From Ira Glass's This American Life on NPR, an African-American expatriate living in Paris recalls an early lesson learned in France:
Janet Mcdonald says:
I was going to the movies with a friend of mine from Yale who is black also. And there was a long line. And we were like, let's jump the line. These white people, they're going to be scared of us. We'll just go and jump the line. We'll get to the front of the line. So, of course, you know, we walked up to the front of the line, like, yeah, you want to try me? I'm black. That usually works in New York.
These people were ready to rip our hair out. And they were white. I couldn't believe it. And they were like, in French, what are you doing? The line starts back there. You can't just walk to the front of the line. They were, like, ready to kick our butts. I was shocked. I'm like, these are white people, and they're not scared of us?
That's when I realized I wasn't in Kansas anymore. And I liked it. I mean, of course, it was kind of humiliating, because you know, we're supposed to be the intimidating, scary ones. And then all these French bitches in high heels were threatening us. And they were in our faces. And it made me realize that the whole black-white game just doesn't work outside of the United States.
Because white people aren't afraid of you here. And at the same time, they don't hate you, because that sort of goes together. So I'll take it. I'll wait on line. Now I don't dare jump lines. So that opened my eyes.
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I am actually kind of excited to see you post about that broadcast. I heard it when it originally aired (in 2000!) and I can say it was a real turning point in my understanding of race relations in this country. The movie line story and another one about how Janet McDonald did not consider herself "American" because she is Black have stuck with me all these years. I distinctly recall how my eyes were opened about how Blacks really feel about America and whites after hearing that broadcast. It may very well have been the first time I saw some things clearly. Thanks, NPR! I am sure the producers of "This American Life" would be appalled by my conclusions.
These French bitches? Stay classy Yale negroes.
Try to cut the line in Boston dude.
As a Chinese-American I was bumming around Paris 15 years ago, and had complete strangers yell the French equivalent of "Chinaman" or " "Ch*nk" at me in the grittier areas (not particularly dangerous).
I must have missed the post-racial utopia part of Paris in 2012, when I spent all summer riding the sweltering RER through the outskirts of the city. The trains were filled with African immigrants at certain junctures, and the behavior of the white Parisians was remarkably similar to white Americans riding, say, the Red line in Chicago.
My superficial impression, in regards to prejudice, is that it's probably better to be in a black ghetto outside of Paris than in Englewood, but it's definitely better to be a middle-class black the USA
I can't wait for the day that is a reality here in America. It's coming and it's long overdue too.
Sorry, aggrieved minorities, but you've overplayed your hand and people are getting sick of it.
Government by proxy is stepping it up to be your protector, but you've brought this on yourself as this woman attests.
How is this about reciprocity?
I was on the line for a bus in the NYC Port Authority terminal waiting for the bus to (mostly white) Hudson Valley resort town of New Paltz (known for the rock climbing at the 'Gunks'). 2 black girls cut the line of white people with no problem, until the short female middle aged Haitian Port Authority worker (Creole accent) told them to get to the back of the line. From what I can see in NYC black trumps white, Haitian or Jamaican trumps black, and I think in the future maybe African will trump Caribbean.
You'll notice that there's no internalized morality here. If you can get away with something, you should do it. Even Yale blacks think like this.
I've noticed that blacks in the South don't seem nearly as hostile and aggressive as blacks in the northern Midwest. It's clear that they sense the weakness of milquetoast midwesterners and take advantage as much as possible.
So Janet McDonald succinctly explains how collective american white neuroticism empowers american black pathology.
Calling Patton Oswalt!
Time to fire up your twitter account, and tell your followers how you agree with what Janet is saying, but are against everything she stands for!
Isn't it amazing, a Yale-trained lawyer (gasp) follows rules and behaves courteously?
The interview was interesting. French people seem to hate "their" blacks - they are just OK with American blacks.
A French paradox indeed.
Are whites in the rural South deferential to blacks?
on 2nd thought, not such a paradox. They don't want a large, growing population of Negroes in their own country, but it's OK to be nice to American Negroes, to show up American whites.
Status competition - who can be nicer to the other country's "oppressed"?
