This probably requires some background. The details of the story are not totally clear, and won't be pending an investigation. The facts are that Jonathan Martin left the team after what was described as a "breakdown" in the cafeteria. Apparently the team was pranking him by banding together and refusing to sit with him. This is the sort of behavior you see. Afterwards allegations of physical beating and voice mails were revealed that suggested Richie Incognito (I know, ironic name) was the primary perpetrator of the abuses.

Focus has been on the use of the racial epithet in question. Frankly, I think this is a red herring. I, like many of you, don't really care about the use of that word. That said, I think Shannon is correct in stating there are signs of something deeper here. That is, real actual issues of race relations.

You've heard here that Incognito is thought of as an "honorary black" in that locker room. More background is that Jonathan Martin would have been the third generation in his family to graduate from Harvard, but he decided to go to Stanford instead. It's been suggested that Martin was ostracized more for this reason than anything. He just came from a completely different place than most of the other guys playing. At its root, the allegation is that they made him feel uncomfortable for coming from a wealthy black family.

What I find much more upsetting than any epithet is what I interpreted to be a continuation of the sort of attitude Shannon was talking about. By implying he had used an incorrect word rather than emotionally flubbing its pronunciation the implication, to me, is that his intellect is not being respected. Since this clip is most definitely about race, and that is a common stereotype about black men, I couldn't help but wonder if his skin color biased your judgements. That, to me, is much more troubling than throwing around nigger, fag, or kyke with your friends.

In the end, I think this whole story will blow over. It's just as likely to me that Martin was replaced as a starter, and is now trying to lawyer up (call his parents) to cash out his career. We won't know until they look into it. Still, in this context, I was surprised people here of all places would belittle this sort of commentary, and by extension the commentator. It's disrespectful to the message if nothing else. If you don't find discussions of race relations worth being dignified then I guess I think you're kind of a dick even if you aren't a bigot.

It is not appropriate to assume the operation of this guys mind. Hey may well follow around every kid that comes into his store with a backpack due to recent thefts.

it COULD be racist, or it could also be his default behavior for anyone younger than 'x' age in his store. Or heck, maybe he trusts no one.

To presume he is racist without any understanding of the man, better context, or insight into his behavior. is itself negative for race relations. It does nothing but drive the wedge.

Vodoo , your still on the wrong side of the facts.

There is a nice interactive timeline and video of events.
http://www.hlntv.com/interactive/2013/06/17/zimmerman-trayvon-map-interactive
Also there are all the 911 calls
Zimmerman's on site police walk through of events of the evening before.
Its not by FOX so it is not biased


The Left made this a race issue not Zimmerman.

Fact is there is not enough evidence to convict. The system worked and the left can't stand it. The left has instigated violence from blacks on white people. The Left should be ashamed. They have done more harm to race relations over this issue.

Yep If I wanted to kill a black man I would be going to the store and spot my target, drive past them and call the cops, then let Martin walk past my car and walk away around the corner out of sight. Then I would follow around the corner and all the while on phone with police. Martin came back from in between bldgs. and walked around the car still on phone with police then back in between bldgs. Still on with with police I got out to locate a proper address for police. And got ambushed by Martin. Yep that's is the normal pattern of a Raciest Killer.


44 days and 6 police interviews with no attorneys. Zimmerman freely assisted the police. If the police had evidence they would have arrested him. Al and Jessie show Up and scream RACE forcing his arrest.

Why did Martin come back and circle Zimmerman's truck? That is not the action of a scared person that is being followed.

What about the 4 minutes that was mention during closing arguments? What was Martin doing? He was 100 yards from home. and he chose to do what? He chose to pick a fight and lost. Martin got shot because of self defense.

This guy kept it real.

could it be that Charles Ramsey just improved race relations by leaps and bounds with that single selfless act?

did black people suddenly become less scary to white folks because of his heroism? God I hope so.

..."a man claiming he's Jesus....plows, balh blah blah, ....because he was black..."

