You know, this is very interesting to me. Lately it seems as though every third post on Metafilter has been about racial prejudices, and everybody is pleased to run their mouth and knight-in-shining-armour it up about how tolerant they are and how many [insert race here] friends they have and how they even had sex with one once and how racists and bigots are morons, but nobody ever fucking does anything. It’s easy lip service and doesn’t tell us anything about you other than you are not completely ignorant.
So what? I don’t give a shit how many [insert race here] friends or spouses you have an how amazing their culture is and how fast and how far you run from racists and bigots because you are as fucking useless as a brick if you’re not actually doing something about it.
Here you have a perfect opportunity to impart a little wisdom to an ignorant person. She isn’t this way because she actually sat down and thought hard about it and decided that, yes, based on my researches and the evidence I have carefully analysed, I Am A Huge Racist. She’s this way because it’s just always been what she has thought, because it’s how she was raised. Her racism is a by-product of her upbringing, not a conscious choice that she has made.
Why not stop with the lip-flapping and make half a fucking effort to educate her, reprogram her, encourage her to understand that being racist is not only stupid, it’s utterly fucking pointless? Ignorance is only going to continue to breed ignorance if you tolerate it, if you do nothing.
So, your girlfriend is a racist. Fine. Try and do something about it for once. Solve a problem rather than ignoring it.
Or don’t. But get the threesome out of her before you dump her stupid ass.

— turgid dahlia commenting on “No sweetie, not all black people drink grape kool-aide.”

I recently had someone point out to me that saying that “I just have a master’s degree, so I’m basically the family imbecile” is actually pretty insulting to people who don’t.

— atrazine commenting on Can you define this constellation of traits I’ve often found at top schools?

After my one year in graduate school, It seems to me that getting graduate degrees has very little to do with intelligence and a lot more to do with stamina and opportunity.

I think the idea of seeing a situation and replacing the races with white people works for me. I’m not sure the actual scene, but if there were a group of white people dressed in hip-hop clothes with open drinks standing in my driveway after dark I would be both scared and pissed.
It’s quite ok to be classist. Honestly, I think you have to remember that the people in the all white neighborhoods don’t ever have to worry about this kind of guilt, and you do, so cut yourself some slack.

— sully75 commenting on How do I combat my knee-jerk racist responses?

If you are walking down the street, and a black guy is walking toward you, you don’t think he’s just going to rob you because he’s black, right?
On the other hand, if a group of young white men in the alley dressed in stereotypical urban fashions, conversing loudly (but not aggressively) with each other, you wouldn’t think “oh they are white, I’ll be fine.”, would you?
You’re not racist, so stop worrying about it. Just look out for yourself.

— santaliqueur commenting on How do I combat my knee-jerk racist responses?

I find it kind of bizarre that its ‘not racist’ to have your example of predator-white-people be white people that look ‘urban’. In this context, isn’t that just a synonym for black?

You’re married, not enslaved to one anothers lunacies, though actually that is often what marriage seems to be about.

— dancestoblue commenting on wedding etiquette