I still can't believe how bad race relations are in Philadelphia. Philadelphia is the only place I've ever gotten "if you got my back I've got yours" look from another white passenger while on a Subway. Contrarily, the only time I've ever witnessed black vs. white hostility in Houston is when a classmate of mind wore a Sean Taylor jersey to a rap concert. Apparently that was disrespect.
There used to be many stories in the press, heavily promoted by US Liberals, of how Europe was much more tolerant of minorities than the US. I guess 30 years of immigration from Africa and Turkey have made some Europeans more realistic than Americans.
This is probably the case because Europeans have to live in their cities, while Americans can white flight out to ever expanding suburbs.
The City of Brotherly Thugs
"Because white people aren't afraid of you here. And at the same time, they don't hate you, because that sort of goes together."
Newsflash: most white people in America don't hate you, either. We just don't like tolerating intolerable aspects of black culture.
Americans won't confront blacks because we're afraid of blacks - we don't confront them because we can't rely on fellow whites to back us up instead of selling us out.
Does "Stand Your Ground" apply when standing in a movie theater line?
Are whites in the rural South deferential to blacks?
--
In my experience, they are more concerned about repercussions from the people that burned their country to the ground in the 1860s.
A lot of the men have warrants out on them. They don't want actual trouble.
Are whites in the rural South deferential to blacks?
No. But there is a lot of emphasis on public politeness in the South.
American Southern society seems pretty good at providing what I call 'safe harbors' for people into which they can retreat, and from which they can interact with others to the extent they wish.
Intractable blacks in the South are locked out of the private sector. If they're lucky they get government sinecures. Otherwise, they end up as State wards either in prison or on welfare. Southern workspaces are far more integrated than elsewhere, from what I have seen. Blacks who hustle in their service sector jobs are, to my observation, happy as clams. They may vote Obama and attend Jesse Jackson rallies, but if they can get a job in the white business infrastructure, they will hang on to it for dear life.
Europeans aren't hamstrung by the false guilt syndrome that American whites are, therefore, they wont be pushed around as easily. And the cries of racism will fall on deaf ears.
Wish that America would tune these race pimps out too. Sick of them.
Ts-Nehesi's reparation piece was at one point tonight the top trending item on twitter.
https://twitter.com/search?q=%22Ta-Nehisi%20Coates%22&src=tren
https://twitter.com/search?q=%22The%20Case%20For%20Reparations%22&src=tren
"And it made me realize that the whole black-white game just doesn't work outside of the United States."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Occasionally (very occasionally), the black-on-white intimidation gambit doesn't work on whites even in the United States.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkVO-luw9u4
"Listen up, Glenn the fookin' plumber..."
The think the point is that the French don't know to be scared of Blacks. The French Blacks aren't as violent as the American Blacks, and the American Blacks that make it to Paris are the elites so there is really no reason to be afraid of them.
On the one hand, if I was a middle class American Black I might console myself that even though I couldn't get a cab I could get to the front of the line.
The disconcerting thing is that these top of the food chain African-American women were making light of the fact that White Americans are physically afraid of Black people. If White Americans weren't so afraid of Black people (unfortunately for good reason) Trayvon Martin would likely be alive today.
You bunch of pussies are just learning now what I learned in 4th grade. You give an inch they take a mile.
Dan in DC
Janet McDonald died of colon cancer. I wanted to see if her book Project Girl was published in a kindle version but it isn't, so I will never read it.
I did pull this interesting review of the book from amazon:
This review is from: Project Girl (Hardcover)
I just finished reading Project Girl. This book was very inspiring to me as a single mother, battling circumstances of poverty as well as my final year of law school. However, I believe that Ms. McDonald failed to consider one point. That is, the professional workforce includes a substantial number of African-American, first-generation, college graduates, with less impressive educational credentials and family support than what Ms. McDonald enjoyed. This demonstrates that "arriving," at least for African-Americans, does not depend exclusively on educational background but also, perseverance, know-how, and ambition. Yet, throughout her book, Ms. McDonald explained that she lacked these qualities. On Ms. McDonald's resume are a felony criminal conviction (based on her own confession), hospitalization in a mental institution, consistent poor college grades, a profound lack of interest in the law, and disdain for the legal profession. Thus, I can only guess that Ms. McDonald's educational and professional accomplishments are due to pure luck as there is no way that an individual, no matter their race, gender or economic status, having these experiences can become a New York corporate attorney in a high profile law firm as Ms. McDonald apparently did.
