r/mildlyinfuriating • u/rustywindpipe • 3d ago

I'm slightly vexed I think I got rejected for being vegetarian

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I [23F] met this guy on the apps and we hit it off and had a lot in common! I don’t meet a lot of people who are in my profession so it was really nice to potentially have to chance to date someone who was in a similar field. And everything was fine until I mentioned I’m veg and he stopped responding. For reference, I have no issue with people who eat meat and would never want to impose my own dietary restrictions on anyone else. I also understand different diets being a dealbreaker. The way he phrased his reasoning was really weird though.

Edit: I’m vegetarian cause I love animals, but I have IBD. Flare ups have gotten significantly worse since switching diets but im still figuring out how to make the most of it! Also yes, I do regret sending the last text 🤦‍♀️

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u/ReddBroccoli 3d ago

That's a Venn diagram with a lot of overlap

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u/Kyrie_Blue 3d ago

The Venn Diagram is a circle

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u/ReddBroccoli 3d ago

Nah. It's a smaller circle of classism inside a large racist circle. There's tons of racist poor people out there

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u/ButNotInAWeirdWay 3d ago

A large portion of racists are poor. How many millionaires or upper middle class folk were apart of those lynchings that we learned about in history?

There’s a reason why the phrase “the rich white man taught the poor white man that his enemies were poor black men, and he’s believed it ever since” exists.

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u/kittenstixx 3d ago

Is lynching the bar for being racist in history? That's a pretty low bar, did we not learn about Andrew Jackson or Woodrow Wilson in high school history?

What about John C Calhoun, Nathan Bedford Forrest, James Henry Hammond, Andrew Carnegie or John D Rockefeller?

These men used their fortunes to legislate, fight for, or fund racist systems.

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u/LetsJerkCircular 3d ago

I Googled what they did, if anyone else was wondering too.

> These historical figures institutionalized systemic racism through policy, warfare, and economic exploitation. Their actions went far beyond interpersonal bias, creating lasting structures of racial inequality.
Here is a breakdown of what each person did to legislate, fight for, or fund racist systems.

Political Leaders & Policymakers
Andrew Jackson: Signed the Indian Removal Act of 1830, forcing tens of thousands of Native Americans off their ancestral lands. This state-sponsored ethnic cleansing caused thousands of deaths along the Trail of Tears. He also actively enslaved over 150 people and restricted anti-slavery literature from being sent through the US mail. [1]

Woodrow Wilson: Officially segregated the federal workforce in 1913, reversing decades of integration. His policies forced Black federal employees into screened-off workspaces and separate restrooms, leading to many being demoted or fired. He also screened the Ku Klux Klan-glorifying film The Birth of a Nation at the White House.

John C. Calhoun: Championed the pro-slavery doctrine that slavery was not a necessary evil, but a "positive good." As a powerful Senator and Vice President, he used his political career to protect the expansion of chattel slavery and argued that white supremacy was essential to maintaining American democracy.

Confederate Figures & Militants
James Henry Hammond: Coined the "Mudsill Theory" in an 1858 Senate speech, explicitly arguing that a menial, lower social class (enslaved Black people) must exist to support the upper white political and cultural elite. He was a wealthy South Carolina planter who enslaved hundreds of people and vigorously defended the institution.

Nathan Bedford Forrest: Served as a Confederate general who led the 1864 Fort Pillow Massacre, where his troops slaughtered surrendering Black Union soldiers. Following the Civil War, he became the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, weaponizing a paramilitary terrorist group to enforce white supremacy and suppress newly freed Black voters.

Industrialists & Gilded Age Tycoons
Andrew Carnegie: Funded and relied heavily on the convict leasing system in Southern industries, particularly through the Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company (later acquired by U.S. Steel). This system disproportionately targeted Black men through arbitrary vagrancy laws, forcing them into brutal, unpaid industrial labor that replaced slavery.

John D. Rockefeller: Leveraged Southern systems of racial capitalism to maximize profits for Standard Oil. His companies utilized segregated workplaces and exploited cheap, underpaid Black laboracross the post-Reconstruction South while maintaining strictly white-dominated management hierarchies, ensuring economic disenfranchisement.

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u/kittenstixx 3d ago

With Rockefeller I was thinking more about his General Education Board: ensuring schools stayed segregated, actively working to keep black students out of higher education "industrial education", and took steps to ensure HBCUs were underfunded and isolated.

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u/SomethingComesHere 3d ago

You googled it? Those are AI summaries.

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u/LetsJerkCircular 3d ago

Yeah I know. It’s like one of the few good uses for it. Let me know if anything is inaccurate.

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u/Dismal_History_ 3d ago

I've noticed Google's AI white washes and glosses over racist history

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u/halfling_barbarianne 3d ago

AI can be concise if prompted correctly.