Great opener there, ya dickweed cunt reporter.
Reiterate a few more times ya shitbrain, the words, "Black", "African-American", then get to the gyst. Uhhhh, the guy snapped, it was NOT race-related, and who gives a fuck who he happened to target on this day he decided to take his sociopathic shit out on the world. Glad hippie-Axe-boy was thereand saved the fucking day with his damn tool.

Fuck, I hate the news.

Guessing Zimmerman is from a powerful family in that area. Because it could just as easily be about which family has more strings to pull.

If the teenager were white, wealthy but not as wealthy as 28 year olds family.....cops wouldn't do shit to the guy especially if his family had ties to high up police force, etc and he could make some halfway credible claim that everyone could grab hold of and use like a shield to respond to all questions.

Ice tea in his pocket = bulge thought to be gun....he said something, reached for his pocket and I defended myself.

Should look into more than one angle than just the race angle. Yes, the black/white situation is one possibly explanation, but I don't think it totally explains it. Unless where this took place white people are still living with the "white is right" mentality, and if they were..black family in their paid for gated neighborhood would not be going over well with that crowd. In which case, they would have more ammo to use against the police department.

And the fact that the guy called the cops and didn't stay in his fucking house when approaching a guy who was not actively trying to break into a house or car.......I just think something other than race related stuff is going on. I suspect a family who lives above the law as a rule in that area, guy probably could have shot an old granny dead on her own yard with no witnesses and not been taken in.

>> ^GenjiKilpatrick:

who gives a shit what two dumb 14 year old girls think about other person/groups?
Keep this pointless shit on youtube, please and thanks.


Hey not to be a dick but same thing is said about your opinion. They exist mang, someone cares somewhere.

I don't doubt that what you say is true, but consider that after abolition, racism was still the norm, and until Rosa Parks segregation was still law. I'm sure you'll agree that getting rid of segregation laws in the long run did a lot for improving race relations. That's what this is.

If you actually think he's a a sexist, you need your head examined. Does he make stereotypical jokes about women? Yes. Blacks? Yes. Men? Yes. Whites? Yes. He's not a racist, and he's not a sexist. The reason he's going after Palin and Bachmann is because they're up in the GOP polls, and they have TERRIBLE ideas. Have you not seen interviews of Palin especially? She's a train wreck, and that shouldn't be a debatable topic. This is coming from someone who would consider voting for a GOP candidate next year, but there's no way I'd consider either of them, and it has absolutely nothing to do with the fact they're females. Their ideas are terrible, and even when they're called on things they say that are clearly wrong, they stand by it proudly. Utterly ridiculous.

And I'm sorry, but those who take the bible that literally are sexists. "Make me a sandwich" is just as sexist as "Make me a sandwich, because god said so". Get mad all you want, but he's right on that. The only thing I didn't appreciate is he's equating every religious person as that crazy when they're not.

Now, to address your point about sexism historically as related to religion, I don't care, and I don't think it's relevant. It is a part of fundamentalist christianity (and many other religions) to tell women they need to be submissive to their husbands or males in society today. Nevermind historically what they did. They're doing it now. Period.

>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:

To Bill Maher, and anyone on the Sift who thinks he has ever had a 'point' in his life... A pile of bull$#!+ wouldn't want to watch 1 second of this show because it would be afraid of getting crap on itself.
Really, BM? Really? You want to sit there and lecture people of faith about tolerance and mysoginy when you yourself are the worst mysoginist on the planet when it comes to Palin, Bachman, or any other conservative female? This twit takes the word 'sleazebucket' to a whole new low. What a lying, hypocritical specimen.
In other words - a typical neolib.
And factually ignorant to boot in regard to religion. Waste of breath to get into it, but ascribing 'mysoginy' to only religions is a typical neolib attempt to apply the time-honored tradition of retroactive standards. Mysogyny wasn't some sort of Christian invention. Nor was it even 'refined' by Christians. It was just the cold, hard, ugly, unfair way HUMANS existed for thousands of years. Women were on the short end of the stick in any facet of ancient life you want to name. But neolibs just love to sniff their noses at past problems and pretend that they only existed in the Christian world. Just ignore the fact that Christians have been (and remain) some of the strongest, most effective, transitional, and heartfelt movers of WOMENS rights, positive race relations, and yes even fair treatment for gays too.
And I notice the videosift hasn't posted the video of BM and his gay neolib buddies having a nice little joke about how they want to rape Rick Santorum and Michelle Bachman.
"Tolerance". PTUI! Maher is the last person on the face of the planet with any moral authority to talk about issues relating to tolerance.

