concept of “love.” The Phelps cult also claims to “love” people as they helpfully inform them, in the most vile of terms, that they too love them. (And presumably want to tell us how detestable we are.) To quote Inigo Montoya: “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
<gasp> No! I’d have to disown my daughter if she did that!
(No, not really. She gets to make her own choices.)
Side Note/OT: I hate the termed “disowned”, as if the father here “owned” his daughter. I know it’s mostly just a saying, but it has always bothered me. No, you don’t own you children or wife. They are not possessions.
“my boyfriend isn’t even an atheist”… yet.
BUAHAHAHAHAHA
@bobo #12
Of course. He’s just in favor of states’ rights.
I’ve seen this same kind of parental shock and dismay IRL and its so gross. They have children thinking that they are going to be copies of their parents (or improved versions of their parents) instead of individual people with their own ideas.
Very, very sorry for Ashley, and DAMN that was passionate singing from Neil Young. I love that song, and I hadn’t seen that particular clip before. Perhaps Ms. Miller could imagine the humorously nonchalant Stephen Stills blowing his cigarette smoke in her father’s racist face.
“Unfortunately Ashley’s father loves his racism more than he loves his daughter.”
This.
Why, Ashley.
Whatever do you mean by that?
;)
To disown your own child over her dating outside her own race neatly encapsulates the pettiness and stupidity of bigotry. His loss, if he does not want to maintain a relationship with a daughter who shows considerable wisdom beyond his years.
Damn, the old man obviously didn’t raise his daughter very well if she doesn’t subscribe to his hatreds and bigotries.
I just hate the “king of the castle” paradigm for family life. My father acts like I should be grateful to him for not outright rejecting me for being gay. For simply continuing to fulfill his role in this relationship that only *he* had a choice in is obviously a cause for us to throw a parade for him.
It’s very Christian in a way. “Be humble and thank me for whatever I dish out, or I’ll make things worse.”
I have the benefit (if you can call it that) of not particularly caring for my father. I am sorry that this kind of thinking cost Ashley a father she does care about.
I’m sorry Ashley, but you’re you’re completely in the wrong here.
It’s “BWAHAHAHAHAHA”
Sorry your dad is the way he is. Maybe he’ll grow some and learn something, but don’t hold your breath. Keep living your life. Sounds like the beau is fantastic and you’re happy. A father shouldn’t want anything else for their child.
As horrible as stories like this are I must confess that I take a sick pleasure in posting them on religious boards and watching the homophobes squirm trying to come up with rationalizations for how this is totally different from them refusing to accept their hyothetical gay child’s relationship.
Very sad, very frustrating. I hope Ashley’s father realizes that “bending” doesn’t always mean compromise: sometimes it means growth.
Wait, what? Am I understanding this correctly? The stepmother tried to make this right by telling the father that Ashley wasn’t dating the black man because he was black, but because all Ashley cares about is that the man was an atheist? Nothing else? The stepmother met him, and yet she apparently didn’t even TRY to say that well, he seemed to be a nice guy or smart or talented or they have so much in common or any one of a hundred other reasons someone might care for someone else?
No, she told her husband that hey, maybe Ashley should be excused because well, you know what an atheist is like, what your daughter is like. They all form their significant relationships only in light of one factor: “Do you believe in God? No? Come to Mama!!!”
She tried to make this clear to him … but, sadly, it just didn’t work. Aw. Thanks, Stepmom. Nice that you tried to help.
Wtf. It doesn’t matter that he wasn’t an atheist. This is pretty insulting in and of itself — to atheists in general, but particularly to Ashley. Wicked, wicked stepmother.
@JJ831:
“Own” in this usage means acknowledgement, not possession. It’s kind of like saying “I don’t know you any more.”
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/disown
I’m a white male of about the age of Ashley’s father. As such, I find the story very sad, but not at all surprising. Which makes me even sadder.
@barbyau #29
You read my mind. The first part of your comment, and this second part, concisely express something I’ve been feeling for quite a long time — and I thank you for that.
You of course, know your own family far better than I ever would, but that sounds remarkably similar to a number of anecdotes I’ve heard regarding southern soldiers and contractors during the vietnam war that came home from their tours of duty in South Asia with Vietnamese/Taiwanese/Phillipino wives.
Many of them talked about being afraid that their family would reject their south asian wives/girlfriends, but were surprised when their families turned out to be very accepting.
One of the possibilities raised by historians was that Southerners with an deeply set prejudice against African Americans would (Consciously or unconsciously) overcompensate when it came to other ethnicities to convince themselves they really weren’t racist because they accept other races, and their feelings about African Americans are justified.
