You answered your own question yourself when you quoted “Straight Black Men Are the White People of Black People”. You don’t understand how misogyny works in the black community.

Without even touching his obvious and long-standing (literal record) or misogyny, Snoop messed up for a few reasons:

I don’t think many people are dragging Lisa Leslie for her answer. She’s not correct, but Kobe was her friend, and it was a normal response.

#girldad

He was 21 and she was 17. That isn’t all that rare. But yeah he probably raped that woman in CO. Acting like a 21 year old having sex with a 17 year old is some kind of pedophile is just silly. 

A lot of people are pulling the “it was settled in a civil suit” to dismiss the allegations, but the charges were dropped because his accuser didn’t want to testify in court. Have people not learned by now that survivors often won’t testify because it is too traumatic and they are usually dragged through the mud by…

He’s regarded as one of the worst teammates in sports history. He had his share of talents but being a good and uplifting teammate was not one of them - several players including Carmelo Anthony didn’t play for the Lakers specifically because of Kobe’s attitude and elitism. The guy even called out some of his own teamm…

That’s when you get the “if you cared so much, why didn’t you bring this up before”....well, because Kobe wasn’t a frequent topic of conversation, and if I’d brought it up without context you’d tell me not to talk about it because “it happened so long ago.”

Just as Tom Brady’s obituary will mention Deflategate and Darryl Strawberry’s will cover his struggles with substance abuse, it is journalistic malpractice to sum up Bryant’s life and career without mentioning the credible rape allegations.

Yes! If someone is empathetic enough to understand that it would be hard for Vanessa Bryant or her kids to have Kobe’s rape trial rehashed right now ... surely they’re also empathetic enough to understand that it would be hard for any sexual assault victims (but especially Kobe’s!) to read these fawning posts that…

Thank you for this. The Root, which usually has excellent, insightful coverage, had an article listing Sonmez’s tweet as a “mistake”, alongside things like the BBC’s ‘In Memoriam’ montage featuring LeBron James, or an MSNBC reporter calling his team the Los Angeles [N-word]s. This post is much more nuanced and…

I saw the reaction to Sonmez’s tweet yesterday and was holding my breath for the WaPo’s reaction. Yup. They made the wrong call, just like I thought they would. You don’t punish a reporter for conveying accurate information. She didn’t tweet it directly to his family. She didn’t add commentary calling him anything…

Washington post fucked up and I hope they’re smart enough to drop the suspension fast.  I hope her fellow journalists rally around her. 

The guys in my fantasy football sms thread “too soon’d” me for pointing out the rape allegation amid their hero worship. My reply was basically, “Too soon? That happened in 2003!”

Kobe probably deserved to go to jail for a few years. Kobe didn’t deserve to die in a fiery helicopter crash with his daughter and her friends and teachers.

Amazingly, people can have nuanced feelings about a tragic situation. We can be sad about those who passed and feel for their loved ones, while still recognizing that one of them was a rapist.

Did I say ANYthing about rejoicing? Nobody wants to say it, but not everyone deserves to be celebrated when they die simply because they died... Not suddenly celebrating a person who died that you didn’t like before their death does not equal rejoicing their death.

Here’s your reminder that just because someone died doesn’t automatically make them a good person.

I’m going into work tomorrow and going to talk about how sad it is for his family every time it comes up ‘cause I don’t want to have to punch out a motherfucker.

The first thing I thought of was when he raped that woman in Colorado. She was not able to push forward with her testimony because of all of the threats against her.  Nobody cared about her welfare, only that of their sports idol.