"I didn't mean to be a terrible racist person and (possibly) get people killed. I just wanted to be casually racist."
Edit: added (possibly)
this post was submitted on 14 Sep 2024
335 points (98.8% liked)
News
23266 readers
2996 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
She actually said:
"I’m not a racist,” she said through heavy emotion, adding that her daughter is half Black and she herself is mixed race and a member of the LGBTQ community. “Everybody seems to be turning it into that, and that was not my intent."
Lee said she pulled her daughter out of school and is now worried about her safety with so much attention on her family. She is also concerned for the safety of the Haitian community, which she said she did not intend to villainize en masse.
“I feel for the Haitian community,” she said. “If I was in the Haitians’ position, I’d be terrified, too, worried that somebody’s going to come after me because they think I’m hurting something that they love and that, again, that’s not what I was trying to do.”
These aren't the words of some MAGA devotee, she seems pretty genuine on this and I don't see any reason not to believe her. I instead blame those who have purposefully worsened and spread this rumor for racist ends. Imagine if you made an offhand post on Lemmy that inadvertently spun up a rumor that reached a fucking presidential.debate, I bet you'd be caught pretty off guard by that.
“I’m not a racist,” she said through heavy emotion, adding that her daughter is half Black and she herself is mixed race and a member of the LGBTQ community. “Everybody seems to be turning it into that, and that was not my intent.”
None of that means you can't be racist.
It certainly doesn't. But in the absence of evidence in either direction, I think it's most reasonable to not assume the worst of people.
The evidence that shes racist is the incredibly racist post she made.
load more comments
(1 replies)
But in the absence of evidence in either direction, I think it’s most reasonable to not assume the worst of people.
The human world is based on purposefully creating and maintaining inequality to enable exploitation. This is empirically verifiable. It is therefore reasonable to assume that most humans do not act based on morality, but instead out of convenience and/or apathy.
Get back to me when there are no hungry children, then I will be ready to reassess the evidence.
You can believe what you want about human nature, but consider how well society would function if it was acceptable to make baseless accusations and act on them as if they were facts.
I do consider how well society functions, and I don't think it is successful.
load more comments
(15 replies)
load more comments
(5 replies)
Lee recently posted on Facebook about a neighbor’s cat that went missing, adding that the neighbor told Lee she thought the cat was the victim of an attack by her Haitian neighbors.
Nah, someone who wasn't racist would have known not to spread your crazy neighbor's theories that are.
If she had left off the Haitian part, it would just be typical crazy Nextdoor stuff. That she felt that had to be included suggests something. Maybe not MAGA level, but there's some specifics not being said. Hell, she may not even consider herself biased, yet she sees those Haitians as different enough to single them out.
☝️
Sorry but are you excusing a person who literally made up the racist shit for no reason just because her apology didn’t sound republican to you and other people blew her lie up further than she “claims” to have not wanted it to be?
That’s like sorry I set this building on fire, I was just trying to burn this one desk but didn’t mean for it to spread and kill a bunch of innocent people.
Have you seen what she actually wrote, and if yes, can you share? I think we should set the actual message before casting judgement.
Have people been killed?
We shouldn't wait until it gets to that point. Look at the past, plenty of racism examples to work from that became violent. What really makes it worse is that Trump, Vance, and others are doubling down on the mistake, fanning flames that should have just been a one day "that's stupid". They want violence, it helps their cause, excites their base.
And somehow it will make trump right instead of wrong, at least in his own mind.
Not yet, and I hope not. I'm worried this will (figuratively) explode into something like the recent UK protests/riots.
"I didn't (allegedly) mean to be a terrible racist person and (possibly) get people killed. I just (allegedly) wanted to be casually racist."
ftfy
This lady, apparently
Expressing concern for a missing animal in a local post is not the same as spreading false rumours with racism. I'd want to see her post before judging. I also respect her talking to the media about regret and misuse of it.
Her post is incredibly racist hearsay from 3 people removed (her neighbor's daughter's friend). It describes a vile act that casts fault on 20k people in her local community.
Shes expressing remorse because she did something vile and racist and now has everyone in the world looking at her and her actions.
She doesn't have anything to gain like Trump/Vance, so shes afraid she will have consequences in her life now that her racism and hate is so public. After the multiple days of bomb threats that have cleared local schools and city Hall, the fear has set in.
That's it. She didn't apologize out of a sense of decency or remorse. Her apology is:
"Well I'm biracial and gay, so I can't be racist."
"I also didn't realize this hate would go national, and now that the world is attacking these people and might attack me, I realize what I did was wrong."
"I'm so scared what I did will affect me, please don't let it."
That's not remorse. That's someone running from the ugly thing they did, hoping to escape any consequence.
Agreed.
This sounds more like "sorry I got caught" than "I acknowledge it was wrong to have thought or said that".
Yeah, that appears pretty racially motivated. Still, the article dances around it, so I wouldn't be surprised if it was clickbait. I assume that is her post?
The story about neighbours daughters friend just reads as plausible deniabikity to post horrid stuff. She had to type all this out purposefully. Its not a retweet ir share or a sentence. Its a narrative shes creating.
Just want to point out that this woman made a mistake and expressed remorse.
The guy who's trying to be pres, deliberately and knowingly stoked this fire for his own benefit.
She's not expressing remorse, she's selfishly scared for herself.
Remorse requires accountability, not excuses and projection.
She made a racist, hateful, hearsay statement and now that it might affect her she says she can't be hateful because she's "gay and biracial." That's the definition of dodging accountability.
"But I'm gay and biracial"
"Oh, I had no idea. Do whatever you want all of the time."
Out of curiosity, what would accountability look like to you, in this case. Since she's admitted guilt she's likely to be held at least partially responsible for the crimes of others if it's found her racist claim played a part in the crimes motivation. I assume she's likely to lose her job as well, but we'll have to wait and see i suppose.
I like your question! To me it starts with a real apology without excuses. Real apologies are generally short and put one in a vulnerable situation, like
"I'm sorry for spreading these lies, they aren't true and I did it from a place of ignorance"
No "I didn't mean to," no "I'm not racist, I'm mixed," and so on.
I agree with your analysis of her apology. I don't think I've ever considered what makes an apology sound genuine. I've always thought of it as a gut instinct. Thank you!
Do you think that the publicity from this statement, would make a second, more genuine attempt at an apology sound like attention seeking? I wonder what kind actions she could actually take to mitigate some of the damage she's caused. That's a rhetorical question, I think.
She needs to at least apologize believably.
The cat was also gay and a mixed breed, so unfortunately that cancels out.
She got caught in the act and is scared for her own self. She’d keep posting this stuff otherwise.
Damage already done. But I'm happy to see she's sorry.
Who knew that there would be finding out associated with all the fucking around.
Imagine communicating something to a former President but through a misinformation party apparatus of thousands and thousands of people.
THEY'RE EATING, THE PETS.
I hope she was watching. I'd love to have seen her reaction.
If only there was a way to have prevented this - perhaps thinking before posting would have helped.
"I never meant to spark false rumours when I literally spread false rumours"
- this lady
view more: next ›