St. Louis is Full of Racists

Racist Zing!

2011-06-01T15:45:00.002-05:00

For whatever reason, I returned to the thread wherein HesterPrynne decried the uncontrolled breeding of blacks in St. Louis (see this post). Hester, sadly, hadn't taken the bait and responded to my silly comment. But some schmuck did go ahead and make a "blacks is munkeez ha ha" joke:

See, there were black people in a video, so clever people will see that that's just like the famous opening of 2001. JUST like it.

Sigh.

Good Breeding

2011-05-31T18:59:00.002-05:00

HesterPrynne is a lady of high birth, the result of centuries of the most careful, purposeful reproduction (you have to read from the bottom up to get the comments in chronological order, because the PD's commenting system is terrible):

Hester, you see, is white, and therefore not the product of "free range breeding," a term she finds offensive, yet accurate and appropriate for use on the internet. This makes her different from the "segment of society" she works "among." These animals don't have families like Hester does. And that, of course, is the root of all their problems.

Hester tells us that it was the dissolving of the family unit that "brought about" violent behavior. And she doesn't mean any of this bullshit these "people" like to refer to as their families either, no way: the only way to have a family is for there to be a dad there. Duh. Aunties? NOT FAMILY. Cousins? NOT RELATED TO YOU. Grandma? INSUFFICIENT TO CURB YOUR NATURALLY VIOLENT TENDENCIES. Single mom? GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE. It's not up to you to define your family. It's up to Hester and her patriarchal, white values, to do so, and she's not buying this wildebeest-style humping going on on the North Side as anything that could ever produce a family.*

And Hester has evidence! That's right, she can "substantiate [her] contention" by pointing to good black families. Ones where no one beats people up! Ones where the children still live in the same house as the testicles whence they sprang! Ones not "inbred" because of "fornication!"** This, of course, is Hester's "Get Out of Being Called a Racist Free" card, because, hey, I like some black people! I don't hate all of them, just the ones that are the exceptions to the rule I just made up about black people! She certainly can't have included it because she honestly believes that it goes remotely toward proving whatever asinine point she's trying make.

As I told Hester later in the thread (yes, I've tentatively begun commenting on stltoday, because stirring up shit is fun sometimes), I feel really sorry for the people she works "among." Whatever she is doing on the North Side, she should stop, since I'm confident that those people will be better off without some privileged white girl holding her nose and thinking the whole time about how they are "on the Federal dole" and are having their illegitimate lives subsidized as a form of slavery. Whatever she's doing, she'll probably be more comfortable doing it in St. Charles.

*Jeepers creepers. Does anyone else find someone with the handle "HesterPrynne" denouncing "fornication without consequence" to be just too much?

**C'mon now, Hester. Fornication - i.e. gettin' around - doesn't result in inbreeding! If anything, that spreads the genes around. Royal families and arranged marriages result in inbreeding!

The Worst

2011-05-26T15:55:00.001-05:00

If you'd like to see what it looks like when our neighbors bring out their worst, it's right here. Ugh.

Maybe We Could Build This Really Big Wall...

2011-04-23T16:30:00.009-05:00

For the past couple weeks, the PD has been covering how white people have been getting really upset and demanding action on a very pressing issue: black kids are walking around the Loop and being all scary and shit. Between the articles themselves and the plentiful comments, it's hard to pick what ridiculous racism to highlight. But one thing really caught my attention and seems worth discussing on the internet: there is a commonly held belief among people who are scared by black kids that black kids should not be allowed to go to the same places that white people go to. Metrolink gets rather absurdly roped into this, and people end up essentially arguing for the deliberate creation of racial ghettos and the racial segregation of the St. Louis area.

First, though, let me address the obviously absurd comment of Blair Stiles in this article. Blair is 21 years old, and she lives in south St. Louis. Blair is young and lives in the city. Yet Blair tells the PD, with no apparent irony or self-awareness whatsoever, that "crowds of young, urban youth [redundancy sic]" are "pretty intimidating." By any reasonable (i.e. non-racialized) interpretation of the term, Blair Stiles is, herself, an urban youth. So unless Blair bizarrely felt like telling the newspaper that she is intimidated by her own peers, Blair means something by "urban youth" other than "young people who live in the city." Now, Blair probably doesn't mean "niggers," but she most definitely means "black kids," and when she's telling us how much they intimidate her with their mere presence, is there really much of a distinction there? I think Blair's comment is the most important one in all of the articles because it lets us really see the feelings that are at the heart of this issue: THERE ARE BLACK KIDS RUNNING FREE ON THE LOOP. And that makes white folks really uncomfortable!

So. Black kids - and we are talking about black kids here, even if only Blair Stiles, and even she indirectly, will come right out and say it - are showing up in the Loop in big groups, and this is bothering the patrons of the local businesses. After all, no one wants to be intimidated by the presence of "urban youths" while they're trying to see art-house movies, buy Wilco records, and eat frozen yogurt. Business owners don't want their patrons to be bothered because then they stop being patrons and business owners stop making money. Notice the dichotomy that emerges: we have the kids, and we have the patrons. One business owner makes it explicit in the article: "[The 'urban youth'] don't buy anything. They just ruin the experience for people who do come here to shop and support the loop." I have no idea if this is true or not, and I doubt whether anyone else really does either, but this whole discussion takes place in a context where it's assumed that the kids in question aren't spending any money in the Loop, just wandering around and harassing the good, American, paying consumers. This is a problem the consumers and the merchants want solved. And solving this problem means eliminating black kids from the Loop.

Two main ways to make this happen come up over and over again in the comment section and the articles themselves: a police crackdown on black kids on the Loop and making it more difficult for black kids to get to the Loop in the first place. The police crackdown obviously supports an idea I've pushed on this blog before: that racists are generally very authoritarian. The second solution is more bothersome to me (at least for today). It's basically an argument that says St. Louis is not segregated enough. If we can just keep the black kids in the ghettos on the North Side, we'll all be better off because we'll be able to go and see Rascal Flatts at the Pageant without having to feel that terrible feeling that comes with seeing black kids out and about.

MrSmith comes right out and says it: black kids shouldn't be allowed on the Loop.

This is so insane. I assume there are other areas of the city that black kids shouldn't be allowed in, according to MrSmith. And I suppose we'd have to install checkpoints at the entrances to these neighborhoods in order to make sure that "black youths were stopped from comming [sic] to" our new, pristine white-only neighborhoods. The existence of these checkpoints would raise all sorts of interesting logistical issues, most of which will be familiar to anyone who has thought critically about the Jim Crow laws of the past: Who decides whether or not a kid is black? Is it just up to a police officer to decide, based on how the kid looks? What about kids who appear racially ambiguous? Would you have to present papers proving your race? Do bi-racial kids get to come in? What if we draw a line around a new, white-only neighborhood and discover that a black family lives there? Did we get rid of the Fourteenth Amendment and the Civil Rights Act? Can white people still go to "black" neighborhoods? Will there be Footlockers in the white neighborhoods?

I mean, wow. This is a person, in 2011, expressly arguing for the segregation of public areas! I'm sure that in the Jim Crow era there were plenty of streets a black person would not have been comfortable or safe walking down, but were there ever any that they were explicitly banned from? "Sorry, boy, can't come in here. This is the Loop, and its streets are just for white folks." Yeesh.

Some of the slightly more tactful racist motherfuckers who want to keep black kids from bothering the nice white consumers have found a convenient entity on which to blame the problem: Metrolink.

