Woman fired for reporting racist t-shirt

[Sava]

You guys sure do have a low bar for "blatantly racist." No wonder the forum spends 500 times as much energy on being outRAGEd than on any kind of intellectual discussion.

blahbity blah

you idiot

[Elok]

Over here public displays of racism are completely unacceptable, and she was stupid enough to do it in a busy place where someone filmed her on a mobile phone. In reference to your point though, it absolutely does not matter whether you know there are plenty of racists around or not, no-one should have to tolerate racist abuse, and if people do that here they get a visit from the police.

Okay, so it's a slightly pettier crime than shoplifting. Why is it news?

[pchang]

As an aside, can you actually fire an unpaid volunteer?

[Imran Siddiqui]

Well, they fired Kramer:

[Elok]

I don't know if they call it firing, but I assume if they told the lady to stop teaching the kids to . . . do whatever the hell it is preteen cheerleaders do (shake pompoms a lot?), and she continued, they could get the police to eject her.

[kentonio]

Okay, so it's a slightly pettier crime than shoplifting. Why is it news?

You think hate crimes are 'pettier' than shoplifing. Wow, thanks for the look under the veil.

[Elok]

"Hate crime" is a catchall for "ordinary crime, only we feel like punishing the motive as well as the actually damaging act." Hate crime is worse than shoplifting if it involves beating the snot out of somebody or dousing them in kerosene and setting them on fire. Being an ******* on a train is not as bad as actually stealing merch and therefore possibly hurting someone's business. On this side of the pond, it ain't even a crime at all, though it may get you kicked off the train. And if someone catches you on video, it'll probably be uploaded to some social justice site sooner or later. Then the members of said site will mob you for a couple of weeks to make your life hell. By and by, I imagine some of the crazier ones will make threats against you and/or your family, and then the police will become involved. But not before.

[Elok]

That is kind of goofy, now that I think of it--how we stick a hodgepodge of totally different offenses together under one scary-sounding label, based purely on the motive behind the offense.

[giblets]

9/11 was an ordinary crime, except we decided the motive mattered for some reason...

[kentonio]

"Hate crime" is a catchall for "ordinary crime, only we feel like punishing the motive as well as the actually damaging act." Hate crime is worse than shoplifting if it involves beating the snot out of somebody or dousing them in kerosene and setting them on fire. Being an ******* on a train is not as bad as actually stealing merch and therefore possibly hurting someone's business.

Verbal racial abuse can isolate, humiliate and help ostracisize people within their own communties. It's bullying written large, and can lead to depression, suicide or acts of violence. Yeah, obviously less important than a business losing a few bucks..

On this side of the pond, it ain't even a crime at all, though it may get you kicked off the train. And if someone catches you on video, it'll probably be uploaded to some social justice site sooner or later. Then the members of said site will mob you for a couple of weeks to make your life hell. By and by, I imagine some of the crazier ones will make threats against you and/or your family, and then the police will become involved. But not before.

I know. One of a number of reasons why most people on this side of the Atlantic find the lack of limits on your freedom of speech laws repellent. We draw a line on freedom of speech when that speech is deliberately intended to hurt other people because of their race, gender or sexuality. To us you don't have a right to walk up to a black person in the street and start racially abusing them, and I'm very happy about that.

[Elok]

9/11 was an ordinary crime, except we decided the motive mattered for some reason...

What? It killed four thousand people. Do you mean that we considered it somehow worse because of the wacko strain of Islam that inspired it, or that we should have? At any rate, it's more commonly called mass murder or terrorism than hate crime.

[giblets]

What? It killed four thousand people. Do you mean that we considered it somehow worse because of the wacko strain of Islam that inspired it, or that we should have? At any rate, it's more commonly called mass murder or terrorism than hate crime.

Thousands of people were killed for simply being Americans. That's analogous to carrying out a mass shooting against black people simply for being black. More Americans die every year from firearm homicides than died in 9/11 but the motive of 9/11 is different from the motives of most firearm homicides so 9/11 had a more profound impact on Americans.

[Elok]

Ken, there is much to admire about Great Britain, but that law is a lot of pantywaist nonsense. Hurting people's feelings should not be a crime. Nothing should be considered a crime until it has some sort of discernible impact on something more concrete than emotions. Or poses an imminent threat of same. The correct response to a woman being a racist on the train is for the other passengers to say "shut up, you crazy *****" or perhaps see if there's an official around to order her off the train. Wasting the time of the police on that is ludicrous.

[Elok]

Thousands of people were killed for simply being Americans. That's analogous to carrying out a mass shooting against black people simply for being black.

I'm going to go ahead and say that killing a ****-ton of people is intrinsically bad. Whether it's because the killer hated some aspect of their identity, or did it for money, or thought his sandwich told him to do it is really beside the point as far as the awfulness is concerned.

[giblets]

I'm going to go ahead and say that killing a ****-ton of people is intrinsically bad. Whether it's because the killer hated some aspect of their identity, or did it for money, or thought his sandwich told him to do it is really beside the point as far as the awfulness is concerned.

Terrorism and hate crimes have a detrimental psychological impact on entire communities.