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CNN: "Accused shooter in Kansas City shooting of Black teen who went to the wrong house is White man in his 80s" Archive: https://archive.is/NcFb5
Edit: Andrew Lester is the 84 year old white man and is facing charges of assault in the first degree and armed criminal action. Clay County attorney Zachary Thompson states there was a racial element but hate crimes is a lower charge so will not be brought. "There is no evidence that the teen entered the home and preliminary evidence shows Lester opened fire on the teen through a glass door with a .32 caliber revolver"
Ralph Yarl is the black teen that was shot outside of Kansas City, Missouri. Early it was reported that he was shot twice in the head but now his family's attorneys are saying that Yarl "shot twice and struck in the head and arm" and Yarl has now been released from the hospital and is recovering at home.
The white man in his 80's "was taken into custody on April 13 just before midnight and was released less than two hours later at 1:24 a.m. on April 14."
By all accounts I am seeing Ralph Yarl is a band geek which places my heuristic chances of aggression on his part as low. If I found the correct streets the subdivision is one of the last developments before hitting mostly farms and the street names are really confusing with the developer using the same number twice and then alternating between "Street" and "Terrace."
Of course, still waiting on details but in my opinion this could likely be what some people consider to be the quintessential example of a "racist" shooting. If that's the case and the only quibble between Red Tribe and Blue Tribe is if it would have made a difference if the kid was white or black does this story gain a much traction with that little toxoplasma or does it more go the way of the Eric Garner and Philando Castile killings?
And if he is doing this, how much do you want to bet it did not sound something like "Excuse me sir, I am expecting to be at address X and..." and instead was more like "Ay! Darnell! DeAndre! Get yo' asses out here! It's time to go! Ay, who you is? Where my brothers at? Where dey at? Ay! Yo, I'm talkin' to you nigga!", likely in a loud tone of voice that could easily be misinterpreted as aggressive before he's even properly reached the door? (Edit on 4/25: Of course I could be wrong here and Ralph Yarl could be a young Carlton (Yarlton?) Banks but statistically that's less likely.)
It's not even the ebonics necessarily, but just the fact that blacks tend to communicate anything they want in a more direct, loud, demanding, and repetitive fashion than other races, even when they have no ill intentions, can make other races uneasy even during actually fairly neutral interactions with them, much less an 84 year old man.
I've had plenty of interactions with blacks where they've wrongfully assumed that they needed/wanted something from me or vice versa based on various mistakes of fact, and while many of these have ended in a non-threatening "Oh, my bad" (though sometimes they also just like to immediately disengage and walk away without comment, almost like weird primitive AI agents, once they realize you're not the droid they're looking for), getting there is usually still an uneasy process as they just do not seem to practice the habits of clearly confirming and socially negotiating their presence and intent nearly as much as Whites, Asians, etc. do.
This of course is not malicious behavior in their book. They have no problems yelling at each other repetitively until one side's shouting wins. But if you aren't used to it I can see why it might seem hostile.
I have a hard time imagining a world in which you wrote that without expecting to eat a ban for it.
Optimize for light, not heat. User banned for three days.
I don’t think this should be considered inflammatory. If a black comedian had these lines in their act it would be a non-issue.
The argument was that there’s a communication style among black folks that can be jarring and intimidating to people not used to it, and this was a not even very egregious example.
If a white person gave such an example in Polite Society they might very well lose their job over it, but we are supposed to be able to violate those kinds of norms here.
This is not a comedy forum, though. This is a discussion forum. I'd like to say our standards are "higher" than the average comedy club's, but... let's say instead that they are at least quite different.
...phrased in an inflammatory way, and attributing it (as you've done) to "black folks" instead of to specific individuals or even specific groups.
Only to the extent necessary to optimize for light. Just because you're allowed to express your views about racial differences does not mean you are allowed to express them in ways that are unnecessarily inflammatory, uncharitable, etc.
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Seems excessive.
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Amazing. He was completely accurate in his depiction. The hot-air trying to politely talk around this fact is the heat, not his shining a light at the facts on the ground.
Was he? My experience with blacks had been that they’re more polite in a neutral interaction(like trying to pick their brothers up).
In my proposed dialogue, he thinks he's calling out to his brothers initially (and it is quite likely that his brothers were at a fellow black person's house and so he thinks everyone in the scenario is going to be black), setting his more casual tone (worrying as much about who else might be listening to what you're loudly saying also seems to be a less common black communicative habit). This maybe causes Lester to evince hostile or evasive behavior upon hearing it, causing Yarl to react similarly (or perhaps he's just unable to code switch so quickly between his "politely talking to White people" voice and his "talking to closer in age black brothers" voice).