Rural Southerners in particular are very familiar with blacks and don't fall for this crap. They also don't handicap themselves with a debilitating amount of White guilt.
But Southern blacks are also a hell of lot more cordial than the typical angry Northern blacks, and they don't pull that crap nearly as often down there unless they are really feeling their strength in numbers. People are more polite in general down South.
So Ira Glass pulled an interview from a young woman who died 7 years ago?
Black, white, whatever, this ain't right.
Jazz musicians in the thirties and fifties like the rabidly anti White but gifted Sidney Bechet and the De Paris brothers used to stay in France where there was no color line. They loved it ... before mass African immigration and anti racism laws made Frenchmen third class citizens in their own nation.
Yes. Fall all over themselves to please them. None more so than patriarch types (though these may say stuff like "some of my best friends are black," etc.).
A significant percentage of rural Southern whites have a black in the family by marriage or adoption or know someone who does. The days of Emmett Till and Bull Connor are long gone (which always comes as a surprise to older ethnics living in the Northeast, who always promptly forget it).
a profound lack of interest in the law, and disdain for the legal profession. Thus, I can only guess that Ms. McDonald's educational and professional accomplishments are due to pure luck as there is no way that an individual, no matter their race, gender or economic status, having these experiences can become a New York corporate attorney in a high profile law firm as Ms. McDonald apparently did.
=====
So that woman was not only an embodiment of the worst in affirmative action, she ws also a ratchet hoodrat trying to scare people away in Paris. Despicable.
The french are extremely polarized politically. They have insane lefties there but there is a very large contingent of very conservative people who live there also.
Oh man. Well, you know you're in trouble when even Ira Glass -- the schmuck -- can't even find a Nice Negro.
Americans like this woman tend to project their own experience onto the rest of the world, but black-white race relations (black hostility, white fear, etc) are much worse in the US than in the rest of the West.
So even Afro-American Yale graduates behave like ill-mannered, ill-bred, trashy thugs.
Wasn't Yale originally founded as a 'school of divinity' and the whole idea was to turn out theologians, scholars and perfect gentleman rather like those polished and beautifully mannered English scions of Oxford and Cambridge?
I have never heard of Janet McDonald, but her little story strikes me as inauthentic for multiple reasons. (Of course, my own observations are "anecdote", but I live in Paris, so there exists more than one such anecdote. And I'm reminded of the witticism that the plural of "anecdote" is "data.")
First, the idea that someone in Paris complained about a line-cutter of course can happen, but standing in lines is not something that is well-accepted in Paris. Paris is not London, and thus queues are more ideas than practice. Virtually every day I see people walk right past a long queue and then jump in when it suits their fancy. No one says a word about it.
Second, the claim that French people do not 'fear' blacks in the way Americans do, as demonstrated by this example, is false. I ride the RER every day to and from work. It's an odd experience in that for the most part, the only sound one hears is the squealing brakes or other rail noise. People do not talk on their cell phones very much, and if they do, it is in such whispered tones I wonder if the other party can possibly hear. They sure as hell do not listen to music out loud the way that riders on, say, BART routinely do (I lived in the Bay Area for 20 years). The exception is almost universally a young, black male, who listens to French 'gangsta rap' (which is even more awful than the American sort, if you can believe it). No one dares to tell the guy to shut it off.
Third, there is a significant problem in the RATP and RER with people hopping turnstiles to avoid paying. Unlike US systems, it is trivial to enter the system without paying, and it is an extremely low-risk activity. There are agents who lurk in the hallways to check that you have a valid ticket. But they typically appear in the middle of the month and at the beginning. Right about now (22nd May), you will not see them. Again, anecdote, but I see every day, at least one scofflaw who doesn't even break stride to hurdle the gates at the Auber station where I enter. It is virtually 100 per cent of the time a young black male. Station agents in the kiosks say nothing.
