Who Are You Fooling?

Man, I just stumbled across this story about a youth football coach in Georgia who apparently likes to spread racist insults wider than Keri Hilson's legs.

This cat insulted Latinos (He actually said "Mexicans" but he used it in the way racists use it for all brown, Spanish speakers), Asians and South Asians. I haven't seen anything about black folks, but I'd wager we got hit at some time in the past.

Anyway, what had me tripping was the dude's apology, as well as the tone of the article I linked to above. This AJC article gives far more information and has a far tougher slant on the obvious racism. And the AJC is anything but a "liberal rag."

First, I'm shocked that people believe that stuff posted on a public Internet profile is somehow protected speech, and that they believe that private correspondence shouldn't have public repercussions. Really people, who the hell have you all been talking to?

Your private thoughts impact your public life. If my private thoughts included the idea that I want to murder all white people just for breathing, I'm sure that if the white people at my job found out, that would impact my life. (For the record, I do not want white people dead. Really.) You can't spew ignorance and bile in private and then expect people to give you a pass just because you didn't mean for them to learn what you really thought. Basically, this guy and his supporters want some sort of hypocrite pass. As long as they pretend to non-racists in public, the private reality of their Klan memberships shouldn't matter. Yeah, OK.

Even sadder are the people seeking to paint this whole incident as a smear tactic of disgruntled parents. I'm sure that the people who posted this information weren't fans of the coach, after all his fans just ignored the racism and continued to yuck it up with him. That said, just because they don't love the coach does not mean he didn't write what he wrote. He wrote these words. Nobody spliced them together, or made them up. He actually wrote the comments that parents printed out and passed out, and he's never denied it. His only excuse has been that he has "diverse" friends with a similar sense of humor to his own.

The excuses offered by this coach and his supporters are hilarious to me. It reinforces my belief that racism actually kills brain cells, and for some people they don't even need the racism, breathing is enough to make them stupider. These people are so unwilling to admit to racism, or call someone a racist, that they are willing to make the most asinine excuses for plainly disgusting behavior.

Who do they think they're fooling? Do they think minorities are so stupid, so ignorant that we'll believe these weren't racist rants, that this guy doesn't despise non-whites, and that his protectors don't agree with him? On a larger note, when these type of incidents occur, do people really think they are fooling anyone with their defiance and rationalizations? But, when I think about it, maybe they are.

When I think about how quickly and easily people discount clearly racist behavior, when I think about how they refuse to see how racism is still alive and kicking today, I realize that maybe these people are fooling folks. And if they aren't fooling them, they are giving them just enough of a rationalization that they don't have to step outside of their comfort zones and confront reality.

Maybe I'm the fool for not noticing this earlier.


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