Here is just a sample of the comments that blame Metrolink for the presence of scary "urban youths" on the Loop, and / or explicitly argue that Metrolink is a bad thing because it allows black people to get out of the ghetto:

I wish I knew what business intheloop owns, so that I could go loiter in front of it:

See, if only we didn't have public transit, the hoodlums would be stuck in the hood, and nice white folks would be able to go to the mall and walk down the streets without ever having to acknowledge that there was a ghetto in their city. The ghetto isn't a problem in and of itself, after all, it's only when people get out of the ghetto and scare me that its existence becomes a problem. So the solution is emphatically not to get rid of the ghetto. No, what we need to do is get rid of Metrolink and further ghettoize the north side. Maybe if we built a really big wall like Pat Buchannan wants to do with the Mexicans...

Where Is the PD's Racism Threshold?

2011-04-23T15:48:00.003-05:00

I'm working on a longer post on this topic, but something struck me as I was reading through the comments on the various PD articles about the roving bands of "urban youth" terrorizing the white folks who just want some peace and quiet on the loop.

This thread is closed to further comments because there were too many racist comments being made. Here, look:

There are other comments in that thread that the editor has removed because of racism. The editorial foot has been put down. Certain things are not acceptable and won't be allowed to stand on the PD's website.

What the editors let fly, though, makes me terrified of one day actually managing to read one of the things they delete. In the comments section of another article about the "Black Kids On The Loop!!!" controversey, this comment was allowed to remain:

I mean, Jesus. We all know what "thugs" really means, and I'm just not sure there is anything more obviously and explicitly racist than literally advocating shooting a particular group of people in the streets.

What could the racists who got the first thread shut down have possibly said to get their comments removed if that one is apparently acceptable?

I'm Back, Suckas

2011-03-03T17:49:00.007-06:00

A guilty verdict was handed down today in the trial of Todd Shepard, so he's looking at the death penalty for shooting a white cop in U. City a few years ago. Shepard, who's biracial but identifies as black, sounds like a god damn kook, and claims that he shot the officer, Sgt. Michael King in order to start some kind of revolution. It's also worth noting that he did it at least partly in retribution for the killing of his then-girlfriend, Annette Green, who was shot by a police officer during a drug raid on her home. Sgt. King is, at least indirectly, another victim of the war on drugs.

So, a black guy killed a white cop for explicitly racial reasons: an awful situation, sure to be made worse by our friends and neighbors commenting on the PD's website. I entered the "Discussion" with trepidation. I don't know whether it's been heavily edited or not, but the tone was far tamer than I was expecting. There are plenty of barbarians calling for Shepard's immediate murder or torture (one commenter suggests that Shepard be involuntarily used for parts[!]). Mostly the thread is a discussion of whether or not this should be have been prosecuted as a hate crime. The sensible commenters have noted that the prosecutor is seeking the death penalty as it is, so using Missouri's hate crime law, which just serves to increase punishments, wouldn't have done any practical good.

I actually think there's something to the argument that it would have been worth it to call this a hate crime for the sake of calling it a hate crime. Shepard's testimony left little doubt that he was motivated to commit this brutal murder by his victim's race. Commenters are predictably complaining that hate crimes only seem to apply to crimes where a member of the majority victimizes a member of the minority. I obviously condemn all racism, which is why I sympathize with the idea of calling this a hate crime. However, doing so might legitimize the idea that so many white racists seem to have the white people are being persecuted by the hateful thugs. The fact is, white racism is systemic and most hate crimes serve to reinforce the systemic advantage enjoyed by straight white males. Flamboyantly gay men get tied to fence posts. Black men who step out of line get dragged behind pick-up trucks. Women who dress too provocatively get raped. These things send the message that non-conformity with the norms of heterosexual white male supremacy are punished. That's what Shepard's crime - as awful and racially motivated as it was - is missing. So I'm ambivalent about whether this should be labelled a hate crime.

There's some solid hate on display in the comment thread though. One guy thinks he's sussed out why white people face so much discrimination at the hands of black folks:

I think. I can't really tell which direction the irony in this comment is going. The whole thing reads as sarcastic, but referring to "us poor tortured white people" makes it sound like he's doing something I might, i.e. sarcastically lamenting the plight of the white man in today's America. But the ironic assertion that blacks want to kill those poor white people on account of they have several ostensibly desirable traits makes me really think Folio is a racist.

As of when I captured this comment to preserve it for posterity, it had been on the PD's page for about an hour and a half:

I don't know if it will be thrown down the memory hole soon, but it probably ought to be, right? Most of the racist comments you find on the PD site aren't this... blatant. Normally you have to couch your racism in statistics you invented out of thin air. Just asserting ridiculous things about black people doesn't usually fly. We'll see what happens. In any case, holy shit that's racist!

Update: Changed the second comment to actually look like the one I wanted. Oops. Post should make sense now.

Update 2: The holy squad cars comment is now gone. Glad I got it!

I Do Not Think This Movie Means What You Think it Means.

2010-11-27T16:35:00.003-06:00

Somebody shot at the police on the North Side. That's a terrible situation. Leave it to the commenters on the PD website to make the worst of it.

Charles P. thinks everyone who runs from the police should be shot with a machine gun. Really:

He also, of course, calls for an expansion of the police department. At least he doesn't call for sending in the National Guard, which is a disturbingly frequent suggestion by conservative PD commenters. You know, the principled, small-government non-racists.

I like to think that stltodaybunny read my previous post on code words, and is trying to send me a message when he / she talks about "PUNKS":

Bring in the National Guard because the niggers have no self respect!

But the discussion thread's winner-so-far is very obviously Captain Spaulding, who appears to have seen District 9, but completely missed the point of its unsubtle commentary on Apartheid:

So there's the good Captain, watching District 9 and thinking to himself "Yeah! Awesome! Lock up those prawns!" I thought the anti-Apartheid message was laid on pretty thick, myself (setting the movie in South Africa? Really?), but I guess it wasn't thick enough for those who are sympathetic to the idea of quarantining an entire population in the first place.

It's also interesting that the white people who abandoned the city in the previous decades have adopted the Tea Party "take our country back" rhetoric to pretend that blacks have stolen it. Just like they used ACORN to steal the White House. Maybe Sarah Palin can hold a rally at the Edward Jones Dome where everyone can dress up like para-military tough guys and show those commies / blacks / libruls that we're going to take the Second Amendment into our own hands. Or, you know, send in the guard while we watch on TV.

Welcome, Racists...

2010-08-30T20:39:00.007-05:00

Well.

So a racist who can read found this little corner of the internet. He posted a thread about my post about "thug" as a code word on a hideous racist forum, which I refuse to link to here. Click on through to see the comments his friends posted. They are quite proud of themselves for posting comments, and they should be. They brought the rhetorical PAIN. Or teh STUPID. Whichever. They're bragging at their forum about leaving "choice words," although they're unclear about what the benefit of doing so might be. One speculates that I'll delete the post soon, but that's not going to happen. I wouldn't want all of my (several!) regular readers to miss out on the horrible, horrible things these lowlifes have to say. That said, I have deleted a few comments.

In the interest of pretending like there is a productive debate to be had with avowed racists, I'm going to come up with a few commenting rules, which I reserve the right to never follow. But here's what I was thinking as I was deleting comments just now:

1. Don't link to offensive websites. I'm not going to drive traffic to your filthy forums, however minimal a boost in traffic you might receive by linking on my site. If the link is in the body of your comment, I'll delete that. If your handle links to something offensive, all evidence of your comment having ever happened goes into the ether.

2. Don't incite violence or say other things that could potentially, in my wildest imagination, expose me to liability.

3. Don't just post for posting's sake. Flooding the site with "choice words" for the purpose of creating a flood is stupid and obnoxious and pointless - I'm just gonna delete them. I know that's really what went on in the code words thread, but if an actual conversation ever happens here, comments that don't contribute will get axed.

4. Don't post anything that will make me want to take your comment down. Stupidity is probably okay (just see the code words thread for proof of that), but plenty of other stuff won't be.

5. I would say "Be nice," since that's just kinda something I think people should do, but that will be too frequently ignored to be enforced.

