Racial Slur at BYU Game - Real or Hoax?

[Amulek]

16 minutes ago, smac97 said:

This article criticizes Dawn Staley (the women's b-ball coach who cancelled a game with BYU based on Richardson's accusations) :

[...]

I still wonder what "personal research" Staley did.

Probably just enough to ensure that the alleged incident provided enough cover for her to get away with her decision.

Let's be honest though. The real reason she decided to cancel the home and home series with BYU is obvious (and has nothing to do with racism). U of SC is coming off a championship year and has become one of the new, dominant programs in women's basketball - that makes their existing scheduling with BYU a "nothing to win, everything to lose" kind of scenario, the kind that has plagued BYU athletics for years.

As the head coach, she saw this incident as a opportunity to strike those risky games from their schedule and she took it. To be fair, she's getting paid close to $3M a year to ensure the success of their program, so I certainly understand the decision. However, I think it's completely disingenuous to come out and say this is all about 'protecting her girls' or taking a stand against racism or whatever. It isn't. It's about doing whatever it takes to ensure your winning program doesn't have to travel and play games at altitude with the risk of possibly being upset and having your season ruined.

 

[Amulek]

4 hours ago, smac97 said:

Should Richardson hold herself "accountable?"  Should Duke hold her accountable?

I think so.

CNN appears to be walking back its initial coverage (see, e.g., here for video clip; selected quotes included below).
 

Quote

“Healthy skepticism is always a virtue, but this doesn’t read like a coverup. Instead, it feels like there was a rush to judgment because of a well-intentioned impulse to believe the Duke player’s accusations,” Avalon said. Avalon also noted that BYU did not conclude that Richardson was lying, only that there was no available evidence to corroborate her claims.

“Systemic racism is real and corrosive to the soul of our country, but facts always have to come first,” Avalon said.

“When investigations turn up a very different fact pattern, it’s incumbent upon everyone to acknowledge it and adjust. Fidelity to the facts is all that we as journalists and citizens should ask,” he continued. “It’s understandable that there’s a desire to believe people when they say they’ve been victimized, but the accusations have to be backed up by facts, and when the facts don’t fit upon further review, we need to set the record straight with as much intensity as the initial reports.”

 

Edited September 12, 2022 by Amulek

[smac97]

Megyn Kelly: 

Per this news clip, Rachel Richardson has not updated her public position:

This video demonstrates the interesting confluence this story represents between A) race relations, B) sociopolitical ideologies, and C) sports:

Here is an interview with Marvin Richardson that I had not seen previously:

At about 10:43, the interviewer quotes/paraphrases Mr. Richardson: "You said this man, he didn't just yell the n-word, he said 'All blacks can go to hell.'"  Mr. Richardson nods in agreement.

He goes on: "Your daughter said there were others who were using the n-word.  This wasn't one guy, correct?"  Mr. Richardson responds: "Correct ... So what she's hearing, she's hearing every time she goes back there to serve.  And it's not just from one individual, it's multiple individuals.  And unfortunately, they used that crowd, out of their own cowardice, to hide, because that's what racists do now.  They try to be covert."

And this (at about 12:51) : "The hard things in life are the things that we have to do, and that's what we taught Rachel.  It's hard to do 'the right thing' sometimes, but you got to stand up and do that right thing if you ever want things to get better."

Thanks,

-Smac

[JAHS]

[gopher]

It's still ok for fans to be offensive to members of the church according to this letter to the editor after the Utah - Florida football game last week.

The jokes on the Florida fans though thinking the University of Utah is a Mormon school.  From what I've heard...  wait, better stop there.

 

 

[JAHS]

Wow! Not a bad post from CNN, believe it or not.

 

[Durangout]

Interesting perspective of a black man on the SC coach.

[Durangout]

1 hour ago, gopher said:

It's still ok for fans to be offensive to members of the church according to this letter to the editor after the Utah - Florida football game last week.

The jokes on the Florida fans though thinking the University of Utah is a Mormon school.  From what I've heard...  wait, better stop there.

 

 

It will ALWAYS be acceptable to show bigotry towards Mormons.  That came out loud and clear in all the Media’s hit pieces about the fake racial slur incident.

