Earlier this week, a white woman was captured on video confronting several black women at a restaurant in Raleigh, North Carolina, telling the women they were being too loud and, when challenged, calling them “stupid n***ers.”
After the video went viral, a reporter for a local news station, WRAL, tracked down everyone involved in the confrontation. 72-year-old Nancy Goodman, the slur-slinging white women, blamed the incident on her “anxiety,” (though she didn’t appear at all anxious in the video in question) and said she would use the slur again.
“I used that word because they forced me into it,ā she explained to WRAL.
And of course she didn’t apologize to the women. “Iām not going to say Iām sorry to them because they kept pushing at it,” she told WRAL. “I would say it again to them. They are the rudest individuals I have ever seen.”
In a Facebook posting after the interview, however, Goodman offered her apologies to “my family, friends and other patrons in the bar at North Hills Bonefish” — essentially everyone but the “three rude, loud obnoxious black women” she had called the n-word.
“Economic anxiety” strikes again, I guess.
You can see the original video, and her later non-apology here.
— David Futrelle
H/T — WRAL.com
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Peterson really does want his own church, doesn’t he?
People with anxiety tend to not go around starting needless confrontations? For obvious reasons.
I call bullshit. Thereās a concept that grown adults shouldnāt have to struggle with, but apparently some do. It is, you donāt have to say everything that comes into your head.
Earlier this week, I had a very annoying interaction with a woman over our respective dogs. She was very rude and judgmental at me, despite the fact that I had injured myself rather than risk her dog coming to harm (long and boring story, not relevant). So I was angry and my adrenaline was spiking. But I somehow managed not to insult her, call her bad names or swear. Donāt get me wrong, I used plenty of snark, yelling āyouāre welcome, by the wayā as she walked off. Even telling people afterwards, I managed to stop myself from using the word that sprang to mind (bitch), because I try to avoid using gendered slurs. And my neck is still quite stiff.
So it can be done. You just have to care more about the effect you have on the world than your freedom to express out loud any random thought that crosses your mind.
Anxiety and depression often force you to abuse yourself and say terrible things to yourself. Not to others.
Saying the quiet part loud seems to be the new normal.
@Redsilkphoenix
Quite the opposite; he’s a big fan of catholicism. Taller hierarchies, more money, more men. I don’t recall if he’s actually come out as a catholic himself, but it wouldn’t surprise me if he had, or did. I expect he fancies himself as Bishop Peterson.
Yeeeaahhh…
Anxiety doesn’t make you racist and confrontational. Actually being racist and confrontational surely will.
What a hateful woman.
But… saying “the Christian equivalent of the crucifix” does not make sense. The Christian equivalent of the crucifix is the crucifix.
(It’s not just about Catholics. The Orthodox, Coptics, Lutherans, and Anglicans use the crucifix too.)
I wonder if this woman ever spanked her children and told them it was their fault?
Peterson does seem to think heās a cult leader, and he really doesnāt seem to understand Christian iconography. Also, āhave kids because youāll be sad about them laterā is a really shitty argument. Have children if you want them, donāt if you donāt, donāt let stupid cult leaders tell you what to do.
It is worrying how many people take this fool seriously. So many seem to think he is some sort of great intellectual or philosopher, ignoring the fact that to be a philosopher or intellectual you are supposed to come up with new and original ideas rather than regurgitate centuries-old garbage. So many conservatives that I know keep telling me how great Peterson is, but I just canāt think of a single good thing heās said. I donāt know whoās worse, Peterson or Shapiro. Theyāre both awful, and an insult to real philosophers or intellectuals.
@Amtep
I noticed that too, and the “Catholics aren’t Christians” rigmarole was all I could think of to explain it. Although Redsilkphoenix is totally correct that no matter what exactly he meant by it, the crucifix and the Pieta symbolize entirely different concepts. Like… what was he thinking?
Perhaps that was my first error, assuming thinking was involved…
Well, this lady really puts the RVO in DARVO.
What BS. The very last thing someone with social anxiety would do is go to a popular bar at happy hour, confront strangers who are being too loud, insult them, and then pull out a phone to record it. She’s trying to use mental illness as a shield, and didn’t even bother to pick something that would plausibly explain her behavior.
Her problem isn’t social anxiety, it’s the racial anxiety that comes with unearned privilege. The n-word is supposed to be the ace in the pack of racial insults, the same way guns guarantee the final word in a physical confrontation. Angry white people in America gotta have their crutches.
@Imaginary Petal: Great to see you again! I’ve missed you. <3
Re: Jordan Peterson
So the choice is, don’t have children and be subjected to scorn, abuse, and violence by the men whom (grammar) you are unfairly depriving of sex, OR, have children and watch them die horribly in your arms. Win-win for women, as usual.