#33 ““Own” in this usage means acknowledgement, not possession. It’s kind of like saying “I don’t know you any more.””
Well, he is treating her like property, in this case.
Ben P #35 wrote:
Another possibility is that they’re working from misogynistic assumptions that a husband is the more important indicator of the status of a couple — and Oriental women are well known to be both docile and obedient. (That’s snark, of course)
Goodness, what would he have done if she were dating a Black woman?
Ashley Miller wrote:
Maybe. But, at the risk of doing an atheist version of the No True Scotsman Fallacy, I think racism (and deep concerns about miscegenation) usually rest on the underlying forms of supernaturalism which specific religions draw on. Specifically, racism is concerned with the idea of the invisible “essence,” that soul-like element of an object which makes it what it is, and distinguishes it from what it is not. No blurring together, or moving from one to another. Everything has its unique capacities.
If you are racist, then I think you have to believe that different races are separated through some deep differences in their essential nature. It’s a form of supernatural thinking, top-down.
Ashley’s father may not be religious, but he sure sounds spiritual.
Kreativekaos: The correct response to someone posting “Sweet Home Alabama” would be to post Warren Zevon’s “Play It All Night Long.”
Glad some mentioned that dreck known as “Sweet Home Alabama”.
Everytime I hear that song I initially think the first lyric is:
“Sweet home Alabama where the skins are so white and the Klan is riding through”
The song is creepy, and tied to the notion that the only “real” Southerners are white.
Conservatives always seem to do that when the moral failings of their religions and ideologies are pointed out, don’t they?
@Ms. Daisy Cutter
These days, those are the lyrics that come to mind first when someone says “Sweet Home Alabama”
P-zed, the operative phrase in your account is “romanticized tripe.” I was born in South Carolina, as was my sister, and though we weren’t brought up there[*], it’s fair to describe our home environment growing up as “southern.”
My sister was a beauty queen in high school and university, which had the unfortunate effect of scrambling her sense of priorities, but it didn’t entirely scramble her brains: I was very surprised ten, twenty years ago when she said that she’d finally clued in that the “romance of the Old South” was a pile of b.s., never mind that she’d been spoon fed propaganda from infancy.
[*] Family history strongly suggests that after my parents married, they got the hell out of the South as soon as my father could find a decent job elsewhere – about a year. Indeed, looking over my mother’s family tree, it appears that nearly everybody with any get up and go got up and went from South Carolina as soon as better pickings further west (Alabama, Mississippi, later Texas and Oklahoma) opened up starting in the early 1800s.
Don’t get too superior about Southerners.
I’ve seen the same sort of thing in the Midwest and Northeast.
barbyau
The explicitly Euro-Christian formulations are Divine Right and the Great Chain of Being.
It is strange that people are shocked by this. I had one friend (way back in the 90’s) who was beaten by her father for being seen in a car with a black friend and another threatened with the same treatment. It is still like that in many families.
I spent junior high and high school in the Cumberland Valley of western Maryland and this sounds accurate (this was the 1980s). I remember kids coming to school in Klan t-shirts. And there were zero black or Latino kids in our school and only one Asian American. Then again, I now live in northeastern Pennsylvania and there are some people I know who would do the same thing if their daughter had a black (or Latino, or Asian, or Protestant) boyfriend.
Losing a parent due to illness or accident is bad, losing one to bigotry is worse. He doesn’t deserve to have such a daughter.
My FIL (OBM) was what some might see as the British equivalent. He was 72 when I met him, I was the first serious female partner and the first one he met. Aaand nothing.
Nothing but acceptance, and love, and seven privileged years of him calling me his daughter.. Everyone thought he was miserable and gruff, he hated his son’s wife (with good cause), and even my partner was nervous about introducing us.
She needn’t have worried. He popped round to her house one morning, and I appeared, in my pyjamas. Ten minutes of my nerdery, and the discovery that we both had a penchant for bizarre gadgets, and we were besties for life.
It turned out that his hatred for his son’s wife was based in her treatment of him as a combination walking wallet/doddering idiot. His apparent standoffishness was shyness, rooted in his embarrassment over his stutter.
I adored him. I still miss him very much.
Ashley and barbyau – I’m so sorry you don’t have my luck.
Sastra@39:
Oh, I don’t know about that. Don’t forget about the “scientific racism” types like the late Phillipe Rushton and the Bell Curve guy. It’s bad scientific thinking, but I don’t think that equates to supernatural thinking — there are plenty of other ways for scientific thinking to go wrong.
