I just really like racist jokes:
Mary Ann Twitty was fired in early March after a Department of Justice report showed that she had shared racist emails with two police officers, Capt. Rick Henke and Sgt. William Mudd, who each resigned.
One message forwarded by Twitty in April 2011 showed former President Ronald Reagan feeding a baby monkey, along with the caption: “Rare photo of Ronald Reagan babysitting Barack Obama in early 1962.”
Another email she forwarded to the two officers was a viral story titled, “Leroy’s last child support payment,” littered with crude stereotypes about black grammar and family life.
“Sure, they look racist,” Twitty admitted to KTVI-TV. “Even when I looked at them, I was thinking, ‘God, that is racist’ – but they were jokes. I meant no harm to anyone, to anybody or whoever sent them to me – I don’t even know – and who I sent them out, the police officers, you know. They went out to more than two people, I’m sure of it. No, I didn’t send them out because I’m racist, because I’m not.”
Twitty said she shared the emails simply because she thought they were funny.
“Humor-wise, yes — not because it was racist or biased, no — just funny joke-wise,” Twitty said. “I feel bad because that’s not — I don’t want people to look at me and say, ‘She sent those racist jokes out because she’s racist or biased.’ I am not.”
Twitty argued that she hired two black candidates earlier this year to work for her on the city court.
“They were more qualified for the job that the four white girls,” she said. “I just want to run my court, and I ran it good.”
Bonus points for the variation of “I can’t be racist, I have black friends” regarding the employees she hired.
Lemme break it down for you white people. If you like racist jokes, think to yourself “God, that;s racist” before forwarding it to a bunch of other white people, if you aren’t racist, you’re on your way there, and you are definitely doing something racist.
I’d be curious to know how many of her black colleagues she sent those jokes. My guess is a number approximating zero. Why? Because it’s fucking racist and she knows it.
Karen in GA
If you forward or tell me a racist joke, my first thought is often “That’s funny,” as in, “That’s funny how much of an asshole you are.”
scav
The Twitty’s so fond of jokes she is one. Too bad she didn’t enjoy the punch line of the one she lived.
brettvk
“Twitty” is a surname that has a lot of political pull in smalltown SW MO (very Republican). I wouldn’t be surprised if this specimen is part of that clan.
Major Major Major Major
OT: What should I do today? I’m off vacation but work hasn’t caught up with that fact yet apparently.
Mike E
Librulz think they invented humor and get mad when it’s used against them.
/in b4 srv
Mr. Longform
That kind of thinking (?) is not uncommon here in the non-confederate midwest redneck portion of this country. These are people who think of themselves as good, kind-hearted, golden-rule types, and in many ways they might be. If your car broke down and you needed some help, they’d be likely to give you a hand – maybe even if you aren’t white or aren’t “normal” looking. But they believe the teaparty line that, in the mass, away in the Big Cities, the teeming ghettos are filled with people who are paid directly from my individual taxed income in order to fund their lazy, drug-taking, sex-having, steak-eating ways. They don’t see that their prejudices are being used to formulate that worldview. So in that sense it is more ignorance than evil that they think the way they do.
MattF
I guess racism is a mysterious trait that can’t be deduced from one’s behavior. Not from the things you say, not from the things you write, not from the things you find ‘funny’. And certainly not from the reactions of other people. Particularly not liberals…
Lynn Dee
@Mike E:
The “humor” in these racist jokes is being used against liberals, you say? Is that an acknowledgment that conservatives are racist while liberals are not?!
Jeez. I haven’t seen so much stupid in one place since George Bush stumbled his way toward “won’t get fooled again.”
Villago Delenda Est
Your guess is a good one, John.
I cannot believe this shit goes on in any professional law enforcement organization.
Oh, wait…
Villago Delenda Est
@Lynn Dee: Snark detector needs maintenance update.
Major Major Major Major
@Mr. Longform: I’d have to agree with messr. Longform here.
Hunter Gathers
I have in-laws who use the ‘I’m not racist, I listen to Dr. Dre’ excuse. My sister-in-law calls her husband ‘Boo’ while her and her husband tell their 5 year old to not play with the black kids at his school because ‘they’re dirty, and they’ll steal from you’. But she and her husband are totally not racist, because they own ‘Doggystyle’.
Villago Delenda Est
@Karen in GA: THIS
Mike J
Zooming out on a David Cameron photo-op
Bobby B
I’ve been noticing police racism for years and this isn’t just the tip of the iceberg, it’s the tip of the ice planet Hoth.