I might fisk some of the racist bullshit in the coming days. I might not. But, in any case, welcome, racists. It will be fun to make fun of you and sad to know you exist.

Update: I closed the comments on that thread because it was really starting to piss me off and I think everyone gets the idea.

The PD Trolls Its Commenters

2010-07-15T19:48:00.002-05:00

Oh my god you guys.

The PD is officially trolling its own racist commenters.

Also, there is an argument going on in the comments about who floats better. To wit:

It all starts when Dick_Butcher (seriously? Is this Lorena Bobbit's screen name?) gets a bright idea:

jrjohnso has a sense of humor about the whole thing:

Dick's all BAM! Science up in yo grill!

flifishun lol's:

happypatb actually read the article:

Real Talk from a trio of posters:

jrjohnso is WAY too logical for an stltoday.com commenter:

Dick misses pat's peace offering, and he takes his ball and goes home (also: he went to grad school, motherfuckers!):

rahda4 might not have read the rest of the debate. He just throws out some weird quote from a person no one else had heard of:

Okay, so pat didn't actually read the article. He / She also says pointless stuff:

jr is not ready to let it go just because Dick stomped out of the thread:

sandisland misses the point and says there just might be something to this whole "buoyancy" thing:

It's insane.

Also, there are people in that thread who are, insistently and without irony, defending slavery. I know.

Their Lives Don't Matter

2010-07-12T20:50:00.005-05:00

One person was killed - i.e. is now dead - and many more were wounded Sunday night in a series of shootings in St. Louis. Many people and their families are in tremendous physical and emotional pain right now because of what happened . One human being lost his life. Countless others lost a loved one or had to watch their loved ones suffer. This story is sad. How to solve the problem of violence in St. Louis is up for debate, but anyone who reads the story with a shred of humanity in his or her heart, I think, would have to feel something. Not the delightful commenters on the story about the shootings at stltoday.com, though. In a word, ugh.

bassmaster asks a rhetorical question (which he ends with a period) about leadership:

And he answers it by asserting that leadership is finding a way to use armed forces to "wipe out these thugs."(We all remember what "thug" really means, right?) Death sentences all around! Live next to a "thug?" Well, you're either with us or against us, so unless you welcome the troops like liberators (to show your loyalty, you could tear down a statue!), you can expect to get killed too. After all, their lives don't matter.

The ugly sentiment continues in a disgusting streak of four comments (stltoday's new "old comments at the bottom" default is really annoying, btw). Snag, mr.westcounty, Farik Al Akeem, and ramsrevolution each demonstrates his odious hatred for his fellow human beings with his comment in this string:

There seems to be some disagreement here about whether a "show of force" is needed or whether the police should "redeploy" elsewhere and guard the people whose lives are worth protecting. There is also a semantic difference here between the terrible people who want to lock the "thugs" up in a dungeon and the terrible people who want them to be killed. They certainly agree on one thing though: their lives don't matter. They're "animals" who should be put away for life. Violence in a neighborhood where black folks live? "Almost no problem with" it. "Why is this of any concern?" Their lives don't matter.

Their lives matter so little, in fact, that we should actively seek to end them by, apparently, building walls along arbitrarily drawn lines (What constitutes "the North Side"? Is it about the density of the black population? A certain high enough "thugs" per square mile ratio?) and creating some sort of apocalyptic scenario in the areas of the city we have deemed unfit for continued habitation. Build a wall and distribute guns. They didn't even do that in District 9.

It goes on. bign thinks he's being hilarious:

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA ITS FUNNY BECAUSE THE BLACK PEOPLE THEY DIED. Their lives don't matter.

TheUnderboss and our old friend drumming umpire have back-to-back comments that really take the cake in the "I don't give a goddamn about human life" department:

drumming umpire, TheUnderboss 12 july.egg

TU has decided to import the new right-wing OMG! du jour and blather on about the "New Black Panthers" and how they want to kill babies. Those militant "thugs" are "the ones to look out for." Who gives a damn about blacks killing blacks. Their lives don't matter.

And, really, what can I say about DU? He seems to have decided that not only don't the lives of black folks on the North Side matter, but neither do the lives of any of those silly liberals who would be stupid enough to live within a nuclear-bomb's-kill-zone of them (incidentally, read the whole thread for some "interesting" perspectives on why living in the City is teh sux or teh roxorz). They're shooting each other? Nuke the bastards.

The high school policy debaters I judged this year liked to strengthen their side by making the case that their opponents' plan - which always involved increasing some sort of social services - would SURELY lead to nuclear war. That line of reasoning is obviously specious, but perhaps I didn't give it enough credit. I like to think that nuclear annihilation is mostly off the table. Most people, I like to tell myself, are completely against using nuclear weapons in response to pretty much anything but an attack that was itself nuclear. But reading bullshit like du's - even though I don't think he would actually pull the lever to drop the bomb on the North Side - makes me realize just how much nuking the bastards is on the table for many, many people in our ridiculous country. I remember hearing idiots talk about dropping nuclear bombs on "The Middle East" after 9/11. As long as we have the warheads, we'll have the idiots who want to use them. Reading even a tongue-in-cheek suggestion that people deserve to die in a mushroom cloud because of their proximity to the black part of town reminds me of that fact, and it depresses me.

Our lives don't matter.

IT IS NOT BLACK HISTORY MONTH SO ALL YOU BLACK PEOPLE NEED TO BE QUIET

2010-06-24T22:40:00.003-05:00

St. Louis Is Full of Racists Presents: Fake Guest-Blogging From Fake Tim O'Neil, Not-Really PD Writer!

Oh, hi. Didn't see you there. It's me, Tim O'Neil. I'm just working on a story for the PD. It's about a prominent black lawyer from the early twentieth century, Homer G. Phillips. His story is pretty interesting, really. He was an early civil rights leader, advocating for blacks even when segregation was mandated by law. He is perhaps best known for

Oh, good. The racists are here. Hi, cardinals_99. Weird how the logo in your avatar is from the wrong Cardinals. Or maybe you're from Arizona. They appear to have plenty of racists there. Anyway, yes, you're right, February is Black History Month, but I'm really quite sure that doesn't mean that February is the only month in which we can discuss history involving black people. The other eleven months aren't, like, reserved for discussing the history of white folks. I just happened to find this guy interesting and thought I'd share his story with the readers of the PD.

Anyway, Phillips is probably best known for the time he proved insurance fraud by bringing the actual coffin used in the fraud into the courtroom. Turned out it was filled with cement and . . . Oh. Oh dear, it's shamwow.

Well, it seems that you all are just directing your claptrap at one another, which okay. But I feel compelled to let you know, shamwow, that not every story about a black person that portrays him or her in a positive light is about white guilt. Having good people as members of your race is not a zero-sum game, after all. It's really pretty stupid to assert that a positive article about a historical black person of note is about white guilt. It's like you racist weirdos just look for excuses to make racist com-

Sigh. -ments. drumming umpire! So glad to see you again! Your ruminations on "negro culture" are insightful and valuable. It's really neat how you can say, with a straight, racist face, "I'm not a racist!" since you praise the "good work" of MLK and Homer Phillips. Why, back in the olden days, blacks were better. Not like they are today, with their devolved culture and all. Thanks for your contribution, DU.

Now, back to Homer Phillips: sadly, he was murdered on Delmar Boulevard in 1931. His killers were unsurprisingly acquitted, which exemplifies the "justice" that existed in our country back then.

jaminator, you're not funny. I really don't understand the tone of your comment, but I do think it's sort of interesting how you're kind of arguing with drumming umpire, above, who was waxing nostalgic about the way black folks used to be, before they had equal rights to whites. Ah, those were the days. Not in your mind, of course. Blacks were even getting shot on Delmar back then! HA HA HA! Never mind that Homer Phillips was probably killed by a couple white guys. BLACK PEOPLE SHOOT EACH OTHER LULZ.

