Playing the Race Card
 

Right now at my lovely school, there are protests out in front of a store. The protests are calling for the boycott of the store because someone in the store allegedly called 3 black women "bitch n*****s." From the outside, this seems like a good thing. People are allowed to voice their opinions, but in a professional setting they must be prepared to pay the price and face the backlash. Racial intolerance should not be tolerated.

The catch.

I was actually in the store when this racists statement was supposed to be screamed. I saw the three women yelling at the store owner because he "fucked up" their order of t-shirts. The store owner yelled back that it was their fault because they did not return any of his phone calls or emails for over a month. The wife of the store owner called the three women bitches and told them to get out. No one ever said the N-word.

But the next day there was a crowd of people protesting the store. To me, this is just wrong. These women were dissatisfied with their service, so instead of handling it through hospitable means or even small claims court, they literally fabricated this allegation of racism to tarnish the name of the store and formed a picket line to keep it from doing any business for 2 days. Maybe I shouldn't use the word fabricate, but claiming the store owner is racist is a huge exaggeration.

I've contacted the campus newspaper and I gave them my observations of the incident. Pictures of the protesters are on the front page of today's paper, but my statement that these allegations are false aren't even mentioned.

I've been skeptical of allegations like this. A few years ago, there was a student at Northwestern who admitted that he pretended he was a victim of hate crimes on campus. He lied to the police to help "promote a dialogue about intolerance on campus."

Playing the race card is an important option to have in my opinion. If someone was treated unfairly because of their race, creed, etc, that shouldn't happen, but it can also be used as a weapon to harass and slander people for petty reasons (and this seems to happen quite often).

What are your thoughts about this? There seems to be no burden of proof other than the words of a few customers that have reason to be pissed off.

Well, I think that the way the race card keeps getting played, eventually people will just move along when someone pulls it. I mean, sure, he insulted them, but the allegations that the store owner is racist are indeed fabricated. I don't know about you, but the way the women just added that on like that is scary. You don't even have to be racist to be accused of it nowadays, you just have to mistreat a minoroty. Yes, I'm aware of the huge hyperbole, but sometimes it seems that that's the case.

The worse bit is that if people just start to disregard accusations of racism, saying "Ugh, just some other jerk trying to add weight to their cause," then actual cases of racism may go unnoticed. I don't think anyone wants it to get that far, right?

Of course, getting called bitches by a store owner is reason to get pissed off, but frankly it's not racism so much as anger.

oy
 

Lord, I hate it when that happens. Y'see, the campus newspaper probably did not post your eyewitness statement because of two reasons.
1. The newspaper has to be read. Scandal invites joe average, the normal guy, to read the paper.
2. They were afraid of the race card being played on them for contradicting black ladies.

Yeah. I'm a college student. I have to deal with the fact that there are hundreds of minority only scholarships. If someone made a scholarship just for white kids, just to be fair to everyone, it would be racist. Personally, if I were of a minority, I would be insulted by this. It's like saying minority children can't afford college, or minority children are too dumb to compete with white kids. That's just wrong.

A truly fair society does not go out of it's way to be nice to people because they have a different skin color. A truly fair society treats everyone, and I mean EVERYONE exactly the same. Racism based on skin color is dead in most states (I exclude ones where there are active kkk members.) The fact of the matter is, it sounds like the clerk cussed them out because they were, in fact, bitches, regardless of their skin color. This is discrimination against bitches and assholes, which I can certainly tolerate. (This is not a racist statement, there are assholes and bitches in every race, creed, gender, and preference, including white male straight anglo-saxon protestants, so I don't want any race card responses to this post.)

I would love to see the race card just burned, and done away with. We should not have to deal with poeple playing any sort of crap like "You have to do what I say, I'm Christian, I make teh perfect moral sense!", or "I'm Black, so you have to take me into your school, or I'ma gonna go complain about racial intolerance!" (yes, I'm aware the first one is not race. Go burn yourself with napalm, then eat ice cream. You're such a smart boy. ^_^)

Eat ice cream? so, what, you're saying I'm fat now?

lol, just kidding. And yeah, I hate it too when people try to say how right they are because of their religion. Honestly, if they have so much faith in god, why bother arguing? If they're right, eventually, god will tell them so. There's no reason to press opinions onto someone else.

Red Mage: Where can I get this race card, and does it give a free 20 roll when activated? Surely it will go well and combo with the other cards of gender, religion, political preference, and sexual orientation! My M:TG deck will be unstoppable!

One wonders if this would have had the same results under the following circumstances(individually or combined in a sensical manner):

1. The offended persons were white(regardless of gender).
2. The store owner was black.
3. If Black men had been offended.
4. If the store owner was female.

I speculate that if 1 were to occur, this whole thing would be irrelevant. Anybody can lambast whites for being evil racist pigs and get off scott-free, as seen here. They might get the store owner on gender, but that isn't likely, and I doubt a protest would arise.

If 2 were to occur, people probably wouldn't buy it. Who would call the store owner a race-hater of his own race?

If 3 were to occur, I'm not sure what would happen, but I don't even think they'd report it. If they did, I imagine a lesser protest that current. After all, a White Male being nasty to Black Females is a double-whammy. You get slammed with race and gender.

If 4 were to occur, there wouldn't be the double-threat of race and gender, but the store owner would probably be called a pawn of her husband by the same people who purport to dispise judgementalism.

If 2 and 4 were to occur, the worst that would happen is the store owner might be classified a vindictive bitch, but there wouldn't be protests.

If 2, 3, and 4 were to occur, we'd have quite a conundrum going, they'd probably just blow the offended guys off.

If 1, 2, and 4 occured, the racism charges would be flying in the opposite direction, and you'd have 3 people called KKK members for walking into a store and allegedly using racist comments.

Race card, not religion card. So keep the discussion where it belongs.

As far as my thoughts on the matter go, it sucks. Sucks almost as much as actual racism. I've never aproved of racism nor completely understood it, but I can't aprove of 'playing the race card' either.

I have to admidt that I haven't got too much experience of such cases. I can't recall it happening once here, atleast to my knowledge. That's partly cause imigrants really are minority and all in all we haven't gotten quite that far yet. Hopefully we wont have to.

Then again, think about why people 'play the race card'. There's always a reason behind everything and in this case I shouldn't think it is too hard to find.

Well one thing is for sure: sheer stupidity is blind to such trivial details of skin color or religion. If it were me needing to get something from the store I would've just pushed right through the picket line without so much as a howdy-do.


EEP I've strayed out of the Arts & Crafts section!... :gonk:

The reason why people play the race card is because it works. It gets them invariably exactly what they want almost every time.

Yes your answer is correct in a way. But it's not what I meant. I meant what is it that get's someone to use the 'race card'. What are the reasons behind it, is more what I meant.