It is the 21st century: had this happened in an earlier era; the “loving father” may have raped her, blamed her boyfriend, have him lynched, and then disowned her
I’ll be frank: what shocks me is that this kind of behavior does not dramatically increase the number of parents killed in their sleep by vengeful, scorned offsprings.
richardelguru
Are you me? =>.>=
You made exactly the comment I would have made.
My five (19 – 31) have, on occasion, done things that I would far rather they didn’t. But I was the one who brought them into the world of my own free will; they owe me nothing.
It was my responsibility to raise them to be able to make the decisions that are right for them, and it is my place to support them when they want support. My approval is irrelevent (although I do tend to approve of anything that makes them happy; I can’t help it!)
Disown my own offspring?! For loving someone?!!!
Wow. What is this I don’t even…
My old man ran the same line of shit on me after my second divorce. I said “Why not, dad? Obviously I don’t have anything WHITE women want… Tell ya what, how about I bring home a nice, educated, young white MAN who can rock my world?”
That was the beginning of the end of our relationship.
To paraphrase XKCD, her father’s behavior isn’t just wrong, it’s like an example you’d make up if you had to illustrate for a child why racism is wrong.
When an Indian (from India) acquaintance informed his parents that he was dating a white girl, they freaked. And he asked them “would you rather I be a racist?” And his father pounced and said “Yes we want you to be a racist! We raised you to be a racist. What is wrong with you that you are not a racist?”
The acquaintance and his girlfriend recently married. The parents attended the wedding. No profound lesson here. Just a story with a happier ending.
Just heard today from a work colleague that another employee has had to seek counseling because he can’t get over the fact that his daughter is dating a Black man (North Carolina). I had to ask her what year it was.
jws1@14:
‘I have long heard the idea that “Sweet Home” was a retort to “Southern Man”. If it is, then it is weak sauce. The money quote is “Well I hope Neil Young will remember/A southern man don’t need him around, anyhow.”’
Exactly. When I first heard ‘Sweet Home Alabama’, and heard the ‘money lyric’,… it REALLY rubbed me the wrong way. That lyric may have only been a smarmy, knee-jerk reaction to some ruffled feathers, but I didn’t think it appropriate, given Southern history.
Neil was spot on, and judging from some people I’ve had the relative misfortune to know over recent decades, he still is.
Ms. Daisy Cutter@ 40: Touche on that suggested response. (I miss that ‘Excitable Boy’.)
jws1@14,…. correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think I ever heard that Neil ever commented or counter-responded to ‘Sweet Home…’
(Sorry about tangential discussion.)
nohellbelowus — Perhaps the “humorously nonchalant Stephen Stills” is jacked up. I hear he tended to do that.
Abdul Alhazred
Well, yes, perhaps Mr. Young, a Canadian, thought of everyone in the US as the “Southern man,” and perhaps not incorrectly.
There’s this, from this interview:
screechymonkey #50 wrote:
Good point. I suppose the advantage of bad science over spirituality is that you can at least try to refute the bad science — and you’ll usually get a hearing. Also, I suspect even Rushton and Murray would have to give some credit to statistical variation and actual data, particularly when confronted by an otherwise fine young person. Although I know nothing about them personally (and could be wrong,) I don’t see them actually disowning a child in a situation like this — or advocating or excusing it. It doesn’t/wouldn’t look scholarly or scientific, for one thing. They want to distance themselves from charges of bigotry, not appeal to something like “well, that’s just the way I was reared, don’t care if it don’t make no sense to you all.”
I’m glad I read the thread before commenting. This was, almost verbatim, the comment I was planning to make.
What a Maroon@61:
Thanks for the post and link—-info I wasn’t aware of. That does shade the light a bit differently.
Any apparent clash may be more of a ‘tempest in a teacup’, but I must say Skynard’s lyrics definitely came across to many as a soft defense of Southern attitude.
‘In Birmingham they love the governor’…
Granted George Wallace was shot in ’72, his racism eventually diluting over time, but there were/are still people who live, still constrained, by a Civil war mentality (obsession with the Confederate flag).
In my ignorant fundamentalist days, I was also opposed to racial intermarriage. I grew out of it as sanity took over. When my youngest son disappeared for about a week, Iwondered where he was.
Finally he called to tell me he had gotten married and asked me if I had any idea who. I replied, “Mary?” I had met her a few weeks before and something signaled to me it was more than a casual friendship.
He asked if I was upset, to which I replied, “Do you love her?” He replied that he did and I told him I was happen for them. I think that kind of blew his mind.
