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    ady101010Tom Scocca
    8/22/13 3:18pm

    CNN - "And three days before what police call the indiscriminate shooting, the suspect, 15-year-old James Edwards Jr., tweeted, "With my n****s when it's time to start taken life's" — a line from the Chief Keef rap song, "I Don't Like."
    Back in April, he tweeted, "90% of white ppl (people) are nasty. #HATE THEM."

    Yes, yes, this was definitely not a hate crime. No evidence here it was motivated by race.

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      Tom Scoccaady101010
      8/22/13 3:21pm

      Definitely time to lock up everyone who listens to Chief Keef. It's practically as if they all got together and shot the guy.

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      AngryAngryHippoady101010
      8/22/13 3:23pm

      once when he was 7 he remarked, "that white person over there is not nice," gotta admit the evidence is really piling up here!

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    ItsARampageLanaTom Scocca
    8/22/13 3:17pm

    "But what are white people trying to accomplish, by calling our attention to race here?"

    They want to score points off of a murder victim, nothing more. They thrive on grievance just as much as the "race hustlers" they decry, and they just want "their turn" now that a white person has been killed (by two black guys and a white guy). They couldn't possibly give less of a fuck about Lane, and from this point I'm guessing that either a) they'll ignore the fact that one of the sick fucks was white or b) if they're unable to ignore it, they'll stop caring about this entirely.

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      김치전!ItsARampageLana
      8/22/13 3:20pm

      I like you.

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      AnneWellsItsARampageLana
      8/22/13 3:20pm

      White people hate feeling excluded, even if they're being excluded from horrific acts of racism and injustice.

      It's not FAAAAAIR

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    Johnny ChundersTom Scocca
    8/22/13 3:13pm

    NO! OUTRAGE TIME! HULK SMASH! PUNY BLOGGER "TOM S-COCK-A" NOT UNDERSTAND DANGER OF BLACK YOUTHS! HULK NOT RACIST, JUST STATISTICS, SEE?

    HULK ON MARK LEVIN SHOW SOON. LIBERAL SHOULD LISTEN; LEARN SOMETHING.

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      ItsARampageLanaJohnny Chunders
      8/22/13 3:17pm

      HULK NOT RACIST, HULK JUST A REALIST! HAVE SEVERAL BLACK FRIENDS!

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      MissNormaDesmondItsARampageLana
      8/22/13 3:19pm

      HAD MORE, BUT ACCIDENTALLY SMASHED A COUPLE.

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    ad infinitumTom Scocca
    8/22/13 3:18pm

    Thank you for laying this out so clearly. It's not going to change anyone's mind, sadly—even if you don't count all the trolls, Gawker's commentariat is terrifyingly racist, something it showcased beautifully on both the recent Anthony Stokes and Oprah Winfrey articles—but I appreciate the effort.

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      kaitumsad infinitum
      8/22/13 3:33pm

      I said this elsewhere, but I'll say it again. Gawker and it's affiliates are havens for middle/upper-middle class (white) people to feel superior to the plebes (including poor whites) and assuage their guilt without self-examination or criticism.

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      ad infinitumkaitums
      8/22/13 3:38pm

      I wish I could disagree with you—there are many things I love about Gawker, Jez, and the other sites I occasionally frequently—but sadly, you're right on the money. Quite literally. The number of Gawkerites who claim they're "poor" because they only make six-figure incomes, and that people below the poverty line are actually much more privileged than they are, continues to be staggering.

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    SuperHybridSystem3Tom Scocca
    8/22/13 3:14pm

    You could have summed it up like this: just because people of different races kill each other, doesn't mean it's racially motivated.

    Idiots and bigots, who will howl at this post by Scocca, miss this point and it's very telling of how poorly constructed their argument is. They either don't understand why the Trayvon Martin case is different from this case (which is either because they're stupid or not paying attention) or they are willfully ignoring the fact that different skin colors do not automatically make a racial crime.

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      ThatOtherBurnerSuperHybridSystem3
      8/22/13 3:27pm

      True, but the threshold for proving "racial motivation" is decidedly lower for certain groups depending on your point of view. Do you really think Gawker would be reacting in the same manner if the suspects were white and the victim was black? You're delusional if you think they would be.

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      SuperHybridSystem3ThatOtherBurner
      8/22/13 3:32pm

      The threshold? There is no evidence in this case to meet any threshold.

