Guess someone's been calling Midwood Flats and saying some pretty messed up stuff. Rachel of DNAInfo can take it from here. I'm sure there are some who'll want to make a big deal out of a (supposedly) black guy calling a bar and complaining about gentrification and queers. As a guy (le Q) who gets crackpot emails and comments fairly frequently himself, often of a hateful variety, I consider such nonsense to be par for the course - the result of living publicly in modern America. No need to rationalize a response about how Midwood Flats is or isn't a "white bar" or this is or isn't a "black neighborhood." Or beer is or isn't for douchebags. That stuff is so 2015! And unnecessarily inflammatory, like gorging on gummy bears. The guy's a crackpot, end of story. In my mind, it devalues important issues to allow them to be framed by fools. But...
The part that deserves attention, in my view, is the part where the caller "jokes" about coming out and shooting up a place. As a guy who likes the funny, revels in it, and can usually take what he dishes out, let me put it bluntly.
That sir, is not funny. Not funny at all.
7 comments:
Shit man, I wouldn't be so quick to chalk this off as a bad joke. Sounds like real anger to me.
The guy himself said it was a joke in his second call. And yeah, he's probably really angry. My point is that only his threat to shoot people is unusual. Like I said, hate mail and hate comments are pretty par for the course these days. Even Bernie supporters say some pretty sick stuff when they get worked up.
But so what? Is he indicative of something? Yes. He's indicative of one man's idea of "doing something" to get folks riled up. We all know perfectly well that reasonable people are angry about real issues. But they don't threaten to shoot people.
My point is that it's very typical for folks, particularly the media, to use anomalous behavior as indicative of something, when it points only back to the individual in question. If ten people call in race-based death-threats, then maybe there's a movement afoot. Check back when that's the case.
" If ten people call in race-based death-threats, then maybe there's a movement afoot"
Well I recall another "just crazy" a few weeks back who slashed a lady in Ditmas because she was white (his explanatio)
A guy in mid Feb (as covered in the Post) was attacked without provocatoin in a Bklyn subway for being white in a black neighborhood, called "cracker".
Then theres the local "spitter" who was pretty vocal about who and why he was targeting.
How far back to do you go before you get to ten?
Not to say one should judge someone for skin color, quite the opposite.
But there are those who do, and who have quite a bit of racial hatred.
And, I would say that the politics-of-resentment, that assumes if someone is living well, it must be at someone else's expense, does seem to incite those who are already a bit on the edge.
So no I wouldn't panic, but yeah I do think its a "thing."
I've been hearing, and experiencing, race based outbursts since moving to NYC in 1989. I was recently called a Fat Cracker by a drunk on the Flabenue.
A slasher is absurd. A prank caller is a nuisance. What you're describing is no more a "thing" than people walking down the street and, without missing stride, cover one nostril and blow snot out the other.
This is a City of 8 million people. The "neighborhood" maybe 100K. Flatbush total, maybe 300K. When these things start happening every day, then I'll call it "a thing." Meantime, it's wacked-out and random. Is there a black-on-white terrorist group that's claimed responsibility?
In the meantime, I'm a bit more concerned about the cops manhandling a mailman for being black. Neither was nuts - they were simply acting out a longstanding misinterpretation of what it is to be a human being.
Like I said, when it gets to be a "thing" and not just an observation, I'll happily acknowledge it as such.
* * * LET THE WOMAN SPEAK * * *
Race based outbursts should be expected when we have racist members on the CB 9 ULURP Committee. No, I am not talking about "D Q"; the Q, Sir Tim, who has been tarred and feathered for writing about demographic reality. I am talking about a CB 9 ULURP Member who is part of MTOPP.
Check out what I just read in a competing blog. Imagine if someone wrote about white flight in Canarsie during the 1980's with the similar racial terms.
"Thursday, March 17, 2016
'The Unblackening Continues Apace'
The New York Times, of all real estate-driven papers, reports this morning on the extent to which the disappearance of the 421-a tax break will "dampen" the number of so-called affordable units ever to be built in this city under the fantasy housing policy known as ZQA/MIH.
On the one block-long street where I live, the Unblackening (to borrow Larry Wilmore's monumentally shaming, heart-breaking phrase) continues. Three houses have sold in the last year, all to white people. I can think of two, probably three more destined for the same change, currently owned by aged black people, retired civil servants. My white boyfriend has been an owner on this block for 30 years: He was always made to feel welcome, loved for his curious choice of neighborhood. Now, we agree that once Black Crown Heights comes to fully resemble Park Slope, we're moving to Mexico. There ought to be a happy medium, but there's not; neighborhoods just turn over from one group to another. That's America.
If City Councilwoman Laurie Cumbo thinks that these white newcomers are going to keep her as their representative, she is courting delusion. I have written her again today, urging her to stand with her current constituents in order to keep her office. We are watching."
"Posted by Janine Nichols at 10:20 AM No comments: "
http://whiteyonwhitey.blogspot.com/
I knew it was Janine writing that even before I saw her byline. She's a piece of work, that one. Whitey on Whitey indeed. Not a few of us have privately wondered if she knows how useful her race is to MTOPP's contention that it is a broad coalition.
For the Q-urious, the sociology and psychology and pathology and anthropology are too rich for words. As to getting things done, she's just a royal pain in the ass.
The problem with the rhetoric the anti-gentrifier extremists use, is the few mentally ill among us hear it and can't process it properly. It's not okay for a resulting attack to happen even once. Let's knock it off with all the hate speech all around why don't we.
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