To Bill Maher, and anyone on the Sift who thinks he has ever had a 'point' in his life... A pile of bull$#!+ wouldn't want to watch 1 second of this show because it would be afraid of getting crap on itself.

Really, BM? Really? You want to sit there and lecture people of faith about tolerance and mysoginy when you yourself are the worst mysoginist on the planet when it comes to Palin, Bachman, or any other conservative female? This twit takes the word 'sleazebucket' to a whole new low. What a lying, hypocritical specimen.

In other words - a typical neolib.

And factually ignorant to boot in regard to religion. Waste of breath to get into it, but ascribing 'mysoginy' to only religions is a typical neolib attempt to apply the time-honored tradition of retroactive standards. Mysogyny wasn't some sort of Christian invention. Nor was it even 'refined' by Christians. It was just the cold, hard, ugly, unfair way HUMANS existed for thousands of years. Women were on the short end of the stick in any facet of ancient life you want to name. But neolibs just love to sniff their noses at past problems and pretend that they only existed in the Christian world. Just ignore the fact that Christians have been (and remain) some of the strongest, most effective, transitional, and heartfelt movers of WOMENS rights, positive race relations, and yes even fair treatment for gays too.

And I notice the videosift hasn't posted the video of BM and his gay neolib buddies having a nice little joke about how they want to rape Rick Santorum and Michelle Bachman.

"Tolerance". PTUI! Maher is the last person on the face of the planet with any moral authority to talk about issues relating to tolerance.

not sure if my two pence means jack shit being between a P and a star (dunno what that makes me....a blank?) but.....if the knee jerk reaction to an arguably perceivable racist remark is to ban, no ifs, ands, or buts, its not really gonna get anyone anywhere. Racism, while not as overt as it was in the early 19th century or the mid 20th century, is still very much a volatile issue raising many different emotions.

personally i feel it helps to understand why certain remarks or their context offends us and why we feel it is racist. for the statement in question "and people wonder why blah blah blah", is it offensive to you because he said nigger? is it offensive because he made a reference to black people as being niggers? is it offensive not by its diction but by how cavalier he seemed to throw racially sensitive words around such as nigger?

i mean everyone is gonna take it differently. but if we dont understand why certain words or phrases or syntax's are offensive to us, especially concerning racial content, then what are we doing exactly?

the "n word" in particular is an extremely sensitive word to many many people. but its use and the different reactions of its use depending on the color of the person using it does paint a strange picture of race relations in society in my eyes. Its a word that can simultaneously invoke humor and vitriol but if we just ignore it, and its impact, and just stick our fingers in our ear whenever it us uttered, nothing is gonna change.

im kind of reminded of Dave Chappelle's "Niggar Family" sketch. I can only speculate that the sketch serves to remove the controversy of the word itself making it more or less a trivial utterance to raise awareness to the why: why is this word so offensive? why is it only offensive in certain contexts? why is it only offensive if nonblacks say it?

personally i feel two ways about the word. 1) everyone should say it all the damn time, or 2) no one should say it at all

It's amazing to me how ensconsed in the bubble the right is these days.

Let's break it down:

1. Ideological subversion propagation - Radical conservatives begin pushing their ideology to all members of society through churches, schools, and supposedly independent policy research "think tanks". This begins in the early 30's, and is a systematic campaign aimed at chipping away at the credibility of embedded liberalism, America's original ideology. The "threat of communism" is conflated with traditional American values like empathy, solidarity, and equality.
   