God, you racists make writing an article really hard when I'm forced to reply to you in the middle of it. Can't you just pipe down for a min-

"Big White Daddy"? Seriously?

I give up.

If They'd Just Stop Committing All Those Crimes, They'd Stop Getting Pulled Over When They're Innocent

2010-06-03T21:10:00.005-05:00

In 2009, blacks were 62% more likely than whites to be pulled over in Missouri. Countenance Blog, predictably, doesn't think this is a problem. Noticing that this has occurred, in fact, is just "peddling the no-snitching culture." He actually argues that to vote for a Democrat is to do that, but his argument is mostly unintelligible to me (the person writing Countenance Blog refers to him/herself as "Blogmeister," which leads me to believe he's a he, but I could be wrong). It seems to go that many Democratic policies, like ending racial profiling, "[support] black crime." How, he doesn't say, which, I suppose, is why the argument is unintelligible. I think the next tortured leap goes something like "supporting black crime is what no-snitching does, so Democrats, who support black crime, are basically not snitchin'." Or something. Behind the whole post seems to be the idea, popular among white people, who don't have to deal with the negative effects of racial profiling, that if those damn minorities would just stop committing crimes, they wouldn't get pulled over when they're innocent.

Predictably, this view is espoused ineloquently in the comments on the stltoday.com article.

jeepmom is back, and she's characteristically ugly:

Her reasoning proves way, way too much. If, as she claims, a person having a particular characteristic makes him or her more likely to have committed a crime, then it would be okay to seize on that characteristic and ONLY harass people who have it. After all, it's just good police work to hassle the people who are more likely to have committed a crime. Why have the cops been wasting their time pulling over any white folks at all? Doing so will only MAYBE net you a bad guy. But running a black guy through the system is much more likely to come up with something good. It's like making sure all the brown-skinned people in Arizona have their papers in order. It's not like the red-head with the sunburn just hopped the border fence, after all. jeepmom's twisted logic, carried to its endpoint, would have one race (or people having some other characteristic deemed to have a correlation with crime) harassed by the cops to the exclusion of all others.

And the crazy thing is that I'm not sure that jeepmom would object to living in that world, provided that white skin was not the characteristic in question.

molly3, who is a horrible person, probably wouldn't object to a policy like that either:

Ick.

If you want more examples of racists cheering on racial profiling, read the rest of the thread. Then, if you're really brave, you can move on to the "discussion" that resulted from this article about young car thieves.

I had plans to write a long post about why racial profiling is wrong, but suddenly I've realized that a) you've most likely read that post before somewhere else and b) I sound ridiculous above, making arguments that refute jeepmom's "logic." So I'll just say that racial profiling is wrong for many reasons, but, since St. Louis is full of racists, it's going to continue to happen here, with the support of a large portion of the community. And that sucks.

Code Words

2010-05-26T20:46:00.007-05:00

Update: That's enough, trolls. Comments closed. See here for some rules if you feel like commenting elsewhere.

Finals and paper are behind me. I've moved to St. Louis and started work. Here's hoping blogging picks up.

Albert H. Nobles, an 18 year-old resident of north St. Louis County, was shot and killed near Fountain Park early Tuesday. Why is he dead? The proximate cause was two bullet wounds, but really no one knows for sure. No one, that is, except for jim63129:

Jim knows that walking in neighborhoods where black people live at times when he is not personally out and about is tantamount to signing your own death warrant.

But Jim's heartless assessment of the situation is not, by a long shot, the worst thing a racist had to say in the comment thread accompanying the sad article linked above.

sue_nokomis gets the Worst Person... In the Thread! Award for her racist drivel, currently the final comment in this traveshamockery of a thread inspired by the death of a child:

Never mind that her statistic, like 43.6% of all of statistics, is made up on the spot. Never mind that it is wildly inaccurate (something like 10% of young black men are in jail, a statistic that is frightening and awful, but not for the reasons Sue would say it is). What is outrageous and racist about her comment is that she uses the fact that 40% of black men are in jail as evidence that her racism is justified. Whatever outrageous percentage of young black men are in jail, they are there because of our society's authoritarian streak and its institutional racism. So Sue is using what sane people would recognize as evidence of racism to justify racism. Racists love circular reasoning.

Sue wins the thread. But what I would really like to do with this sad situation is to demonstrate that racist white folks have come up with a new word for "nigger." Obviously that word is not used in polite company, and I'm willing to bet the mods at stltoday.com delete any comments that contain it. So racists have to use a code, one that's broken so easily that even racists can figure it out. I'm sure there are plenty of words that substitute for the n-word in polite conversation among whites, but the one I want to focus on today is "thug." "Thug" pops up a lot in threads discussing black people who have committed crimes, black people who have been victims of crimes, or, really, any crime committed in a neighborhood perceived to be black.

Let's examine its use in this thread.

Conveniently, it pops up in the very first comment, from The Ark:

Go ahead and just throw a "nigger" in there in place of "thug." The meaning of the post hasn't changed at all. We broke your code, The Ark!

The word pops up again a little ways down, in a mostly unintelligible and completely insane post form ChinacatSunflower:

Who knows what on earth CS is getting at, but swapping the words in this one seems to change her tone. So chalk one use of "thug" up in the racially neutral category.

It doesn't really stay there for long, thanks to NotFromHere:

This comment in mostly incoherent, but "niggers don't spend enough time at a target range to be accurate" sure has a nice ring to it, and I think it's pretty much identical to the point NFH is trying to make. It at least sounds like the punchline of a joke at a Klan rally.

DLstl can't use the n-word while pretending to praise MLK, so goes with the t-word instead:

It really is sad that black people have only used the civil rights movement to enable themselves to act like a bunch of niggers.

RedRonin is participating in a debate about guns, which pop up in response to these "black kid gets shot" stories about as often as the racists do, which is to say every time:

I'll give his use of "thug" the benefit of the doubt and a score of racially neutral.

kedgman gives us a quote straight out Alabama in 1962:

"Some nigger gets cocky..." Goodness gracious. This guy is a one-man lynch mob. Which isn't to say that he doesn't have friends - he probably does, and that makes him even more scary.

Saving the best for last, chad_rn's comment, the last one (so far) to use "thug," takes the racist code word cake, and, honestly, gives sue_nokomis a run for her money:

So simple. So ineloquent. So obviously wishing he could say "nigger."

I wonder if there is a racist MSWord macro for making this type of substitution easy and automatic...

You Know Who ELSE Was a Fascist?!

2010-04-30T23:02:00.002-05:00

Finally, the long-awaited fascists.

Once again, I'm looking at the comments in response to this story on stltoday.com. I've covered the racists and the gun nuts already. Let's bring it full circle with three commenters who don't just blame, like the racists, and don't simply advocate violent self-defense, like the gun nuts, but actually offer a proactive solution to reducing crime in the city.

First up is guns n camo, who makes the transition from racists and gun nuts to fascists a smooth one:

guns n camo is not ready, like the commenters we'll see in just a moment, to demand that the government start killing black people. But he is ready to impose the death penalty on them. At least the ones out after dark. After all, there is absolutely nothing good that they could be getting up to at that time of night. So guns n camo cheers his fanciful vigilante on as he imaginarily imposes death sentences on the real people committing guns's fictional crimes. Or at least fictionally doing things guns doesn't think they should be doing. Is there another meaning for "choreboy" besides the popular line of scrubbers? Urban Dictionary is, uh, no help. Is there a Racist Dictionary somewhere I could check? I'd like to know exactly what guns thinks this person was doing at 4 AM that made him deserve to get shot. Because buying a scrubber and a lighter doesn't really do it for me. But, then, I'm not a proto-fascist racist who thinks that shooting people on the street because of the timing and content of their activities is something to cheer about.

