<p>EmeraldKitty- Google “You Miight Be a Redneck If…” It’s a Southern thing. :)</p>
<p>You might be a redneck if:</p>
<p>You’ve ever been accused of lying through your tooth…</p>
<p>You think “The Nutcracker” is something you do off the diving board…</p>
<p>The Salvation Army declines your mattress…</p>
<p>You go to a stock car race and don’t need a program…</p>
<p>Directions to your house include “Turn off the paved road…”</p>
<p>Your wife’s hairdo has ever been ruined by a ceiling fan…</p>
<p>The dog can’t watch you eat without gagging.</p>
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</p>
<p>Yes and yes.</p>
<p>What if he had caused an accident and you hadn’t called the police because you were afraid you’d have to give your name? You’d never forgive yourself. This is not all about you, it’s also about all the other cars/drivers that were on that road and whose lives were put at risk by this behavior. </p>
<p>I agree with another poster that there seems to be more to this story. If he was in front of you, how could he ‘mimick’ your move when you exited. When you exited, wasn’t he already past the exit if he was in front of you?</p>
<p>If there had been an accident, despite this driver’s behavior, you most likely would have been held responsible, too, for engaging in erratic driving behavior.</p>
<p>I was called out for work late Friday night/Saturday morning (12:30AM on my way somewhere). I absolutely hate driving during those hours because I know the chances are high that many other cars on the road are being driven by impaired drivers. Sure enough, within one small town that I passed through, I encountered at least two cars that I knew were impaired (swerving in the other lane, braking inappropriately, driving way too slow). This was along a stretch of road where there are a couple of restaurant/bars where the parking lots were packed, too. I decided continuing to drive along this route was not in my best interest, so I took a detour (luckily once I make a turn off my GPS guided route, it will correct itself and get me to my destination via my new choice). I was in an area that I had never been in (fairly rural and dark and very few cars), and somehow missed a speed limit sign that said the speed limit went from 45 to 35. I had no idea I was entering a very small village. I was doing 49 (thinking I was 4 miles over the speed limit), and got pulled over for speeding. Yea, I was pi$$ed, but I just did not feel comfortable continuing to drive on that other state route, so I had to take the consequences of my actions. And before anyone asks why I didn’t call the police when I saw the impaired drivers, I didn’t get close enough to the car to get a license plate number, nor could I really tell the make of the car. The village was small enough that, by the time I’d made the call and filed the report, I (and the driver) would have been in another jurisdiction (literally you can get through this town in five minutes). In other circumstances, I have called 911 and reported erratic drivers, instead of trying take matters into my own hands.</p>
<p>By the way, my GPS has a ‘search places’ function. Even when I’m going somewhere that I know exactly how to get there, I always enter my destination. That way, if I encounter some wacko driver, I can quickly ‘add a place along the route’ and enter the nearest police station… and that’s exactly what I’d do. Let the idiot unknowingly follow me there.</p>
<p>If I EVER found out one of my kids engaged in the kind of driving behavior you did and didn’t do something within the first two minutes, I’d strangle them.</p>
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<p>Oriental? I hope this is subtle humor and not utter cluelessness.</p>
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<p>Maybe they’re afraid of all the racists. ;)</p>
<p>Oh I see
around here only the wealthy/retired can afford to live " in the boonies",
, driving massive vehicles ( like a Tahoe?), is for areas with heavy snow & while many of the wealthy/retired * are* Republican, many are not.</p>
<p>I think the thing that most alarms me about the whole incident is just that someone would be very drowsy and set their cruise control higher than the speed limit.
I wonder if the poor decisions that followed stemmed from foggy thinking due to lack of sleep</p>
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</p>
<p>Or store that information? You mean you honestly don’t remember whether someone you just spoke with was white, black, Hispanic, “Oriental”, or Inuit unless that person’s race was somehow directly relevant to your discussion? I believe that you are either:</p>
<ol>
<li> Joking.</li>
<li> Lying.</li>
<li> Suffering from a frontal-lobe injury resulting in the inability to form accurate memories.</li>
</ol>
<p>If there’s another possibility, please tell me. (And “I am so far beyond race that I honestly don’t notice it in the person I am speaking with, ever” will not be accepted as a serious answer.)</p>
<p>I just can’t stop thinking about the disingenuous, even laughable assertion that some people “don’t store” the race of the person they’re interacting with.</p>
<p>**Victim: **Officer, someone just ran me over in his car.
