See above. Ick. This is your brain on political correctness and convoluted social justice double standards. It’s not pretty.
Last week, Wednesday White Sox shortstop Tim Anderson was thrown out of a game and suspended after a fight broke out on the baseball field between his team and the Kansas City Royals. The cause doesn’t matter here, but the Royals pitcher, Brad Keller, threw at Anderson for being flamboyantly demonstrative after hitting a home run.
Anderson was also suspended by MLB, and it turned out that the reason for his punishment was that during the fight he called Keller a “weak-ass fucking nigger.”
Here is Anderson…
This is Keller.
Got that? Anderson, who is black, called Keller, who is white, a fucking nigger.
Now here is NBC baseball pundit Craig Calcaterra, a former lawyer, objecting, as lawyers are wont to do:
“Anderson, who is black, used a word that is historically acceptable when used by and among black people and always unacceptable when used by non-black people. If that is the case, MLB has thrown itself into the insanely controversial and likely indefensible position of presuming that it can and should police a black person’s use of that term….Bold move, MLB. But not a wise one I don’t think.”
How does someone trained in critical thinking, logic, analogies, justice and the law reach a point where he would write something that ethically and logically fatuous? I guess it comes from watching too many Samuel L. Jackson movies and listening to too many Black Lives Matter rants. So Craig thinks that white players who use the word “nigger” on the field should be fined and suspended–he does you know…he even thinks that a pitcher who used a racial epithet in a tweet when he was in high school should be suspended and fined for it now—but black players can use the same word with impunity, because they just can, and so there.
That’s a double standard by definition. I assume, therefore, that if Anderson, who is black, called Honkey Keller a nigger, and Keller responded, “Yeah? Well, so are you!” Keller would be suspended and fined, and Anderson would be congratulated for not stooping to the White Boy’s gutter level rhetoric. I also assume that Anderson could also call “Parallel Finian’s Rainbow” Universe (where white people turn black, thanks to Leprechauns ) Keller, who is black in that reality, a nigger, but if a white team mate of Anderson’s, say, outfielder John Jay, said, “Yeah! What he said!,” then Jay would be fined and suspended, but again, Anderson would be fine, and regarded as a perfect gentleman and a credit to the game.
So, let’s see…MLB will have to distribute a handy chart…
Black player calls Black Player a nigger: No suspension.
Black player calls White, Hispanic or Asian Player a nigger: No suspension.
White, or Asian Player calls White, Hispanic or Asian player a nigger: Suspension.
White or Asian Player calls Black Player or mostly black Latin player a nigger: Suspension.
Mostly Black Latino or Hispanic player calls Black, Asian or White Player a nigger: No suspension.
Mostly White Latino or Hispanic player calls Black, Asian or White Player a nigger: Suspension, but a light one.
I’m sure I left something out.
This is the society-rending idiocy we get and deserve when we permit race-obsessed activists to infect the culture with special rules and privileges based on group identification. Then we end up with special standards, crimes and acceptable vocabularies based on race, color, gender and ethnicity, and daily life is so filled with traps and potential gotcha’s that everyone is afraid to move, talk or think.
Major League Baseball is well within its management and oversight rights to ban “fighting words” on the baseball field, including racial epithets and ethnic slurs. It should go without saying, accept that addled social justice warriors like Calcaterra make it necessary to say, that if a word is ruled unacceptable for use of the baseball field, it must be unacceptable for everyone, and no player should be granted immunity because of his skin color.
Ethics Alarms 
I just have to laugh. Unfortunately, this is the logic mandated and enforced in our K-12 and colleges across this country. However, there is a loophole that I think a lot of people will be taking. One of the most ‘opressed’ groups (according to the left) is Islam. So, if you convert to Islam, you will be permitted to do and say a lot of things. It looks like R. Kelly is trying to get to the Middle East because if he can get there and convert to Islam, he will be protected. Nothing he did is a crime in Islam. I saw a funny video about the Virginia KKK converting to Islam because their racial views are completely in line with Muslim views about race. They even said that the SPLC is now protecting them from people calling them racist!
Sounds like jizya…
It was not a serious video. Any video where the Virginia Democratic Party, the KKK, and an Islamic hotline share a phone number is not meant to be taken seriously…I hope.
Jizya’s pretty funny when you think about it, too.
The context of the sentiment when that word is uttered is identical irrespective of who uses it. It is to demean that person by overtly suggesting he is a second class person who has no sense of self and does the bidding of others.
