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Follow-up: Charlottesville Race Threats a Really Bad “Joke”

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by

James A. Bacon
in ,

A week ago I predicted that an online threat of racial violence that resulted in the shutdown of Charlottesville public schools would prove to be a hoax, possibly perpetrated by an activist trying to bring attention to racial injustice. Well, the incident did turn out to be a hoax, although I was wrong about the motive. The perpetrator, a 17-year-old white male, either (a) was making an immature “joke” (if you believe him) or (b) was seeking attention (if you believe local prosecutors). The key point is that the kid was not a white supremacist and the threat was not serious.

The “joke,” if truly meant as one, was truly unfunny. Posting anonymously online, the teenager threatened an ethnic cleansing and a school shooting, telling white students at Charlottesville High School to stay home, reports the Daily Progress. However, prosecutors said there was no evidence the teenager intended to carry out the threat. Police found no weapons at his house and found no evidence that he associated with white supremacist groups.

The “joke” was wildly irresponsible, all the more so when committed in a community where, a year and a half after a violent white supremacist rally, racial tensions remain frayed. The kid should be chastised and receive an appropriate punishment, and then everyone should chill out. Minorities are not under threat. White supremacists are not running amok in Charlottesville.

Let’s all move on… to the latest racial controversy, in which, after a precipitating incident that remains unclear, a white Richmond policeman, caught on video, yelled at a group of black middle-school girls, “Wait until your asses turn 18, then it’s mine!”

Or, for a change of pace, we can opine on the sexual-harassment accusation lodged by a Virginia Commonwealth University office assistant against L. Douglas Wilder. The 88-year-old former governor allegedly took the young lady out to dinner, plied her with alcohol, took her back to his condo, sat down on the couch, put his hand on her knee, and kissed her on the mouth. When she responded negatively to his advances, he drove her  home.

It never ends…

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12 responses to “Follow-up: Charlottesville Race Threats a Really Bad “Joke””

  1. djrippert Avatar
    djrippert

    The 17 year old dumbass needs a suspension and some counseling. Maybe some community service too. No Jussie Smollett treatment for criminals in Virginia. In retrospect, I’m not sure what option the schools had other than to shut down. Yes, the white nationalist (or whatever) banter is over used. But what do you expect? When a threat is made to kill black people the talk will go to racism.

    I have no idea what the Richmond cop was thinking. Middle school girls? Like 12 – 14 year olds? Sounds like the cop has anger management issues. Also … note to Richmond cops … cell phones today have cameras and video recorders.

    I’m not sure what Wilder did wrong other than being a creepy, horny old goat. Was the woman underage? If not … she went to dinner with him, she drank with him, she went back to his place and he tried to kiss her. When she wasn’t interested he took her home. Yucky? Yes. Criminal? I don’t see it.

    1. Reed Fawell 3rd Avatar
      Reed Fawell 3rd

      “Was the woman underage?” She was a highly educated adult women, now 22 year old alleging a kiss by an 86 year old man she admired more than two years ago.

  2. CrazyJD Avatar
    CrazyJD

    There have been a number of these “bad cop or teacher actor” videos that have shown up recently. A disturbing similarity between them is the lack of video of what led up to the part where the cop or teacher acts badly.

    1. James A. Bacon Avatar
      James A. Bacon

      We should have learned by now that context is everything. And if the context is cut out of the video, you’d better believe that it doesn’t support the narrative of the person posting the video.

  3. LarrytheG Avatar
    LarrytheG

    Yeah, these days when a threat is made – what should the response be?

    It’s not like we have not seen this before and in some cases the threats were carried out with horrible results.

    Does it really matter what the specifics of the threat is in terms of how to respond?

    Seems like the discussion about whether the nature of the threat was racist or white supremacy is not something that really matters on the front-end.