      I'd love to see any links to posts that Gawker has done where a white person has killed a black person and they hyped it as racially motivated when there wasn't significant evidence to suggest it was. Considering there are hundreds of black people killed each year by white people, you have an awful lot of instances that you should be able to find an example of this behavior.

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    Freddie DeBoerTom Scocca
    8/22/13 3:19pm

    What's more, the notion that's advanced by people like Bill O'Reilly that "black leaders" (whatever that means) or black people in general don't care about violence or crime is just bullshit. There's dozens of groups in this country that were founded by black people or have predominantly black memberships that are explicitly anti-violence. There's dozens of groups in this country that were founded by black people or have predominantly black memberships that are explicitly anti-crime. People in the media complaining about this could, you know, invite members of such groups to talk about crime and violence.

    But the people like O'Reilly who push this line don't just want black people to talk about crime and violence in this country. What they really want is for black people to take blame for crime and violence in this country, and essentially to accept that there's just something inherently violent or criminal about black people. They want black people to ignore all of the socioeconomic context and just self-flagellate, to beg for white America's forgiveness. Most black people are naturally loathe to do so, given that it's utter, ahistorical bullshit.

    Racists gonna racist, of course. What bothers me is the pretense that they could be pleased. Al Sharpton could go door to door, telling white America that black people are the root of all evil, and it wouldn't satisfy O'Reilly or Ann Coulter.

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      BigPlopsFreddie DeBoer
      8/22/13 3:22pm

      They want black people to ignore all of the socioeconomic context and just self-flagellate, to beg for white America's forgiveness. Most black people are naturally loathe to do so

      Ha ha. I suppose that's true.

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      ItsARampageLanaFreddie DeBoer
      8/22/13 3:24pm

      THANK you. What do Aggrieved White People imagine such activists are doing when they're not raising awareness against something like the Martin case? Hibernating?

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    Battler4321Tom Scocca
    8/22/13 3:27pm

    I knew the white guilt perspective would raise its' head eventually.

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      BigPlopsBattler4321
      8/22/13 3:31pm

      Who cares about white people and whether they feel guilty?

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      Tom ScoccaBattler4321
      8/22/13 5:20pm

      That apostrophe doesn't go there.

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    Dice SchaeferTom Scocca
    8/23/13 7:49am

    Could it be people are more shocked that 15, 16, and 17 year old children were "bored" and decided to take another human's life rather than the fact that they were black and their victim (first victim, if they had the opportunity) was white? Maybe accusing white people of being outraged only because the guy was white is just as bad as being outraged only because the crime involves a caucasian person? Can't we be disgusted by the lack of humanity of these young men, and question what sort of youth culture produces these examples of barbarity without someone throwing down the race card? It's getting old.

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      Tom ScoccaDice Schaefer
      8/23/13 8:40am

      It could be, but to judge by the actual content of the outrage-mongering, it is not at all.

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      Dice SchaeferTom Scocca
      8/23/13 9:35am

      Well, racial tensions sell magazines, newspapers, and advertising. I suppose that's as good an explanation for "white outrage" as any legitimate complaint people of Caucasian descent may actually have.

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    BurmeseBeefDrapeTom Scocca
    8/22/13 10:52pm

    I'm sure these kids would have killed the first black person they saw too. Lane was killed because he was white. Fact.

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      Tom ScoccaBurmeseBeefDrape
      8/22/13 11:02pm

      Pretty much the opposite of a fact, epistemologically, really.

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      BurmeseBeefDrapeTom Scocca
      8/22/13 11:07pm

      That's a really big word. Nice job.

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    MissNormaDesmondTom Scocca
    8/22/13 7:45pm

    By the way, why are we not talking about race and violence in the Georgia School Shooting That Wasn't a Bloodbath Due Entirely to the Grace, Love, and True Non-Violence of an African American Woman? Oh, because the person who was going to shoot all the children was white, so obviously it's not important here. Thanks, then.

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      BillieHolidayMissNormaDesmond
      8/23/13 1:38am

      Norma, did that guy tweet/write/speak about wanting to kill black kids? Serious question - I haven't heard that, but other than the awesome stories about the awesome woman who talked him down, I haven't read deeply?

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      MissNormaDesmondBillieHoliday
      8/23/13 2:27am

      I haven't heard anywhere that his motive was specifically to kill black children; I suppose it may have been, if the racial make-up of the school was predominantly African American, but as far as I know he just wanted to shoot up a school. I didn't mean to imply that, so if I did somehow, I regret the error.

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