The things black people believe

Yesterday I posted a comment here and under this title with an anecdote in which the commenter told how he retorted to, and justly made a fool of, a black woman customer in a bagel shop who was uttering complete nonsense, namely “We have to watch out for that Romney, he is gonna kill old people by taking their Social Security and Medicare!”, and “Romney is gonna kill poor kids by taking their food stamps!” I didn’t realize until after I posted it that the use of a four-letter word in the retort to the woman made the story inappropriate, as Paul T. suggests:

Pretty crushing retort, but I prefer the response used by a friend of mine in broadly similar circumstances: “Well, I have different information.” Wouldn’t get the laugh your reader got, but showing a little class exerts its own kind of influence. Which raises the whole question of casual obscenity, especially in public places—something that most people tried to avoid before the Great Cultural Revolution we’re living through. I know it seems a small point when everything’s collapsing around us, but by that standard, so is wearing clean clothes, opening a door for a woman, etc. Would be interested to hear any thoughts you might have on the subject.

I thank Paul for the correction. VFR is a shared enterprise, and its readers can help the site maintain standards on those occasions when I forget to.

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Paul T. writes:

By the way, when I wrote “casual obscenity in public places” I was referring to your correspondent’s words to the black woman in the restaurant, not to your reporting the story on VFR. I suppose the same point holds in that VFR is also a “public place,” but anyway, I didn’t think of that until I read your gracious response. And I’m hardly blameless in the matter of obscenities.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at May 02, 2012 08:30 PM | Send