    In terms of Wilder – it’s the era of “She said-He Said” and in more than a few cases – it’s gonna be that it did happen and we’re having to deal with the issue of whether all the things a leader has done are negated because of wrong, bad, inappropriate sexual behavior.

    So, how come, it’s always the guys?

  4. James A. Bacon Avatar
    James A. Bacon

    These phone-in and online hoaxes are shutting down schools with increasing frequency. 99% are hoaxes. But the schools really don’t have a choice. They can’t afford to take a chance of being the 1% that’s real.

    1. LarrytheG Avatar
      LarrytheG

      Agreed – but hopefully we also agree it’s not a “left” or “right” or “race” issue. With social media these days – anyone with a complaint can turn into a mass killer and if we discount it – it is at our peril.

      With the advent of non-land-lines (i.e cell phones) and social media (internet) – the world has changed… and we’re still figuring out how to deal with it.

  5. Steve Haner Avatar
    Steve Haner

    Wilder is faculty. She is a student. That is all there is – no other facts matter. Those rules are plain. Those are good rules. And the reality is, guys, and we all know this, yes is only yes, implied or spoken, until the word is no, and then it might as well have been no all along. Jeez, Biden is now getting battered for kissing a woman on the back of her head!

    1. LarrytheG Avatar
      LarrytheG

      I actually agree but I still ask the same question – does the wrong act invalidate everything else he did?

      We are now …trying to decide – to calibrate it. There is a line. On one side, no matter what else you did, the wrong act is the end. On the other side are folks who never did the bad acts. In the middle – are there any situations where the bad act was low level enough that it’s not fatal?

      We can go through the numbers. Did Al Franken deserve to be forced out of politics altogether and forever?

      I’m NOT making excuses. I’m in a quandary, realizing that I’m male and that males in general seem to have a high percentage of bad acts on their part over their years …. I’m thinking 50-75% of men – at one time or another have done something not right in this area. Am I wrong?

  6. Reed Fawell 3rd Avatar
    Reed Fawell 3rd

    Actually, some think they are unrealistic rules. But in any case no one knows what really happened in the great majority of these cases. Why? And the answer to that question exposes one why they are unrealistic rules.

  7. LarrytheG Avatar
    LarrytheG

    I don’t know where the “rules” came from or whether or not those “rules” were ones that both genders agree with or not.

    Women, in general, feel that they have been approached in a physical way that they do not or did not want AND they felt they were unable to prevent it nor call it out at the time it happened – and now, years later, the environment for calling that behavior out – has changed.

    The guys now feel that the “rules” have changed but from a woman’s perspective – they never agreed to those “rules” to begin with and felt they were taken advantage of but felt repressed from reporting it.

    So now, they’re “reporting” it – and the fact that the guys never self-reported it – indicates that they are not proud of it, in fact, now know it was wrong.

    In Wilders case, just imagine that it was HIS Daughter who had been physically approached by some other older guy. He, as most fathers, would have been outraged but somehow that same “father” – when he himself was interacting with other “daughters” it was “different”.

    In the end – guys are idiots.

  8. Reed Fawell 3rd Avatar
    Reed Fawell 3rd

    “In the end – guys are idiots.”

    No, in the end, guys are still boys if they fail to become men.

    And, in the end, women are still girls if they fail to become women.

    This is the plight of our post modern world. Why?

    These facts of nature going on between boys and girls, men and women, have always frightened us, its a state of perpetual war, but now in our modern times we’ve untethered ourselves from nature to the point where our fears now reach into panic that spreads into bouts of mass hysteria. To try to escape these rising fears, we try ever harder to repress nature, what plays out in flesh and bone in front of their noses every day, and has since our humanity rose.

    But now, we have lost the equipment, experience, and competence to deal with nature’s dark side, our dark side, so we deny its reality altogether. Hence all of our silly rules. Hence all of our silly behaviors, our neurotics, our hysterics, our wild accusations, and flights of fancy. We behave like the maladjusted children so many of us have become.

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