I Seem To Have A Troll

DISCLAIMER: THIS POST CONTAINS STRONG LANGUAGE.

I guess it was bound to happen at some point; I've been putting myself out on the Interwebs for a long time now, and I finally got trolled in the comments for Primarily Colorful. I won't reprint the three-comment-long exchange here because this person posted comments that were incredibly racist towards black people, but you can click on the link above if you'd like to see it. Most notably, this commenter, who actually gave his name in a rare act of Internet bravery (is "Anonymous" Anglo-Saxon in origin? Perhaps Latin-based? Help me out here, etymologists.), used the word "schwartze," the German word for "black" that was absorbed into Yiddish as a derogatory term for black people.

Though I shouldn't have gotten pissed off over someone who is such a gaping asshole that he/she spends his/her time spewing abuse anonymously on the Internet, this upset me greatly for a couple of reasons.

First, I find racism abhorrent. This is not to say that I fancy myself colorblind; I, like everyone else in the world whether or not they'd like to admit it, see skin color and notice it. Like everyone who is not a complete jackass, I try to heed Dr. Martin Luther King and judge people by the content of their character, not the color of their skin. My parents taught me that "there's good and bad in everyone." I get exceptionally angry when hearing about racism and once bit a co-worker's head off years ago after this person referred to a difficult customer as a "black bitch." So when I saw a racist comment on my blog (after I was politely told to commit suicide for using the word "jawn"), I got angry.

Second, this commenter used some Yiddish terminology that I described above. I don't know if this person is Jewish, knows I'm Jewish, or inferred that I was Jewish because I used the word "oy," but the word "schwartze" as it's used in Yiddish is incredibly embarrassing to me. As a Jew, I strongly believe that Jews who succumb to racism -towards anyone, not just blacks- need to re-read our people's history and think about all the times we've been discriminated against, literally to the point of near-extermination. If after that you still can't see the role-reversal, you are pathetically ignorant.

In response to this, I am now managing any comments on my blog. I don't care of someone disagrees with me (see the shitstorm that happened two years ago), but I do care about my little slice of the Internet being a civil forum for discussion and refuse to let it be a place where any anonymous dickhole can spew racism and get away with it. Let's keep it classy, and thanks to anyone who's commented in a positive and/or constructive way since I started writing.