Sympathies and virtual hugs if she wants them to Ashley Miller. Hard to believe this is happening still in the 21st century.
As far as ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ goes its wikipage :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweet_Home_Alabama#Controversy
seemingly suggests some folks have misconstrued it a bit perhaps?
Trebuchet
3 December 2012 at 4:35 pm
Yes, it’s an otherwise archaic meaning of “own”, as in:
What a low-life.
@16: It’s just like Gawd’s Love! He loves you, but he’s gonna send you to hell anyway!
I’m very sorry for Ashley
Hardly anybody can hurt you as much as your parents, and they can do so thoroughly.
I wished that people didn’t have children unless they understood that they’re creating new people with new ideas and likes and personalities and not blank sheets on which parents can write their wishes and expectations.
Are there things my children could do that would really, really disappoint me?
Yes, obviously. Catholic nuns would shock me.
But if they still wanted to spend lunch with their hellbound atheist mum then the question is just what to cook.
And I admit that there might be boyfriends (or girlfirends) who might not be allowed to enter my house or who would have to learn to shut their piehole because I don’t accept racism, misogyny or homophobia in my house.
I can just hope that by that time they’d know themselves why such a person is indeed a bad person and no SO-material.
But they would still be my children.
And they’d still be their own people.
The one difference is that northern bigotry is usually kinda denied or whispered in hushed tones, as if conspiratorially talking about “that thing we all know is true but you can’t say openly” and whatnot, whereas in the south they run it up the damned flagpole.
I’m not saying that the effects of the southern style are necessarily worse. Northern bigotry is stealth bigotry.
At one fine dinner in 1987 I got to hear my once-favorite uncle say he hoped AIDS killed off all the gays, and got to hear my aunt, who does love me trade racist “jokes” with her kids about “colored people.”
I’ve disowned them.
Guess who’s not coming to dinner.
dancaban @ 72
Well played, well played.
Small correction: it was her stepmother who relayed the information; her mother is being supportive, according to her post.
There’s a t-shirt out there somewhere that has a saying closely related to this topic:
“You haven’t failed as a parent if you raised a gay child. You’ve failed as a parent if you disowned a gay child.”
How the fuck does the part about the governor being “complicated” change the much simpler part that people are actually discussing: That the song mentions Neil Young by name, says that he has insulted the South, and “rebuts” Southern Man by saying that “A Southern Man don’t need him around anyhow” . There is no dispute about that. For fuck’s sake, did you even read that wiki article?
Because the South only had a few racists, ya see.
Are you suddenly defending every kind of racism now, StevoR?
@SteveoR – I always thought the song was the standard Southern defense, namely that there are good things about the South, we’re not all racist, stop painting us all with the same broad brush, etc. And really, the only problematic lyrics were “Southern man don’t need him around anyhow”, and “In Birmingham they love the governor….we all did what we could do.” And they are a bit ambiguous. I have always preferred to see it that way, mainly because I happen to love both songs. I thing Neil is absolutely right, and I think Skynyrd is overly defensive, but have also written a great Southern anthem that at least acknowledges there were serious problems in the South.
Now that’s also coming from the perspective of having first heard both songs as a teenager in the South in the eighties, when I mainly believed that sort of thing was a thing of the past. When I came to realize that it wasn’t that far in the past, I didn’t stop loving Sweet Home. I still turn it up every time I hear “Turn it up…”, but I did mostly come down on Neil’s side being right.
Of course, one question is whether they intentionally made those lyrics ambiguous, so that their more hippy fans would see them as anti-Wallace, while their racist redneck fans (and if you’ve ever been to a Skynyrd show, there are a lot of them) could still see the song as entirely supportive of Wallace. That notion makes it a bit more troubling.
But @anteprepro, how does suggesting that there’s nothing inherently racist about Sweet Home Alabams become a defense of all kinds of racism? Did I miss something?
“Your father is an old Southern man, he was raised like that, he was raised to believe that races just don’t mix.”
You know what, my father was raised “like that,” too. His father, my grandfather, had many good qualities but was undeniably racist. However, my father (both parents, actually) saw that this was wrong, and didn’t raise me that way. At all.
Moreover, this was in the 50s and 60s, in west Texas, still deeply segregated, and where virtually all our neighbors were racist to some degree or other. Not only did my playmates use racial epithets that I was absolutely forbidden to use, most of their parents used the same ones regularly. One the (rare) occasions I met black adults, it was expected, make that required, that I address them as “Mr.” “Miss” or “Mrs.” (no “Ms.” in those days) and sprinkle my conversation with the occasional “sir” or “ma’am.”