Our first real fascist is Ask Grandpa, who isn't quite as violent as guns n camo, but who is ready to move beyond lone vigilantes imposing justice on the city:

As Grandpa typed this on his laptop in the County, I guarantee you he wasn't smiling to himself and imagining the National Guard rounding up a bunch of white gang members. But racial issues aside (I'm sure if he read that, he would say he wants white gang members up too), I find this mentality really, really frightening. I just do not understand how anyone can be okay with the idea of uniformed, armed soldiers marching into an American city with orders to "round up anyone gang affiliated." I think it's directly related to the idea that it's okay for uniformed, armed American soldiers to march into cities in in Iraq and Afghanistan and round up anyone "terrorist affiliated." I like to think it's a BIG step from soldiers in Kabul to soldiers in St. Louis, but for someone who thinks like Grandpa, it might not be. "Terrorists" and "gang members" are both firmly in the "other" category for him, so he doesn't care what happens to them. "Rounded up" by soldiers and locked up without trial? No problem! That kind of thing, you see, just doesn't happen to white dudes in St. Louis County. Never will.* It would be just as easy for Grandpa to sit in his easy chair and cheer on the soldiers in his TV marching on St. Louis and gittin' the bad guys as it is for him to do it now as they march on Kandahar. It takes principles to stand against oppression that will never reach you personally. It takes an authoritarian nature and white privilege to advocate attacking an American city with American soldiers.

But if you thought Grandpa was a fascist, just wait until you see what Garfield the Cat had to say:

Goodness gracious. Thank you, Garfield, for making the analogy I drew above explicit. He says he wants "police [to be] able to treat thugs like soldiers treat terrorists." He is calling for his own community to become a "quasi-police state." But not even when we've invaded a foreign country do we hold public executions! This comment is truly stunning to me. I don't know if my saying this proves Godwin's Law, since this is just my blathering and not much of discussion, but Garfield would have fit right in in Nazi Germany. Substitute "Jews" for "thugs" in his comment. It's unbelievable.

Now, I obviously have no proof whatsoever that these three commenters are members of the Tea Party. But I doubt they'll be attending any Organizing for Missouri meetings in the coming weeks. And if put these people in the context of the political movement of which there is a good chance they're a part, their authoritarian mindsets and calls for fascism become even more unbelievable. They're too busy painting little mustaches on pictures of Barack Obama and railing against "Big Government" to realize what exactly they're advocating with regard to the city. Affordable health insurance for millions of Americans? Big government. Government troops marching on an American city? Just gettin' 'er done. It would be comical if it weren't so frightening.

There are people in St. Louis who have dedicated their entire lives to improving the city. They work on a daily basis to end violence, to teach children, to assist people in poverty, to beautify the city's buildings and green spaces, to minister to their flocks. They have solutions to this problem. They're working hard to implement them. But people like Garfield set their efforts back every time they make comments like this, because it perpetuates a toxic mentality. It's a mentality that says that people in the city are the "other." It says that they deserve to be shot, whether it be by their neighbor or an agent of the government. It says, in other words, that there is no hope for them. Those of us who know that isn't true need to do everything we can to prove them wrong.

*Or will it?!?!?!?!?! Dah dah duuuuh!

Heat-Packin' Grannies Make Everyone Safer

2010-04-28T21:17:00.012-05:00

New feature: post titles! Exciting, right?

So let's get back to the comments on this article about two shooting deaths in South St. Louis.

I covered the racists earlier. But, like I said back then, there are a couple of other trends that stuck out to me in that thread. They are related to each other and, I think related to the racism.

The first couple comments I'll highlight have a particular thought behind them. It's a clever solution to the problem of too many shootings: more shootings!

First up is d-artagnan, grisled veteran of "NoCo," hardened "diversity" survivor, and, obviously, paranoid, racist gun nut.

So the racism tie-in here is obvious. God. Just imagine this loony walking around his neighborhood, packin' heat, just waiting for some joker (read: black person) to "approach" him, so that he can flash his piece (read: HUGE penis) and scare that joker away with the sheer, intimidating size of his glorious manhood. All the while, of course, he's sneering at those "liberal easterners" who just moved in across the street and promptly started growing vegetables and shit, not realizing that they had moved into a fuckin' WAR ZONE, man! With jokers! Who approach you! You gotta be a REAL MAN to survive down here, and everyone knows that REAL MEN carry guns.

I mean, I'm all for people feeling connected to their communities, and I understand his frustration with people who would ignore the problems the city is facing because they're removed from the "direct impact" of them. But please, sir, try to find a solution to the problem of violence in your neighborhood other than arming yourself and assuming that anyone who "approaches" you is "probably [doing so] for a stick up." You're a danger to yourself, your neighbors, and innocent kids on bikes who look at you wrong.

A Biker Too has lots of words to say about how much better the city would be if there were only more guns in it:

So the theory here appears to be that a critical mass of armed old people leads directly to a drop in crime, on account of the crooks being driven crazy trying to figure out who has a gun and who doesn't. I think I understand this way of thinking. If I thought someone had a gun and was willing to shoot me, I would not rob them. I would also not look at them wrong. Or go anywhere near them. Especially if that person was anything like d-artagnan, from above, and just looking for an excuse to whip out his *ahem* piece.

And that, I think, is where I fundamentally differ from the people who see more guns as a solution to inner-city crime: I am not willing to shoot someone to save my iPhone and my credit cards. And I am sure as hell not willing to let somebody with a gun think that I am. Because even if the hypothetical mugger wasn't willing to shoot me for my iPhone and credit cards, he's a lot more likely to be willing to shoot me to avoid being shot himself. Which is why I don't want to pull a gun on him.And if he was willing to shoot me in order to get his hands on what's in my pockets, then my sidearm (it sounds so sexy when you call it a sidearm - it's what the soldiers do!) isn't going to protect me when he walks up behind me and shoots me in the back of the head.

I think, if my life or another innocent life depended on it, I might be able to shoot someone in the heat of the moment. Self-defense has a long tradition in our legal system, and I think it's pretty okay. But I don't think self-defense extends to protecting your shit. Once you decide that you're willing to shoot someone because he's trying to take your shit, (let alone being willing to shoot someone because you think he's going to rob you, as some of these gun nuts obviously are), you've essentially said that your right to property takes precedence over his right to life. And that is a prioritization I cannot get behind. I don't think our country will be a better place with citizens walking around imposing death sentences for robbery.

Speaking of death sentences, my next post will deal with another group of people who think they have a great solution to the problem of inner-city violence: the fascists!

Stay tuned.

2010-04-27T22:03:00.000-05:00

There is a really stunning comment thread in response to this article about two recent shootings in South St. Louis. Obviously, there are racists aplenty. That's not stunning. But there's another - related, I think - mentality that pops up repeatedly in that thread that I would really like to address. I was quite taken aback by it. I'll try to explain why.

First, though, the racists:

Statistics are my favorite. And not just because 59.3% of them are made up on the spot. Now, of course, we could quibble with "belpeckor-books" and bring up the fact that "follow[ing] the math" does not lead where he thinks it leads, even mathematically, but that would be pointless. The real gist of the comment is that "[o]nly [the black community] can solve it," "it" referring to, presumably, violence in black neighborhoods. Or unwed black mothers. Or something. Stats! The point is that it's all black people's fault and therefore white folks shouldn't worry about it or think about ways in which they might be able to help. And - whatever you do - don't think about the larger social issues that contribute to this problem (that is killing people) and ways the society could address them. Nope. It's all on you, black folks!

When your handle is "Big White Daddy," I don't think there's much question as to what the antecedent to the pronoun "they" is. And when you announce that "Diversity is on the march, driving out responsible, law abiding citizens," I don't think there's much question as to whether you're a prototypical St. Louis County racist.