I haven’t today’s allotment of Dr. Pepper yet, so I am confused. You wrote:
“Got that? Anderson, who is black, called Keller, who is white, a fucking nigger.” Did I read the post to say that Keller got suspended because Anderson called Keller a “fucking nigger”? That seems . . . odd. Why punish Keller for something Anderson did? What am I missing?
jvb
Last week, Wednesday White Sox shortstop Tim Anderson was thrown out of a game and suspended after a fight broke out on the baseball field between his team and the Kansas City Royals. The cause doesn’t matter here, but the Royals pitcher, Brad Keller, threw at Anderson for being flamboyantly demonstrative after hitting a home run.
Anderson was also suspended by MLB, and it turned out that the reason for his punishment was that during the fight he called Keller a “weak-ass fucking nigger.”
Anderson was suspended and thrown out for language, Keller for throwing at Anderson.
JVB, Jack was objecting to the insanity of the SJW/politically correct position Craig Calcetara took in response to MLB suspending Anderson.
Be a Pepper…
This is the same inanity Paul and I were laughing about in the comments to Jack’s NYT/nigger post from earlier today.
I know. I didn’t know about the game so I had to read the article. Even the article seemed to suggest Keller got suspended for Anderson’s comment. I had to read it twice to figure it out.
“I’m a “Pepper, you’re a Pepper. . .”
Your “rules” remind me of the caste names back in Mexico during Colonial times. People got a different moniker based not only on the race of their ancestors, but the proportions, gender and order of intermixing in the family tree. See this section of the wikipedia article for how senseless and convoluted the thing got: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casta#Sample_sets_of_casta_paintings
My favorites: Torna Atras (“turning back”) and No Te Entiendo (“I don’t understand you”).
Man, I am clearly Dr. Pepper deficient today so I am clearly confused. I read the link to Craig Calcaterra piece. I understand that Anderson was too celebratory for hitting a homer off of Keller, so Anderson’s next at-bat resulted in Keller beaning him.* Thereafter, a bench-clearing brawl ensued. Keller has been suspended for 5 games for throwing at Anderson. Anderson, however, has been suspended for one game for calling Keller a “fucking nigger”. What am I missing? Should Anderson be suspended for hurling a racial epithet? I don’t know – there may be MLB justification for it and one game is not a horrible penalty. Should Keller be suspended for 5 games for a beanball? Sure, if he intentionally beaned him for the great slight of tossing a bat too far from the batter’s box.
jvb.
*Ed. Note: Baseball has way too many unwritten rules for my Dr. Pepper-infused brain to grasp. There are these odd does and don’ts that make absolutely no sense to me. Somehow it is a breach of etiquette to toss a bat back to the dugout when you homer. Pitchers take great offense at it, a kind of in your face taunting, I guess. Likewise, if a batter fist pumps all the way around the bases after a homer, he is declared unethical and liable to be beaned. Additionally, if their pitcher throws too close to our batters, our pitchers should do the same, to send a message that our batters won’t put up with that bad behavior. Oh, and if a batter commits a grave offense against a pitcher, then it is understood that the pitcher will (and should) get back at him at his next at-bat, even if that at-bat occurs two years later.
Handing out “get out of jail free” cards based on race is one hell of a slippery slope. Apparently, that is beyond the cognitive ability of some people, but if they ram it through, it’s going to bite them where the sun doesn’t ever want to shine.
Maybe we should let them get away with it, grab some popcorn, and watch.
I am still waiting for the day when most MLB hitters are good enough to “bean” a pitcher with a batted ball. (Well, maybe I mean just “soak,”as in “impact” – not murder, as in beaning – but, safety and non-injury are never guaranteed.) As long as a pitcher throws at a particular batter and stays in the game, I root for that batter (or one of his teammates) to hit a ball right back at that pitcher. Scare for scare, and pain for pain.
I was never thrown at in my playing days; I was hit by a few pitches, but honestly don’t recall being thrown at deliberately. Good thing, for those pitchers who plunked me, considering my “exit velocities.” If I ever had had good reason to believe that I had been thrown at while batting, I would have taken aim at my targeter with one of my targeter’s pitches, if I had the chance. I actually could place-hit pretty well, too…
This got me to wondering – I don’t recall ever having seen it: Has any MLB batter ever grabbed the ball just after a pitch hit him, and thrown it back at the pitcher? (I never would have done that simply because I threw wildly too often.) I suppose that would be “weak-assed” of a batter to do that – too easy for the pitcher to catch it.
Anyway, if the MLB hitters were good enough, “knock-down” and “brush-back” pitches would be much rarer, and pitchers with helmets and other body armor would be seen on the mound more regularly.
By golly, I do believe I am starting to see more MLB hitters beating those defensive shifts. Hooray. Maybe there is reason to hope yet, for batters to “soak” deserving pitchers. Hey, don’t shoot me; I’m a hitter, so all I want is something a little more like “equality.”