   
2. Destabilization - The 1960's reads literally like a textbook example of a country in crisis. A presidential assassination, two proxy wars, a mexican standoff with nuclear weapons, a counterculture protest movement, race relations getting strained with protests and violence, and the then-dominant Democratic party coming apart at its seams over disagreements about the war and civil rights.
   
   
3. Crisis - This one is clear. The oil crisis of the 1970's was our key takeover crisis moment. It basically ushered in an end to embedded liberalism as the American way of life. So many aspects of our political life and the way our economy was run was radically changed in the aftermath of that crisis, even though it was a walk in the park compared to today's economic problems.
   
   
4. Normalization - Conservative Republicans won 3 terms in a row, from 1980 until 1992, followed by a conservative, Southern Democrat who won in part because a third party candidate split Republican support. Party-line economists have treated the works of John Maynard Keynes the way their forebears treated the work of Karl Heinrich Marx -- they pretended it had nothing worthwhile to say, and tried their best to erase it from academic discourse. The Democrats of today consider reforms Republicans proposed in 1992 massive ideological win for the left.
   

Take the bananas out of your ears, morons.

Anyways, this is actually a pretty astute observation about how radical political and economic change happens. It's not necessarily planned like our conservative takeover was, but the framework for all ideological revolutions start with an ideology becoming commonly known, then during a period of destabilization and crisis, people may turn to the new ideology.

This is literally what more than a few libertarian bloggers say is their raison d'etre -- to make sure the ideology is lying around for when a crisis hits.

However, anyone who thinks some Russian-led infiltration of "Marxist-Lenninist" ideology happened or is happening is fucking deluded. It would've been a real trick considering your average American doesn't have a fucking clue what Marxism is...because the right stigmatized knowledge of it!

I don't know how often this is or isn't quoted, but I suspect racial sensitivity plays a role. Coming from black lips to white ears, it would sound threatening -- we don't need to wait for you to make laws or treat us fairly, we're just going to stand up and take what's rightfully ours. Coming from white lips to black ears, it would sound painfully condescending -- you don't need Civil Rights or fair treatment, you just need to stop whining about being oppressed and stand up for yourselves, and you'll find you weren't all that oppressed in the first place.

Just my guess based on what I know of race relations.

@GeeSussFreeK, I have my own story of learning about race as a child. I too was never taught about ethnicity as a child, though I did identify that there was more than a tan going on with "brown people" as I unknowingly called them. I didn't really think much of it, I mean people have different hair and eye colors, and different genders, people just have different skin colors. No big deal.

So it was until I had my 7th or 8th birthday party, and invited a bunch of school friends over for my party, including one of my friends who happened to be black.

He came over, and we did all the usual kid's stuff, including playing in the yard together. Well, our neighbors across the street didn't care for that much, and decided they'd all come out in their front yard with guns. They didn't say anything, they just stared at us a bit, before my mom rushed us into the house.

I later asked my mom why they'd done that, and she just said "they don't like brown people". I asked why not, and she said "I don't know".

Of course, years later my mom told me that they'd said they were just wanting to make sure that "little nigger" stayed in line, and didn't try to steal anything, and all kinds of really atrocious things.

I think racism is not dead, and not trivial. The only way to help with the problem is to be open to the idea of questioning your own actions with regards to race. I think of myself as being pretty free of prejudice, but I don't really spend time with non-white people in social situations anymore. I think that opens me up to a situation where I become insular, and insensitive to the ways in which a privileged white male like myself lives a life that's utterly different from that of people of other races, genders, and classes. It also means I might say or do something that seems completely fine to me, but would be horrific to someone outside my ethnic group.

I don't think the way you ease that tension is for people who are offended to feel like they need to just stay quiet and tolerate it. You don't just ignore it, and hope it gets better.

The look on Tan's face in the end is priceless!

In many ways, Malaysia is light years ahead of the west in terms of race relations and tolerance.

Was that racist? It sounded race-related.