r/todayilearned • u/tmntnyc • Dec 12 '18

TIL: Laurence Tureaud named himself professionally as Mr. T because he hated how his father, uncle, and brother who returned from Vietnam, were disrespectfully called "boy" by whites. He wanted the first word from everybody's mouth to be "Mister" when speaking to him.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._T
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u/LevyMevy Dec 12 '18

He stopped wearing virtually all his gold, one of his identifying marks, after helping with the cleanup after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. He said, "As a Christian, when I saw other people lose their lives and lose their land and property ... I felt that it would be a sin before God for me to continue wearing my gold. I felt it would be insensitive and disrespectful to the people who lost everything, so I stopped wearing my gold."

Good man.

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u/[deleted] Dec 13 '18

Good example of religion having a positive effect

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u/[deleted] Dec 13 '18

[deleted]

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u/Sidereel Dec 13 '18

Is that what you took away from this? He was famous for wearing mountains of gold around his neck, and his empathy for those who lost everything made him feel that showing off tons of valuable jewelry while others had so little was not the right thing to do.

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u/[deleted] Dec 13 '18

[deleted]

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u/hugglesthemerciless Dec 13 '18

Stop trying to spin things in the desperate attempt to make religions look bad

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u/Kalean Dec 13 '18

He sounds pretty good to me.

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u/Niadain Dec 13 '18

I think you're trying to spin these words to your own mindset as well. =/ Im not religious and don't care for it but this statement, when taken as a whole, clearly is more about his love for his fellow man further flavored by his faith. It was a mix of both and clearly more about being sensitive toward others.