Rolling Thread on Race 2020

apparently that's not actually him. seem to be some pics of him front & center at a Trump rally though

I rarely (never?) post on this thread, so I don't know if this would be considered frivolous.
http://www.cnn.com/2020/05/26/entertainment/jimmy-fallon-apology/index.html

fwiw Fallon (who I assume was a 1st year cast member at the time?) probably isn't the person to be upset at for this, a bunch of writers & Lorne Michaels had to sign off on that

If you remember correctly, the commentariat decided it was OK for him to be up in the face of an old guy because elsewhere on the National Mall and the Black Hebrews had yelled at him several minutes earlier.

iirc the old guy came up to the kid and the internet libs went crazy about a minor making a face that reminded them of bullies in high school. that incident imo was shameful + has v little to do with cooper or the minneapolis killing which were serious crimes and not the fever dreams of angry twitterers.

that's... one reading of it

maybe none of us rc

The man on the right isn’t Derek Chauvin. He isn’t a cop. He is Jonathan Lee Riches, a notorious con man, troll and prankster, not to mention the "world's most litigious man." Riches injects himself, indefensibly, into tragic news events, even if it means going to prison. https://t.co/Y66mXihrYB

— Luke O'Brien (@lukeobrien) May 27, 2020

sorry for introducing that into the thread. shit is bad enough without introducing whatever the hell is going on with that dude

(but thank you to symsymsym and frogbs for pointing it out)

iirc the old guy came up to the kid and the internet libs went crazy about a minor making a face that reminded them of bullies in high school. that incident imo was shameful

what the fuck is wrong with you

just credulously (I hope) repeating the 4chan/fox news line here

oh no don't cancel me plz mister

too late

did you get outraged over that scary muslim woman yelling at poor pregnant chelsea too

on a lighter (?) note, here's Christian Cooper's measured response following Amy Cooper's firing
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/26/nyregion/amy-cooper-dog-central-park.html

“I am one of the few male African-Americans who birds the Ramble regularly,” he said. “And I have always been aware that if I am crawling around behind a shrub trying to catch a glimpse of that rare bird, holding a metal object in my hands, I will be perceived differently than a white man if police come across that scene. I didn’t want to kowtow to that, I didn’t want to give it any power,” he added. “I am pretty adamant about not being a participant in my own dehumanization.”

“It’s a little bit of a frenzy, and I am uncomfortable with that,” he said. “If our goal is to change the underlying factors, I am not sure that this young woman having her life completely torn apart serves that goal.”

or, alternately, Damon Young's brief meditation on forgiveness

https://verysmartbrothas.theroot.com/thoughts-on-forgiving-amy-cooper-aka-darth-karen-who-1843701476

^^^v thought-provoking and dignified piece

I have to admit I'm almost convinced by that.

enjoyed that quite a bit

https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/29/us/black-parents-children-safety-talk-blake/index.html

WNYC putting David Brooks on to talk about moral leadership is odious

feel like wnyc has lost their way a bit

And I’ll just leave this here.

And not one of these other actors spoke up for me and the fact I was not on here, being as well known as most of them. pic.twitter.com/z3t3rXPBNy

— Noel Clarke (@NoelClarke) May 29, 2020

poor Mickey!
naw really that is lame

FYI: I’m not impressed with the violence. I’m not impressed with the looting… I am Fn Happy as Hell!! That the people finally Stood Up Nationally to the BS..

— ICE T (@FINALLEVEL) May 31, 2020

Meanwhile, in Britain:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/01/uk-police-accused-of-targeting-black-people-during-lockdown

xp: I have never been so uncomfortable surrounded by NYPD as when I attended Ice-T's Body Count show in the '90s, which brought out extra "Cop Killer" Blue Wall ... not until OWS. It sort of crystallized my contempt for cops.

and i share that, but now is when the world needs cops like you would be, because still, imo.

Skai Jackson is spending the day on Twitter ruining the lives of racist high schoolers by identifying them along with their online racism and it's kind of hilarious

In more direct news, one of my coworkers is fundraising for the Black Lives Matter Foundation

https://www.gofundme.com/f/zdku77-black-lives-matter

Here is a weird one. my friend (who is white), just posted a graphic today of an exchange with a business owner, calling for boycott. one of his employees has a picture of a license plate that says Florida Cracker, and the friend claims that cracker means "slave owner", and thus this employee is bragging about being a slave owner. when she reported it tot he owner, he was confused, so she posted the conversation and asked us to boycott the business since he didn't terminate or discipline the employee.

I can't find any corroboration on the idea of cracker meaning "slave owner", as it was usually used to describe poor white people, plus it runs counter to what I've always been told about what 'cracker' mean, and I've always understood "Florida cracker" to be something completely different. Am I missing something?

https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/07/01/197644761/word-watch-on-crackers

https://tampamagazines.com/florida-cracker-cowboys-history/

Yeah I think your friend is confused. They will feel pretty bad when they figure it out

In Florida, we don't leave crackers on the counter for fear of ants and roaches iirc

on the plus side, though, last week she did get an unrepentant, virulent FB racist who was saying some really vile shit fired from a local eatery after going to the owner and sharing the employee's dirty work with him so....I commend her for that.

lol Alfred

I always thought cracker = whip-cracker and def associated with slavery in that sense, like enforcer if not owner

in fact I never really gave it this much thought before but I wonder if it has an even more nuanced meaning, like the "cracker" is not the rich white slave owner, but the lower status white who takes the job as enforcer and deserves special contempt for taking the side of the oppressor.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cracker_(term)

sounds like maybe all of the above

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cracker_(term)

xp lol, sorry man alive

just saw that.

compounding things even more is this person's plate clearly said Florida Cracker, which....is apparently its own separate thing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_cracker

ugh slang is so confusing

I suppose I assumed “cracker” came from crackers the food being uh. White-ish. And dry.

Good craic.

xpost i like that reading.

I think it's a good example of how multi-layered language can be. Like it may well be that certain southern whites were referred to as "crackers" for reasons having nothing to do with whip-cracking or being white and dry like a cracker, and that the same term was also repurposed for its double entendre.

ftr although I am white I am not dry, I’m quite oily

my pores are terrible lately.

pore whites

Cautiously optimistic.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/20/us/lynching-federal-hate-crime.html?smid=fb-share&fbclid=IwAR2TwOoJvvDHnyTejdeEq63cmIje3J0DcYQX4uESG1_lYduE5c55srfWCjk

that story's from 2018, I won't spoil things for you if you're not caught up yet