Edited September 13, 2022 by Durangout

[Kenngo1969]

Yes, this is an extreme (and probably unreasonable) position, and yes, this is unfair to BYU's Women's Volleyball program.  I recognize that.  But, still, I say BYU and its officials should have "called everyone's bluff" (my phrase) and said, "Racism has absolutely no place among fans of Women's Volleyball or anywhere else at BYU.  Ms. Richardson reported hearing racial slurs.  If the guilty party does not, or [more likely, if you believe Ms. Richardson] if the guilty parties do not come forward by [insert date certain here], the remainder of the BYU's Women's Volleyball season will be cancelled."

Ms. Richardson reported having no problems with any of the players on the Women's Volleyball team and said that all of them were supportive.  If Ms. Richardson wants to hold onto "her truth" come you-know-where or high water, she can do that.  Would she do so if she knew it would have such dire consequences for a team whose players she said were supportive (and who, presumably, she respects, or at least with whom she has reported having no problems)?

[Nofear]

https://publicsquaremag.org/dialogue/racial-healing/byu-duke-volleyball-more-healing-or-more-culture-war/

 

[teddyaware]

23 minutes ago, Nofear said:

https://publicsquaremag.org/dialogue/racial-healing/byu-duke-volleyball-more-healing-or-more-culture-war/

 

Unlike the author, I’m inclined to believe Richardson didn’t mistakenly think she heard racist slurs but that she was put up to making the false accusation by her provably anti-white, politically ambitious godmother. Now please take note of the fact that I said I’m inclined to believe rather than that I do believe. And the reason why I’m inclined to believe as I do is because of the total lack of any corroborating evidence. But on this board being one who’s inclined to believe the BYU-Duke volleyball incident was a hoax, rather than a misunderstanding, will get you accused of being a purveyor of “hate porn.”

But the whole hate porn accusation can easily be turned around because perpetrating a race hoax with prejudicial malice, that gets an entire religion branded as a hotbed of hate and racism, is a most extreme form of hate porn. And isn’t it also hate porn to confidently believe the modern-day Latter-Day Saint religion is an incubator of virulent racism based on the flimsiest of evidence?

Nevertheless, I think it’s likely that Rachel Richardson and her godmother, Lesa Pamplin, reasoned ahead of the event that because of the din of the pumped up crowd her accusation of repeated loud and intimidating racial slurs could never be disproved. But they weren’t counting on the fact that dogged investigation, modern technology and not a single corroborating witness would cast the most serious doubt on her allegations. Even so, I would be most interested to listen to any corroborating witnesses who may yet come forward.

[teddyaware]

Enlightening….

 

[Duncan]

16 minutes ago, teddyaware said:

Enlightening….

 

don't you have anything better to do than talk about this? it's old news now

[JustAnAustralian]

42 minutes ago, Duncan said:

it's old news now

There are still recent news articles relating to  the fallout from it. Here's one from the past day https://news.yahoo.com/inquiry-dawn-staley-cancellation-byu-165243449.html

[smac97]

45 minutes ago, JustAnAustralian said:

There are still recent news articles relating to  the fallout from it. Here's one from the past day https://news.yahoo.com/inquiry-dawn-staley-cancellation-byu-165243449.html

Yep:

Fort Worth Star Telegram (less than an hour ago) : BYU ends ban on fan accused of slur against Duke athlete, godchild of Fort Worth lawyer

NPR (9 hours ago) : BYU apologizes to a banned fan, saying it found no proof they yelled racial slurs

CBS Sports (yesterday) : WCC releases statement on BYU probe into alleged racial slurs shouted at Duke volleyball players

New York Daily News (yesterday) : Admit liberal bias when it exists: One lesson from the BYU-Duke debacle

An excerpt:

Quote

Witness the controversy over Rachel Richardson, the Duke volleyball player who claimed she was called the N-word and other slurs at an Aug. 26 game at Brigham Young University. Richardson tweeted that she and other Black teammates were “targeted and racially heckled throughout the entirety of the match.”

After Duke players and coaches identified a man who had allegedly shouted the slurs, BYU officials announced that they had banned him from future games. The school’s athletic director and women’s volleyball coach also released abject apologies, acknowledging the pain caused by the incident and promising to fight racism wherever it arises.

Duke’s athletic director decided to move its next volleyball game from BYU to a different location, so that players “have the opportunity to compete in an inclusive, anti-racist environment.” Then South Carolina women’s basketball coach Dawn Staley, who has led her team to two national championships, announced that her program was canceling its two-game series with BYU.