You heard it here first, folks: immigrants = good; blacks = bad. Blacks are so bad, in fact, that they are a clear and present danger to society. All of them! Every member of that "certain group." They are a drain on society because they haven't made a decent live of themselves.

BUT- lest you think that all of the racists in St. Louis only hate black people, or that they all agree with one another, goddessbythewatefl is here to inject a little excitement into the discussion (and this blog). Those recent immigrants? BAM! Drain on society as well:

So, as far as goddess is concerned, recent immigrants, even ones who have awesome restaurants and other small businesses, are drains on society because they send their money back to that far-off desert land that they came from. And St. Louis? It's almost as bad as that sandy area. It's unclear whether that is because of the immigrants or the blacks or both. Either way, the goddess's suggestion of importing police is a great segue to the next line of comments in response to this article: the gun nuts and the fascists!

Check back for that fun soon...

2010-04-27T16:40:00.001-05:00

I (also) have a new reader!

That makes, like, 5 of you.

The prospect of a flamewar will be more appealing once finals are over.

NB: First off, PD comments aren't the whole reason for the blog, they're just the easiest way to dig up some racism to highlight when I've got a few minutes and an itchy blogging finger. The reason I don't respond to the ridiculous comments at the PD website is because I'm not particularly interested in having a conversation with the yahoos that post over there. I'm more interested in highlighting their existence and making fun of them. Plus I can be more verbose on my own blog.

2010-03-06T14:55:00.008-06:00

So some idiot white kids at Mizzou thought it would be hi-larious to put a bunch of cotton balls on the ground in front of the campus's Black Cultural Center. One of them is from St. Louis, which, of course, goes to prove this blog's title (or at least it does when he comes home). But just saying "this racist is from St. Louis" would be boring, so I dove into the comments on the story on stltoday.com to see what the local idiots thought of the incident. Shortly into the story's 192 comments, I found easily the best one-two punch of back-to-back comments I've come across since beginning this pet project. To wit:

Racist #1: Dummerthanu2, stltoday.com commenter.

Proof #1: His / her comment, reproduced below:

From St. Louis is Full of Racists

Racist #2: Our old friend jeepmom, stltoday.com commenter (see her previous handiwork here)

The Proof #2: Her comment, reproduced below:

From St. Louis is Full of Racists

Commentary: These two comments really are back-to-back in the thread. I would have posted them in one picture, but since Dummerthanu2 wasn't exactly parsimonious with his / her (I'm going to adopt masculine pronouns for DTU2 from now on, based on nothing other than my thoughtless assumption) language or spacing between paragraphs, they wouldn't both fit on my screen simultaneously in their entirety. I just got done reading the whole thread and, really, the whole thing is chock-full of racist idiocy. Read it if you're weird like me. Talk of hate crimes really kicks racists' persecution complexes into gear. Let's take a closer look at the particular comments.

First, wisdom from Dummerthanu2 [sic, as they say, throughout]:

No such thing as a hate crime, never has been and never will be. You could charge them with littering, maybe.

If what DTU2 says in the first "sentence" is true, these kids have a real due process case against the Campus Police, who arrested them under suspicion that they committed a non-existent crime. As for charging them with littering, it looks like they might be charged with criminal tampering, which would allow the MO hate crimes law to kick in.

From the constitution on down, Double Jeopardy has always been illegal. No different than hitting a gay person over the head with a B-ball bat, you can charge them with attempted murder, or whatever the charge would be. They cannot be charged twice for the same crime.

1) This is not what double jeopardy means. 2) The anti-gay violence he uses as an example to illustrate his misguided take on double jeopardy a) is disturbing and b) doesn't illustrate anything, since it's not a hate crime just to attack a gay person. 3) I really, really love how DTU2 has chosen to capitalize "Double Jeopardy" and leave "constitution" lowercase. I think it probably has something to do with the fact that there's never been an Ashley Judd movie called Constitution.

I probably speak for about 99% of the people who read this when I say I freely admit to being surprised that it was NOT a minority student who pulled the prank, since it normally is, whether it is nooses on doors, or people claiming a bunch of "white" guys raped this girl or that girl. I was stunned for once it was some college kids actually pulling an honest prank, how refreshing.

So many racist pathologies appear in this paragraph. In my experience, racists love to claim that everyone would think / talk like them, if only they would react to the world honestly. "I'm not being racist, I'm just telling it like it is." DTU2 leaves out the "if they were honest" part of that proposition, but does claim to speak for essentially everyone who would read about this situation. The title of this blog being (somewhat) tongue-in-cheek, I think DTU2 and I would disagree about the percentage of stltoday.com readers who share his racist beliefs.

I'm curious whether DTU2 is basing the assertion that symbolic, overt displays of anti-minority hate are "normally" perpetrated by minorities on something he read or if he has just made that up out of thin air since it fits into his worldview. In any case, this assertion and its companion about (presumably) false rape accusations evidences a couple of standard racist ideas. First, it's a great example of denialism. Racists love to deny that racism exists, and if anti-black hate is "normally" being perpetrated by blacks themselves, then whites are off the hook for that manifestation of racism. Second, it shows, very clearly, the persecution complex that so many racists carry around as chips on their shoulders. "White dudes are always getting fingered for things they didn't do! Every time a blatantly racist action is taken, people just assume it was us! Every time a white guy rapes a girl, people just believe her when she describes it!" DTU2 really thinks he lives in a world where white dudes just can't get a break, because they are constantly being falsely accused of crimes. I really don't understand where he finds evidence to confirm this worldview. He honestly thinks that people see evidence that a crime has been committed and think to themselves, "Those damn white dudes are at it again." It is SO HARD TO BE A WHITE DUDE.

You gotta admit, the timing of being Black History Month was either a cowinkadink, or intentional.

"You gotta admit, it was either these guys who did it, or some other people." "Clearly, they are either Mizzou students or they are not Mizzou students."

If we ignore for a moment the fact that his statement says absolutely nothing, I think what DTU2 is trying to say here is that our boys were trying to make some kind of point about Black History Month by making a public, racist statement during it. And when you couple this admission that the "prank" was racist with the way DTU2 praises it as "an honest prank" that is is "refreshing" above, you can really see DTU2's true colors. Racist pranks: honest and refreshing! Way better than dishonest racist pranks, because those are pulled by minorities.

Everyone is equal under the law, if they had dumped them around the Police Station, they would be charged with littering, and if a police car was a few seconds late to a call, maybe obstruction.

And for obstruction, they'll get two minutes in the penalty box. I think this paragraph is supposed to be an argument against hate crimes laws. I've heard it before, and it basically says that a person should be punished based on the crime they committed, not on who the victim was. This, of course, completely misses the point of hate crimes laws, which is to prevent the use of violence and other criminal actions to intimidate a certain group of people. So hate crimes laws don't make some victims' lives more valuable, as their opponents frequently argue. They make actions designed to spread hatred and intimidation subject to tougher punishments than actions without such intentions or consequence.

Incidentally, I'm ambivalent about a lot of hate crimes laws because of their free speech implications. It actually seems to me that in a case like this, where there doesn't seem to be any threat of violence behind the speech, hate crimes charges would be inappropriate. But that's just my snap judgment and I'm not sure I have the patience to consider it further at this point.

If you want equality, you have to want to be equal.

This makes little to no sense.

Then DTU2 tosses in the definition of discrimination, which is a non sequitur and wastes everyone's time.

On to jeepmom!

