Racists blubber in court as judge jails them for threatening black child's birthday party with shotgun

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I hope so! I love me some White Supremacist Shakes. Although generally I just call that “Vanilla.”

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Muito obrigado.

We’re very kind people… to our friends and family who are also mostly racist white people… and to a few of ‘you people’ who are the ‘good ones’… until you step out of line…

I would drive past in a convoy. Less direct confrontation with you also means I have less direct confrontation with my own bullshit

Because I wasn’t there… oh. Because I couldn’t do anything to stop it… oh wait, I could. Because I didn’t actually participate?.. still no. Well, fuck.

…that I got punished for what everyone would do if they had the chance, and what everyone knows in their hearts is right… anyone with me? Anyone?

But it’s out of character for her, or some shit like that.

I will get a lot of use out of that gif for the next four years.

Yes actually.

What our justice system needs to do is remind these racist little nobodies who think they’re somebody because a racist is elected president, that they’re still nobody and they shouldn’t be emboldened.

Maybe, but I think they’re crying because they know they won’t do well in prison. Sure, they can join a prison gang, but they will have nothing useful to contribute. Bye bye protection.

Not completely. You wrap furniture in the flags to keep the edges from getting scuffed during the move. It might tear little holes in the flag, but c’est la vie. If the flag gets too ratty, you can use it to mop up shit and vomit. I can think of no better use for it than that.

You can’t push a rope.

But if they actively wanted to change, I suspect that would be a different story. I’ve known many people who have grown up like that, but then got out into the real world and went the other way entirely.

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Poor Southern White people are used to getting sent to prison – if not personally, then it’s happened to their relatives, neighbors, someone they know. They also know about parties and expeditions that get out of hand. What surprises me is the blubbing. I’d expect a stolid, low-expression sort of reaction. And the statement ‘It’s not me’ – that doesn’t ring true for me as the utterance of good ol’ boys and girls. Maybe it comes from television.

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I’m super-liberal and super-privileged, so I’ve got the luxury of trying to muster empathy for these shitstains, and I can, and this is how it happens. I kind of can understand that. Getting caught up with the group. Not acting “like yourself” in a crowd. Struggling with the cognitive dissonance. Hell, we’ve all been there, most of us probably just haven’t pointed a fucking gun at a kid’s birthday party while being exorbitantly racist about it. I can see that under different circumstances, with a different life, and a different mind, that wouldn’t be impossible.

I think the most important antidote is to realize that yes, that was you, that sometimes you can be an awful person, that sometimes everyone can be an awful person, and that this doesn’t make it OK, it just means that if you see a person being awful that maybe there but for the grace of God go all of us. This helps you to try not to be so awful, to know that it’s always a struggle to not be awful, and to be more forgiving of others who are awful.

The fact that these people haven’t quite realized that lesson, even after all this speaks to the pernicious effects of internalized puritanical Protestant morality, where being a “good person” is so fragile and so vital that you cannot accept the idea that you did something horrible. Better to create another person, a “crazy version” of yourself, one that can be flawed, that you can try and dissociate from.

That attempt to rationalize away the behavior will never be successful in ending it.

(As an aside, please don’t read my reaction as saying that everyone should have empathy for these people. I’m not here to tell anyone else how to react, so please continue your schadenfreude or whatever works for you. Having empathy for these assholes is something I can do, so I will, but that’s just me.)

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Right. Watching this, I can’t help but think of black communities terrorized over the years… not all that long ago… by white assholes like that, and worse. Houses burned, people murdered… and no one held to account.

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I can empathize. Going to high school in South Carolina it was easy to find casual racism.

It was also easy to find people who took zero of that shit. So I’m in that side of things. I think it’s too bad that they grew up racist assholes because of their parents or it’s what they’ve always been taught or whatever, but similar to my feelings in To Kill a Mockingbird, I’m not going to get too worked up when Mrs. Henry Lafayette Dubose dies and we can all move on as a society instead of having to be nice to an old lady who just grew up that way.

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Well, for starters they weren’t cops…

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No, I understand where you’re coming from; I came from a deeply racist part of the country and have lived with both casual and overtly violent racism first-hand. I know quite well how mob mentality works and how difficult it is for someone to see their awful behavior as ‘bad’ when they’re in the middle of it. Exactly as you say, these folks are using cognitive disassociation to literally think of the person who pointed a shotgun at kids as a separate human being.

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I think that’s fair, but I also think that it’s important to realize that Mrs. Henry Lafayette Dubose isn’t a one-time phenomenon, but something that will repeat, time and again, throughout all of history, and that her kids and her grandkids and all the other people in her neighborhood aren’t going to be effectively shamed out of her ideology, either.

We don’t have to be nice, or even polite. For me, it’s just important to recognize that these are human beings who are the architects of their own suffering and the suffering of so many others, just because of the way they see the world. I want to figure out how to evangelize them, to have them own their monstrous behavior, to force basic human empathy down their gullets.I want to eradicate some of their core beliefs and worldviews, to do violence to their sense of self.

I’m not about to try and stop anyone from savoring the tears of fragile racists and saying “Fuck those assholes, they got less than they deserved,” though. Fair enough, and in some ways kinder. :slight_smile:

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Frankly, they need to make the first step, whether it’s going to Seder somewhere or letting a black person go first at a traffic light.

Until they decide they want to change I’m fine with waiting for Mrs. Dubose to die off childless and alone.

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I guess our major point of divergence is that I see this as hopelessly optimistic.

Either way, we can agree: godspeed, Mrs. Dubose.

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Lead. Horse. Water. Drink.

These days there are enough troughs of water around that nobody should miss them. And if they are it’s because they are being willfully obtuse.

Ain’t nobody got time for that.

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Man, when people are blubbering in a courthouse and inventing other personas to pin their sins on rather than confronting the idea that they might’ve done a superbly shitty thing, I start to wonder if the horse has ever seen water before, if it would even know what to do with it if it was lead there. For most folks, I think, it’s pretty hard to challenge the social groups they belong to, racism and all. It’s why expulsion is such a useful punishment for cults like the Mormons. These ties are stronger than reason.

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Well, yes, they probably would have, because it’s not illegal to have a racist parade.

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I can’t seem to muster any fucks to give for these people. They’re not crying because they feel terrible about the terrible things they did. They’re crying because they got caught, and they’re being punished.

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Per one of the defendants, "“But I want you all to know that that is not me. That is not me.”, ostensibly because they were drunk.

Too that I say, “In vino veritas… cheese-dick.”

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… or, Don’t go away sad. Just go away.

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Oh, the white butt-hurt is strong with this one…