And the national news media? It ran with the story right away. But nobody, it seems, made any effort to corroborate it. Richardson’s allegations echoed a common liberal narrative: America is marred indelibly by racism, which colors everything we say and do. But that perspective can create its own biases, which seems to be what happened here.

On Friday, BYU concluded a lengthy investigation of the incident. Officials reviewed footage from security cameras and the school’s television channel. And they contacted more than 50 people who had attended the game, including athletes from both teams and fans in the student section where the alleged heckler was sitting.

The result? BYU found no evidence — none — that the episode occurred. The school apologized to the spectator accused of shouting slurs and said he would no longer be prohibited from attending games.

Let me be clear about two things. First, I’m not saying that Richardson was lying. Although nobody has thus far corroborated her story, it’s still possible that someone will come forward to do so. In a noisy and crowded arena, it’s also possible that she sincerely mistook innocuous words for hateful ones.

Second, racism is real. We have a huge body of evidence showing that Black people suffer ongoing discrimination in housing, employment, health care and much else.

But it does not follow that all claims of racism are real. The awful history of racism in America primes liberals — and here I include myself — to believe them. But sometimes the charges turn out to be untrue. And we should be honest enough to admit that.

No such luck. Although media outlets dutifully reported on the BYU investigation, none of them ran a correction or apologized for their overly credulous reporting on the incident.

Ditto for our universities, another liberal institution that conservatives love to hate. In a statement responding to the BYU investigation, Duke’s athletic director reiterated her support for Richardson and the other volleyball players. “We unequivocally stand with and champion them, especially when their character is called into question,” she declared.

Staley doubled down on her decision to cancel games against BYU. “I continue to stand by my position,” Staley said. “After my personal research, I made a decision for the well-being of my team.”

Never mind the trove of research produced by BYU and by student journalists at the school, who also failed to find a single person who witnessed the alleged racist event. Fighting racism means never having to say you’re sorry, even when the verifiable facts are aligned against you.

That harms the anti-racist cause, all in the guise of furthering it. The next time a well-documented racist incident occurs, Americans — especially conservatives —are going to be less likely to believe it. Even worse, this episode reinforces the GOP claim that everything we say — about elections, vaccines and race itself — is false. That’s a lie, in its own right. But now more people are going to believe it, because we don’t have the courage to admit when we’re wrong.

The author, Jonathan Zimmerman, paints this as a political (Democrat v. Republican) or ideological ("Liberal" v. "Conservative") issue.  I am not sure it is.

Nevertheless, I agree with his basic assessment and conclusion.

He is not totally correct about news outlets not issuing corrections.  CNN, or at least one of its reporters, appears to have done so: ‘Rush To Judgment’: CNN Anchor Admits Network Jumped The Gun On BYU Racism Scandal:

Quote

CNN’s John Avalon admitted Monday that his own network jumped the gun when reporting on an alleged racist incident at Brigham Young University (BYU).

BYU launched an investigation and barred a fan from entering campus after Duke volleyball player Rachel Richardson claimed the fan called her the n-word during an Aug. 26 game. The investigation concluded there was no “evidence to corroborate the allegation that fans engaged in racial heckling or uttered racial slurs at the event.”

CNN gave extensive attention to the allegations, with Jim Acosta inviting former NAACP president Cornell William Brooks on to criticize BYU’s handling of the incident and Brianna Keilar having Richardson’s father on to discuss, according to Fox News. Avalon admitted Monday the network should have exercised more skepticism in their reporting. (RELATED: Major Networks Carried King Charles’ First Speech But Not Biden’s ‘Threat To Democracy’ Address)

“Healthy skepticism is always a virtue, but this doesn’t read like a coverup. Instead, it feels like there was a rush to judgment because of a well-intentioned impulse to believe the Duke player’s accusations,” Avalon said. Avalon also noted that BYU did not conclude that Richardson was lying, only that there was no available evidence to corroborate her claims.

“Systemic racism is real and corrosive to the soul of our country, but facts always have to come first,” Avalon said.

“When investigations turn up a very different fact pattern, it’s incumbent upon everyone to acknowledge it and adjust. Fidelity to the facts is all that we as journalists and citizens should ask,” he continued. “It’s understandable that there’s a desire to believe people when they say they’ve been victimized, but the accusations have to be backed up by facts, and when the facts don’t fit upon further review, we need to set the record straight with as much intensity as the initial reports.”