I don't really know where to start with jeepmom's comment. She is obviously a shameless racist, and I'm honestly unsure of whether that is better or worse than being a sneaky racist or a racist in denial. At least jeepmom's arguments are out there, laid bare for the world to see and respond to. But it bothers me that she feels okay rejecting what I think is a fairly universally held idea in our society: racism is objectively wrong. Even sneaky and in-denial racists operate within that framework and, as nice as it is for jeepmom's prejudices to be so obvious, it also makes it impossible to engage with her. Almost every argument I make in this context is based on the assumption that racism is wrong, that people are not inherently inferior because of the color of their skin. So if someone rejects that assumption, then we are really just talking past each other. This is a woman - somebody's neighbor!- who honestly believes that the only thing blacks have contributed to American society is picking cotton. She thinks that things you might have heard about black folks inventing things are just propagandistic lies (obviously not made up by blacks, though, since that would technically be a contribution to society). It's ridiculous. And I don't think there's any hope of changing her mind. So let's all just agree to shame her mercilessly.

2010-02-23T23:51:00.002-06:00

Predictably, I suppose, my new friend at Countenance Blog is pro-gun. I'm fairly ambivalent on the issue of guns, personally. I guess you could say I "grew up around them," since my dad has quite a few and I've gone hunting and shooting with him on numerous occasions (well, hunting only once, since I immediately hated it after actually shooting a bird). I'm not categorically opposed to legal gun ownership. However, I'm also not very sympathetic to the arguments of gun rights advocates who constantly want to push the envelope and make guns as prominent a fixture as possible in American life. For instance, unlike "Blogmeister"(the German-ness of that self-given moniker is really creepy, if you ask me), I don't think teachers should be packing heat at work. It turns out that a certain subset of another group of workers wants to bring guns into the workplace as well, and blogmeister is all for it.

Blogmeister can barely contain his / her bursting pride over Cardinals closer Ryan Franklin "rip[ping] MLB a new one" over its recent ban of firearms in team clubhouses. The PD characterizes Franklin's comments as "expressing disappointment," and after reading what he said, I think the PD's characterization is more accurate. In any case, neither Blogmeister nor Franklin offer any substantive reasons for why allowing players to come to work strapped would be better than forbidding them to do so (mentioning the VT tragedy is not a substantive reason). It seems to me that nothing good could come of it, but that's beside the point I want to get at. Read to the end of the Countenance post on the subject. Go on: I'll wait.

So let's take a look at that last paragraph.

The edict is in reaction to Plaxico Burress, Gilbert Arenas and Javaris Crittendon.

This is more than likely true.

It should be noted that Burress's gun trouble was in a night club in New York City, not a clubhouse.

Also true, and I think it's right to keep that fact in mind, since preventing MLB players from having guns in the clubhouse obviously won't stop them from shooting themselves in the leg at night clubs. But this fact might also tend to show that the policy is more in reaction to Arenas and Crittendon than Burress.

Burress? NFL. The other two? NBA. What don't you read? MLB.

I suppose all this is to suggest that irresponsible gun use is not a problem in MLB. And that is probably true. But I don't think it does much to support the position that MLB shouldn't ban guns: It also implies that the NFL and NBA would be / are (I don't know if they have prohibited guns in their locker rooms) right to ban guns. I'm not convinced that Blogmeister would agree with that position, though. Would MLB be right to ban guns if one of its players did have a high profile gun incident, when we would read "MLB" in the above list? Why does Baseball have to wait until a player brandishes a gun at a teammate to ban them? The fact that MLB has not had a high-profile gun incident does little to prove that the league shouldn't have a gun ban. So there must be something else driving Blogmeister's opinion on the issue...

All three [players involved in gun incidents]? Something which an increasingly small share of MLB players are. Something that's taboo in most media.

Ah ha. This is typical of Blogmeister, letting the reader infer what "something" refers to, but just for future reference: it's almost always black people. So it's apparently relevant that the three most recent and highest-profile athletes-with-guns incidents involved black athletes. I suppose the argument that Blogmeister doesn't make goes something like this: Black people are bad at guns. Lots of black people play in the NBA and NFL, so lots of NBA and NFL players are bad at guns. White people are good at guns. Lots of MLB players are white, so lots of MLB players are good at guns. Therefore, MLB doesn't need a gun ban. Right.

But I'd really like to address the implication that the race of Burress, Arenas, and Crittendon is a critical fact that "most media" fails to mention because it is "taboo." First, the race of these three players is no secret. They are famous athletes and virtually everyone who is reading about their gun issues has either watched them on TV or has seen photos of them (usually accompanying those same articles). So it can't be that Blogmeister wants the papers merely to point out their race. So I think it must be that Blogmeister would like "most media" to have some sort of discussion about the fact that these players are black. Not just to mention it (that wouldn't do any good), but to make a point of mentioning it, make their race relevant. I'm not really sure how that discussion would go, if it were to be kept in the realm of the rational. But I suppose Blogmeister isn't concerned with rationality. He / She is just wants to read a validation of his / her prejudices somewhere. I imagine the ideal PD article reads something like this: "All three of these athletes are black. This proves that black people are bad at guns. White people aren't though, so they should be able to carry guns anywhere they want." It's a real shame stuff like that doesn't get published.

NB: From the PD link, they let Isringhausen shoot his bow in the stadium???

2010-02-22T20:02:00.000-06:00

So, we all know what fun the comments section of the Post-Dispatch is. And we all know it's full of racists. See the comments in response to this blog post about the fiftieth anniversary of lunch counter sit-ins if, for some reason, you're unclear as to what I'm talking about. (One brilliant example: "They should have given the blacks their own country. They were 10% of the population so give them 10% of the land.")

But I would like to expand the content of this blog beyond the comments sections of stltoday.com items. So I was searching for other resources that might help me find examples of racism in the St. Louis area. I really found more than I bargained for.

While I admit I didn't search extensively, there don't appear to be a lot of St. Louis-centric news / politics blogs out there (please point me to any that you know of - nothing I like better than being proven wrong). But there are a few intrepid STL bloggers, one of whom is the the prolific poster at Countenance Blog. Warning: racist content at that link.

I read a frightening amount of content on Countenance Blog the other night. I don't have a particular entry I want to address at this point, but let me point out some of the things I read: just on the front page, this fine St. Louis-area resident defends George Wallace's segregationist bona fides, makes an unsubstantiated claim that it was black TSA workers' racism that caused a terrible situation where a kid had to take off his leg braces and struggle through airline security, busts out the racial slur "kraut," declares the ranting of the terrorist who flew his plane into the office building in Texas "definitely worth your time," and tells us that someone - referred to as "they," and suspiciously lacking an antecedent - is trying to make Tiger Woods and Barack Obama appear "as light-skinned as possible." He should really quit golfing, since all that sun is sure to defeat this plan.

So this, obviously, is a different situation from some inarticulate rednecks hollerin' about How come there's no White History Month on stltoday.com. This blogger, from what I can tell, is an out-and-out, committed white supremacist. He / she is the former webmaster for the St. Louis chapter of the Council of Conservative Citizens, (I'm not going to link to the org's webpage) and I was alarmed to learn that the national headquarters for that organization is in St. Louis. St. Louis is full of racists, indeed. The group is on the Southern Poverty Law Center's list of hate groups. This might explain all the derisive mentions of th SPLC on Countenance Blog. He / she is, generally, somewhat articulate. I enjoy making light of the ridiculous comments on stltoday, but this blog really makes the whole "St. Louis is full of racists" thing less funny.

I've been reading about the Federal school desegregation litigation in St. Louis recently. It wasn't settled until 1999! The Federal Courts officially held it to be segregated until then! Many people in the area fought integration tooth and nail. And, with our 100% black schools on the north side of the city, integration has not - remotely - been achieved. In the nearly 56 years since Brown v. Board came down, St. Louis hasn't even managed to talk its citizens out of being proud racists (one funny example, from our friend at Countenance: "Blacks, especially the low-down ghetto types, are bad at animal husbandry."), let alone integrate its schools. St. Louis has a long, long way to go, and it will take spirited opposition to people like the blogger behind Countenance to drag the city to where it needs to be. I plan to be among that opposition.