Once, when I first arrived in Paris, I was stopped by an agent. When I showed my NAVIGO (a sort of monthly, e-pass that you flash over the entrance), I was fined 40 euros because I had failed to sign it.
At the same time, several black males who were asked to stop and show their tickets cursed the agents (half of whom were women whom, I would guess, weighed less than 50 kilograms) and just walked away. No one pursued them. It was only the stupid people who try to abide by the rules who got stopped and questioned.
I suspect French people would be more intimidated if Algerian or Moroccan juveniles tried to cut in line.
I am not convinced that Janet was correct that white New Yorkers in the '90s were "scared" of blacks - black men maybe, but black women? I think most whites just didn't want to deal with the inevitable hassle and unpleasantness of some black woman yelling and screaming. To a white person waiting a few more minutes is a decent bargain for avoiding unnecessary confrontation. Whites of Northern European descent usually don't enjoy confrontation and status games as much as blacks (or Mediterranean peoples). Of course McDonald's behavior in NYC, probably helped contribute to the subconscious contempt that most liberal white New Yorkers actually have for blacks, so thanks for that.
@Nupelon,
There used to be many stories in the press, heavily promoted by US Liberals, of how Europe was much more tolerant of minorities than the US.
Tolerant of white minorities, not black or brown (or yellow) ones. Europe has never been particularly hospitable to non-whites.
I wonder how many white kids get 1st, 2nd, 3rd,etc. chances at top tier colleges with what seems to be a free ride at each - she doesn't seem to dwell on the problem of her debts.
Lefty Lawyer Said:
"If White Americans weren't so afraid of Black people (unfortunately for good reason) Trayvon Martin would likely be alive today."
So you're saying Zimmerman would have been able to face getting his head slammed into the pavement with less fear. You're right. We're really missing out.
Time to fire up your twitter account, and tell your followers how you agree with what Janet is saying, but are against everything she stands for
His current gag is writing some dull Public Spirited message then cutting the 140 letters near whichever clause is most blatantly offensive on its own. Then, guilts anyone who retweets it... It works on so many levels
Aside: we are in the middle of a campaign by the RATP (the metro) called "restons civils." ('stay civil')
THIS cartoon is omnipresent, among others
http://www.ratp.fr/fr/upload/docs/image/jpeg/2011-09/1000-grenouille.jpg
The typical turnstile hopper is not a 'frog...'
I wonder if the result would have been the same if it had been two big black men, not two women.
As for whoever said French blacks are not as violent as American blacks, remember that many blacks in France are either illegal immigrants or migrant workers without rights of residence, and the French authorities (unlike the British) have little hesitation in deporting 'undesirables'. Heavens, they even deport Roma.
nonwhites are the weapons of the elites in their war against majority white labor. Thus, over the decades the elites have tacitly given blacks permission to be aggressive and hostile towards the whites, and to confront them. This is now part of the culture. It's a war--Capital vs Labor. And blacks are the footsoldiers of Capital.
A significant percentage of rural Southern whites have a black in the family by marriage or adoption or know someone who does. The days of Emmett Till and Bull Connor are long gone (which always comes as a surprise to older ethnics living in the Northeast, who always promptly forget it).
There was a very high degree of intermarriage among the three main ethnic groups in Bosnia at the time of the outbreak of the Bosnian War.
This may be only tangentially related, but one thing I've always liked about the French is that they don't apologize for their culture. On the contrary, they're unabashedly proud of what they've accomplished and are keen to preserve the best of that patrimony, which seems to me both a practical and psychologically healthy approach.
Culture being an expression of human nature, there are no ethically pure cultures, but American culture (at least its academic culture) is probably an anomaly with regard to the degree to which Americans are taught that the moral shortcomings of the past justify a sweeping condemnation of everything that went before us.
Puritan spiritual introspection, the influence of transnational elites, the Frankfurt group, post-Freudian guilt complexes, whatever. Americans seem to divide themselves into two contingents: one whose sense of its past is thoughtlessly "rah rah" patriotic, and another contingent which scrutinizes American history and culture primarily to identify its flaws and hypocrisies -- which of course exist everywhere.