And the NY Times: Liberal Disinfo: New York Times Corrects ‘Racist’ BYU Hoax It Should Never Have Spread

Quote

Reporter Amanda Holpuch’s follow-up several days later noted no evidence of racism had been found, but she still wrote as if certain the incident occurred.

Brigham Young University said Tuesday that it was still investigating who was responsible for the racist slurs and threats that a Black player for Duke University’s women’s volleyball team said were directed at her at a match on Aug. 26.

The Times let the alleged target of the slurs, Duke volleyball player Rachel Richardson, step into the footsteps of her father’s accusations and paint a picture of a near-riot in the stands.

Two days after the game, Richardson, a sophomore, said in a statement posted on Twitter that she and her African American teammates were “targeted and racially heckled throughout the entirety of the match.”

She said the heckling grew into threats and that the B.Y.U. coaching staff and officials “failed to take the necessary steps to stop the unacceptable behavior and create a safe environment” after the problem was raised.

Holpuch even played the race card against BYU.

The B.Y.U. campus is predominantly white and Mormon. Less than 1 percent of the student population is Black, and many students of color “feel unsafe and isolated” at the school, according to a February 2021 report by a university committee that studied race on campus.

Black Menaces, a group founded by Black students at B.Y.U. that uses social media to discuss racism on college campuses, said they were disturbed by a “lack of action” from people at the game. “Out of the 5,000 people in attendance, no one had the bravery or courage to denounce pure racism,” the group said in a statement.

Perhaps because it didn’t actually take place?

Holpuch’s debunking article made it into print on Saturday, but was relegated to an inside page of the Sports section: “No Evidence of Racism Claim Is Found by B.Y.U.’s Inquiry.”

At least the Times eventually updated its bad reporting, unlike many outlets.

Thanks,

-Smac

[Okrahomer]

Since I made the original post about this, I feel like I should apologize.  I just assumed it had actually happened.  I still think it’s possible that  Richardson simply misheard, and the story kind of got away from her.   We will probably never know exactly what happened now.

I graduated from BYU, and I love the place.  As an institution, I want it to live up to the very best the youth of the Church have to offer.  I should have had more faith in those youth in this instance.

I am sorry for my premature and uncharitable reaction.

[JustAnAustralian]

33 minutes ago, Okrahomer said:

 I just assumed it had actually happened.

I expect most people assumed that it happened, especially when BYU banned someone. There's no reason to feel bad for starting a discussion based on what little information we had.

[teddyaware]

1 hour ago, JustAnAustralian said:

I expect most people assumed that it happened, especially when BYU banned someone. There's no reason to feel bad for starting a discussion based on what little information we had.

I was very skeptical from the start because it was hard for me to imagine that a large crowd of emotion charged BYU students wouldn’t have immediately gotten in the face of such a loudmouth racist provocateur to shut him up, especially in light of the fact that the Church leaders have been so strongly speaking out against the evils of racism for the last several years. Many of the fans would have been even more powerfully motivated to shut the mouth of such an obnoxious jerk because they’re keenly aware of the fact that allowing such horrific behavior to continue without stopping it would give the Church they love a very serious public relations ‘black eye.’ If Richardson and her godmother actually did plan this ahead of time, they severely miscalculated because they likely believed the woke anti-Mormon stereotype, that the Latter-Day Saints are virulent racists from whom hateful racist taunts are only to be expected, would be instantly accepted by most people without giving it a second thought.

Edited September 15, 2022 by teddyaware

[Scott Lloyd]

2 hours ago, Okrahomer said:

Since I made the original post about this, I feel like I should apologize.  I just assumed it had actually happened.  I still think it’s possible that  Richardson simply misheard, and the story kind of got away from her.   We will probably never know exactly what happened now.

I graduated from BYU, and I love the place.  As an institution, I want it to live up to the very best the youth of the Church have to offer.  I should have had more faith in those youth in this instance.

I am sorry for my premature and uncharitable reaction.

You’re not the first person to have jumped to a hasty and ultimately false conclusion in an instance like this. We have clear examples in the very recent past with the Nick Sandmann and Jussie Smollet episodes. And Joe Biden, among others, accusing mounted Border Patrol agents of whipping Haitian immigrants. 