Frankensteinbeck
Here we get to the heart of racism in America. Mildly racist whites have spent a generation defining racism as an absolute. Either you actively and consciously hate blacks, or you are an egalitarian who cannot be reasonably accused of racism. Any plausible deniability, like having hired some blacks, is proof that you’re not in the first group.
This system is self-reinforcing, because it perfectly hides the truth. Racism comes in all levels. Being just a little bit more afraid of black men than white men is racism, and it’s almost universally common in whites. You can’t even see it without statistical tests, but it has a huge effect on the justice system. Or you have people like this, who can deal with at least some blacks on friendly, personal terms, but carry around ideas in their head of what most blacks are like that are astoundingly ugly.
@Mike E:
Hmmm. Srv might use that, although I think he/she/it would spell it properly. I think srv is performance art. Their positions range so wildly, and are often so weird, that I think it’s just someone trying to figure out trolly things to say for any circumstance. There’s none of that biting argumentativeness and specific insults you get from honest trolls.
c u n d gulag
‘I’m NOT a racist just because I forwarded a “racist” joke, you f*ckin’ “NI**ERS!!”
Whoops!
Ha!
That was a joke.
And if you LIBTARDS don’t get it, them YOU”RE the real F*CKIN’ RACISTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Mike E
@Lynn Dee: I’d like to shake your hand in a “secret” way so that you’d understand. ;-)
But, seriously, it took a move to NC to recognize this kind of tribal hazing as, “Hey (very white guy), I thot you were one of us.” Icky stuff. Folks in PA aren’t subtle about it but couldn’t care less if you’re in their club like the status conscious southerners are…folks ’round here hold a grudge if you reject ’em, and there is that element of danger that goes along with refusing their “hospitality”.
MattF
Speaking of racism, it appears that members of the Le Pen family have differences:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/09/world/europe/marine-le-pen-leader-of-frances-national-front-party-splits-with-her-father-its-founder.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=second-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0
Note that Marine Le Pen suggests that Muslims in France just might need to be deported, so she’s not a nice girl.
JPL
If you start a sentence with I’m not a racist but………………… Look in the mirror.
Punchy
…………..buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut she fowarded them on anyways. The stupid is near Guiness Record-strength strong in this one.
Perhaps instead of suicide-by-cop, she was attempting career-suicide-by-cop…..
Mike J
@MattF: The only disagreement is in tactics. She just doesn’t want him saying these things out loud where decent people might find out what they’re like.
Major Major Major Major
@MattF: To be fair she was talking about the “nationless” people and migrant worker folks, not “French [citizen] Muslims”.
ETA: I would love to stand corrected but I’ve never found anything of her saying we should deport people based on religion.
CONGRATULATIONS!
As they say in the musical “Avenue Q”, “everyone’s a little bit racist”.
This is, of course, painfully correct.
Some of us are a lot more racist than others. Try dialing it back a notch or two, for starters. It’ll make your life a lot better.
max
@brettvk: “Twitty” is a surname that has a lot of political pull in smalltown SW MO (very Republican). I wouldn’t be surprised if this specimen is part of that clan.
So they came up with a combination of ‘Gilligan’s Island’ and surname suggestive of either stupid or Twitter or both. Well done.
max
[‘There’s a parody account in there somewhere.’]
notorious JRT
I keep waiting for someone to persistently ask her to explain what makes these jokes funny to her and how she selected her forwarding audience. Why did she chuckle or laugh outloud rather then shake her head that someone forwarded her this juvenile, racist crap? Why did she forward it to others rather than write the sender and tell them to take her off his/her mailing list for this kind of material? Finally, perhaps she ought to put down her shovel instead of asking for a cookie for hiring the most qualified candidates rather than engaging in unlawful discrimination? Ignorance instead of evil? Perhaps. But the lines get blurry, do they not?
SuperHrefna
@Mr. Longform: I don’t know about giving them a pass about more in ignorance than in evil. I used to do a shift at my local shelter that was otherwise staffed by teahadis (not the whole shelter, just that one particular shift.) I managed to work that shift for years to give my tolerance muscles a work out. And by and large, they were just as you say: while their own coterie was a swirling social drama of conformity tests, any personthey dealt with face to face they were perfectly nice to whatever race/ nationality they were. But when they thought they were on their own they would whisper and giggle and fold the newspapers we lined the cat trays with so that the cats could pee on Obama’s face. They knew it was wrong, but they thought it was hilarious and it gave them a real thrill to do things like that.
I can well imagine that Twitty getting a similar thrill from forwarding outrageous emails at work, to work colleagues. It’s not ignorance, it’s a stream of conscious micro aggressions that can easily be covered up with ” oh silly me!”s if the aggressor is ever called on it, but which give the aggressor a real thrill.