One would wish for more, and better.
About the comments on southerners and this situation happening...
There has been kind of a sea change in the south. Hard to put your finger on it, but the place isn't really rural or blue collar anymore.
Of course not everyone is an office worker or in FIRE, but increasing numbers of the rest are on some kind of assistance like SSDI or just outright food stamps.
They act differently now. To my mind they just don't react the same way when someone does something like this now, and the race doesn't have much to do with it.
I don't think it is some kind of neurotic or apologetic thing. I really don't think whites in the south are "scared" of blacks in the same way it seems like people are saying they are in other parts of the country.
They live too closely to blacks in one way or another, and know too much about them. But on the otherhand they also know a primal law, "it's one for all, and all on one," though nowadays they don't seem particularly inclined to practice it.
Actually they don't seem particularly inclined to do anything, let alone violence, particularly the younger ones.
That said, you just don't see this kind of thing with anyone down here. Maybe in Atlanta, Charlotte, or Birmingham.
But it is hard for me to imagine anyone, regardless of skin color, getting away with this. At least with the numbers we are talking about and the gender. If you had 20 blacks doing it, I think it would be different.
On the other hand, the sea change I am talking about is all over the country, with it being more advanced in other parts of the country.
Some will blame government meddling and think it is some kind of liberal conspiracy. I am always ready for a conspiracy theory and find a lot of them plausible.
But I also think "when it's steam engine time, it's steam engine time." For whatever reason people are evolving into Homo Nebbish, an entity noted for his apathy.
Cause I bet you could do the same trick with a bunch of yuppies if your skin were the color of milk and your hair red as Ronald McDonald's. Nebbish man just doesn't do anything that involves him making a stand. Not marriage, not physical conflict, not anything really. Best you can hope for is he dials 911 on his cell.
Many black French and Arabs behave in much the same way as black Americans.
The behaviour of blacks in London would tax the patience of a saint.
Btw Until are on course to reshape UK politics.
This is completely anecdotal, but I lived in France for a year (about a decade ago) and from my experiences French people, on average, are much more "race realist" than white Americans and also are just more "racist" than white Americans in the sense that they dislike other races.
Everybody in the world is more racist than white Americans. White Americans are the least racist people in the world.
In reply to DW Budd,
I live in France, too. Northern France, but not in Paris. I see the French queuing all the time for all manner of things, from going into expos and salons to standing in queue to get some bread. I've never seen anyone jump queue. Not once.
I go to Paris from time to time and I've seen people queue there: at the Japan Expo, for instance, and at various boulangeries. I once accidentally jumped queue because I misread where the end was and I was told firmly 'il y a une queue' and told to go to the back of it.
As for political correctness, I would say that the French are less politically correct than the Americans or the British, but those on the left are working on making things the same here. They do everything they can from shoving gay marriage down people's throats to trying to downgrade the status of the French language. People are fighting back, though.
One big issue in my part of France is the 'anti-racist' fight against clubs that turn away blacks and Maghrebs. The clubs do this because they know the behaviour of these two groups. A few years back, one of them who had been turned away came back with an AK47 and shot up the place. The left blamed the bouncers.
Are the French afraid of blacks? Some probably are. But not all, and the French can be a violent people when they want to be.
"Aside: we are in the middle of a campaign by the RATP (the metro) called "restons civils." ('stay civil') -- THIS cartoon is omnipresent, among others
"
The cartoon is interesting. Every inch of the bad "frog" jumping the turnstile is covered. No skin showing whatsoever. The three respectable, law abiding onlookers looking askance at the "frog" are all black.
The double message: (a) turnstile jumping is bad, and on a deeper level (b) black people are well dressed fare-payers who do not like turnstile jumpers.
if the "respectable folks" were white it would be a veiled condemnation of "the other" i.e. other-than-white, i.e. black/Mahgreb.
Seconding DW Budd, a (white) French adult cut in line in front of me in a store in Paris when I was 9.
What was that about white privilege?
>>Marc B said:
""""""""""""""But Southern blacks are also a hell of lot more cordial than the typical angry Northern blacks, and they don't pull that crap nearly as often down there unless they are really feeling their strength in numbers. People are more polite in general down South.""""""""""""""""""""
