False equivalence. Rogerbox knows the motives of his own comments and actions, we can only impute them for the perpetrators in question, based on the context. As it stands, there are pretty significant second order signifiers to the actions in question.
You think you’re joking, but in the closed zombie thread in the pit, someone actually argued that a guy who threw around “fat nigger bitch” as an insult might not actually be racist in his heart. So no, there’s pretty much no level of racism that some pretending-to-be-fair-minded white person somewhere will not defend as maybe not actually REALLY racist.
Why because George Bush is not a descendant of Ham according to the Bible, but Obama is. When you have a Biblical justification for allowing slavery, allowing people to be considered sub-human animals, then segregation and all the things that follow, eg; don’t swim in a white man’s pool, don’t drink from a white man’s drinking fountain, don’t eat in the same restaurant, don’t go to the white man’s convention is not only normal but according to God’s will.
Who is Roberta? Aren’t we talking about Patricia Carroll?
No doubt it would be sad if Ms. Carroll had to prove anything, but as far as I can tell, nobody has asked her to. Certainly not in this thread. Did I miss where someone said her account was unreliable? Or that racist bullies don’t exist? Or that she is a liar? Or that the peanut-throwers aren’t complete idiot troglodytes* deserving of punishment?
Well I’s sure someone would, but it is a dumb thing to do. Racist behavior can be judged as such completely separate from what’s “in the [perpetrator’s] heart.” It looks like we’ll never know, but if you track down these guys and ask, I’m guessing they’d swear they’d never had a racist thought in their lives. They “don’t see race.” They come from a predominantly black state. They are Christians and Jesus says love thy neighbor. And any number of other things that people with bias always say to explain why they have no bias.
But even if they really, truly, believe this, it is the actions that matter. And most importantly, how those actions are perceived by the target. Like I said in my first post, the strongest argument for this incident being racist is not the specifics of the attack, but how Ms Carroll felt about it, though the actions themselves certainly leaned in that direction as well.
See, out of this whole thread, this is the part I don’t get. If she wants to let sleeping dogs lie, why can’t we? She was the injured party. It appears that she realizes her dignity only increases by these assholes running and hiding, no matter what their motivation is or was, and she’s already won.
Being a (probably racist) asshat isn’t usually against the law unless a party wants to press charges, or someone is sent to the hospital. I’m pretty sure they won’t be invited back to the RNC for fear of causing more incidents. If you just want to go find some racists to look down your nose at, we can go find a couple before lunchtime. It’s pretty easy. I drove by a Confederate flag with a Nazi eagle emblazoned in the center flying on the side of route 180 week before last. It’s a pretty sure bet the folks living there are fucking white supremacists, a whole lot more threatening in my book than these jokers.
I wasn’t joking, I really don’t understand this phenomenon…well I do when it comes from our resident racist white conservatives on the SDMB because conservatives have a vested interest in lying and saying that there isn’t systematic racism in the US still so they can keep locking up the people they hate at disproportionate rates and eliminate all forms of affirmitive action, but when non-conservatives do it it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to be putting their heads in the sand.
Sorry, I got her name incorrect, but my thought on the subject remains the sameapparently she did not want this to be a distraction, but a lot of people according to the report was very upset by it.
Again, when your slur needs a long discussion of biblical history to prove it’s a slur, it’s not a slur. Real slurs are instantly recognized as slurs. This was an insult. It MAY have been racist. We can’t be positive.
But I wouldn’t argue that. “Nigger” is undeniably racist (though even that word is now often used in non-racist ways). “Animal” is not undeniably racist.
You need to read the full account of the event, and then you need to understand the propaganda from white supremists. They ABSOLUTELY know the biblical references that justifies their racism.
The incident was PROBABLY, nearly indubitably, racist, based on the history of this country and the evidence presented. A lawyer may not be able to satisfy the “beyond a shadow of a doubt” rule given juries based on the minimal information we are working with, but you continue to insist that the teensiest sliver of a possibility that there was no racial intent on the part of the men means we should dismiss the incident as not-so-youthful hijinks. You have been presented with the evidence that a black woman was targeted and that there is a centuries-old meme in this country that African Americans are animals. Based on that a reasonable person can safely assume that the incident has a racist basis. To continually not do so betrays a willful ignorance if not a desire to make us give up talking to you, making it seem to you that you have won.