[smac97]

From yesterday: How the Media Fell for A Racism Sham

Quote

Things got so out of control, she said, that “my teammates and I had to struggle just to get through the rest of the game.” She accused BYU’s coaches and the game’s officials of having “failed to take the necessary steps to stop the unacceptable behavior and create a safe environment.” In an interview with ESPN that aired just a few days later, Richardson said that as the match progressed, the “atmosphere of the student section had changed,” growing “more extreme, more intense.” 

The national response to this heinous allegation was swift and righteous. Utah’s governor, Spencer Cox, issued a statement on Twitter (now deleted) expressing his shock and disappointment. “I'm disgusted that this behavior is happening and deeply saddened if others didn’t step up to stop it,” he wrote. “As a society we have to do more to create an atmosphere where racist a**holes like this never feel comfortable attacking others.” For its part, BYU quickly acknowledged that something horrible had happened in the fieldhouse. The day after the game, it published an apologetic statement, saying that the fan deemed responsible for shouting the epithets—who was not a BYU student—had been banned from all university athletic venues. 

Unsurprisingly, major media outlets were all over this story. The Times’ coverage set the tone, with the Washington Post and CNN and Sports Illustrated and NPR all publishing similar articles, alongside the predictable think pieces. The incident also had consequences for BYU sports more generally. The head coach of women’s basketball at the University of South Carolina canceled its home opener against BYU. A match between Duke and Rider University’s women’s volleyball teams—scheduled to be played at the BYU arena—was moved to a nearby high school gym in order to provide both teams “the safest atmosphere,” according to Duke’s Director of Athletics, Nina King. 

For millions of people watching this story unfold, this was yet another example of the ineradicable stain of American racism, of just how little progress we’ve really made.

Except it didn’t happen. 

"Except it didn't happen."

Is this a conclusion that can be reasonably reached?  I think so.

Quote

There is no evidence that the chain of events described by Richardson and her family members occurred. There isn’t even evidence a single slur was hurled at her and her teammates, let alone a terrifying onslaught of them.

All the journalists who credulously reported on this event were wrong—and it was an embarrassing kind of wrong, because the red flags were large, numerous, and flapping loudly. Richardson and her family members reported that racial slurs had been hurled with abandon, loudly and repeatedly, in a crowded gym filled with more than 5,000 people. But the journalists covering this incident never stopped to notice how odd it was that none of these vile slurs were captured by any of the thousands of little handheld cameras in the gym at the time, nor on the bigger cameras recording the match. Nor did they find it strange that in the days following the incident, not a single other eyewitness came forward—none of Richardson’s black teammates, and none of the players for either team.

Yep.  

Quote

If any of these journalists had demonstrated an iota of curiosity or skepticism—if they’d practiced journalism as it was meant to be practiced—they could have had a major scoop. Instead they acted as stenographers, with terrible results.

Everything that happened here fits into a growing problem in mainstream newsrooms: the injection of political values even into straight reporting, undermining the very purpose of journalism. 

This has been going on for quite a while.

Quote

Among activist journalists, the basic idea is that appeals to “objectivity”—meaning that the journalist will seek out crucial information and act as a neutral arbiter—doesn’t advance social justice. Instead, these journalists are making the same errors they decry from the past, but in the opposite direction. Journalists used to ignore accusations of racism? Well, now the default should be to accept them at face value. Prior generations of (mostly male) journalists didn’t take sexual assault seriously? Well, now we should #BelieveWomen, and journalists themselves should proudly tweet #MeToo. Let’s not worry too much about the fact that believing things reflexively, or participating in activist movements, has typically been anathema to old-school journalism. Leave those concerns to the rapidly aging dinosaurs who will soon be departing our newsrooms.

We do seem to be having a bit of an over-correction.

Quote

Even as major media outlets were ignoring the red flags surrounding the BYU incident, some of their smaller competitors were busy doing actual journalism—and it’s revealing who didn’t botch this story. On August 30, the local paper, the Salt Lake Tribune, published an article questioning whether the correct perpetrator had been identified and banned: “BYU Police Lt. George Besendorfer said Tuesday that based on an initial review of surveillance footage of the crowd, the individual who was banned wasn’t shouting anything while the Duke player was serving.” Besendorfer issued a plea for someone, anyone, to corroborate Richardson’s story. “So far, Besendorfer also said, no one from the student section or elsewhere at the volleyball match last week has come forward to BYU police to report the individual responsible for the slur. He also said no one has come forward to say they heard the slur being shouted during the match. He implored students who heard the comments to come forward.”