People actually can rise above their “raising.”
This is so wrong on so many levels. As a parent, I wouldn’t disown my child for anything. Mass murder makes me stop to think, but they’d still be my child and, while I wouldn’t support their actions, and would make that clear, I still wouldn’t disown them.
And that this kind of outright racism exists is not that much of a surprise, but that he would go as far as to say he’ll never speak to his own daughter again? So sad, so ignorant, so lacking in the wisdom that one would hope would come with years, but obviously doesn’t.
Worst of all though may be the unspoken, but rather obvious, fact that he’s proud of how he was raised. He really thinks there’s something morally wrong with loving someone of a different skin color, and that he’s the superior human being for realizing it and is taking a strong moral stance by cutting off his own daughter. That’s what’s most disturbing, I think.
I will always recall overhearing my grandmother talking to one of her friends. She was a Nebraskan who had long ago been transplanted to Mississippi and accepted by the upper class white society in her small town. She was also a strong woman and the clear matriarch of our family. She was used to being listened to and obeyed. One of her friends was distraught, telling her she just didn’t know what she was going to do because her daughter was pregnant and the father was black. My grandmother turned on the same voice she used when I was being unruly and looked at her friend and said: “What are you going to do? You’re going to love your grandchild, because that’s all that matters.” I’m very proud of my grandmother. But I’m also amazed that her friend had to be told this, and that Ashley’s father, decades later, still doesn’t understand this.
StevoR is known for being so Islamophobic that his statements resemble a justification for genocide. He denies that that is racism, and yet here he is, trying to come up with excuses for a song that explicitly says “how DARE you criticize the South for its racism, Neil Young” by mentioning how it isn’t clear what the verse about the governor was supposed to mean. Hence “all kinds of racism”.
Actually, that was kind of incoherent. Basically: StevoR has already shown racism against Middle Easterners. This is suggesting that his racism may have a greater scope than that.
I was forced to miss my high school senior prom because my grandmother (who had adopted me) discovered that my date was a HALF black boy.
This was Michigan and the year was 1985.
I’ve never forgiven her for her racist stupidity.
@anteprepro – I wondered if it was something like that. But wasn’t there something in PZ’s latest batch of rules about focusing on present arguments and leaving past history out of it? Or is that just the way I feel about these things? At any rate, it’s really hard to have a conversation, especially when you only occasionally delve into the comments, when people are dropping vague references to things in other, entirely unrelated comment threads. Thanks for clarifying it.
bt th mjrty f th scmmy ppl chmng n hr r nt mrrd t ps nd dn’t vn hv mnkys n thr fmly tr. Pr hypcrsy!
Sorry it wasn’t clear.
There is. StevoR doesn’t deserve that protection because he’s been exploiting it for too long. Hell, before it even existed. He thinks that he can blather out all sorts of offensive shit regarding Muslims, go on to post reasonable things and personal things for a while, gets to the point where he can expect that things were forgiven and/or forgotten, and then cycle back to bigotry. The new rules mentioned an exception to the amnesia if the troll is particularly egregious. I am not alone in thinking that StevoR fits the bill.
re #84
Translation anyone?
One of the few comments I’ve seen that have deserved an insta-ban.
chigau: It is a thread about a racist father objecting to an interracial relationship. We are being accused of being hypocrites for not having “apes” or “monkeys” in our family. Basically, read it as if the commenter was really fucking racist, and then it makes too much sense. Because even reading it as a creationist one-liner doesn’t make as much sense as a “joke” from the worst kind of bigot, imported straight from the Jim Crow era.
(And if there are any doubts that the person is a blatant troll, look up “jenkem” if you dare)
re 84: because evolution says ‘we came from monkeys’ therefore calling black people ‘monkeys’ can’t be racist yo.
anteprepro
thanks
jenkemjones @ 84;
I don’t think this level of offensive idiocy deserves the consideration of the three posts rule.
I can’t tell whether xe is actually a frothing-at-the-mouth racist goon, or simply some sadly humour deficient idiot labouring under the delusion that xe is being funny, but fortunately it seems likely that it won’t be long before PZ banhammers hir into oblivion.
So, jenkem is actually full of shit.
That is not figural.
Oh, that’s just awful. But I’m sad to say that, after 7 years in the deep South, I’m not all that surprised. Here’s just a few reasons why:
– A friend was committed to a mental institution by her parents when they found out she was dating a black man. This happened in NW Louisiana in the 1990s
– A now-ex boyfriend went pale as a ghost and choked out “don’t you ever tell my dad” when he found out my previous boyfriend was black.