MattF
@Major Major Major Major: She’s too smart to be explicit about it. You can dogwhistle in French, though.
RSA
That counts as an argument?
Roger Moore
@Major Major Major Major:
Unless it’s a genuine emergency, let them eat static. They need to be reminded that you’re on vacation, and they won’t get that reminder if you respond.
Amir Khalid
@MattF:
Where it counts, Marine’s still a Le Pen.
Steeplejack
[Bugs Bunny voice] What a maroon.
Mike J
N Charleston presser going on now. Cops don’t want to turn investigation of shooting over to the feds.
Elizabelle
It’s culture, and the DOJ was right to point it out. From KMOV:
Just following orders. And BTW, everyone does stuff like this.
linky: KMOV: http://www.kmov.com/story/28745448/former-ferguson-court-clerk-who-sent-racist-emails-speaks-out
Steeplejack
@Major Major Major Major:
Count your blessings. Post-vacation work always rolls in like a tsunami.
trollhattan
O/T STFU RFK Jr. Jesus, you’re a stain on your father’s good name and in the course of going Godwin on vaccinations, you’re literally trying to kill children, you bastard.
Elizabelle
John or whoever:
FYWP ate a few of my comments on previous post. Will you check the filter? Many thanks.
Major Major Major Major
@MattF: And to be clear I’m not defending her. Her random Times op-ed was a masterwork of whitewashing the party though.
@Roger Moore: Right, the question is what should I do today? It’s sunny out and nobody will notice!
Soprano2
I’m shocked that she did that on her work e-mail. Here in MO we have pretty good Sunshine laws, as a city employee I’m always aware that any e-mail I send could be printed in the newspaper someday (probably never would be, but you never know) so I behave accordingly. That she felt comfortable forwarding racist crap like that to fellow co-workers tells you a lot about the culture in that workplace. Also, it tells you that they are completely clueless about how their e-mail could be used.
scav
She Chienne-Souffle by the Seaside? Sans the Seventh Sick Sheep of the Swarthy Sheik?
As for Miss Twit: “Oh, This is so Adultery!” she justified herself as she hestitated a moment before plunging further into her neighbor’s rumbled bed.
Waldo
I have relatives who routinely drop N-bombs in casual conversation and then appear genuinely offended if I point out their racism. Somehow they just don’t see it.
Elizabelle
Also, does anyone else find the “I was raped and thrown under the bus” hyperbole awful, when you came to light for (a) sending racist emails — that even look racist to you, on second thought — to people while you’re at work and (b) the whole thing came under DOJ review because an actual human being, an unarmed young black man, was gunned down by a cop. And his body was left on a street in the hot sun for hours.
Not the time to be making “I was [metaphorically] raped” complaints.
MattF
@Soprano2: I’m always boggled by what people put in emails. Listen, people: don’t put anything in email you wouldn’t want broadcast over the public airwaves.
Roger Moore
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
Even if you’re racist, you can resist your racist impulses and act like a decent person. For example, you may think those racist emails are funny and laugh at them, but the part of your brain that’s saying “that’s racist” should also be telling you to keep the humor to yourself and not forward them to everyone around you.
Uncle Ebeneezer
@notorious JRT: That was my first thought too. What exactly is funny about the joke that doesn’t involve racism? The racism is absolutely central to the joke. But you know, she wasn’t caught in a hooded robe lynching black people so she can’t do anything else racist and we are all racist for suggesting otherwise.
Quaker in a Basement
“Humor-wise, yes — not because it was racist or biased, no — just funny joke-wise,” Twitty said.
Please proceed. Explain what was funny about this “joke.” You can stop whenever you find it impossible to go on without sounding…well, you know.
notorious JRT
@Elizabelle:
Agreed.
SuperHrefna
@MattF: What this is about is her push to ally her party with France’s jews, on the grounds that they both hate Muslims, a tricky proposition given how antisemitic the Front National has always been. If I were a French Jew I wouldn’t fall for it, because the enemy of my enemy is not automatically my friend, but her push does seem to be getting some traction. It’s very drepressing.
Roger Moore
@Elizabelle:
I’m sure that part is true. Everyone in the city government was happy to go along with the plan to fund the city by fining the black residents, and they probably had a racist email circle, too. That doesn’t make it OK.
Elizabelle
The Washington Post story has images and more on the emails sent. They’re awful. I would fire those “public servants” too.
The other two fired officials, a police captain and a police sergeant (name of “Mudd”), have had no comment.
Ms. Twitty, who even looks like her, is following the “Paula Deen” strategy, apparently.
