I definitely expect people from many quarters to capitalize on all this. We're American, after all. But there is something especially abhorrent about someone who was in such a position of power cashing in on that position within days. Was it even days? It seems like it was under 48 hours. That's vile to an extent I…

Believe me, I have more than enough side-eye for both overt racist thought and implicit racial cluelessness. I think we all do.

WOC/POC is often self appointed, which makes it immediately acceptable to use when describing those people who have already shown that they like the term. You don't really see it used to describe kids, so yeah, "boy of color" is much easier to connect mentally to "colored boy". If nothing else, it highlights how out…

Yeah, someone should have taken a fat black marker to that entire paragraph.

In one spot of good news, the book is dead already. http://groupthink.jezebel.com/breaking-state…

The prosecution did not present an airtight case that zimmerman never, at any point, feared for his life. The jury instructions explicitly reminded jurors to consider that he had the right to use deadly force if he reasonably believed his life was in danger. The verdict is a massive disappointment, but it is the last…

I don't blame them at all. The internet will probably id B37 before long, and I hope she enjoys how her little bid for fame pans out. But the other jurors do not deserve anything similar.

This begins to make up for their complete silence about the shooting, which Jon Stewart finally broke not to discuss the incident itself, but to make fun of newspeople who were wearing hoodies to support Travyon. Mentioning Marissa Alexander's case on something with the viewership of TDS will do a lot to inform people…

While I generally feel that our community is only as good as its worst members (if we are tolerating their presence), in this case I did roll my eyes at that line, because it's needlessly inflammatory.

Right on! I've been living in East Asia for years, and my unfortunate experience is one of correlation between the people who complain about stereotyping and the people with the worst group of friends. We are a community, and we have to hold the whole group to the highest standard possible. In my city, it actually…

You know what though, if we don't want the stereotype, we need to fight the assholes that make us look bad. If any expats saw this happening and did nothing, they deserve to be painted with the same brush and that's it. Any expats who do nothing when their friends intentionally try to get wasted girls into cabs with…

I agree with everything you're saying. For me, the takeaway is that the bizarre nature of this incident at least allows Tyson to retain his individuality, and redirects the story from the Scary Black Men part of the brain to WTF territory. Whereas Chris Brown's story is sadly conventional and fits a ready and waiting…

I remember the ear biting as being pretty much a joke from the start. White people seemed to find it hilarious, and I would argue that it's because they were comfortable with it. There aren't any stereotypes about big black men getting overexcited in a fight and biting your ear off, so it was not scary to them at all.
I…

I think the Mike Tyson turnaround says more to do about attitudes towards rape than it does to contradict the prevalence of the Scary Black Man concept.

I think Kanye is a less complex, more obvious example—although you still meet resistance/ unsolicited opinions about his music (???) when you bring it up. I don't know if I'd agree that he's a better example, because the Chris Brown hate also brings up racism against black women (Rihanna is less of a victim than…

You were right then, you are right now, and I am calling on all white women to suspend use of the pronouns "I/me" when discussing any aspect of this travesty unless they appear in a direct quotation.

I'm unhappy about how this trial went, but I don't think they deserve to lose their anonymity because she is vile trash.

I completely agree, however it's not unimaginable to me in light of what evidence the jury was allowed to know about (a bunch of useless shit, truly) vs. the staggering amount of things that we know that they did not. This trial was an utter shitshow.

She is trading her anonymity for money. I do not wish her physical harm, but I will not shed a tear for her when she has to delete an all caps hate email per every cent she makes off this mess.

The "Martin was a thug" people are where my ability to have a conversations breaks down. I can't say anything, because if I did it would basically be "Aren't we lucky that we won't be judged forever by how we acted as teens BECAUSE WE GOT TO LIVE TO FUCKING ADULTHOOD."