Do you feel as though your experiences made you better than the OP and so you cringe because of your superior enlightenment? I can't imagine what else you might have in mind, I find nothing particularly cringeworthy in the OP, especially since the whole "paragon of racial enlightenment" bit seems to come entirely from your own head.
I know enough to not pretend I'm on a higher plane of racial understanding by giving trite justifications such as "I'm the only rich white guy in a gentrified neighborhood" while simultaneously giving the example of being the target of an attempted theft, so as to not so subtly show the bias of minorities as criminals.
Not to mention the "OG Cody" at the end, once again showing that these must be stereotypical (highly presumably) black minorities, again to hammer home this sort of bizarre feigned legitimacy he presumes. The whole passage is essentially saying "I get these things that you people don't get it, here's why".
Edit: Another way to put it, he's giving the expanded version of "I have black friends, so that racist thing I said can't possibly be racist."
If this was in a poor white neighborhood I'd expect similar shit to happen.
It's much more an issue of socioeconomic status than race. And I'm sorry you perceived my post in that matter.
They're predominantly Spanish speaking Puerto Ricans. You're the only one who mentioned anything about race when it comes to that instance and your own presumptions don't hold true.
And I never said I was "the only rich white guy in a gentrified neighborhood". That wouldn't make any sense, one person doesn't gentrify a neighborhood. I said I was one of the only gentrifying members who has made an attempt to become a part of the existing community. This is consistent with every place I live, work, and play whether said place is predominantly minority, or predominantly white.
Every person has decades (except children) of experiences that I don't have. Every person is an extremely rich fabric comprised of characteristics inherited from an extremely complex ecosystem of factors. As such, I try to treat everyone with respect, and it ends up enriching my own world.
That being said, sometimes I still don't know exactly what to say. I come from a world of privilege even if my parents were lower to middle middle class, and they certainly don't.
Crime is more predominant in lower socioeconomic groups, it's just a reality. Did I blame every latino in my neighborhood? Did I scorn, run to the police, move away? No. I just backed off for a little and then came back after the holidays and kept going about my business.
You can perceive that however you like.
Edit: And what exactly was this racist thing I said? Was it when I heard that a couple of people were going to take things from my house and so backed off for a little? To mention a legitimate event that happened to me is now considered racist?
Edit 2: And in this world - [0] - You're damn straight I'm proud to have such a multicultural group of friends, and experiences. And even though this post indicates otherwise, I don't particularly give two shits how anyone misconstrues my post which essentially was trying to say "We should come together, hang out with eachother, and understand and forgive". Because, apparently I'm assuming superiority by continuing to hang out with people after I heard they where going to take shit from my house. All I can say is, fuck that.
> and had a few people conspire to potentially remove a few select items from my house. So I started going out in the city more, and now everything's back to the nice vibe it once was. I'm just as comfortable as I was before and that process of potential betrayal and silent forgiveness (I'm not sure my friend even knows I knew he was planning to pull the jux (as my friends from my hometown might say)) is just a part of who I am.
My friends told me that some of the other block regulars were planning to rob me. So I backed off from them for a little bit. And now I hang out with them again, just not inside my home. If this was in a poor white neighborhood I don't imagine similar things wouldn't happen there either.
Maybe the wording was a bit over the top for what the situation actually was: I enjoy hanging out with my neighbors, and wasn't going to let some stupid shit like this mess that up.
Sorry that I explained where the word jux comes from in my vocabulary.
Edit: And in this world - [0] - You're damn straight I'm proud to have such a multicultural group of friends, and experiences. And even though this post indicates otherwise, I don't particularly give two shits how anyone misconstrues my post which essentially was trying to say "We should come together, hang out with eachother, and understand and forgive". Because, apparently I'm assuming superiority by continuing to hang out with people after I heard they where going to take shit from my house. All I can say is, fuck that. And then I made a joke at the end about this stupid nickname they gave me once. Good lord.
Imagine if someone described their experience as a software engineer like so:
> I often used to only sit and talk with the sales people, but then I took an introductory Ruby on Rails course. Now I feel very aligned with my fellow programmers, having worked on projects such as websites written in CSS, and frontend UIs written with the Java scripting language. Sometimes, my pull requests are rejected by certain fringe elements of the engineering team, but I can understand why, since I do not have a traditional background in CS yet am contributing just as much to their code base. But, in those cases I will usually go around, show my face, do some SQL queries and everything is back to normal.
You're right, I overplayed the nature of how much of a contributor I am to the community. I'm not on the block party planning committee for instance. But I spend tens of hours a week during the warmer months just sitting and hanging out with my neighbors. I try to learn a little Spanish which I really enjoy. And we have a lot of fun together.
The idea that I only talked with "sales people" prior to this is invalid though. I was actually the minority in my public school when I was growing up.
And yes, I do feel as if through sharing experiences with people I've learned how to "be aligned" with people as you say, although I wouldn't say that's a fair characteristic of how I perceive it.
I don't particularly feel aligned with any group of people, majority, or minority.
But I do recognize the value of shared experiences which give me a stronger cultural background, empathy, a grander perspective and worldview.
Of course, imagine if someone judged your entire life from 2 or 3 paragraphs on the internet without knowing said person, their background, experiences, personality, or anything about them?
Edit: And in this world - [0] - You're damn straight I'm proud to have such a multicultural group of friends, and experiences. And even though this post indicates otherwise, I don't particularly give two shits how anyone misconstrues my post which essentially was trying to say "We should come together, hang out with eachother, and understand and forgive". Because, apparently I'm assuming superiority by continuing to hang out with people after I heard they where going to take shit from my house. All I can say is, fuck that.
