A Racial Shakedown in Portland

[Puppycow]

It's amazing that the state of racial politics has come to this:

A Racial Shakedown in Portland

PORTLAND — In a 30-second video recorded on Oct. 28, a female pedestrian holding a bicycle helmet is seen making a phone call. She’s complaining about a car blocking a crosswalk on a busy street in Portland, Ore. The phone call ends and the car’s occupants—a young black man and woman—walk up to her and take her to task for reporting them. Some angry words are directed at the bicyclist by the man—“go back to your ******* neighborhood”—and then the video ends.

It is hard to know how the pedestrian, derogatorily christened “Crosswalk Cathy” on social media, could have known the race of the car’s owners. Portland doesn’t offer its residents race-tagged parking permits (yet), and the incident occurred on a busy business street. But that didn’t stop Portland Mercury news editor Alex Zielinski from writing a provocative (and wrong) story with the headline, “Woman calls cops on Portland man’s parking job. She’s white. He’s black.”

The report, video, and misinformation went viral and spawned a series of other stories targeting the woman. “Portland, Ore., couple Rashsaan Muhammad and Mattie Khan were running to grab a quick bite to eat at Big Burger (sic) when they spotted a woman bearing the skin color of an American terrorist standing across the street looking at their parked car,” read one unsubtle story at The Root. “White lady dubbed ‘Crosswalk Cathy’ called cops because she didn’t like how black couple parked,” headlined another on BET. Newsweek was slightly more charitable, saying she had “allegedly” called the cops. They were all wrong.

"a woman bearing the skin color of an American terrorist"
Apparently this is OK to say now, and not "racist" as long as the skin color is white?
Then it goes on about "activists" doxxing the woman and harassing her employer and family.
And why assume that race has anything to do with this?

And one more aspect:

And it was Ms. Khan, not the pedestrian, who instantly racialized the incident, while her male partner called the woman an “idiot” and told her that she doesn’t belong in the neighborhood. Who’s the racist—not to mention segregationist—here?

What's this notion now that certain people with the wrong skin color "don't belong" in certain neighborhoods? Nobody would hestitate to call that racist if a white person in a predominantely white neighborhood said that to a black person.

And the whole basis for the story, that she was calling the police, turned out to be wrong. She was calling a non-emergency line set up by the city for exactly that purpose.

 

[Thermal]

Totally missed the opportunity to title this Being A Racist Twit While Black.

But c'mon...this is obviously Fake News. We all know the sole determinant to demonstrate #LWB is whether the victims are black and the oppressor white. So the couple must be the victims, no arguments accepted. Hell, they even gave the evil white woman a snazzy name, 'Crosswalk Cathy'. The black woman victim is selling hoodies with her likeness for $45 and T-shirts for $25 (not a joke).

The interesting element here is the depth of the racism against them. See, the racists are trying to flip it back on the victims and make them look like the racists. So they are being exponentially victimized.

#LWB²
This is some Inception level **** going on here.

 

[The Big Dog]

It is from The Root, certainly one of the most racist websites on any mainstream internet property.

The brats illegally parked blocking a crosswalk and went all The Root when they saw that someone was calling to report them. They was just blocking the crosswalk for a few minutes, they are black so that makes it ok.

 

[Thermal]

You're being too hard on The Root. They just opined that the white girl was bearing the skin color of an American Terrorist. No overt, hateful racism there. Nor did the guy exhibit any when he told her to go back to her f'in neighborhood. Crosswalk Cathy hoodies and Ts still on sale!

The Woke Folk haven't noticed this thread yet to back me up here. I expect they'll be along presently.

 

[CaptainHowdy]

It's amazing that the state of racial politics has come to this:

A Racial Shakedown in Portland



"a woman bearing the skin color of an American terrorist"
Apparently this is OK to say now, and not "racist" as long as the skin color is white?
Then it goes on about "activists" doxxing the woman and harassing her employer and family.
And why assume that race has anything to do with this?

And one more aspect:


What's this notion now that certain people with the wrong skin color "don't belong" in certain neighborhoods? Nobody would hestitate to call that racist if a white person in a predominantely white neighborhood said that to a black person.

And the whole basis for the story, that she was calling the police, turned out to be wrong. She was calling a non-emergency line set up by the city for exactly that purpose.

If White people were actually racist, we would never hear about nothing incidents like this. Pretty soon it's going to be racist for a convenience store clerk to ask a black person to pay for a bottle of Night Train Express as he's walking out of the store.