 

But the best reporting actually came from an even smaller upstart. On August 30, the Cougar Chronicle—a conservative campus paper at BYU—published a story by student journalists Luke Hanson and Thomas Stevenson. They reported that according to a source in the athletic department’s office, the search for any evidence of a slur had, thus far, turned up zilch. Moreover, Hanson and Stevenson reached out to a number of spectators, and they, too, said they heard nothing unusual. 

This is all Journalism 101—but the big guys couldn’t be bothered. What’s more, the Chronicle writers revealed that, according to their source in the athletic department, the man who was fingered as the culprit was not only innocent but “mentally challenged,” and was punished to “appease a mob.”

Last Friday, their reporting was validated. 

BYU issued another statement that completely imploded the dominant storyline about this incident. The university explained that it had conducted a thorough investigation of the evening’s game, including extensive review of the available video footage and interviews with more than 50 individuals in attendance, and had not found evidence of a single fan yelling a single slur. The ban on the innocent fan had been lifted.

Props to the Tribune and the Cougar Conservative.

Quote

By this point, between the original New York Times story and a tepid followup, a combined five reporters and researchers had been pantsed by a small student paper. If all this provoked any soul-searching on the part of the Times, it was unclear from its report on BYU’s findings.

Remarkably, their most recent story treated the events as unresolved: “B.Y.U. did not directly address why its findings contradicted the account by Richardson, and the statements by both universities left questions unanswered.” It also included a statement from Duke’s athletic director saying the university stood by the volleyball team. The story ends with a reminder that at the overwhelmingly Mormon school, less than 1 percent of students are black, and that a recent report highlighted the university’s diversity issues. It’s unclear exactly why this is relevant; the point seems to be for the Times to advertise that it understands racism is a serious problem at BYU, and that even if the school were not guilty of it this time, everyone knows the university’s soul is not entirely spotless.  

Yes, this is the vibe that's still reverberating.

Quote

The BYU non-brouhaha brouhaha is part of a growing problem. From the outright criminal fraud of Jussie Smollett—in which some of the most prominent journalists in the world accepted a storyline that never really made much sense—to the unwarranted piling on of the Covington Catholic High School kids, there’s an established pattern of journalists being far too credulous when these incidents first burst onto the scene.

There are real-world consequences to this sort of shoddy reporting, not just for newspapers’ reputations and their pocketbooks (Nicholas Sandmann, the face of the Covington controversy, sued and settled with CNN, the Washington Post, and NBC), but for those caught in the crossfire. In this case, a vulnerable, innocent young man was wrongly accused of horrendous acts, and an entire student body was slandered. Millions of people will continue to believe this incident occurred, because debunkings never travel a tenth as far and wide as misinformation does.

It won’t take some radical revolution for journalists to better cover fast-developing, controversial incidents involving race and other hot-button issues. All they have to do is rediscover norms that are already there, embedded in journalistic tradition. The best, oldest-school newspaper editors—a truly dying breed—constantly pester cub reporters to make that one extra call, ask that one extra question, follow that one extra unlikely lead. They do this all in the service of making sure their organization prints the best, most accurate version of the news (and doesn’t get sued). They can adhere to these norms without becoming a shill for the powerful. It’s simply a matter of approaching a story with curiosity and skepticism, of not believing they are the advocate for one side in a conflict—no matter how righteous and obvious the battle lines may seem at first glance.

Thanks,

-Smac

[Scott Lloyd]

10 minutes ago, smac97 said:

From yesterday: How the Media Fell for A Racism Sham

"Except it didn't happen."

Is this a conclusion that can be reasonably reached?  I think so.

Yep.  

This has been going on for quite a while.

We do seem to be having a bit of an over-correction.

Props to the Tribune and the Cougar Conservative.

Yes, this is the vibe that's still reverberating.

Thanks,

-Smac

A great piece. Thanks for posting. 

[Scott Lloyd]

31 minutes ago, smac97 said:

Utah’s governor, Spencer Cox, issued a statement on Twitter (now deleted) expressing his shock and disappointment. “I'm disgusted that this behavior is happening and deeply saddened if others didn’t step up to stop it,” he wrote. “As a society we have to do more to create an atmosphere where racist a**holes like this never feel comfortable attacking others.”