Check the crime rate per state and then get back here and say that.
I like this. She learned gratitude for her fellow citizens, and became a much better person as a result.
The best target for questioning or arrest is the person who looks like he will give you the least trouble. The ideal target is the innocent person, who will be very cooperative. All cops know this, and many, unfortunately, act on it. The latter kind of cop would rather search Grandma Gertrude's bra than Taze Tyrone. They figure, Why risk getting Zimmermanned?
To avoid getting singled-out by cops, one has to adopt a sort of "tough" or slightly "intimidating" persona when one is in public. (This also makes muggers think twice.)
Caspar P. Milquetoast has more tickets for jaywalking than anyone else does.
Not many armed blacks in France, I bet.
Let's include that incident in the "conversation" that the Ta-Nehsi crowd wants to have.
@Simon in London,
"black-white race relations (black hostility, white fear, etc) are much worse in the US than in the rest of the West."
Just wait a few years. You'll catch up to us. Wait until you experience 30 years of wilding, then see how nice things are in London.
"Wilding":
http://robertktanenbaumbooks.com/the-injustice-of-a-rush-to-judgment/
Read the whole thing.
A Janet McDonald has a wikipedia page with some details that match the This American Life radio program (Ivy league + Paris).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janet_McDonald
An Obituary:
http://entreetoblackparis.blogspot.com/2011/03/remembering-janet-mcdonald.html
Random web page about an article about her in Teacher Magazine.
Janet McDonald practices law in Paris. She has degrees from Vassar, NYU, and Columbia. She is one of the few black members of MENSA. Yet, she came out of high school with a GPA so low it was necessary for her to go to summer school in order to get a basic diploma. Ms McDonald’s story tells of promotion for racial equality with little or no regard for the student. It tells of her long bus ride every day to a white school where she not only looked different, she was different...from the music she liked to the food she ate. Yet, because of the "prestige" associated with the institution she chose to stay and suffer, both academically, and socially.
http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/ed419/mcdonald.html
So there you have it an extremely high IQ, extremely black female.
Not too far O/T: The twenty-something black female who HAD to be hired as a metro train operator recently cost taxpayers six million dollars when she drove her train into an escalator at O'Hare airport. She fell asleep.
They were trying to spark drama, and and they didn't get it.
Do black people really jump lines successfully all the time in the U.S., or is it just a New York thing? I can't think of the last time I saw anyone of any race cut in line successfully in the U.S.
I'm a white immigrant from a South Pacific nation with a strong warrior culture. When I arrived I was poor and did labor jobs alongside African Americans.
The first three times African Americans wanted to fight me (all for made up reasons) I genuinely thought a fight was starting and went into fight mode. It was shocking to see the look of bewilderment on their faces. To me a challenge to fight was always followed up by fists flying. The bizarre excuses used to not follow through on threats were comical.
If you don't have enough self respect not to get pushed around you deserve what happens to you. US whites (including the heavily muscled, tattooed types) always back down in the face of any kind of physical threat.
To Parisian DW Budd above:
On the RATP a few years ago I saw an elderly wino verbally abusing (between swigs from his bottle) a middle-aged respectable-looking couple. The couple ignored and then looked indignant for a full five minutea. The spat only ended with just that—he spat on both of them, then moved on. Stay civil indeed.
I came away with two things - perhaps not the two things you meant to convey.
First Parisians are simply detestable. Those from the Provinces can be quite nice - they even have a city in the south named Nice.
But the people in Paris are surly and obnoxious - even worst that New Yorkers.
Secondly - why don't they all go home and watch a movie in their Home Theater instead of standing outside in a movie line? What kind of behavior can you expect from people who still go to movies in theaters?
Pat Boyle
"Do black people really jump lines successfully all the time in the U.S., or is it just a New York thing? I can't think of the last time I saw anyone of any race cut in line successfully in the U.S."
I have never seen this, and I'm from NYC.
I have seen blacks physically intimidate whites - all the time. It's like gravity, it's just a part of the landscape.
