At least it didn't say * ANIMAL *
Hispanic Customer Given Starbucks Order With Racial Slur Written on Cup
Pedro, a customer at a Starbucks in La Cañada, was given his order with the word "beaner" on it

When I see the title of this topic pop up on the RAFT,I envision a bunch of smart phone dummies blindly looking down at their screens,getting angry about what they have been told to be angry about that day,while completely ignoring the signs everywhere that say "BIG EFFING CLIFF AHEAD!" and walking off a cliff like good like Bezoite lemmings.

 R_P wrote: 
I read that story the other day. Apparently the house had been abandoned, boarded up, and been used by squatters and druggies, so it was probably a big sore spot for her.

Which is all the more troubling: why would she want to keep such an eyesore intact? The guy is planning to fix it up!

She insisted it's not about race, but if Chip and Joanna were doing the same thing, she probably wouldn't have reacted that way.

c.

(...) In a video posted to YouTube earlier this month, Michael Hayes, a real estate investor in Memphis, Tenn., went to a house that was in desperate need of a fixing up to inspect it. It was at that point, he said, that a woman came out of a neighboring house demanding to know what he was doing. Ever affable, Hayes said that he readily showed the woman his investment contract, which showed that he had permission to work on the house, as well as the written permission he received from the homeowner.

Still, Karen the unidentified woman wouldn’t be swayed and called the police anyway.

Thankfully, in this case, the police were quick to call the woman out on her bullshit and defended Hayes’ right to be there.

“You keep the camera rolling. If you have any problems with her, what I want you to do is call me back over here,” a white male officer reassures Hayes. “She will go to jail for that.”

The woman says something that sounds like, “I’m friends with the sheriff,” but the same officer shuts her down.

“I don’t care if you’re friends with the president,” he snaps. “You’re going to let him do what he’s going to do. If you try to do anything to stop him, I’m going to take you to jail.”

“Hurry up, do it and get out!” the woman sneers in Hayes’ direction.

Again, the cops were not having it.

“No, no. He can take his time,” a female officer chimes in.

“He can take all day,” the male officer agrees.

At Hayes’ request, and after he voiced his own discomfort, the officers agree to stick around while he takes pictures of the property to ensure his safety.

Toward the end of the video, Hayes thanks the officers for sticking up for him in light of Karen’s madness.

“You know why the lady called the police on me,” he said in the video. “But at the end of the day, she did not just want me in her neighborhood. (...)

June 1940. "Melrose, Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana. Daughter of mulatto family returning home after fishing in the Cane River." Medium format negative by Marion Post Wolcott for the Farm Security Administration. View full size.

 islander wrote: 
There isn't necessarily a problem with seeing groups, tribes, clubs, etc. We apply categories to everything. The problem is thinking that one group is somehow (inherently) better (or worse) than another.

 meower wrote: 
Our Tribal/monkey based brains separate us into groups instinctively. I don't think it's racist that we do that, I think it's racist when we do that consciously. I'm not sure how to classify the unconscious act, but looking at events over the last couple years I think we need anew term and view of it. People get really defensive with any notion of racist (deserved or not). If there were a better way to make people aware of the natural bias active in their brains and ways to recognize and deal with it appropriately we might make some progress.

Feds: White man wanted hit man to kill black neighbor, hang body, burn cross on lawn

A white South Carolina man offered $500 to a supposed hit man to kill his black neighbor, hang his body from a tree and burn a cross on his lawn - but the hit man was really an undercover officer, federal prosecutors say.

Brandon Lecroy was arrested last month after he gave the man a $100 down payment and told him he might have more people to kill later, according to an affidavit unsealed after Lecroy was indicted Tuesday.Lecroy found the "hit man" through a white supremacist group, authorities said.

Lecroy sent the undercover officer pictures of the neighbor he wanted killed in the small town of Hodges in Greenwood County, according to court papers. Hodges is about 85 miles west of Columbia. (...)

 meower wrote: 
Case in point
Also

 meower wrote:  Actually. Maybe not The Most. 

 islander wrote: 
"Get my good side"
 
Anyway, it's May, and I don't care how big that dorm is, there's no way the caller didn't know the napper was a resident.

 miamizsun wrote:

 
I get it, she does look strange.

AND (and I'm not talking to you directly here,) the thing that drives the black people I know crazy the most is that white people get to get away with mental illness excusing their behavior.

just a thought.

XO ~ peace ~

 meower wrote: 

i suppose we could

maybe we'll get some background and get a better understanding of the situation

my mom wasn't around much and my caretaker from very early childhood on was a wonderful black woman

so that my have influenced my bias/preference in a certain way (my other half now is black)

you know, i just watched the video and i was a bit blown away by something strange

i interact with a paranoid schizophrenic twice a week for the last twenty five years or so

obviously i notice patterns in behavior, mood, hostility, irritability, facial expressions, progression of the disorder, etc.

i'm sure it's a bias to some extent, but watching that video i was reminded of that person early on

could it be that she is mentally ill?

who knows

 miamizsun wrote:

 
how about not racist, but also not aware of the fact that she might've responded differently if it was a white girl?

Is that possible? How about if we don't call it racism, but racial bias?

I have racial bias, when I notice it, I check myself, and try to be aware of it and not engage it. I think if we all self checked, it would be a good thing.

 maryte wrote: 

i agree

is it extremely poor judgment by the caller? yes

is that normal behavior? no 

does that makes her a racist? i'm not convinced

regards

 miamizsun wrote: 

I work at the University of Texas.  Students - many of them - decompress whenever and wherever they can. I've seen countless students napping in public areas, inside and outside. Wouldn't dream of calling the cops - even the Uni cops - on any of them. If there's a problem, someone should try to politely wake them up, not report them to the police, as though they were criminals.

 Proclivities wrote: 
Right, and someone pulling an all-nighter who falls asleep at 2am can't really be confused with a dorm "guest" who's on a sleepover. Unless that guest is sneaky and leaves research materials scattered around.
 
Absolute furthest the cops should have gone would be to say "you don't have to go home but you can't stay here," and when she produced a key to an apartment (having no reason to suspect she would not be the rightful possessor of that key), said, "okay, good night." But of course, as a tenant of the building, she is perfectly okay to use the common room, even to sleep (within reason). 

 islander wrote: 
Not unlike those guys who got hauled out of Starbucks. I guarantee those guys have been hassled by police many times, and know the drill. If they are anything but completely compliant, they get roughed up, or worse. It's a $hit situation. In the Starbucks video, a white man asked, loudly, what was going on. A black man doing the same thing would have been cuffed and stuffed on the spot.
c.

 meower wrote:
I know some white students who have been awakened by campus police while sleeping in public or "common" spaces, but I don't believe any of them were really "questioned"; they were essentially just told "you can't sleep here".