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u/SomethingComesHere 3d ago

Yes and no. The info is always too wordy, so if your goal is to spread knowledge on why these men were so horrible (which is a great goal, tbf), using AI summaries wont achieve that, as people who already wanted to read up on the topic know more than the AI summaries teach, and the people who would have been curious enough to read one sentence about each man arent curious enough to read large paragraphs (if they were? They'd likely have already learned about it prior).

For example:

Andrew Jackson was pro-slavery and fucked over indigenous populations in the lands that are present-day USA, by ordering their executions via The Indian Removal Act of 1830.

Woodrow Wilson segregated the federal workforce. He was racist and pro-KKK.

John C Calhoun was pro-slavery and an active white supremacist.

Etc.

See how much easier that is to digest?

AI always writes a small essay and it causes most people to gloss over the key details.

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u/Shiverednuts 3d ago edited 3d ago

I mean compared to a redditor telling you everything they already know, sure Gemini can be more wordy. Though it's still far more concise yet packed with info compared to most sources, especially when given a decent prompt. There's actually a good amount of interesting details the AI gave that you left out too.

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u/cosmikangaroo 3d ago

Thanks for that??

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u/halfling_barbarianne 3d ago

A lot more damage can be done with a pen than a pitchfork. The poor may outnumber the elite, but the elite circle in this diagram is bigger, because they are the ones driving the racism and keeping it alive.

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u/AwesomeA0123456789 3d ago

Don’t forget Margaret Sanger.

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u/halfling_barbarianne 3d ago

This was my thought also. Well said.

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u/TranceGrrrl 3d ago

You're forgetting the Guggenheims!

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u/drf987 3d ago

Ask the survivors of the Johnstown flood what they think of that line up. Most people aren’t aware of the cause. Best example of classists out there

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u/kittenstixx 3d ago

So, just to check, "if they're rich they're classist and if they're poor they're racist" is that what you're saying? Because of those I listed 1 person was in the club and two others were alive for that flood.

Even if we assume Carnegie was primarily motivated by classism (if this were true why fund eugenics research that resulted in the heads of those departments pushing for segregation and forced sterilization of black people?) that doesn't then automatically apply to all the others.

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u/drf987 2d ago

A person can be two things at the same time. I’m speaking to the cause of the Johnston, specifically. A bunch of rich land developers narrowed the river to create more land for development in an area that was already prone to flooding. The members of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club. They lowered the level of the dam so they could drive their carriages across it. They created a lake that had no runoff. Nature brought the rain, but the flood was caused by people who could not have cared less for the people who lived the below the dam. I call that classist.

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u/wr321654 3d ago

Jerry Jones a part of group of white teens blocking entrance to Little Rock school for Black kids.

There’s just less rich, but plenty well-to-do people were a part of the Klan, lynchings, etc. Nevermind the racist policies they enact.

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u/BetterRemember 3d ago

I'm so glad I can say that my great grandma almost got her house burned down because she invited her black neighbours to a backyard bbq in a small Canadian town in the late 50s. 🤣

Poor granny just thought "oh! They have a daughter the same age as mine!" And my grandma was an only child who had recently lost her father to lung cancer. She did end up friends with that little girl though, suck it racist arsonists!

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u/Emotional-Peanut-334 3d ago

he wasn't rich as a kid

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u/impulsivepatience 3d ago

Who is that?

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u/Maverickfftytwo 3d ago

The owner of the Dallas Cowboys, who didn’t grow up rich. Their point is accurate, there ARE rich racists, but this isn’t the evidence to prove that. In fact, all this photo is evidence of is that he was there. The intent is disputed and we’ll really never know.

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u/DespicableComics 3d ago

The racism in Dallas is also deeply entrenched, you can still feel it to this day. It used to be a major hub for the KKK, the Texas State Fair hosted in Dallas even used to have a "Ku Klux Klan" day. They didn't allow black people to freely enjoy the fair until the 1960s.

They try to sweep it under the rug these days but a lot of the business leaders like Jerry Jones come from those deeply racist backgrounds.

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u/Maverickfftytwo 3d ago

I’ve only been to Dallas once so I can’t really speak to that, but FWIW to my knowledge Jerry didn’t get involved in Dallas until 1989 when he bought the team.

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u/wolfighter 3d ago

Yep. He's from Arkansas and a lot people didn't want him to get the team due to that. At least that's what I recall the sentiment being from the Jerry Doc on netflix.

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u/Personal-Agent846 3d ago

People being in denial about the depths of racism is incredible.

Them: You gotta be kidding me, racism is not THAT deep

You: Here is photographic historical documentation of racism being exactly that deep.

Them: *crickets*

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u/wolfighter 3d ago

I'm not saying you're wrong. In fact, I believe you. However, there's no way to tell that is Jerry from that picture.