"I was on the line for a bus in the NYC Port Authority terminal waiting for the bus to (mostly white) Hudson Valley resort town of New Paltz (known for the rock climbing at the 'Gunks'). 2 black girls cut the line of white people with no problem, until the short female middle aged Haitian Port Authority worker (Creole accent) told them to get to the back of the line. From what I can see in NYC black trumps white, Haitian or Jamaican trumps black, and I think in the future maybe African will trump Caribbean."
My reasoned guess is that the woman told the girls to get back in line not because she was Haitian, and "Haitian trumps black," but because she was in charge of the bus departures and it was her job to keep people from jumping the line.
Peter
Pat Boyle: First Parisians are simply detestable. Those from the Provinces can be quite nice - they even have a city in the south named Nice.
But the people in Paris are surly and obnoxious...
I've been greatly disappointmented in my encounters with Parisians. They were so...nice. I have found them almost universally pleasant, and notably helpful and patient with my foreigner's confusions.. Granted, they're not quite as super-duper warm, friendly, and helpful as the French outside Paris, but still. I am an American, and my spoken French is certifiably execrable. What does a guy have to do to get the fabled abusive Parisian experience? I feel that I've missed something. I might be visiting again soon, so tips would be appreciated.
Old age will claim me just like anyone else, but I fondly recall strutting around rough and dubious company being more likely the mugger than the mugged
I shall miss my glorious youth
There's definitely something to that. I grew up in Europe and moved to the US when I was 19, and I've always been struck by how scared white people in America are of blacks. (And of conflict in general, perhaps)
Black people would get in my face, and I'd respond with equal aggression, and they'd be simply stunned. Their experience with white people was that they were cringing curs.
"I'm a white immigrant from a South Pacific nation with a strong warrior culture. When I arrived I was poor and did labor jobs alongside African Americans.
The first three times African Americans wanted to fight me (all for made up reasons) I genuinely thought a fight was starting and went into fight mode. It was shocking to see the look of bewilderment on their faces. To me a challenge to fight was always followed up by fists flying. The bizarre excuses used to not follow through on threats were comical.
If you don't have enough self respect not to get pushed around you deserve what happens to you. US whites (including the heavily muscled, tattooed types) always back down in the face of any kind of physical threat."
The rule with blacks is you can say anything and only physical provocations are supposed to start a fight. A man saying to you "you are coward punk-ass mofo and I will rape yo momma" is not trying to provoke a fight unless he moves towards you. It's expect that you will respond with your own torrent of outrageous insults. Back and forth insults can go on a long time with no expectation of anything more happening.
A theme of Mitch Heisman's Suicide Note is the idea that we can overvalue our individual lives. From the note:
Some Jewish prisoners in Auschwitz were selected for work as subslaves in the gas chambers and crematorium. Called Sonderkommandos, their work included hauling out gassed Jewish corpses, pulling gold teeth from the dead, and loading corpses into the crematorium to be burned. Forced to choose between death and working in the crematorium as subslaves, some Jews refused, and chose death to this work. Those who did not became Sonderkommandos: autogenocidal subslaves, in a death factory.
It was the survival of the fittest where only slaves without thymos or pride were fit to survive. Individual life was at least possible over certain death if only they would adapt to their environment; adapt to forces utterly beyond their control. Like the material machines posited by the Hobbesian view of the human, the Sonderkommandos were slaves because they were slaves to their instinctive fear of violent death.
Are whites becoming a race of Sonderkommandos?
Last year I attended a dinner party in the Yucatan at which was a Parisian couple (middle-aged). They were extraordinary nice. They were liars, though: they said my French was pretty good (I mostly bluff my way through, but they more meant pronunciation than grammar, oddly enough). They wanted to know what was wrong with America and I told them about the frontier experience; we had a political/cultural talk. They were simply the opposite of the image of rude Parisians that is laid on all Americans from birth.
A teacher of French once told me how to obtain the rude Parisian experience. This is what you should do, according to him. Dress in a slovenly and conspicuously American way, go to a cafe in its busiest hour, speak English only, speak louder and angrier when you don't understand something, and be a raging prick about the service. You are guaranteed to have something spilled on you. I am also informed that refusing or neglecting to try to speak good French will do the trick almost anywhere. Try hard not to fit in, in general, and I guess you'll experience the delicious Parisian rudeness we keep hearing about... Bonne chance!
