I am off to court now. Hopefully everything will be okay and I will return to elaborate on the details, but if something crazy happens and I do not return... it was nice knowing y'all.

I was going to post this in the comments thread of the previous post per usual, but I think it's long enough to warrant making it a new post. The comments to which I am responding are from Dave -- located here -- and Nick -- located here. Once you're all caught up and stuff, you can read my responses below the cut.

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Dave: Two points in response. The first is that I do think that the behavior I describe -- or at least the mentality that underlies it -- differs from "someone assuming they can engage in a conversation about the Yankees or American Idol" with anyone, because here the topics are not general but are specifically chosen in accordance with the skin color of the interlocutor. The behavior that bothers me also includes assumptions about the interlocutor that go above and beyond that of a remote and/or general interest in the subject. It's the difference between meeting someone at a party and asking if he/she saw the final episode of "The Sopranos" (I've never seen a single episode) and approaching someone of apparent Latin descent and saying, "So I bet you sure like tacos, huh???" In both instances people may be repeating what they heard somewhere else, but the latter example is much more demeaning.

The second point is that contrary to the assumption that these people probably don't know me very well, whereas I am bothered by comments from even people for whom this is true, the most frustrating ones come from people who have known me for years. The AIM excerpt came from someone who has known me for at least four years, and a number of the regular offenders have known me longer than that. My parents have known me my entire life.

And it's not as if I've never commented on this kind of behavior or only reply to it with a look of disgust -- I have given so many lengthy arguments and explanations detailing why this is unacceptable that even if people are truly incapable of understanding me on the matter and making an effort to recognize people as individuals, you'd think that they'd at least refrain from making insulting comments to me. But even after years and years of association (and my largely predictable nature!) they still expect me to have the exact same views as Chris Rock or Cornel West (or that they might expect said persons to espouse) regarding any given topic.

Nick: You write, "You can either be depressed by this or realize that the people you are friends with have made an effort to look past stereotypes and spend the precious minutes of their life in your company." But what I am saying is that they clearly haven't made that effort -- or that whatever effort they have made is so insignificant as to be negligible -- such that their attitude does preclude the possibility of our having anything other than meaningless and superficial relationships.

In addition, your disjunctive statement here is analogous (not directly, of course) to "you can either feel pain or perform open brain surgery on yourself to sever the nerve endings and be glad that the people who deign to drink with you are only uppercutting you in the gut as opposed to breaking bottles over your skull and gouging out your eyes." Just as one would feel pain in said instance insofar as being punched in the gut hurts, insofar as I recognize that I am being insulted, I feel insulted when people insult me -- especially when, assuming that they've listened to anything of importance that I have ever said, they should know better.

I am more concerned with the reality that people do not recognize me as an individual rather than that they identify me with specific stereotypes or groups -- it's just that this particular identification is the most prevalent in my experience in society today (in addition to being implicated in so, so, so many social problems that could be fixed -- easily -- if people simply stopped). Admittedly, if I met someone who stereotyped me on the basis of my shoe size (in a way that had nothing to do with penis size), I would probably be amused and interested at first, but only because that has never happened and would give me the opportunity to learn a bit more about this unfamiliar, foreign society that places such importance on shoe size. After ten times, however, it would probably become quite annoying -- and after 20+ years it would be infuriating.

But you know, while you write, "The kind of people you'd like to make friends with do not exist in the grown-up world," and chalk people's flaws in this respect up to basic human nature, I'll be honest -- I don't believe that at all. I may not even believe that there is a single person on this planet who is incapable of changing if given the right impetus. I may think that people are lazy, or stupid, or shallow little creatures, but I do not think that they are that limited in their capacity to recognize others as individuals. I mean -- one hopes -- they recognize themselves as being individuals (though admittedly in many cases their perception is blurred as a result of various social influences), so how difficult is it to extend this courtesy to others?

In fact, even though the prevalence of this mode of thinking makes it a little easier to exercise, I would argue that it takes more work to reduce people to stereotypes and group representatives (etc.) than it does to grant them their individual autonomy. Whereas the former requires people to draw upon probabilities, outside information, media bias, etc., etc., all the latter requires is one of the most basic and intuitive examples from your run-of-the-mill introductory logic course. Really, it's so simple! Humans may be flawed in many, many ways, but I have to believe that they're better than this. Quite frankly, I'm disappointed and worried that, on the occasions when I do sincerely question my faith in others, people essentially encourage me to abandon it altogether. Even if you've "accepted" that people are largely hopeless, this is the part where you're supposed to hold my hand and lie to me.

At any rate, even if the strain does ultimately press me unhappily into my grave, I would rather be depressed and retain my sad, perpetually shaken idealism (or even optimism) than simply "accept" that people are unable to grasp even the most basic ideas and understanding that -- if I am right -- make love and respect and friendship and all other meaningful relationships possible. I couldn't be otherwise even if I wanted to: accepting these so-called flaws of humanity and losing myself (whether that entails suicide or the murder spree or a third option, the creation of persona that is perhaps more cheerful but also more shallow, less interesting, and decidedly not me) are tantamount to the same outcome.

And no, I don't think that the world would be better off without me -- but insofar as I am wrong about people and their capacity to truly relate to and connect with others, I do think that I (and everyone else) would be better off elsewhere.

