Quote:
Originally posted by sebastian_dangerfield
I actually heard one chick at a pretty high end holiday soiree refer to chuildren she was teaching in an inner city school as "monkeys." I almost spit my drink. I cringed, waiting for her to get a full frontal onslaught from the rest of the group, but all that came up was one drink guy with a great "monkeys, really?" which was probably the best comeback. The remainder of the conversation was awkward dead air where everyone stared at their drinks. Thank God for alcohol.
The best I ever saw was some rube tell a racist joke to an Irish rugby-player friend of mine who was about 6/4 230lbs. The big Irish dude luaghed really loud and then stopped, took a swig on his beer and said "My sister is black and I love beating the shit out of little guys."* That redneck didn't try to gouge anything.
* Which is true.
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Here is what I find interesting - what is, in fact, the best, most chastizing response? I, for one, am not the sort to let stuff like this go (if I catch it, I guess - it would never have occurred to me that "cocksucker" is a slur v. gays (now possibly genericized), though how I missed that is, on reflection, a mystery). Above, we have examples of what I think are the two most common methods - uncomfortable silence and threatening confrontation. I might add a third option that I hear sometimes, which I style "righteous lecturing," in which the challenger says something to the effect of "you are a bigot and can't say that it is offensive and let me explain to you just how wrong you are."
I understand the "mortgage" problem in confronting bigots, and maybe I am lucky in my employer in that I am confident I would NEVER be fired for calling a client or anyone else on an inappropriate comment (and lucky that I only very, very rarely hear anything of this nature about anyone - maybe I just look prissy and put people on good behavior). However, any job I would loose because I objected to a biggoted comment I really don't fucking want. You can buy my time, buy my effort, buy my brains but you can't buy that. (Easy to say given that I've never been in a position where my basic livelihood was threatened, I admit, but I have called boyfriends parents, large men on the subway, etc., on shit like that.)
Anyhow, my default response is uncomfortable silence: "I BEG your pardon?" with a cold look that says "you had better explain fast that you did not just say what you just said." If no immediate stammering appology is forthcoming, the silence grows and the look gradually transmutes into "you are a revolting, mentally deficient piece of snot." I have gone in for more of a confrontation by substituting "What the hell is wrong with you" for "I beg your pardon" while standing up and walking towards the malfeasor in one case where I thought the object of the slur might be under some actual physical threat (big guy making menacing comments at a muslim woman). (That sounds somewhat dangerous, particularly if you've ever seen diminuitive me, but I've found that, if someone actually does something about it first, passive standers-by in NYC are quite eager to follow and give moral and physical support. And being a rich white woman in this culture often gives one amazing invisible armor in the minds of just about anyone other than other rich white women, I've found. ) This seems pretty effective to me, but I sometimes wonder if I am just wussing out by not being more proactively confrontational. Certainly the complete social aprobation implied by a stunned uncomforable silence is more effective than the "righteous lecture" approach, which seems to lead most bigots to dismiss one as a lefty/PC busybody.
Thoughts?