It doesn’t seem to have occurred to him that the main reason millennials aren’t having babies is that they can’t afford to. If he and the rest of the “Great Replacement” bigots really cared about women having more children, they’d be fighting for expanded health care, maternity leave, universal pre-K and family-friendly workplace policies.
And if they want to make having babies sound more attractive, maybe don’t turn it into weird tragedy porn.
Hi Buttercup š
The Jewish equivalent of the Star of David!
The American equivalent of the Stars and Stripes!
The equine equivalent of the stallion!
Truly, Peterson is a genius and a skilled communicator.
While we’re on the lobfather here’s a splendid photo of Patrick Stewart in a lobster outfit. I’ll be really glad when Peterson’s 15 minutes are finally up.
>”I was forced to do it.”
>”I’d do it again.”
Pick one.
Just to add to the chorus of those with anxiety issues that somehow manage not to use racial slurs, I think it’s worth drilling down into this as an example of somebody using it as what they know is the most potent weapon in their arsenal.
If anybody watched the show House back in the mid-aughts, House and his boss Lisa Cuddy started the show with an antagonistic relationship where they’d sling barbs at each other, Cuddy needling House to be less of a jerk and do clinic duty and House needling Cuddy for her often necessary oversight of his excesses. That relationship was firmly established over the first two seasons, but in Season 3, House learns that Cuddy is trying to get pregnant. Having to rationing his Vicodin due to a cop putting the squeeze on him for stockpiling an opiate, House starts suffering withdrawal and in a moment of anger for perceiving Cuddy to be endangering a patient’s life shouts: “I’m glad you’re not going to be a mother, because you’d suck at it!” This reduces Cuddy to tears and she explains to House’s only other friend (Wilson) that as much of a jerk House is, he does hold back because he does know how to jab at somebody’s vulnerabilities.
It’s the same dynamic with people that deploy racial slurs ostensibly in a fit of pique. It’s that one tool that you can reach for when you really want to hurt somebody by reminding them “I can reach into my pocket and dredge up all the wretched history of racism against people that look like you, sharpen into a point and drive it home whenever I want and you can’t do the same to me.” That’s what makes it so vicious and why it’s the weapon of choice for the Nancy Goodmans of the world whenever they want to declare their hierarchical dominance over somebody considered socially lower on that totem pole. This underscores why the invectives are so often aimed at service employees, who are less of a position to defend themselves.
@Katamount
Please choose a different metaphor in future, that one’s rather offensive.
@Simon, that picture is amazing ?
“Look what you made me do”. Only works as a juvenilely ironic pop song.
Shut up you toxic old fart-though I can imagine this woman has family and ‘friend so” telling her that she’s totally right, for the most part because people are afraid to confront someone as abusive and belligerent as her
Jordan Peterson: Statue of Liberty is the American equivilentof the bald eagle”
@Dalillama
Good point! I’ll have to be more mindful to excise that particular idiom.
Peterson is actually one of these people that makes me scared of having kids. I want to be a mother but I’m aware that they will have to share society with dudes like that.
I encountered my own Nancy in High School. I had a falling out with a redheaded, white girl, named Rachel. One day we encountered each other in the hall, and exchanged some words. I got in some snark, and although I have no idea what I said, (at 14, it was probably the b* word), but it must have struck a nerve, because she went right into her arsenal, for the worst thing she could possibly say to me, which is to call me the N*word. Up to that point, our issue was not a racial one, and she must have felt some type of way about what she did (or thought I would do) because I never saw her again, (meaning she was actively avoiding me.)
It didn’t bother me as much as she thought it would though, because I KNEW her. She wasn’t a bright girl, but I was, and I knew that saying that word to me was the only weapon she ever had, and once she deployed it, she was scared of the consequences.
I’m going to make the argument, and this is probably going to sound bleak to some of you, that that woman had every intention to use that word, before she even approached those women. She was in a loud, crowded restaurant, but singled out a group of black women to assault for being noisy (black women being the least powerful people she could have said anything to, because I very much doubt she would have approached a table full of black men). She saw her chance, and planned the event.
I’m certain this will be a popular story in her little group of white girlfriends for many years after. Look at the glee on her face. She’s seems happy shes not holding herself back anymore. Shes wanted to say that word to a group of “N*rs” her whole damn life, and was too scared too, but trumpism has given her courage she never had before. This was probably the highlight of her day.
I expect a lot more copycats (keeping in mind the noose incidents from a few years back) with random white people running up on black strangers to say that word, then using her excuse to claim victimhood. We’ve already seen an uptick in white people telling people to go back where they came from.
Its bullies like her (and she is in fact a bully) that tear apart our faith in humanity. I have to keep telling myself people like her are not that powerful, and not and never will be the majority. I remind myself by looking around at the white people I have known ,and know now, who are kind and decent human beings, who I know for a certainty, would never do such a thing.
@Buttercup
You probably could have stopped that line right there. I doubt many people with a social phobia, or a more than weak social anxiety would go to a crowded popular bar, full stop.