# WV black lawmaker gets email with KKK graphic and anti-abortion message...also sues. Is this right? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [February 21, 2022, 12:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wv-black-lawmaker-gets-email-with-kkk-graphic-and-anti-abortion-message-also-sues-is-this-right/959845 "2022-02-21T00:09:29Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 150
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2022, 6:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wv-black-lawmaker-gets-email-with-kkk-graphic-and-anti-abortion-message-also-sues-is-this-right/959845/150 "2022-03-09T06:26:03Z")
> [@Max\_S](#): > > _I_ don’t think of the described email as certain or substantially certain to cause trauma. _I_ don’t think of it as outrageously, intolerably indecent. _I_ don’t think of it as a true threat. At the risk of just beating my head against a pole, against the advice of others and their better example, I’m going here one last time : _you’re_ not Black. > [@](#): > > _I_ consider myself a reasonable person. Empathy is, IMO, a necessary condition for reasonableness in human affairs, to be able to predict the outcome of your actions on fellow human beings, and you have shown zero empathy for the situation of Black Americans here. > [@Max\_S](#): > > However I do not think it is reasonable to _expect_ a Black person to suffer from a panic attack upon seeing the image. On what do you base this claim? I think it’s eminently reasonable to expect a _large_ proportion of people living as an oppressed minority under a White supremacist system to experience some form of psychic trauma on being confronted with unsolicited, unexpected, unwanted imagery of one of the worse parts of that White supremacy. > [@Max\_S](#): > > as far as I know this is a very small minority …and you base this on? I’m basing my opinion on the evidenced reactions of not just Walker, but other African-Americans in media over the years, on receiving Klan-related imagery. > [@Max\_S](#): > > I think this is, **potentially** , what happened By that weasel word I bolded, I take it yo you _are_ wanting to call her a liar, but hedging your bets? > [@Max\_S](#): > > if it was me sending the email, I would not have expected her to take it as a threat of violence You’re not acting as a “reasonable man” in this situation. Note that the “reasonable man” standard is _not_ the same thing as “the average person”. > [@Max\_S](#): > > Though at first glance an image of a Klansman **may** appear threatening Weasel word noted and bolded. > [@Max\_S](#): > > In other words the KKK is used in a negative sense, not as a threatened enforcer to some demand. Big picture, smaller words. You are very much mistaken as to where in the email the actual message was. Walker saw it quite clearly. --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wv-black-lawmaker-gets-email-with-kkk-graphic-and-anti-abortion-message-also-sues-is-this-right/959845)._