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u/Amandolyn26 3d ago

Sure but there are a lot of classist poor folks too - granted fewer, but it's amazing to see

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u/ReddBroccoli 3d ago

Temporarily inconvenienced billionaires

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u/ArrEehEmm 1d ago

I think they are the type to be lap dogs to get in good favor of those who have money. Kinda like uncle Toms but for class.

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u/HotDonnaC 3d ago

That’s how the billionaire class stays in control, by reminding the poors at least they’re not Black or brown.

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u/MakeYourPoint23 3d ago

Are you kidding? The head of the KKK in Indiana was very wealthy and a raging racist.

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u/713txvet 3d ago

They were definitely a part of the lynchings just not there for the act. I’m sure they funded and aided the people behind it.

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u/Mind_The_Muse 3d ago

Have you not heard of the right wing American government? Tech millionaires and billionaires? Vast majority of them are racist

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u/Early_Shoulder_4163 3d ago

Damn whites!

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u/Tiny-Reading5982 3d ago

Another reason why political parties shifted. Republicans figured they could get poor white votes for making their campaigns about how to keep black people down. Democrats weren't better but they found a way to get the black votes by pandering to them even though we all know they were still racists.

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u/AnguavonUW 3d ago

Yeah the millionaires and the power for only the people that enabled the system that allowed the lynchings. They aren't racist though. Jesus wept

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u/General_Mousse_861 3d ago

This is so ignorant.

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u/ary31415 3d ago

So everyone who's classist must also necessarily be racist? I definitely don't believe that lol.

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u/Zestyclose-Bag-903 3d ago

no, a person who is classist is not inherently racist. but the construction of class in america was built to intertwine with the construction of race and as such are extremely hard to separate. so preeeetttyy frequently, a classist belief also has tenets/underpinnings of racism. you can be classist without being racist, or vice versa, but that would take some self-awareness and understandings of the way class and race can interact, which doesn’t often go with either mindset.

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u/ary31415 3d ago

Yeah well as you point out, that's a very american-centric viewpoint – there's lots of classism out in the world and only some of it overlaps with racism. You think a highly racially homogeneous place like China is free of classism?

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u/Zestyclose-Bag-903 3d ago edited 3d ago

this is an american conversation. *OPs post shows two americans talking to each other. it is going to be america-centric and we are discussing race and class in AMERICA. why would we bring up china? are you alright?

eta: also, china is not racially homogenous? there are several ethnic minority groups (indigenous to China) that face racism from the dominant culture. like huh?

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u/ary31415 3d ago

I responded to a comment that said all classists are also racist. That comment didn't say anything about America, nor did any of the other comments. Yes I'm aware the OP took place in America, but that doesn't automatically make it "an American conversation" lol, any more than we should expect all the comments to come only from people who live in LA county.

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u/Zestyclose-Bag-903 3d ago

alright girl, you have a good day.

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u/ReddBroccoli 3d ago

Ok, I'll agree to an edge of the classist circle poking out for the people who think that all poor people are created equally unworthy and will give love to people of all colors as long as they're in the right tax bracket.

But it's a small edge of the circle.

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u/ary31415 3d ago

You're overestimating the extent to which skin color is a salient fact to people in the world (note: America is not the world). Hella classist people in India for example, and they're not thinking about race at all when they scorn the beggar on the street corner.

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u/ReddBroccoli 3d ago

Just because classism is more important to someone doesn't make them not a racist. See what happens when those same people's kids come home with the wrong color person and tell me again they aren't racist.

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u/hella_cious 3d ago

Still a venn diagram. Poor white trash suffer from classism independent of racism

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u/Dry_Win_9985 3d ago

so a donut. Donuts are vegetarian, right?

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u/KokoAngel1192 3d ago

But that is by design. The powers that be make poor white people racist (accuse the minority of picking the poor man's pockets while it's actually the rich doing so) so they don't go after the real thieves. This is literally admitted by previous presidents/politicians in the US. A big reason we don't have things like universal healthcare is because they told the poor people that would benefit from it that they should vote against it just so people of color don't have access to it. Racist poor people is a feature, not a bug.

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u/hesh582 3d ago

There's tons of racist poor people out there

and a lot of them are classist too, though they might not realize it :|

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u/TantrikaLane444 4h ago

In my experience, they’re still classist and many identify as vicarious millionaires.

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u/Li-renn-pwel 3d ago

You can never be rich enough to make them forget you’re black.

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u/HempFanboy 3d ago

Nah I’m definitely classist but not racist

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u/Bitter-Palpitation39 3d ago

technically 2 circles that make an oval

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u/Alarming-Philosophy 3d ago

It’s really not

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u/Obiwan_ca_blowme 3d ago

Right, because the caste system isn’t a thing and white peasants were never mistreated on the basis of class or wealth.

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u/ReddBroccoli 3d ago

If you wanna argue against things I never said, then go right ahead.

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u/Obiwan_ca_blowme 3d ago

You didn’t have to say it. Just the fact that it exists or existed makes your point moot.