Mr. Longform
@SuperHrefna:
I guess it was this kind of disjunction between their individual actions and their cultural norms that makes me hope that it is more ignorance than evil; that their instincts to treat individuals well is the “real” them. But even if their Obama-hating tendencies are the real part and the being-nice-to-individuals actions are the learned behavior, it still makes them (us?) trainable. Maybe I am being too optimistic.
catbirdman
http://giphy.com/gifs/naggers-PmBRerJT9X2dW
Calouste
@trollhattan: Anyone who uses the term “holocaust” without actually referring to a concerted effort by a dominant national group to round up and exterminate a minority, loses the argument.
Belafon
@Punchy: Sure they look racist, I even throught they were racist, but they stop being racist when I forwarded them, obviously.
Roger Moore
@Elizabelle:
The “raped” part is crazy, but she was definitely thrown under the bus. I am entirely prepared to believe that everyone around her was doing similar things, and that she has been singled out and fired because she happened to be the one who was mentioned in the DOJ report. Of course I think the fair thing to do would be to fire everyone else in the city government who was doing the same thing and then rebuild from the rubble.
JPL
Just a reminder that the Obama’s hid the recording where Michelle called someone a honky.
Elizabelle
@Roger Moore: Agreed. Clean house but good.
JPL
Tsarnaev verdict will be announced at 1:45.
karen marie
@Mike J: Of course they don’t. They realize they will be in for some serious trouble when their unwritten policies are brought into the light of day.
Grumpy Code Monkey
Perfeshunalizm, we haz it!
Data point #9845726 why you don’t use official email for anything other than official business. Save that shit for your personal Facebook account.
Racist and clueless, such a lovely combination.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@SuperHrefna:
Edited for clarity and/or specific accuracy.
bluefoot
@trollhattan: Amen. The result of anti-vaccine policies is dead people. And this kind of blatant lying really pisses me off. No drug company can put “anything they want” into a vaccine. The tolerances for anything remotely toxic in a vaccine are a lot tighter than what goes into, say, your food. And “three months later their brain is gone”?? What is this, the zombie apocalypse?
SuperHrefna
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): Yep, you got it. I think a lot of the fuel for their constant micro aggressions came from their suppressed fury that this sort of thing is now mostly socially unacceptable.
Patricia Kayden
I was involved in a situation where a White racist sent a racist “joke” to White co-workers not knowing that one of them was interracially married. When everything hit the fan, he learned the hard way that not all Whites are okay with “jokes” where Blacks are the punchline. Bet he’ll be careful about making such assumptions in the future.
Origuy
From the NYT article about Mme. Le Pen, a related excerpt:
Seanly
Didn’t read any of the replies, but isn’t the reason she found racist jokes funny is because she is a racist? Which is basically what Mr. Cole said – though I eliminate the ‘on the road’ that he graciously attributes to her.
Seanly
@trollhattan: F’cking asshole… thimerosal hasn’t been in vaccines (except some flu shots) since 2001. I like the articles weasel words – numerous hands went up in a crowd of hundreds. How many is that? 5, 10, 20?
Major Major Major Major
@Origuy: That’d be about 1%.
They make the Republicans look sloppy.
Calouste
@Major Major Major Major: Want to make a bet on how long Muslims are allowed to stay French citizens if a LePen should ever come to power?
Grumpy Code Monkey
@Patricia Kayden:
Don’t bet on it. He’ll just whine “reverse racism”.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Two bets I’d be willing to place: 1) Ms Twitty refers to herself as a Christian, and does so in that self-congratulatory tone that suggests this is a rare and admirable accomplishment.
2) if she ever saw the risen Christ walking down her street, the real one not the Northern European, well-groomed hippie, 1974 youth pastor one she has in pictures and figurines about the house, she’d call the police because Al Qaeda has landed.
Steve
Is Andrew Harrison a racist?
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: The best way to make those types have a minor stroke – before they argue that of course you are wrong! – is to tell them that the Jesus looked a lot more like OBL than the light haired, blue eyed vision seen in church art.
muddy
@Grumpy Code Monkey: Yeah, I knew a guy who for *years* would start off saying, “I know you don’t like racist jokes,” and then tell one to me. I told him NO every single time. Finally I said, “What it really is, is that I don’t like YOU, because you are a fucking racist!” Many present said I was a humorless bitch, and why did I have to hurt his feelings like that? Boo hoo.
Paul in KY
@Elizabelle: You can just tell from her comments that’s she’s a piece of scum.
Paul in KY
@Steve: No, don’t think so.
Matt McIrvin
@trollhattan: Wow, he’s well through the nut event horizon at this point.
