I’ll leave you with this link that my boy The Artist threw up the other day.

http://yglesias.thinkprogress......racism.php

In short, no, I don’t think filtering the commentary of others to ferret out the racism inside is even remotely as bad as racism itself. Not by a longshot. But, like I said, I’m sure we’ll revisit this again sometime.

You acknowledge that you may be pointing out racism even where it doesn’t exist…and this is ok? If 80% of crimes in Whoville are committed by the Voos, while the Gnoos rarely commit crimes, is it ok to randomly imprison all the Voos, as long as we acknowledge we may be imprisoning someone wrongly?

Words have meaning. Civil discourse is underpinned by the idea that words mean something, and we can all be fairly judged by what we say. To take a statement about an individual, which had no reasonably literal racist connotation, such as the statements made about Cano and Cabrera, and cast them in a racist light because of what is important to your particular world view, is no different than a police officer pulling over an innocent man under the guise of racial profiling.

I don’t think what you are doing, or trying to do, does anything to help the cause you say you are trying to help. Quite the contrary. Invoking the spectre of racism at every turn (well, not at every turn, since many instances of racism and sexism are ignored, or even applauded, especially if they happen to target majority groups, rather than minorities) simply makes an issue of what are essentially meaningless differences (skin color, religion, ethnicity, etc.), as far as living in a civil society goes.

Here’s an analogy.

Say jsbrendog says that CC Sabathia really likes chicken and watermelon. If I say that that statement, whether it’s true or false, speaks to/implies/infers an adherence to racial stereotyping on jsbrendog’s part simply because , does me saying that really “speak to my cultural conditioning and bias” more than it speaks to jsb’s cultural conditioning and bias? No, it doesn’t.

Because, in that hypothetical, jsb used racial buzzwords and stereotypical memes. Me calling into question his usage of that is not more pernicious than his original usage of that.

And I don’t have a substantiation that there is a perception that Cano or Cabrera are lazy, that’s the point. I do have a substantiation that Latinos are generally perceived as lazy, and that would be the sum totality of the past 400 years of recorded human history and thought. Come on, are you really challenging the notion that there’s no stereotypical depictions of Latinos?

If you’re not calling me a racist, at the least you are portraying me as the innocent-yet-ignorant poor schmuck, unknowing victim of culturally inculcated racism, something which you, apparently, are by contrast enlightened enough to be free of.

I don’t claim to be “enlightened enough to be free of bias”. I do claim to be aware of bias to the point that I know I’m not perfect and that subtle cultural programming often leaves me with residual biases and latent stereotypes that do influence my thought.

The problem is, you seem to be unwilling to admit the same: that non of us are truly “enlightened enough” to be free from cultural bias, and that sometimes, we do allow racial/cultural stereotyping to influence our thoughts, to the level that we may, for example, call Latino players “lazy” in a manner incongruous with the actual observed facts.

These statements don’t “imply racial bias.” What is happening is that you are inferring racial bias.

You asked for substantiation of the claim that Cabrera was partying excessively. Well, where is your substantiation that there is a “general perception” that Cabrera and Cano are lazy? Your anecdotal observations of sportswriting and reporting in NY? So you are objective enough, and unencumbered by bias, racial or otherwise, to conclude, based your what you see, that there is a “general perception” that these players are lazy, yet someone else is not permitted to reach a conclusion based on their own observations, without being subject to racial bias?

All you are doing by “pointing it out” is dragging another person’s character and reputation through the mud, because I don’t care how much you intellectualize or sterilize your comments, you are painting a picture of guilt by association. If you’re not calling me a racist, at the least you are portraying me as the innocent-yet-ignorant poor schmuck, unknowing victim of culturally inculcated racism, something which you, apparently, are by contrast enlightened enough to be free of.

The “Latino Player X was at the club all night and not showing the proper work ethic to go to bed early so he can play baseball better” is a stereotypical baseball meme.

The story may have truly had nothing to do with their races or backgrounds… or maybe it did. Again, I’m saying, don’t you at least think it’s curious that there’s a story at all about these three Latino players going out and partying, when we can all say with near certainty they’re not the only Yankee players who go out to nightclubs?

Can you give me more information on this story?

So please don’t accuse me of being a racist when I say a ballplayer of ANY ethnic background seems lazy because it’s NOT THERE.