Just so we’re all clear:
1st degree = “great” bodily harm i.e. hospitalization
2nd degree = “dangerous” weapon i.e. guns/stabby things
3rd = this
4th = anything less than this (ie a slap or a single kick) but done against state officials or due to bias.
And there’s no battery crime in Minnesota, it’s all just assault.
I have to ask: what did she think was going to happen? Did she think everyone in the restaurant would cheer her for her racist violence and she’d just go on her merry way? I know racists aren’t very bright to begin with, but how did she reach the age of 43 without already being locked up if she was capable of actions like this?
Here, we have the “Reclaim Australia” movement doing similar ghastliness…
I hate to Godwin, but damn, don’t people know their history at all? Don’t they know what they are copying?
And it’s always abuse at women. You aren’t going to throw your hate at a big tough guy who would cheerfully beat the crap out of you.
And once again I have to use my sad and tired line: “WTF is wrong with people?!” I’m sad because I use this line far too often.
Instead of community service - after her jail time - let’s deport her to a non English speaking country.
She wasn’t thinking. Thinking had been turned off by the alcohol.
Which, on another level, is confounding to me. When I drink, I get laffier and happier, and everybody in the world is my friend. I’d probably even shoot pool with Hitler if I’d had six shots. Why people get sullen and turn on their neighbors after a few drinks is beyond me. It must be a biochemical thing, and we also don’t know what else she might have been on that day. She could have other drugs in her system, and other events going on. Not as an excuse, but as an explanation.
Hopefully, she will have many long nights in a dark cell to think about her terrible actions.
Sad, but not terribly surprising. Coon Rapids is in a pretty red part of the state.
As with most drugs, booze doesn’t create personality; it just exaggerates and releases what’s already there.
I’ve heard this in Australia, and of it happening in the US quite a bit.
I’m curious as to whether it’s common in non-English speaking countries? “You’re in Belgium, speak Dutch you dwaas!”
(actually, people suck everywhere so it probably is) 
I WANT to think “this is horrible” and “i despise racism”
and I do
But I keep coming back to “one MORE reason to never go to Applebees”
A lot of people do, if only with words and dirty looks, most of the time. Discomfort and anger over “foreign” language use is an extremely common form of xenophobia in the good ol US of A. It seems to especially get under people’s skin. What I wonder is, are they actually worried that they’re being talked about, or what?
I was in the Netherlands and Belgium recently. No one gave me any grief for using English. In fact, they all speak English rather well themselves. Hearing English conversations between to native Dutch speakers is not uncommon. In Switzerland once I tried to order coffee in German and the reply was in English.
I’m not gonna speak for the racist’s motive in this attack, but I will say that here in Texas, there are a lot of people who get upset when they hear Spanish spoken in mixed company. I think it has a lot to do with everyday bigotry mixed with insecurity (are they talking about me behind my back?).
Yup, I know a few (seriously like 3, so grain of salt) Belgians, and they’re impressive polyglots. The guys I know are comfortable speaking English, French, Flemmish and German. And they’d never give anyone a hard time for speaking a different language.
Of course they’re very cosmopolitan guys, so, biased sample and all that.
This must be that honor culture thing we read about. As in, “violence proves bravery, and I am entitled to stop people from talking about me behind my back.”
But even in that context this example is still paranoid.
Language-based identification of the Other, and allocation of violence accordingly, would appear to be a plan older than pretty much everything except dirt and trilobites.
Judges 12:5-6King James Version (KJV)
5 And the Gileadites took the passages of Jordan before the Ephraimites: and it was so, that when those Ephraimites which were escaped said, Let me go over; that the men of Gilead said unto him, Art thou an Ephraimite? If he said, Nay;
6 Then said they unto him, Say now Shibboleth: and he said Sibboleth: for he could not frame to pronounce it right. Then they took him, and slew him at the passages of Jordan: and there fell at that time of the Ephraimites forty and two thousand.
(That aside, though, I suspect that the bigger difference is not the specific languages at play; but how recently they’ve come into contact. It isn’t a happy story; but two historically important ways of making peace are exterminating the opposition and fighting to a standstill so hopeless that compromising with your enemies is the lesser of two evils. In places where contact has been the rule for enough time, people have likely fought whatever grudges are available either to the end or to sheer exhaustion. When somebody new shows up, this is not the case.)
No offense, but that could say more about your German than anything else. 
They do the same thing in Montreal. If you aren’t a Montrealer and you try to speak French to a Montrealer, most of them will not humor you and keep speaking French. They’ll just switch to English and continue the interaction in English, to get the job done without hassle. They don’t like feeling like your French instructor for the day. They’re not unkind. They just don’t go in for bullshit.
FTFA:
She said she might join her sister, who left Minnesota in June for
Dallas. Before she left, her sister begged Jama to come with her.
Good lord! You’re leaving Minnesota because of racism and going to…Texas?