(PS: I had a friend who said he demanded ketchup everywhere he ate in France, hoping to be slapped, but no one gave it a second thought. So that won't work.)
http://www.worldjewishcongress.org/en/news/14302/france_records_the_highest_aliyah_rates_in_2013_
"So you're saying Zimmerman would have been able to face getting his head slammed into the pavement with less fear."
If I read the original quote correctly, you were apparently unable to grasp the important distinction Lefty was making - namely that the situation as it exists now, with the American public kowtowing to offensive behavior from "minority" groups, facilitates and furthers a thug culture and ultimately encourages violent criminal behavior.
The point was that if we, as a community, had not tolerated little saint Trayvon's years of misbehavior there is a very real chance he wouldn't have turned in to the type of thug that assaulted a man out of the blue.
Either Mr. Misbehavin-Martin would have received correction and punishment from friends, family, neighbors, teachers, officials, and police until he had been turned from the path that led him to attacking and trying to murder a portly little hispanic octaroon for a perceived slight, or ultimately he would have been adequately incapacitated in prison with the rest of the rabid animals (of any stripe).
What do you think happens when school teachers and officials are afraid to discipline a black youth purely because of his race? What do you think happens when teachers and families just assume that a black boy has some inborn right to be a piece of **** thug? What do you think happens when a race can just riot to get whatever it wants? What do you think happens when career race-baiters successfully excuse criminal malfeasance with a mere accusation of racism? What do you think happens when our justice system hands out lighter sentences to black offenders than they would to white offenders with similar histories and profiles?
Note regarding that last point, since most people are too naive to grasp the distinction, disingenuous white liberals and racist black agitators will try to impress upon you the belief that blacks are given harsher sentences than whites "for the same offense", when in fact sentencing takes into account factors that are not considered during the determination of guilt or innocence - things like prior criminal history, family environment, likelihood of rehabilitation, likelihood of recidivism, threat to the community, etc.. Once you look at offenders with comparable criminal histories, similar employment prospects, and identical overall risks to the community, you'll find that as a trend black offenders will have far worse criminal histories "for the same offense" than comparable non-black offenders.
The justice system cannot apply the same penalties to certain offenders due to the likelihood that doing so would generate race riots. Policing cannot be applied equally to all persons, either. To say nothing on non-judicial school discipline or even public commentary. So we have created a society in which persons of a certain ethnic or racial background are not corrected to the same extent as others, not disciplined to the same extent, not policed to the same extent, and not punished to the same extent.
You know what that kind of incentivisation creates? A violent, hateful, racist and criminal counter-culture.
Mr. Lefty's point was that we as a cowardly, cringing, sobbing and quivering excuse for a culture turned aside and pretended not to notice when a young black man took every necessary step on the long path to prison or the coroner's slab. We didn't criticize, we didn't discipline, we didn't police, we didn't prosecute or incarcerate, we did absolutely nothing until a life of racial privilege led an undisciplined and finally undiscplinable youth to a dark stretch of road and the decision on whether or not to try to murder an effeminate little latino butter-ball.
Mr. Zimmerman would never had to defend his life if we as a nation had the balls to tell a black kid not to be a piece of ****, or smack him upside the head if he didn't listen to that particular piece of sage advice.
Frenchmen queue? Not on your life. Most of the waiting line issues at the club I worked at in my youth were caused by blacks, but French nationals in Boston going to college caused problems way out of proportion to their numbers.
My experience with blacks and their attempts at intimidation is similar to that with bikers: in a large group they can be trouble, but alone or in small groups they're not. I've found that, when fixed with the aforementioned thug stare from a brother, "Who you be eyeballin', boy?" settles their tripes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%A9tif_massacre
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_massacre_of_1961
It's funny to hear americans speak of how rude the French are. The animosity between the French and Americas is an obvious, both nations are bastards of the Enlightenment, both believe their cultures are universal. The tide has turned in France while European-americans sadly cling to what never was, "victims" of mass Stockholm Syndrome.
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