– That same ex-boyfriend went to a local high school that didn’t desegregate until the mid-late 1980s, while his older brother was attending.
– I have, on multiple occasions, had people – who mistakenly believed I’d be receptive – say horribly, blatantly racist things to me. Things like “Oh, I used to go into $BigCity, but not anymore. It’s too dangerous, because all those people live there now.”
– My cousin was basically disowned by her conservative father after the election, because she supported Obama. He also unfriended me and several other cousins for the same reason.
I’m glad to be getting out of the South soon. There are a lot of good things about the place, and even about most of the people, but there are also some seriously antiquated ideas still in play here.
Two bigots have shown up at that thread making claims that Ashley Miller is risking her life by dating a black man.
“The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”
Don’t be ridiculous, jemkem, we are apes! And so our our spouses. See “Did humans come from monkeys?”, courtesy of AronRa.
…”and so are our spouses.”
When I resort to sonic spelling, it’s time to rest.
Sh s th n tht brk t ff wth hr fthr. Sh ddn’t hv t bcm dssd sknk whr tht s gng t gv brth t bby tht lks lk mnky.
Pls brng bck Cmmnt #116.
Boy, we’re really getting the dregs of humanity today, aren’t we?
I am in a mood.
Alert sent.
frankly, if anyone is exhibiting signs of disease, that would be yourself there, bigotboy.
can you tell yet?
Yezz, we iz ze Lizzard People!
Yeah, how dare she act like she’s her own person and make her won decisions instead of being daddy’s sock puppet!
Wait, I didn’t know Ashley is pregnant!
Congratulations!
Oh, wait, she actually isn’t or hasn’t told anybody yet. It’s just that all you racists are also misogynists who believe that women are broodmares whose only thing in life is to be fucked and make babies, because you can’t wrap your head around the fact that women make their own decisions about if, when and with whom to have kids.
Also, all babies look like little monkeys, trust me.
And: fuck off, scum.
What? Are we supposed to hate people with dark skin because our skin is lighter, and we can’t trace our ancestry far enough to Africa?
Sorry, sounds stupid. Can’t do.
I stupidly followed hir facebook link – damn my chimpy curiosity.
S/he calls your President ‘Obongo.’
‘Nuff said.
(O praise it, oh praise it, O Banhammeration! *ominous chanting*)
Why’s everyone always bring up “Southern Man” instead of “Alabama”? “Southern Man”‘s lyrics are pretty histrionic: “I heard screamin’ and bullwhips crackin’/how long? how long?” Seriously? Whereas Alabama’s are understated but far more evocative, not to mention more…I guess conciliatory:”Banjoes playing through the broken glass” “Your Cadillac/Has got a wheel in the ditch/And a wheel on the track” “What’s going wrong?/ You’ve got the rest of the Union/To help you along.” I guess the paternalistic bent might get under southerner’s skin as well and thus ruin the intent there, but I think Neil was being sincere.
Ichthyic @ 102;
Yup – definitely a frothing at the mouth racist goon.
It is sad, really. When bigots get like that, there really is no helping them, but we can’t just humanely put them to sleep either.
Looks like disemvowelment will have to do.
Perhaps I’m treading on dangerous ground, here, but I think the most monkey-looking human I’ve ever seen is George W. Bush. And I bet jenkemjones luuuuurves ol’ W.
@76. anteprepro :
Did you?
Do you get that there can be ambivalent mixed messages in, well all kinds of things?
Or maybe a lot of people in the South are racist but not all and you shouldn’t condemn all the southerners for the sins of many of them or think that’s all there is too them always?
I have NEVER, repeat NEVER defended racism and I never will.
Racism is judging and condemning and mistreating people based on their skin colour.
I don’t do that.
You – along with quite a few others here – seem to be addressing some strawperson with my name demonising, othering and bullying me as well as failing to actually read and comprehend the nuances in what I’m actually saying as opposed to what your fevered imagination conjectures this straw-me as seeming to say.
Well, I AM NOT THIS STRAWPERSON you have fantasised out of your hate on for me.
This strawperson bears absolutely no resemblence to the real individual person I am.
To be clear read this – and reread, re-re-read and repeat aloud 100 times if that’s what it takes to sink in for you :
I, StevoR, do NOT advocate or support racism.
I, StevoR, do NOT advocate or support genocide.
I, StevoR, accepts that Muslims are human beings.
I, StevoR, object to the way the Islamic religious ideology brainwashes and fucks up Muslims (Ok some – too many – but not all) and turns them into Homicide-suicide bombing terrorist fanatics.