 

[baron]

Perhaps they'll run an article on this incident and entitle it, "Robbing a white man whilst black." Here we see another racist, this time a 78 year old bigot, thwarting the human rights of three lovely black lads by being reluctant to hand over the keys to his car, then repeatedly hitting the youths' fists with his face whilst lying on the ground. It's all Trump's fault.

 

[Thermal]

Perhaps they'll run an article on this incident and entitle it, "Robbing a white man whilst black." Here we see another racist, this time a 78 year old bigot, thwarting the human rights of three lovely black lads by being reluctant to hand over the keys to his car, then repeatedly hitting the youths' fists with his face whilst lying on the ground. It's all Trump's fault.

No, no, no. That's not how this works. See, if the victim is identified in the title as black, and the aggressor specifically identified as white, it's a racial issue. The guys in your link are specifically identified as 'youngsters', not black at all. There is no race issue here. Move along people.

Sooooo....this thread's pretty quiet. Lots of space to stretch and get some brisk exercise. Usually there would be a half dozen SJWs telling a couple posters how racist they are for not parroting the Woke Narrative for ten pages. I'm thinking we could get the fireplace going and break out some brandy while it's still peaceful. Our resident SJWs are sure to be here any minute to tell us how obviously racist Crosswalk Cathy^tm is. She ticks all the boxes for any other LWB thread. Aaaaaaaany minute they'll be here.

*...chirp...chirp...*

 

[baron]

Got to admit, this is post 8 and it really doesn't seem like ISF at all...

 

[Distracted1]

Change the thread title to "Parking while black", and link only to "the root" in the OP and plenty of posters will be aghast that she hasn't been fired from her job yet.

 

[Craig4]

Someone blocked a cross walk and/or bike path in Portland and they lived? That town is getting soft. Normally that person would have been passive aggressived to death.

 

[Thermal]

Oh, damn, we had guests. Here I had nodded off in the recliner.

Change the thread title to "Parking while black", and link only to "the root" in the OP and plenty of posters will be aghast that she hasn't been fired from her job yet.

Funnily enough, that happened, but with Essence.com. Parking while Black and everything. Always the first to take the high road, they ended the article with the following:

One of these days some white person is going to call the cops or authorities on the wrong Black person, and learn a lesson the hard way.

Mind your business, white people. Just mind your business.

Nothing like a little racist threat to round out a news story. I'm trying to picture that line in Newsweek or something. Even more thought provoking if you reversed the race roles. What fun.

https://www.essence.com/news/politics/parking-while-black-white-woman-calls-parking-enforcement-on-black-couple-for-parking-near-crosswalk/

But the Woke Folk still haven't noticed this thread. Been a couple days, so I'll give them a head start:

Thermal: You know, I don't think Crosswalk Cathy was necessarily racist here.

Fictitious poster CheckYerPrivilege: That's because you are such a filthy racist that you can't be reasoned with.

Thermal: No, it's just that she didn't even see the owners of the car...

Fictitious poster BabbleOnAndOn: I'm surprised that some posters can even see the keyboard with that Klan hood over their eyes.

Thermal: Wut?

BabbleOnAndOn: I'm not speaking to you.

Thermal: Well, ok. Is there any reason to think this Cathy is racist?

CheckYerPrivilege: You're such a racist that you can't even think straight.

There ya go guys. Got the preliminaries out of the way. Have at it!

eta, forgot: the original OP Fb video of Crosswalk Cathy seems to have been taken down

 

[Puppycow]

No, no, no. That's not how this works. See, if the victim is identified in the title as black, and the aggressor specifically identified as white, it's a racial issue. The guys in your link are specifically identified as 'youngsters', not black at all. There is no race issue here. Move along people.

That's another aspect. The Portland Mercury ran the following headline (since slightly amended):

Woman Calls Cops on Portland Man’s Parking Job. She’s White. He’s Black.

(Later they crossed out the word "Cops" and replaced it with "City".)

Imagine the headline without those last two sentences. It's a non-story. "Woman Calls Cops on Portland Man’s Parking Job." Who cares? People who park illegally get reported by other people every day. People get parking tickets and get their car towed every day all over America. This isn't newsworthy at all, unless you can make it into a racial incident.

Secondly, imagine if Newspapers routinely did that in, say, crime stories.

"Man rapes woman. He's black. She's white." Think anyone would accuse the newspaper of racism there?

I mean, do they really think that "Crosswalk Cathy" wouldn't have done the same thing in that situation if the owner of the car was white? (likely she didn't know whose car it was when she made the call, just that it was parked illegally.)

 

[Craig4]

This is Portland. Bike access to crosswalks is sacrosanct and transcends race, color or creed. You just don't block them. How is the unicyclist playing bagpipes, wearing a Darth Vader mask painted in Oregon Ducks colors going to get across the street if you block a crosswalk/bike lane?

