LeBon James brings up race when it comes to the word "Posse"

This post is so real and strong!

what posse are you with??

oh.. the best posse on Clutchfans

 

No, it does not. I have no idea what JV is talking about. Very stupid bringing race in to it.

LeBron is a baby, not much more than that.

 

It sounds to me as if they're confusing "posse" with "lynch mob", I've never associated "posse" with any racial reference at all.

 

**** just got real!

 

Phil Jackson rips Redskins and Dan Snyder
http://nypost.com/2014/11/04/phil-jackson-rips-dan-snyder-backs-redskins-name-protest/

 

I don't think you answered my question. I agree with the necessity to have social tact and generally be mindful of others' feelings as well as to not be a an insensitive douche. My question is, what "negative" thing is someone allowed to say about someone without being called a racist?

Posse has to be very low on the list of even potentially construed racially charged insults.

It's clear Jackson wanted to belittle LeBron's entourage. What way could he have said that?

 

Vaqueros of any race are too busy herding cattle, gunslingers are an anachronism with the expansion of local law enforcement and not an analogous rebuttal to Lebron's complaint. But Lebron's frustration loses credence because black media popularized the usage of the term by Northeastern, urban black men to describe their own groupings, and black youth nationwide adopted the terminology and further notarized it as a racial self-reference.

I get somewhat more disgusted hearing anyone of any race, but particularly educated blacks or black journalists, refer to him as "LBJ."

 

That's not a fair remark. Claiming he could have alternatively used the words "dumbass" or "freeloaders" is easy to say. But those words aren't likely accurate descriptions of what Jackson was trying to get across.

it seems that he wanted posse to carry a negative connotation to refer to a group of hoodlums/problem causers/irrelevant (to the team) people who hang out with and follow a certain leader.

That's a rather lengthy way to describe that group though when posse fits that definition quite well.

I really think the definition of "what's racist" is going down a slippery slope very fast. That's not good for overall race relations and making actually progress. You can't make a big deal about relatively minor things like this. People have a limit. Crying racism about "posse" makes those on the other side completely jaded in regards to race complaints. It's very likely this has a severely negative impact on taking actual racist events seriously. That's not a good thing at all.

 

Lynch mobs are a fair corollary. A white guy who says 'they sent the lynch mob after me' in a figurative sense doesn't really connote anything racial. A black guy saying that is going to get some more negative reactions, because the implication is that it's racial.

Granted on the first point. Posse is a nuanced word that carries a lot of meaning that can't be easily replicated by some other word choice. But a lot of them are racially-tinged, which is why the conversation started in the first place.

On the second point, white people have a limit on how much they'll put up with being called racist. Black people have a limit on how much they'll put up with being called *******. Saying this example isn't significant enough makes me think of the letter from Birmingham jail (which has been on my mind a lot recently anyway) where MLK complains about the white moderate devoted more to order than to justice who advises blacks always to wait and to be strategic because they aren't the ones being impacted. So, yeah whites disengage when blacks intimate we're racists all the time over seemingly innocuous things or small slights. Likewise, blacks disengage when whites intimate they're worth less all the time over seemingly innocuous things or small faux pas. If you're stuck in a cycle of stupid little reciprocating micro-aggressions, why should one party be able to tell the other party they should be the ones to stop? And why should either party convince himself he's done nothing wrong (or wrong enough) and pretend like the subtext that was intended to be communicated in the first place doesn't actually exist? I'm not saying anyone is a racist or that you need to "watch out" about what you say. I'm just a white person asking white people to have some self-awareness.