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[kitewithfish]

Poll #21636 Quick Check on Some Racist BS

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 12

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If you hear a story about a white man harassing an immigrant Asian woman who is his neighbor, and your first response is "Why did she give him her email? What happened between them and cause him to behave like this? What was their relationship and how did it turn so sour?" how racist is that response?

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Mean: 3.83 Median: 4.5 Std. Dev 1.40

undetectable from background norm of racism 1		1 (8.3%)
2		2 (16.7%)
3		1 (8.3%)
4		2 (16.7%)
Super duper racist 5		6 (50.0%)

 

 

EDIT March 22/2019:

Forgive me folks, I posted this while I was irritated at someone and left out quite a few key details. I also had vaguely meant to sound like a sarcastic "on a scale of very racist to super racist," etc etc, but I quite failed in the sarcasm, and I ended up sounding confusing and probably kind of gross myself. I'm sorry - I did this in a hurry and didn't review properly, on a reasonably sensitive subject. That's on me. 

BACKGROUND: On a far distant forum, a schoolteacher was asking for advice on behalf of her colleague, a new assistant teacher, a woman, who had recently moved from China to the US to help the new Mandarin program get started. The new assistant teacher was getting emails from a white man, her neighbor, who decided to tell her about  his generalized hate for Chinese people. The assistant teacher felt it was a threat and possibly a sign of violence, and had tried to go to police to ask for help. The police had declined to help because it wasn't a direct threat against her, just against Chinese people *generally*, and that the town was very safe and she should just block his emails.

The schoolteacher in question was posting to ask advice on what next steps to take to help her Chinese colleague, who is pretty freaked out. Some of the advice helpfully suggested by other members of the forums was good! Including: getting in touch with a lawyer, documenting all the times this scary man reaches out, talking to local Chinese-American groups to ask for advice and help about how to handle it. 

And, of course, One Person had to be That Guy, and she decided that it was Simply Impossible, Too Much to be Believed! that a random white dude in a random majority white town with a minority population of Chinese people, would just at totally random decide to harass a newly immigrated Chinese woman who lived near him. Ms. That Guy simply Had To Know, WHAT COULD HAVE HAPPENED, that this isolated immigrant woman would be targeted in this way by a white dude in his early 50's??? What had PASSED BETWEEN THEM??

And so, That Guy (who, yes, is a woman, in this case, the forum is women-only) asked a whole bunch of questions that generally implied it was more important to Figure Out the Motive of the scary white dude harassing his neighbor than actually figure out ways to help the neighbor. 

*insert Picard facepalm*

So I pointed out that actually, we don't need to know the motives of this creep - we need to help these people be safe and figure out safe ways of stopping his behavior. Racism exists, people of color get harassed by white people without provoking them in any way - this is not an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary proof to be believed. People sometimes share their emails with their neighbors, and men frequently use women's contact information to harass them, and people of color often get harassed by white people - as the Dothraki say, IT IS KNOWN.

As often happens, the That Guy woman decided that """"people""""" were calling her racist, """"just because she's white"""" and flounced away. 

And then I got annoyed and vague posted about it in an effort to vent my irritation, and then left you all in a state of confusion. :/ Not my best day.