 

[Porpoise of Life]

Yes, the way the owner of the parked car and the angry twitter mob acted was terrible. But somehow I'm detecting an undercurrent of 'all those 'while black' threads are overreactions and not indicative of racism'.
I won't be applying for the MDC with my mind reading skills, but can anyone tell me if that's the message I'm supposed to get here?

 

[Puppycow]

Yes, the way the owner of the parked car and the angry twitter mob acted was terrible. But somehow I'm detecting an undercurrent of 'all those 'while black' threads are overreactions and not indicative of racism'.
I won't be applying for the MDC with my mind reading skills, but can anyone tell me if that's the message I'm supposed to get here?

Not me. Maybe some of them were, but that's on a case-by-case basis.

This sort of story has become a genre now. The perceived racist is tagged with a name like "Crosswalk Cathy" in this case or "BBQ Becky" in another one and vilified, doxxed and generally harassed. And I'm not saying there's no justification in any of these cases, but the mobs can get pretty vindictive.

Sarah Braasch having her life ruined is absolutely hilarious and that kind of story will never not bring a smile to my face

But each case is different and I'm not trying to make any kind of blanket statement about them.

 

[Distracted1]

Yes, the way the owner of the parked car and the angry twitter mob acted was terrible. But somehow I'm detecting an undercurrent of 'all those 'while black' threads are overreactions and not indicative of racism'.
I won't be applying for the MDC with my mind reading skills, but can anyone tell me if that's the message I'm supposed to get here?

Replace "all" with "many of", and add that the over reactions likely do more harm than good in a "boy who cried wolf" kind of way (among others) and I think you have grokked the undercurrent fairly accurately.

You might further examine that one of the justifications for the actions of the "Parker" from the article amounted to "these people are moving into our neighborhood and changing an established tone". An attitude with historical precedent that may not be the way to enlightenment.

 

[JoeMorgue]

Yes, the way the owner of the parked car and the angry twitter mob acted was terrible. But somehow I'm detecting an undercurrent of 'all those 'while black' threads are overreactions and not indicative of racism'.

Feet to the fire. They bug me sometimes because at the end of the day they are still anecdotes (or context-less examples) and the plural of anecdotes is still not data even when the anecdotes and the data agree.

Now the problem with this is that the raw data we have about actual objective, society wide factors which have been collected that can show us racism is still a thing. We don't have to rely on viral videos and PunnyWhitePeopleName JobTitle memes.

I get it these real world, street levels examples are more visceral, hit us on an emotional level more but that's a double edge sword.

 

[Thermal]

I would take it a step further and opine that they are not visceral examples, but lousy examples. Not a double edged sword but a plastic one. Many of them (Barbeque Becky, Mowing the Lawn) are people just being jerks. Everybody deals with them, and many of the the stories as presented show no racist element. They are freaking paper tigers.

So now we have, for skeptical consideration, Crosswalk Cathy. Lambasted as another racist white woman and indicative of the black experience in America. Right? Anybody?

 

[Thermal]

That's another aspect. The Portland Mercury ran the following headline (since slightly amended):

(Later they crossed out the word "Cops" and replaced it with "City".)

Imagine the headline without those last two sentences. It's a non-story. "Woman Calls Cops on Portland Man’s Parking Job." Who cares? People who park illegally get reported by other people every day. People get parking tickets and get their car towed every day all over America. This isn't newsworthy at all, unless you can make it into a racial incident.

Secondly, imagine if Newspapers routinely did that in, say, crime stories.

"Man rapes woman. He's black. She's white." Think anyone would accuse the newspaper of racism there?

I mean, do they really think that "Crosswalk Cathy" wouldn't have done the same thing in that situation if the owner of the car was white? (likely she didn't know whose car it was when she made the call, just that it was parked illegally.)

This has been my argument for lo these many LWB threads. It's not just in the biased presentation of the stories, which shouldn't pass the most preliminary skeptical muster, but that these people are really having their lives trashed by the SJW outrage. And like Crosswalk Cathy, some of them appear to have done nothing vaguely racist. But they are crucified nonetheless.

The SJWs claim to be fighting for awareness of racism. The only evidence of racism we see here is in the black couples reaction, the twittersphere pitchfork brigade, and of course the reporting. Should this not be examined with a critical eye?

 

[TurkeysGhost]

Seems like this is only getting traction in alternative news circles. Certainly not he bad exposure like many of the other "doing x while black" examples. Lady isn't getting blasted on primetime CNN.