Of course, to be fair, not all black people even bother using the "politely talking to White people" voice, especially nowadays. And some others also do use it more liberally, almost always when they feel there might be mixed company. But again, as far as I know (as I added to my original post, though only now as I was banned, as it originally got lost in an editing sweep when it was supposed to be moved to the end), maybe Yarl is Carlton Banks from The Fresh Prince. Statistically that's unlikely of course.
In any case it could be a factor. I want to hear the full and true story before I condemn. I was fooled initially by George Floyd, even though I should have known better post-Trayvon. Not again.
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For reference, can you demonstrate how one would communicate the same idea in a less heated manner? Or is this a case where the poster should have linked to a few /ActualPublicFreakous videos or the like to provide multiple pro-active examples of the vocal phenomenon in question?
Sure thing.
I did not write a loquacious ban message because it seemed unnecessary to do so, but the rule requiring posts to be about specific rather than general groups, to the extent possible, absolutely applies here. @WhiningCoil's response, which I am tempted to moderate as well, illustrates the problem. I have met many black people. I have met some who behaved in the ways described above; I have met many who did not. I have also had entirely too many encounters, in my life, with white people who behaved in the ways described above.
This is--obviously--a high-heat discussion topic. That is not an excuse; it is a reason to work even harder to live up to the rules.
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Have you never met a real black person?
Have you? I have, and based on my experience the GGP is still making an extraordinarily inflammatory claim (that the interaction with a generic black youth would likely have looked like that) that requires extraordinary evidence (well in excess of either invoking stereotypes or linking an anecdotal video from the internet hate machine).
If the thesis is actually "members of culture X habitually communicate in the described way (litany of attributes considered negative in our culture, anecdotal transcription optimised for disgust response)", then I'd expect something on the level of scientific papers on the interpersonal value differences and the prevalence of intercultural misunderstandings induced by the different communication style supposedly illustrated by the example. Even then, I would drop the example; if that way of speaking actually induces a negative emotional response in members of our culture. then we should keep it out of the discussion lest we are made more irrational by our own emotional response.
Actually reducing the thesis to "different cultures communicate differently" would be a massive motte-and-bailey shifting of goalposts to a thesis that is so general as to be uncontroversial.
If your feelings on the matter are actually something like "but black people are really this bad, how do we deal with this unfair standard that makes it impossible to prove that in conversation", then maybe it helps to flip the scenario to get another setting in which the required level of evidence and careful wording would at least form a lower bound: imagine a white cook got fired from a prestigious cooking school. People think it's because he's white and there is a pervasive prejudice that white people have no cuisine to speak of. Would you accept someone making the argument with personal anecdotes about being fed canned Campbell's soup, Uncle Roger shorts and Twitter memes about US supermarket toast bread and mayo, or is there a higher standard of evidence you could think of demanding?
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When I saw Joe Rogan in Baltimore, a fight broke out in the parking garage because someone wouldn't let someone else back out into the line. It was two cars behind us. The entire 60 minutes we were slowly emptying out of that subterranean edifice, dude was hanging out his window shouting at the guy in front of him more or less exactly like that. Baltimore being Baltimore, my wife was anxious actual violence was about to break out the entire time.
Where I used to live, we'd have to get my infant off the neighborhood playground as soon as the highschool let out, because a bunch of 13 year old black kids in the "mixed income"
utopiandystopian development we were renting would take it over and begin speaking exactly like that.Now granted, in a professional setting, I've never heard a black person speak like that. But literally 75% of the street encounters I've had with black teenagers, they were.
Some black people speak like that, Yes. But in peer to peer interactions mostly.
Virtually all of the black kids I know call any adults Mr/Miss/Mrs Firstname very politely and get a clip round their ear (or worse) from their parents if they do not. And that's including the ones literally from the ghetto. Where even the adults in their 30's are very likely to call me "Boss" or Mr SSCReader as an older man and be more deferential towards me than each other. For a black kid going up to knock on an adult's door they do not know well (given they didn't get the address right) it seems more likely they would be saying "Miss Talia, my mom sent me to pick up my brothers" than stereotypical ebonics even if he were a literal hood kid. Because if he didn't his mum was going to be told about his disrespect and so would her friends.
There is a lot in common with more southern politeness norms in black communities. And to be fair also in regards to levels of violence/threat. It is very similar to my Ulster-Scots brethren, where there are a lot of norms around politeness but also lots of fights/aggression. Which is perhaps why despite being in some of the worst ghetto neighborhoods as one of the whitest white men who have ever walked the earth, I've never encountered any problems. And it's usually pretty easy to see who has had in depth interactions within these communities and who hasn't. You were comparing people in an argument in the street and kids playing basketball (both where trash talking is likely) to a kid going up to ring a doorbell and collect his siblings from an adult. Why would you assume they would be similar interactions? Those are very different social situations. Codeswitching is a huge thing in the black community as you acknowledge later about professional settings and it is also very relevant to interactions like this.
And that's before we even get into the discussion of whether this kid was from a community where he is likely to use that language anyway in the first place.
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