In Adam Mansbach's piece, he talks about a situation where a bartender refused to serve an obviously drunk patron and somehow skewed it to make the bartender, as well as the girl he was with, racist. He portrays himself as completely superior to her, as if his line of thinking is the absolute right and there's nothing she, or anyone else, can do to convince him otherwise[1].

I think this part of the piece is pretty telling:

Fast forward to three in the morning, the two of us lying in a hotel bed, half-drunk, Jessie railing against New York for trying to make it about race when it clearly was not, when there was no way her race had anything to do with that bartender doing his job and it is unforgiveable that she pulled that bullshit and you didn’t take my side.

New York claimed that the bartender was being racist. There are, roughly speaking, three ways of evaluating New York's claim: (1) New York's claim was reasonable, (2) New York's claim was unreasonable, and (3) New York's claim cannot be reasonably evaluated because there is an insufficient amount of information to determine where it is (1) or (2).

(3) is largely an agnostic, there-are-two-sides-of-every-story, you-don't-know-the-backstory-of-New-York-or-the-bartender sort of claim and one that I would personally take. There really isn't a whole lot to work with as far as determining whether New York's claim is reasonable or not. So, a bartender refused to give New York a drink. There are plenty of possible reasons why. Maybe the bartender thought New York was too drunk. Maybe the bartender was a racist. Maybe New York was being a colossal bitch. Maybe the bartender had a long day. Maybe the bartender misheard her. Who knows.

(1) is taking New York's claim as face value and supporting her. I'm not as big of a fan of (1) in comparison with (3), but I still think it's a pretty reasonable position to take as long as you are willing to change your opinion of the bartender with further information.

(2), which was how the girlfriend evaluated New York's claim, is the least reasonable in my point of view. It's not so much raising the possibility that the bartender may, in fact, not be a racist shithead, which (3) does as well, but the insistence that the bartender was not being racist. How could the girlfriend possibly know? She is neither a mindreader who can read the bartender's thoughts nor a Puerto Rican woman who has to put up with racist assholes who hate Puerto Rican women because of reasons. You can make the same exact argument to knock against (1) (which is why I believe (3) is the most reasonable claim), but by denying the possibility of the bartender being racist, the girlfriend was pretty saying that New York was, at best, being super sensitive who gets easily butthurt by the most inconsequential things like a 5 year old, or at worst, a lying bitch who liked to provoke people and play the race card to stir up real life drama.

Given the girlfriend's history of someone who doesn't get American race relations and her half-drunk incoherent rant afterwards in bed about how New York was full of shit, I don't think it's unreasonable to disapprove of the girlfriend's actions. Obviously, all of this is assuming the author isn't just making shit up for his article or portraying the girlfriend in an incredibly shitty light because he still isn't over her. We all have our biases and see the world through our own personalized filters.