**Officer: **Can you describe him?
**Victim: **Well, he was driving a black BMW
**Officer: **Mm-hmm.
**Victim: **He was very tall.
**Officer: **Go on.
**Victim: **And he was wearing a basketball jersey.
**Officer: **And what did he look like?
**Victim: **Well, he had dark hair.
**Officer: **Did he say anything to you as he ran you over?
**Victim: **Yes, but I couldnt understand it.
**Officer: **Because he was speeding away too fast?
**Victim: **No, because it was in Chinese.
**Officer: **I see, so a Chinese person ran you over and
**Victim: **I dont know if he was Chinese or not. I didnt store that information.
**Officer: **You dont know if he was Chinese or not?
**Victim: **Why would I? Is his race relevant to the fact that he was running me over?
**Officer: **I suppose not. Now, were there any identifying marks on the driver?
**Victim: **Yes. His basketball jersey said Yao Ming.
**Officer: **So you were run over by the Chinese basketball player Yao Ming?
**Victim: **Not necessarily. I only know that I was run over by <em>a</em> basketball player named Yao Ming. Since his race is irrelevant to his athletic ability, I did not store that information. He may have been Indian or Norse.</p>
<p>"Suppose the tables were turned and I was a young black person, driving alone, and was followed by a white person who looked like he places in the top 10 every year at the Redneck Games? Would it be prejudiced at all to bring this up when describing the situation to someone else? "</p>
<p>What does a “redneck” look like? I identify rednecks by their attire and insignia on their cars, but otherwise can’t identify them. Being white and wearing jeans, for instance, doesn’t mean one is a redneck.</p>
<p>If he were driving a pickup truck with the confederate flag plastered all over it, that would make a statement. </p>
<p>It would be appropriate to describe his race if one were black because the race combined with the vehicle and confederate flag might indicate one was being targeted for a hate crime. I’m black, and for good reason – fear – my family doesn’t frequent places that have lots of vehicles with confederate flags in the parking lot.</p>
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</p>
<p>So, in other words it is appropriate to fear hate crime but not gang crime?</p>
<p>Crime is crime to me. I don’t care if a criminal targeted me because he hates me personally, hates my race, or is just plain hateful. I want him punished just the same. His social attitudes are of no concern to me; it’s his actions that merit punishment.</p>
<p>“So, in other words it is appropriate to fear hate crime but not gang crime?”</p>
<p>Of course not. That wasn’t the point at all. Race of the perp might be important if one were wondering why one was targeted. Race also may be important if one is trying to avoid danger as in the example that I gave of how my (black) family avoids gathering places where we see lots of white people displaying confederate flags.</p>
<p>Otherwise, who cares except for the police as they try to ID the perp?</p>
<p>do you have a college confidential bumper sticker on your car?</p>
<p>It was probably “BMW dude”… he drives a 5 series and is a self described a$$hole.</p>
<p>mantori in #87, etc.</p>
<p>It is probably inappropriate to assume that people who think differently from you are “lying”, have a brain injury or whatever else you said, but I will try to explain, to shed some light on it.</p>
<p>I think it’s in the upbringing. I had the great good fortune of being raised in a fully-integrated middle-class community (memorialized in “Ragtime”), and I can tell you quite honestly that I was not aware that I was “white” until the end of third grade – there was a huge variation of people. My mom says that I would point someone out on the playground and say “See that girl with the red shirt and yellow hair things? She’s my friend.” I would never say “See that black girl…” even though clearly, as my mom could see, the friend was black. See how that works?</p>
<p>Even today, although society constantly rubs the race issue in your face (to wit: the OP), it is never the first thing I note about a person. I recently saw Lisa Jackson, new head of the EPA interviewed, and later heard her described as black. I remember thinking “She is? Oh. So?” Same with Susan Rice, Amb. to the UN. Last summer when the Obamas were interviewed, I thought, “this would have to be the most beautiful, exemplary family to ever live in the White House”, and months later, when the Obamas took residence at 1600 Pennsylvania and things like this appeared in the media:<br>
from: [Jesse</a> Holland on How Slaves Built the White House and the US Capitol](<a href=“http://www.democracynow.org/2009/1/20/jesse_holland_black_men_built_the]Jesse”>Jesse Holland on How Slaves Built the White House and the U.S. Capitol | Democracy Now!)
Tell you what, I found the enormity of the symbolism of that so touching, I was crying like a baby, duh, I’m slow, but THE FIRST BLACK FAMILY LIVING IN THE WHITE HOUSE was not the first thing that occurred to me about the Obamas!</p>
<p>Forgive me for the “oriental guy with glasses” comment. Honestly, I wouldn’t be able to describe a Chinese, or Chinese-American for that matter, person as “Chinese”, or Korean, or Vietnamese, etc. Would you be able to differentiate my heritage (Swedish) from other Anglo-looking people? I doubt it.</p>
<p>Funny story: my son sent me a picture of himself and a bunch of his buddies going to an event.<br>
My first thought was: Why does my son stick out like a sore thumb?<br>
Then I had these thoughts, in this order:
- He’s the only one not wearing a tie. Where is my son’s tie?
- He’s a half-a-head taller, and he needs a haircut.
- Where are they going, anyway?