Kind of like those contrarian climate scientists who started out with some possibly legitimate objection to the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis 35 years ago, ended up getting warm fuzzies on the wingnut lecture circuit, and just kept on telling the same story and moving in less reputable circles as evidence and consensus piled up against them, because why give up a gig like that?
Steve
How come Paul?
scav
@muddy: You could always just shrug, agree with them that you just don’t get jokes and as they’re jokes it follows that . . . .
Eta, if they’re clever enough, you could even switch the last bit around to you just don’t get them as people, so . . . .
JustRuss
I just don’t get it. One of my childhood friends, staunch Libertarian/Conservative/Wheatever, sent me a pic labeled “Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reed, and Barack Obama”, and it featured three donkeys, one of whom was….wait for it….black! Hilarious! When we were kids, one of our group of five or six kids who hung out together all the time was black, and the two of them were pretty close. I guess you can blame tribalism or Obama Derangement Syndrome, but it’s just messed up.
WaterGirl
@Elizabelle: Yep. And I stand with Cole in his attitude about rape. To paraphrase Cole in responding to someone who compared something to rape:
WaterGirl
@JPL: Excuse me, but that was the “whitey” tape, not the “honky” tape. Please try to keep the
mythicalentirely made up tapes straight. :-)EthylEster
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
the gentile Jesus!
Paul in KY
@Steve: I don’t think his use of ‘nigga’ was racist. In fact, it may have been a back-handed compliment.
g
@JPL: They “hid” the recording, huh? Where? Under the bed? How do you “hide” a recording?
Idiot.
Steeplejack
@g:
New here? Or faulty snark-o-meter, maybe.
varmintito
You have to admit, Twitty has a point. There’s a difference between isolated conduct (forwarding a racist joke) and character (being a racist).
I mean, I got caught fucking ONE sheep, and now all of a sudden I’m “Varmintito the sheep fucker.”
Grumpy Code Monkey
@muddy:
In elementary school (99% white kids from the suburbs) I heard friends and classmates make all kinds of ethnic jokes, and of course I joined in because that’s what you do when you’re seven years old. Fortunately, the first time I tried that at home my folks jumped all over me for it. Aggie jokes were fine, ethnic jokes were not.
Gotta catch ’em young, though; if you let someone get away with that crap much past third grade, they’re set that way for life. And they’ll never understand why it’s a problem.
Not that I’m perfect. In an unguarded moment you may catch me saying something horrible about Jersey Shore types, but I’m at least smart enough to not say it in crowds or in an official email.
Steeplejack
@varmintito:
“I was just helping her over the fence, officer.”
Soylent Green
I grew up in suburban St. Louis about three miles from Ferguson. I am long gone from there, but during the demonstrations I heard the Facebook banter of my relatives discussing this event. These are good liberals. They don’t send racist emails or use racist language and they all voted for Obama. But all I heard from them was fearful whispering about the thugs and criminals in the street (that being what they kept seeing on the news, the TV cameras zooming in on looters) and their inchoate fear that these demonstrators (groups of dangerous thugs) might spread to their neighborhoods. I heard no expression at all of sympathy for the vast majority of Ferguson citizens peacefully voicing their objection to being murdered by the police. Liberal or conservative makes no difference — anyone can be close-minded.
Steve
Lol Paul the apologist!
Steve
I guess nigga must mean tall white Midwestern basketball player who is the next coming of Larry bird
JaneE
I am willing to admit the possibility that a racist joke exists that is also funny. I just haven’t seen one yet. It is really really hard to be demeaning and hateful and be funny at the same time. Which really makes me wonder just what kind of person would find this stuff funny. I know quite a few people who are “closet racists”, who don’t really see whole groups of people as their equals, but get insulted if you point out the fact that they are generalizing about entire racial or ethnic groups without any basis, and even they don’t usually find that kind of crap funny. “What were they thinking?” is the usual response.
Paul in KY
@Steve: Man I wish I was smoking some of what you must be! ‘Next coming of Larry Bird’?!?!?! No fucking way. If Larry had been on that Wisconsin team, they’d have beat us by 20. I saw Larry play in college & Mr. Kaminsky is waaaaay away from that.
He’s a fine player & should have a nice pro career, but come on….
Steve
Upon reflection the Larry bird comparison is a bit aggressive, for now.
Paul in KY
@Steve: He is a good 2 or 3 inches taller than Larry, so he’s got that going for him.
Plantsmantx
Funny how the “Appeal to Melanin” thing only applies to white people. A black person can’t “prove” they’re not racist by declaring they have one or more white people as friends, in their family, and so forth.