[rauljara]

You're leaving out a pretty important bit of context. He isn't talking about white people in general, here. He is talking about a very specific subset of people who have had power over him, and said pretty racist things to him. I'm pretty sure he wasn't referring to my white mother when he said dumbwhite.

While I agree that the saintly thing to is respond without bringing up your persecutors' race, I am pretty sympathetic to people who have been the victims of overt racism seeing some things in terms of race. They've had their faces rubbed in it.

And I'm sorry to come down hard on you, but it's pretty arrogant to tell someone who is still suffering the consequences of being harassed because of his race not to take notice of the race of the people harassing him.

[methoddk]

That bit of context is irrelevant. He frequently used the extremely general term, "Dumbwhite motherfucker.", which is blatantly racist and makes his complete argument null and void, because the comments he makes in this post are no better than the crap he heard at his job.

Sincerity and respect for a person's race does not take a backseat just because someone made racist remarks to someone else. I've been the victim of racist remarks and I'm white, that doesn't make it okay for me to refer to the other person by their race. In fact, it makes it WORSE.

Being tolerant of ANYONE using racism for ANY reason is not okay.

EDIT: The more I read your comment, the more it looks like you support racism as a means of retaliation to racism. This is why racism still (and always) exists.

[saraid216]

> He frequently used the extremely general term, "Dumbwhite motherfucker.", which is blatantly racist

Agreed.

> makes his complete argument null and void

No, actually it doesn't. That's really not how logic works.

This is an audience problem. This post was pretty clearly not meant to be an intellectual tour de force; it was a rant, and a step away from frothing at the mouth. The author doesn't claim to be perfect, nor is he. For an audience like HN, it's completely inappropriate, because it doesn't take into account our biases and worldviews; but I seriously doubt he expected to be on the HN front page.

[methoddk]

Except it really does. I fully support a good rant to get something off the chest. The OP is so intensely focused on the race of his attackers, that it is debilitating to the rest of his problem. It makes him look just as bad as his attackers for stooping to the race level.

[anigbrowl]

'Oh yes it does' is a powerful assertion, but doesn't really constitute an argument.

[Apocryphon]

Except he never used that sort of language towards his coworkers at a professional setting.

[methoddk]

So racism is okay as long as it's not in a professional setting?

[Apocryphon]

His racism is not the subject of dispute here. The racism that the story focuses on is the one that created a hostile workplace and is the subject of legal action.

[shardling]

>which is blatantly racist and makes his complete argument null and void, because the comments he makes in this post are no better than the crap he heard at his job.

Oh hey, it's the rare explicitly stated ad hominem attack.

[jlgreco]

I don't think this is an example of an ad hominem fallacy. Rather it seem to be tu quoue fallacy (attempting to discredit by asserting hypocrisy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque) Technically I suppose that is a form of an ad hominem fallacy, but describing it as that seems off to me.

(Not that that's any better.)

[shardling]

Even the wikipedia article mentions that this is a type of ad hominem. But thanks for teaching me an even more specific term! :)

[chojeen]

> You're leaving out a pretty important bit of context. He isn't talking about white people in general, here. He is talking about a very specific subset of people who have had power over him, and said pretty racist things to him. I'm pretty sure he wasn't referring to my white mother when he said dumbwhite.

So racial epithets are OK as long as you're targeting a group of people who have wronged you? Got it.

Not that it in any way legitimizes the vile things that were said to the man.

[makomk]

> So racial epithets are OK as long as you're targeting a group of people who have wronged you? Got it.

So long as you're talking about a group of people who have systemic, institutionalized power over you based on the colour of their own skin? Damn right they're OK. I hate to break it to you, but it's pretty much only white people that think race is no big deal. People of colour tend to get disabused of that foolish idea pretty damn quickly by reality. See for instance http://www.womanist-musings.com/2012/02/anti-racist-billboar...

[lucian1900]

If I said "dumbblack motherfucker", I'd be called racist. The OP is being racist, regardless of what has or has not happened to him.