I, StevoR am just saying that we need to fight terrorists just as much as we need to fight republicans and MRAs and that like every nation on the planet, Israel has the right to vigourously, militarily defend itself and protect its civilians from genocidal bigots such as Hamas, Al Quaida and Hezbollah.
What about that is supposedly racist exactly?
@85.anteprepro :
Prove it.
Show us all one comment from me – just one – where I specificially claim people should be judged based on their skin colour NOT their actions or behaviour or ideas.
I think you will find you cannot do this.
Note that Muslims are NOT a race nor do all Muslims share a common skin colour nor are most “brown-skinned people” Muslim -in fact most brown skinned people for the precious little that matters are Hindu (Indians) or Catholic (South American) in their demographics.
Oh and one other not so small point : Middle easterners include the Israeli and more broadly Jewish people as well.
I find your overlooking and thereby implicitly delegitimising of them suspect and suggest you check your own bias against Israelis and the Jewish people more generally who also have lived in the South West Asian (Middle Eastern, Near Eastern) region and been a part of it for millennia despite some anti-Semitic propaganda to the contrary.
After you have failed to back up your offensive slandering of me as a racist, a genocidal troll and all these other horrible lies, perhaps you will have the decency and courage to apologise abjectly to me and everyone else here as you should?
Not at fucking all.
What happened was I decided to check the facts thinking, “yeah I know that song, never thought that of it’, so I went and researched and why look, things are more complicated and less one sided than people here were claiming and so I thought I’d share that information with y’all since we were talking about that song. I was basically debunking the myth you’d made up about it using a few minutes research and backing up my words with evidence.
PS. ^ The above challenge is directed to and applies to every other deluded bully who’s attacked and lied about me here on Pharnygula as well.
StevoR,
Please take your discussions of Muslims to Thunderdome. This thread is pretty much dead already, but the poor thing doesn’t deserve your OMG MUSLIMS ARE COMING SAVE YOURSELVES THOSE WHO STILL CAN comments just because it can’t defend itself.
Although your lack of awareness doesn’t surprise me, it does make me almost pity you, despite being a racist ass.
And no, I’m not wasting valuable time finding evidence you’ll shrug off as irrelevant, given that you’ve ignored 5 or 6 direct shows of it when pointed at them.
What the fuck is wrong with you, that you stay where you are clearly not wanted?
@ 113. Rutee Katreya : Maybe I’m just stubborn or maybe I’m not going to be pushed out of participating on a blog I really like just because some nasty lying abusive bullying commenters are, well, exactly that?
Both those options I think actually.
having answered your question perhaps you can now answer mine – what the fuck is wrong with you, Rutee Katreya, that you think you own and speak for everyone on this blog now?
I also note that you declined my challenge – because you know you cannot find me ever saying anything racist – and I again urge you to think about that, about your own anti-Israel bigotry and ask again that you admit you got it badly wrong and apologise to me.
As for Thunderdome, I hated the idea of that thread but tried it and found it was just as bad as I feared in terms of unrestrained, offensive gang-up bullying of me. Why would I want to go there? Why should I have to? That said, I am wondering about it. Maybe. Maybe not.
StevoR,
This thread is not about your pet topic. Take it somewhere else or fuck off.
Song for Ashley Miller :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9Pop985sJQ
Heartspark Dollarsign by Everclear.
I don’t. That was easy. But I know that I don’t generally whine about how nobody likes me and everyone bullies me to the people I say hate me and bully me. I walk away, and if I talk about that shit it’s to other people. Because I only think that shit about actual fucking abuse, not people calling me a racist when I’m being a racist.
See, this is how I know you’re fucking clueless. You’re denying the plausibility that anything that you ever said had enforced racist stupidity. Ever. Even unintentionally. Even if I hadn’t watched you specifically say obviously racist shit you said wasn’t racist, I would know you were a dumb fuck who said at least your fair share of racist shit.
But no, if you can’t read, let me spell it out for you. I’m not wasting my time searching for evidence that a reality-denying fool will ignore for the umpteenth time. I’ve already watched you loudly insist that the racist shit you do isn’t racist.
Done; there is none, you’re clueless, I’m not apologizing for that cluelessness, and you should fuck off. Although I am vaguely amused that an anti-semite is trying to position himself as ISrael’s lone defender, it’s hardly surprising given US Rhetoric.
StevoRacist,
Do you get that good things, and/or complicated things, alongside bad things do not make the bad things go away or become irrelevant?
1a) The song mentions Neil Young by name.
1b) There is no dispute that the song says this.