That said, I'm still going to make fun of rednecks, and I think I'm even going to make fun of Mr. / Mrs. Countenance fairly frequently. I'm starting to like this blog.

2010-01-28T23:06:00.000-06:00

The Racist: Steve M., stltoday.com commenter.

The Proof: His comment in response to this post on stltoday.com's "A coversation about race" blog [Yes, that's how they really capitalize the title of the blog. Sigh. - ed.], reproduced below:

The Commentary: A racist Obama fan? So it would seem.

Obviously, the racist nature of the comment speaks pretty clearly for itself: someone forgetting the President is black is a compliment, because, you see, where Steve M. lived at, the blacks were setting a bad example, which in turn dragged down the quality of the white folks in the area. Blacks = bad. Whites = good, until the blacks get to them. Old-fashioned, obvious, unconcealed racism. But it seems to me Steve M. is able to look past his prejudiced worldview and support our first black President.

Sure, his point about Matthews' comment being a compliment is racist, but notice his first sentence: "Looks like Mr. Matthews was spot on about President Obama." Two things make me think Steve M. is actually a supporter of the President:
1) He refers to him as "President Obama." No self-respecting member of the socialist-fighting, Obama-hating, tea-bagging right would let himself be caught referring to Barack Hussein Obama by using the courteous title "President." The best you'll get out of them is "Obama," and they tend to use it as more of a curse word. Steve, you showed the President a modicum of respect? Are you on his side?
2) He says that Chris Matthews was right about President Obamba, and then goes on to characterize his comment as a compliment. Steve thinks that complimenting the President is correct! That black boy done good!
Or, perhaps, as it were, the white phenotypes that are expressing themselves in the President have managed not to be "set down to [the] lower example" being set by his black genetic material.
Steve could be a very fair guy. I imagine him carefully considering the SOTU, listening intently, maybe even taking notes. At the end, he tallies up the "Pros (White)" column and compares it to the "Cons (Black)" column and notices something: unlike "[w]here [he] lived at," the white side has come out on top! The white genes have set a good example, and the black genes have followed it! Quick, somebody get on TV and compliment the President by saying that, for that hour at least, he wasn't black! Thanks, Chris Matthews! You took the words right out of Steve M.'s mouth! Now, if only his old hometown could pull off a similar feat...

2010-01-18T21:09:00.000-06:00

The Racist: "jeepmom," an stltoday.com commenter.

The Proof: Her comment in response to this article (comment reproduced below).

The Commentary: This one is off the charts. Whites wouldn't be racist, she seems to say, if blacks weren't so terrible and deserving of our scorn. It's a truly weird, "blame the victim" mentality, and it is so utterly un-self-aware that I know it must be completely earnest. There is an actual person, somewhere in the St. Louis region (presumably: for the purposes of this blog, I'll assume I'm the only person not currently living in the area who combs through stltoday.com comment threads), who honestly believes that "[b]lacks are solely responsible for white flight, white fear, and white mistrust," and that when a white person assumes that the black youths walking toward her - in the mall, of course - it is THE KIDS' FAULT. If only other black people hadn't beaten up other white people, she would tell them, I wouldn't automatically assume that YOU were going to beat ME up. The fallaciousness of this argument is stunning.

What really infuriates me about this comment, though, is the assertion that "until blacks can demonstrate that their very presence does not stimulate fear of being a victim, not much will change." Here is this woman, sitting in her jeep, telling an entire race of people that until they can "demonstrate" that other people's fallacious fears have gone away, they should just expect to be discriminated against. Imagine this woman meeting an individual black person and explaining this theory to him or her. When I see you, she might say, I am afraid of being made a victim. And even if you don't beat me up and steal my jeep and go put rims on it, I will feel completely justified in assuming that that is what you will do. Why? Because you have not demonstrated to me that it will not happen. The burden she places on an entire race of people in order to expect her to be willing to live near them or walk in the same mall as them, is an impossible one to meet. Her fear occurs because they have not proven that it will not occur. She uses her fear to justify her fear! I am afraid because no one has proven that I am not afraid. Her initial condition precludes the satisfaction of her requirement.

I'm glad I don't know this person. I'm glad I'll never have to speak to her. During my time in St. Louis, I have been fortunate to be able to surround myself with reasonable, bright, delightful people. It is only "in the community at large" that I encounter thinking like this. While I treasure my ability to avoid it, I also think that it shouldn't exist and would like to do something to change it. How can I resolve that contradiction of my own?

2010-01-12T20:51:00.000-06:00

Updated below.

The Racist: "drumming umpire," commenter on stltoday.com.

The Proof: His/Her comment in reply to this article, reproduced below. The article is about an increase in the number of children relying on food stamps for nutrition. Our friend d.u.'s comment is in reply to someone up-thread holding up Germany as an example of a more functional welfare state than the U.S.

The Commentary: This one is great! "[L]egions of ghetto queens farting out . . . babies . . ." is about as explicitly racist a comment as you'll hear outside of a Klan rally - and it's almost certainly something you would hear inside of one. Drumming umpire is clearly no fan of people who don't "take a personal responsibility for the children they bring into this world." Ghetto queens, you are on d.u.'s shit list. Why can't you be more like the Germans? Some of them might have 15 babies, but that's just because they're good Catholics who know that Every Sperm Is Sacred. Plus these ideal, responsible Germans are wealthy, which gives them the full reproductive privileges d.u. would deny to the poor.

And thank you, drumming umpire, for teaching us all the "lessons from hurricanes Katrina and Rita." All those people in New Orleans, unschooled in how to survive without the government, died because they expected the federal government to do things like build reliable levees, honestly assess whether they would withstand the storm, and mobilize its enormous resources to give life-saving aid in their time of desperate need. Too bad there weren't more people like our friend d.u. living in the homes that were engulfed by flood waters. They would have known better than to expect any one to help them when they lost their homes, livelihoods, pets, property, and life-sustaining necessities to the water. They would have struck out on their own! Relied on no one but themselves! Done whatever it took to survive, no matter what! And no matter what they did, they would have been cheered on by conservative commentators for getting out there and doing things for themselves instead of waiting in line for some FEMA trailer from the nanny state! Er, wait, they were just described as "darkness . . . descending on New Orleans . . . ."

Update: There are also racists writing picture captions.

Getting Started

2009-12-16T23:11:00.001-06:00

With any luck, I'll be (once again) a resident of the City of St. Louis just one year from now. It is a city and larger community I have come to care about quite a bit since I moved there in the Fall of 2005. And it's a city I'll be proud to contribute to the improvement of when I live there again. It's also (as, I suppose my desire to improve it implies) a community with considerable flaws. Too much poverty, failing schools, the Cardinals, &c.

This blog will be my attempt to chronicle and criticize a glaring flaw in the greater St. Louis community and its people: their vile, unadulterated, often completely shameless racism. Now, obviously not everyone who lives in the St. Louis area is a racist. That opinion is officially disclaimed. I would wager that a majority of the folks in the area - particularly those living in the City itself - are not racists and even trend toward the progressive side of the spectrum on race. But let's be honest: there are plenty of racists out there, and St. Louis has a long way to go in the area of race relations.

The manifestation of racism that will feature most prominently in this blog will also be the easiest pickin's: comments made in response to stories on the Post-Dispatch website, STLToday.com. I'll also try to find examples of racism in the stories themselves, both in the Post-Dispatch and other news sources. And, naturally, I'll add my own witty take on everything. My goal will be to highlight examples of racism and expose them for the foolish bits of nonsense that they are. I might mock the sentiments, the authors, or both. I might make dispassionate, well-reasoned arguments that make the ones I'm fisking fall apart. I might just slap it up here and let you draw your own conclusions (he said to his imaginary readers). We'll see. Hope you like what you read.