(Clarification: Smac97 didn’t say the above. It was in the article he quoted.)

I think Cox needs to do more than just delete an errant tweet. He needs to publicly acknowledge he was wrong. He has a heavier responsibility to do this than if he were merely an ordinary citizen, owing to the fact he is in a highly visible position of public trust. 

Edited September 15, 2022 by Scott Lloyd

[smac97]

2 minutes ago, Scott Lloyd said:

(Clarification: Smac97 didn’t say the above. It was in the article he quoted.)

I think Cox needs to do more than just delete an errant tweet. He needs to publicly acknowledge he was wrong. He has a heavier responsibility to do this than if he were merely an average citizen, owing to the fact he is in a highly visible position of public trust. 

Yes.  Also, the crassness of his comment was beneath the dignity of his office.

Thanks,

-Smac

[Calm]

“not a single other eyewitness came forward—none of Richardson’s black teammates”

”my teammates and I had to struggle just to get through the rest of the game”

The above statement of Richardson’s is really the only thing that makes me wonder. Everything else is easily imo explained by the way our perception of the world works.   However, if Richardson told her teammates what she mistakenly thought she heard, their anxiety could have been enough to cause them to express it was difficult to finish while she herself was talking about hearing additional slurs (mistakenly due to expectation at this point) and she conflated the two. Perhaps they were reluctant to correct her misunderstanding because they wanted to be supportive or it wasn’t made clear until her interview that she interpreted their supportive comments as evidence of a shared experience.

I wish the WCC or other neutral college sport agency did their own investigation and interviewed all the teammates and staff confidentially and then published the findings without names attached. I don’t think it is fair to the teammates to put them in a position of publicly rebutting Richardson. They didn’t ask to be in the middle of this.  
 

——

For those convinced this is a hoax, do you have an example of a sane person making claims of being racially harassed in a public venue where it was known there were numerous recoding devices around?  Anything close to what happened here?  Not just a hoax, but a very, very public hoax.
 

I have a very hard time thinking an intelligent individual like Richardson wouldn’t know a hoax would be doomed to fail and backfire on her in such a venue. There would be plenty of other options she could have claimed were harassment that didn’t require someone shouting slurs in the middle of a crowd that had cameras and mics focused on it and plenty of minority students and fans who would be more than willing to speak up if they heard such. 

[teddyaware]

43 minutes ago, smac97 said:

From yesterday: How the Media Fell for A Racism Sham

"Except it didn't happen."

Is this a conclusion that can be reasonably reached?  I think so.

Yep.  

This has been going on for quite a while.

We do seem to be having a bit of an over-correction.

Props to the Tribune and the Cougar Conservative.

Yes, this is the vibe that's still reverberating.

Thanks,

-Smac

Sadly, I believe this incident is a harbinger of things to come:, even that prophesied day when all the nations of the gentiles will unite to persecute Christ in an attempt to destroy his restored Church. A harbinger, I say, because there’s zero doubt in my mind that the kinds of justifications that will be employed to attack the church of Christ will be based the same sort of vicious, defamatory lies that we’re propagated in this incident. It will require deeply grounded testimonies, open channels of personal revelation, and Spirit empowered courage to triumphantly persevere throughout the mighty oncoming storm of darkness and hate, but those who remain faithful in the bright hope of Christ’s indomitable power will be mightily blessed like unto the inhabitants of Enoch’s glorious city of old.

12 And it came to pass that I beheld the church of the Lamb of God, and its numbers were few, because of the wickedness and abominations of the whore who sat upon many waters; nevertheless, I beheld that the church of the Lamb, who were the saints of God, were also upon all the face of the earth; and their dominions upon the face of the earth were small, because of the wickedness of the great whore whom I saw.
13 And it came to pass that I beheld that the great mother of abominations did gather together multitudes upon the face of all the earth, among all the nations of the Gentiles, to fight against the Lamb of God.
14 And it came to pass that I, Nephi, beheld the power of the Lamb of God, that it descended upon the saints of the church of the Lamb, and upon the covenant people of the Lord, who were scattered upon all the face of the earth; and they were armed with righteousness and with the power of God in great glory. (1 Nephi 14)

Edited September 15, 2022 by teddyaware