Certainly didn’t post it to antagonize anyone. I disagree that it is racist. Blacks use that phrase about blacks who have earned it. No different than whites using it about whites that have earned it. And here both races use both.
You live in Maine. I live in Tennessee. Maine is 97% white, 0.5% black. Tennessee is 80% white, 16% black. I’ve also lived in Mississippi and I know what is said in mixed company as well as the intent. The use of black and white is descriptive not racist. So we definitely disagree but I will try to use trash as stand alone, here.
I appreciate your explanation and I get the point you make in the last sentence. So all is well. I think the matter is closed and we are just chatting now.
Just in terms of me and my experience, though, I don’t want to leave the wrong impression. I am originally from Canada. We moved to the states when I was 10 or 11. First it was Indiana. My first grade school was 90% black. My 2nd grade school was 100% white and so openly racist some teachers used overtly racist language in class as a matter of course. My high school was more mixed. Before college I lived in Chicago. I went to college in St. Louis. My neighborhood in St. Louis was 90% black. Since St. Louis, I have lived in Chicago (again), Claremont (outside LA), San Diego, SF, and Louisiana. The biggest portions of that were San Diego and Louisiana. I moved to Maine in my late 40s. So Maine is not my only experience of the USA and its demographics.
I think all I was saying was that online, in posts, people don’t really know who you are. (That’s the generic “you” not you personally–this applies to all of us). They don’t always know how we mean things. So it is always best to stay away from certain kinds of language that we know can be taken wrong. So I do appreciate you recognizing that in this case.
Given that kind of basic distinction, this board is built to allow people all kinds of freedom in what they say and how they say it. What interests me is that we regulars know that, and yet conflict is minimal. So I am proud of that.
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