Assuming race during debates

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I've been having a strange conversation with this person who doesn't make sense to me, and I think he assumes I'm black? I was talking about how I don't think the Confederate flag should be displayed, and this guy said I was being racist and hateful, and living in the past, hating on the proud Southerners...

He apparently thinks I'm black? I didn't catch it at first, but I reread one of the comments:

And it seems like he thinks I'm black. And living in the past with my slave ancestors...? He also said "You should be proud of where you come from or you wouldn't be here." To that I replied with a probably too long genealogy comment on how I'm very Northern European, just in case he is thinking my ancestry is from Africa. I mean technically, we're all most likely from Africa if we go back far enough...

Either way, he is very confusing and is not making sense. He says we need to not live in the past but that we need to learn from it, and that by flying the flag, it stands as a reminder of our past mistakes, but doesn't see flying the Nazi Germany flag as the same thing...

Do any of you get assumed to be a certain race when in debates online? I think this is a first for me.

It's very common for people in online discussions to make all sorts of assumptions about others, especially their opponents. I don't recall any example based on race, but expressing any opinion disagreeing with someone's political views usually gets me labelled and dismissed as their favorite straw-man enemy. I've sometimes been assumed to be female, be it for opposing male chauvinistic ideas or for more inscrutable reasons; perhaps because others started swearing and I didn't

I've gotten people thinking I'm male before (in both positive and negative ways). I've even had people think I was a chat bot, lol.

I'm thinking this person isn't high up in intelligence for debate, though...
After my long detailing of ancestry, he commented multiple times with no one else commenting:


And I have only a vague idea of what he's talking about... Not enough to formulate a response. Should I assume he's saying I can't say anything about the Confederate flag because I have no known black ancestry?

Edit: Apparently he likes to beat dead horses?

Just ignore the jerk. You'll never get anywhere with him, so don't even try.

Me too People have some really weird ideas on how to recognize a bot. I wonder how they can believe them.

I've also often been accused of copy-pasting everything I said.

I ended up talking to someone who knows him and the guy was apparently on drugs, soooo... yeah.



I've been told things I've said were "too intelligent." As if I was copying someone else's work.
I got that on an oral report in college once where I was supposed to write an introduction to a book, so I picked one of my favorite books at the time; Flatland. Apparently the teacher thought it was too intelligent and that I had to have plagiarized it all. -_-;

Well, that must really suck. I guess sometimes people decide you're stupid, and then they infer you necessarily cheated if you do something not stupid.

One of my two nemesies on WP had accused me of wanting to be black, because of the sympathy I've displayed for African Americans. I suppose he also could have accused me of wanting to be gay for the same reason.

I'm pretty sure that the southern belle who called me a racist when i expressed my contempt for traditionalist white southerners was under the impression that i might be black. Rather than whiter than her.