- He’s the only blonde, non-Asian in the group. </p>
<p>Number 4. Big deal, right? What do I mean by Asian? I do not know. It does not matter. What does matter is they are all really comfortable with each other and my son never describes his friends in racial terms. </p>
<p>This is what disappointed me about the Dr. Henry Louis Gates debacle in Cambridge – it may well have not been motivated by racism, but just bone-headed, heavy-handed policing. Campus police in Cambridge don’t have the best reputation in the world for discretion. And the neighbor who called – I have no trouble believing that she did NOT describe the two men as “black”, because I probably wouldn’t have ‘stored that information’ either. I also have no trouble believing that she’s just one of those Nervous Nellies who call 911 for anything and nothing; we have a lot of those up here.</p>
<p>
…or he might have been Tiger Woods’s kid, in which case, all of the above! </p>
<p>Keep smiling, mantori.</p>
<p>p.s., someday this country may be populated by people who look like Tiger Woods’s kids, and you know what, I don’t think that’s a bad thing.</p>
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<p>Some people consider the word “Oriental” to be very offensive. In some countries the term is still used with no ill intent. I think most people here would just use the word “Asian” to avoid controversy.</p>
<p>[Orient</a> - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orient]Orient”>Orient - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>[Washington</a> State Illegalizes O Word - NAM](<a href=“Top 10 web hosting companies 2021 - sites & providers reviews”>Top 10 web hosting companies 2021 - sites & providers reviews)</p>
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<p>Cheers, AnudduhMom! And I think it’s not only possible, but likely, perhaps even inevitable in our shrinking world, that all humans will one day have a pan-racial appearance, and I also believe that that would be a good thing. (Not the appearance, but the universal acceptance that it would imply.)</p>
<p>By the way, I take no offense whatsoever at the term Oriental, but I am aware that some people do. I think it’s probably a bit like Negro, in the sense that it’s not a bad word per se, but it is outdated, and therefore has become associated with outdated notions and stereotypes. But no apology is necessary, at least not to me. I just found its use in this thread a bit ironic.</p>
<p>About lying, being brain damaged, etc., I sometimes wrongly assume that such over-the-top statements make it pretty obvious that I’m being tongue-in-cheek, but if not, then I’ll state it here for the record: I don’t think you were lying, nor do I think you are brain-damaged. :)</p>
<p>The Obamas are an interesting case to me. I think of Barack and the kids as either multiracial or just plain American. (Michelle is, I believe, of almost entirely African ancestry, but I’m not certain. She just looks more like it than the other family members.) Rather than think of Barack as “the first black president,” I think of him as “the first president who is not obviously of European ancestry,” and I think that’s even better.</p>
<p>Anyway, thanks for taking the time to write more about your thoughts on this matter.</p>
<p>I admit I have face blindness and can’t remember where I met someone or sometimes even if I have met them. This is really embarrassing when I am sitting next to someone and am acting like I don’t even know them when just a few months ago I gave them a ride to a meeting!</p>
<p>But I certainly notice race and am even learning to tell apart the differences between different nationalities ( although not foolproof to be sure), although the cues are not only face shape and features ) and skin color, but mannerisms, vocal patterns and thank goodness for the big clue- what they bring to the dept potluck. :)</p>
<p>I think it is important that we see each other as people certainly- but that comes after we know them, noticing their skin color before we know them is just as important to pick up information as mannerisms, facial expressions, etc is later.</p>
<p>Wow, I had no idea that “oriental” is offensive! Thank you.</p>
<p>Is it also offensive to say “The Orient” as in "an art exhibition of ‘Jewels of the Orient’ ? Really, that’s a sincere question. </p>
<p>Why is it offensive? </p>
<p>Another thing to add to my list of dissertation topic ideas:
A study of historical linguistics: the evolution of racial terminology in terms of its power to offend</p>
<p>I understand from watching Jon Stewart that Puerto Rican people (btw, is it okay to say Hispanic?) take offense if they are asked about Mexico. Goodness, I also take offense if someone asks me about Norway, considering my heritage is Swedish. (ha ha, a little levity)</p>
<p>The power and will to offend and be offended. It’s a war-starter, all right.</p>
<p>Anyway. So what about the OP and his mention of the fellow as being “African-American”? It’s not terminology here, but his insertion of the person’s race as being somehow relevant to the story. This white girl cries foul. But some of you think it’s okay? Agree to disagree, or?</p>
<p>*Is it also offensive to say “The Orient” as in "an art exhibition of ‘Jewels of the Orient’ ? Really, that’s a sincere question. </p>
<p>Why is it offensive? *</p>
<p>thats a good question- my understanding is that Oriental comes from a time when everything was more Eurocentric,but I don’t think it is as bad as the Italian prime minister referring to Obama as the “man with a tan”.
[Google</a> Answers: Oriental verbiage offensive / not politically correct](<a href=“http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview/id/545754.html]Google”>Google Answers: Oriental verbiage offensive / not politically correct)</p>
<p>“Oriental” is offensive, I’ve heard, because of its Eurocentric perspective. The earth is round, so Asia could be considered east or west or even north or south depending on your perspective.</p>