2a) The song says that he has insulted the South.
2b) There is no dispute that the song says this.
3a) The song “rebuts” Southern Man by saying that “A Southern Man don’t need him around anyhow”.
3b) There is no dispute that the song says this.
4) Nobody in this thread except for you shows any sign of misconstruing the above.
Neither anteprepro, nor Neil Young, was condemning all Southerners, nor thinking that racism is all there is to them.
In reality, here’s what Neil said:
http://www.songmeanings.net/songs/view/80435/
http://www.songmeanings.net/songs/view/80410/
When I first read #76, I thought anteprepro was probably assuming too harshly about you. After seeing you continue to skirt the issues re Neil and Skynyrd in your #109, I no longer think so. I try to give non-Americans a bit more leeway in recognizing the badges and incidents of racism in the USA. But you appear to be deliberately obfuscating, not ignorant.
Prior to this thread, I did not imagine that you are racist against black people per se. Your misrepresentation of Neil, and your ignoring the problematic parts of Skynyrd, now make me wonder.
Rutee,
He’s Australian.
StevoR
You have received the same treatment in other threads, it had nothing to do with it being the Thunderdome.
The fucking quote said “one or two” you fucking dishonest sack of dishonest fucking shit.
Yeah, because I’m sure it is unheard of for racists to try to justify their discrimination against racial groups on the basis that those racial groups behave badly. Unheard of.
Oh and one other not so small point : Middle easterners include the Israeli and more broadly Jewish people as well.
I find your overlooking and thereby implicitly delegitimising of them suspect and suggest you check your own bias against Israelis and the Jewish people more generally who also have lived in the South West Asian (Middle Eastern, Near Eastern) region and been a part of it for millennia despite some anti-Semitic propaganda to the contrary.
StevoR is pretty vehement about not mixing any Jewish people into the same category as Muslims. Yeah, sure, I’m biased against Israel. I think StevoR doth protest too much.
StevoR is so proud that he was unable to read a wikipedia article for comprehension.
The sad part was I wasn’t even serious! But he really is making it hard to ignore the possibility.
–StevoR
–StevoR
The italicized terms are the operative ones in this thread; a dense, inability to understand genuinely nuanced points are a common feature with these creatures, ‘Pharyngulites’ most pointedly.
If there is any possibility for a nuanced view where an argument may not be black and white, and you can’t club someone into submission with a simplistic interpretation, then one’s point (or the person making it) has got to be wrong/racist/psuedoscientific/(your preferred derogatory/defamatory term here). That’s the way they roll in the ‘P’ blog.**
** Even IF they may be accurately conveying a point or argument.
Brilliant that someone trying to bash Pharyngula sides with StevoR on the subject of nuance . The irony is delicious.
Especially given how SteveoR’s massive pile of -isms was just aired in Thunderdome.
Also entertaining: the absence of an actual defense of the nuanced position that StevoR was bringing up when he attacked our nuance . I’m sure that’s completely beside the point though. It doesn’t matter if StevoR was actually wrong about that particular instance of nuance , he said something that neuralobserver agreed with in general, and that is good enough for him. Sure, StevoR’s nuanced perspective was inaccurate and ill-informed, but I’m sure that it isn’t relevant at all for someone making a blanket accusation of lack of nuance, right? I mean, it isn’t indicative of anything at all that the sermon about nuance springboarded off of an example of nuance that came straight from the mouth of a known bigot, who asserted that he had a more nuanced position while ignoring half of the relevant information in the source he had cited and ignoring that the half he did cite didn’t contradict the points made by those referencing the first half . I’m sure that these facts don’t undermine your criticism at al. Good work, Dissenter.
Where’s the nuance in advocating genocide? Until shown otherwise, said nuance by StevoR and Neuralobserver is faux nuance apologists use to hide their bigotry behind.
Here’s the impression that I get regarding trolls and their version of Nuance :
Nuance is the product of those who prefer not to separate the signal from the noise. The Nuanced are folks who appoint themselves as More Reasonable because they reach more complicated conclusions, even if they do so my ignoring MORE data than the Un-Nuanced do. Because, you see, nuance isn’t about reaching the most accurate conclusion or paying the most attention to the evidence: It is about reaching the conclusion that sounds the most moderate, the least extreme, the conclusion with the highest level of hedged bets, the conclusion most appealing to the mealy-mouthed and wishy-washy. Sure, those reaching a less moderate and more certain conclusion might have the evidence on their side, but they are still more Unsophisticated than those who make sure that all conclusions are translated into fluent Milquetoast.