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Excerpted from an AIM conversation today:

Me: man these old Boy Meets World episodes never fail to warm my heart
Person: but there's no black people... Boy Meets World doesn't get a token black character til WAAY later

And yes, that response came completely out of left field -- but wouldn't you know that not a single goddamned day goes by during which someone in my life does not say something along these lines. These people are supposed to be my friends and loved ones and so much -- so, so much -- of what comes out of their mouths or is conveyed by their fingertips causes my head to throb and my eyeballs to sting so intensely that I want to inhale carbon monoxide rather than endure the day after day after day after day after day of said pain that will inevitably follow. I don't even know why I'm posting about it here, since I don't really expect you to be able to offer any consolation or comforting words so much as I expect you to further compound my pain. All too frequently I voice my distress with a certain media development or personal incident only to be met with a non sequitur comment to the effect of "yeah, I know what you mean; if it were me, I would be embarrassed for my race too" or an equally insulting and ridiculous off-base or dismissive response, and I want to repeatedly bang my forehead against something very, very hard because oh. my. god. you. morons. just. don't. fucking. get. it. And I sincerely wonder if said parties ever could even if they lived to be 969 years old. (more...)

Seriously, who gives a fuck if these twerps can spell entirely random-ass words that they would never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever use in actual conversation -- or, for that matter, even in writing? They just asked three words in a row that I had never even heard spoken or seen written, and I've read some pretty lofty shit. Not even Lovecraft would use these words.

One of them was "kilim". Even if one did have occasion to use this word -- say, one happened to buy a kilim -- one would likely end up having to explain that it is a rug anyway, since there's a good chance that one's conversation partner would have no idea what the hell a kilim is. So why not just save syllables and call it a rug in the first place? Useless.

And think of all of the things that these kids could have been doing instead of memorizing the spellings of multiple words -- and in multiple languages to boot! Not all of these kids are thin: they could have been outside running around and playing sports and getting in shape. Everyone can stand to be more clever: maybe they could have spent some time reading Plato or something. But then again, they're freaking kids: why not let them watch some cartoons or fire up the Xbox360 and enjoy their youth? Instead they are reading overfed dictionaries for the purpose of competing in some bullshit contest and enriching a skill that has largely been made irrelevant by the advent of Microsoft Word and the F7 key.

I have a monster headache right now. 🙁

I always feel terrible on or around days like this -- when people insist that one should praise certain people for all that they have done and blah blah blah. It's all very well and good if you feel that the people in your life are actually deserving of this kind of devotion, but I don't. The more I learn about my mother, the more it seems to me like she simply regarded getting married and having children as something one does when one grows up. She never put a great deal of thought into whether it would be a good or noble thing to do (which is unsurprising to me now; she never puts a great deal of thought into anything at all and I suspect that she never has and never will), never looked at the world around her to consider whether it was an ideal place in which to raise a new life, and certainly never made the slightest effort to become the kind of person who could rightly and knowingly guide and support a child.

I have often maintained that the decision to become parents is largely a selfish one, since people tend to think more about their own personal desires when it comes to having offspring rather than considering any of the aforementioned points, but I don't think that my mother was even all that fervent about having children -- she was simply adhering to the perceived requirements of her assigned social role. The woman puts more thought into crossing the street than she did into giving birth (twice) because at least in the former case she remembers to look both ways. But even with this knowledge, I would not feel so unkindly towards my mother on this day if she had not been so terrible at it -- which, again, is a function of her willful ignorance and unwillingness to think about anything.

On the surface, she was a good mother. She drove my sister and I to the store and the library to after school activities; she encouraged us to do well in school (though even here it must be noted that she never actually encouraged us to take an interest in any of the material); she bought us cards and toys on our birthdays and holidays; she took our temperature and made us chicken noodle soup when we were sick; she was never physically abusive (though we were physically disciplined from time to time). And yet this is literally all that she did, because she was essentially playing a role on stage. I noted in the parenthetical that she never really encouraged us to be passionate about anything. At best, she tolerated our various interests and pursuits; at worst, she actively discouraged us from pursuing them. The entire content of her guidance and moral instruction was derived from platitudes and aphorisms and shallow religious dicta that were never expanded or elaborated upon.

And the worst part is that, owing to other reprehensible views that she holds -- but has never ever questioned, so they arguably do not even deserve to be called views that she holds -- many times even these supposedly axiomatic rules for living were completely contradicted. If I ever pointed this out -- then or now -- she basically responded by saying "whatever." When I entered college, I practically had to study philosophy, because the entire extent of my previous home training had been a seventeen-year tutorial in how to be an inexcusably shallow and stupid human being. But I have only come to realize that in relatively recent years.

There is a lot more to be said about my more specific grievances with my mother -- and with society as a whole, since one of my mother's other favorite "defenses" is, "Well, I'm not the only person who thinks this way," and she is right -- but I'm getting too angry and tired of writing this so I will have to stop here. Suffice it to say that I lack both the cruelty and the time to give my mother what she truly deserves today -- not that she possesses the required understanding or depth of mind to actually be affected by such vengeance anyway. She basically filled my early childhood with false encouragement and phony hugs and insipid Sunday School advice -- by which she unwittingly planted in me the seeds that likely underlie my strong convictions and beliefs regarding a variety of topics -- only for me to be cast into a Hell in which, I now realize, none of the things that I desire will ever be possible for me to attain: not because they do not exist, but rather because people like her are withholding them from me and attempting to destroy them altogether with every shallow word and action. How, I ask you, could I ever repay her for that?

But my hands are shaking and sticky with perspiration, so I must stop now.