I am saying that it does not matter what his intent was. He still need a very public and humble apology to help adjust the perception of the people who think he is a racist. (that would include me at this point)

When I was a younger man, my grandfather would refer to anyone who was not white as colored. My wife, who is a wonderful shade of pacific islander brown, was always excused because she was “one of us” now. It was not hard to feel the racism then, it is not hard to feel it now.

As in legal judgments, I believe we should presume innocence over guilt until guilt is proven without any reasonable doubt should someone’s words possibly be seen as racist/bigoted/evil or whatever. This is a good precedent to take given that language can be quite subtle and very difficult to interpret.

Now, is there reasonable doubt with Sherman’s remarks? Yes. For one, given what I know of him, there seems to be no reason to think him a racist for any other reason. Second, he obviously didn’t know the word “negro” was offensive, and all he meant was to use a term he saw as “historical” that would call to mind a time period when African Americans suffered a lot of oppression and injustice. Third, his use of the word “they” doesn’t necessarily imply he is generalizing about a group of people. Rather, he could be using a group generalization that he fully realizes is untrue, in hopes that seeing this untruth will allow Davis to realize the error of her ways. (See my example above, if you don’t believe pluralizations can be used colorfully to refer to individuals and not necessarily groups.)

So, is there any reason to presume him guilty of a racist remark without a reasonable doubt? Not in my mind.

Side arguments are:
1. Language cannot be “racist”. It is people who are racist, and who may use language for racist motivations. (Hence, we shouldn’t judge people as guilty of racism or bigotry based solely on language.)
2. Characterizing language use as “racist” trivializes real racism, in much the same way we’d trivialize the term “murderer” if we applied it to anyone who uses the word “murder” and not just those who actually murdered.

I do think the case is airtight here!

Within the context of the lumping “they” statement, and the intimation that now that “they” have power, “they” see no problem with discrimination, and “they” called folks “whitey”… in that exact context, the word negro has been set aflame.

But is that what he actually meant? Of course not. What he meant is equivalent to the following:

“As a black person who has experienced oppression, Davis should know that oppressing atheists is not a good thing.”

How do I know this is what he meant? From the relevant context. The quote is about the incident with Davis, after all. Focusing in upon single words like “they” or “negro” only shows, to my mind, a willful attempt to read way too much into what was actually meant, and a sort of strange desire to interpret something as “racist” without any real warrant.

Remember, we are, in a sense, characterizing Sherman as a bigot or racist in a sense when we make such claims, and that’s not right if you recognize, with everyone else, that he was NOT intending to say anything about the hypocrisy of blacks as a whole. In short, to go from “This language can possibly be interpreted as racist” to “Sherman is a racist” is a rather strange leap to make.

More on the “they” remark:
I think it’s safe to say we’ve ALL at one point or another used “group” language to refer to an individual, and that this doesn’t necessarily mean we are intending to say anything about the beliefs or actions of everyone in that group. If I were to say to my boss, for instance, “As a boss of a company, you should have a reason for firing someone. But I suppose now bosses no longer need a reason to fire the people they dislike.”

Notice that I used pluralizations, but it is clear from the context of my remarks and who I am saying them to in the example that I am speaking about my individual boss, and using the pluralization to show the absurdity of her position. By applying her own hypocrisy to ALL bosses, what I expect her to see with such a linguistic device is that this is not a trait we’d expect to see in all bosses, and hence she as an individual should not practice such behavior.

Sometimes people can say things that cross the line into racism without meaning offense.

I think this remark, here, cuts to the heart of the matter, of course. I disagree vehemently with the statement that language can be “racist” in the absence of any intent on the speaker’s part. A word doesn’t lynch, or hate, or otherwise discriminate against people. Language cannot adequately be characterized as “racist”. Now, people who are racist can use certain language as manifestations of their hatred, and I think that conception makes a lot more sense without a needless sort of anthropomorphization of language. With that in mind, the speaker’s intentions clearly matter when assessing whether what was said is racist. If a group of mexican youths address themselves as “niggers” as a term of endearment, is this “racist” language? I’d say no. Why trivialize racism into something as benign as using certain language? If someone otherwise fights for and respects the equality of everyone else, I could care less what sort of language they use, and if our only basis for portraying someone as bigoted is something as obviously fluid, subtle, and arbitrary as LANGUAGE and not anything they’ve done, then that’s a pretty egregious error to make, as accusations of racism are no laughing matter. Someone has only said something “racist” if they have said those words with a racist motivation. Otherwise, they’ve at worst used a word wrong, and at best tried to use a word colorfully or in a more subtle intepretetive framework that others are incapable of grasping.

In short, people need to learn that because language is subtle, ironic, sarcastic, and there are all sorts of literary devices that allow us to do things like use taboo words as signs of friendship, or pluralizations to refer to individuals, or whatever–because of all this, we should be careful not to immediately portray someone as racist based solely on the language they have chosen to use.

You just don’t seem to be noticing the context. We’re not reacting to the word. We’re reacting to the use within the specific post by Rob Sherman.

No. What you are doing is reacting to a rather unfair interpretation of Sherman’s remarks–a judgmental, unthinking, knee-jerk interpretation that doesn’t take into account the true subtlety of language in favor of doing one’s hardest to see a remark in its worst possible light. Interpreting language is not as straightforward and easy as you make it out to be.

And the basis for my defense of Sherman is my knowledge of his character, as well as the principle of proving guilt and assuming innocence. I refuse to presume someone guilty of racist remarks if there is ANY reasonable doubt in the context to see it otherwise, and there is plenty of reasonable doubt here. That’s the only suitable way to go about these things.

The guy uses an admittedly “loaded” word, but in a context that is decidedly NOT meant to be offensive or meant to insult Davis because of her race

Sometimes people can say things that cross the line into racism without meaning offense. In fact, most people I know who are racist aren’t TRYING to make anyone angry when they say these things, and are often shocked that anyone would be offended by what they see as the plain truth. I’ve heard very nice people, very kind and loving people, say horribly racist things. They don’t mean to hurt anyone’s feelings. It’s just that (those people) are (greedy/lazy/stupid/inbred/whatever).

…and then everyone immediately interprets it as somehow “racist,” regardless of the context,

No, I’m actually interpreting it WITHIN the context of a statement where he compared himself to Rosa Parks, used the word “whitey”, and said “Now that Negroes have political power, it seems that they have no problem at all with discrimination”. “They“. Not “she”. “They“. Within THAT context, the word “whitey” becomes sarcastic mimicking. Within THAT context, the word “whitey” becomes a mocking and belittling use charged with implications of counter-racism. Within the context of the lumping “they” statement, and the intimation that now that “they” have power, “they” see no problem with discrimination, and “they” called folks “whitey”… in that exact context, the word negro has been set aflame.

…and then everyone immediately interprets it as somehow “racist,” regardless of the context, and in turn he gets publicized like this, as “the worst person in the world,” and all because people are, dare I say, too stupid to read a remark in its proper context.

Oh no. We’re reading it in context all right. You just don’t seem to be noticing the context. We’re not reacting to the word. We’re reacting to the use within the specific post by Rob Sherman. To say we’re reacting to the word negro in a vacuum, or in a poor context of our choosing is specious.

Rob Sherman chose the words he surrounded the word negro with. And it wasn’t “United” and “College Fund”.

If we criticize him, we should do it for making unfair parallels between race/religious discrimination.

Unfair parallels? What, exactly, makes the comparison “unfair”? The basic meaning of his statement is something like the following:

“As a black woman who has no doubt faced lots of hardship and discrimination, Davis should understand how wrong she is to discriminate against atheists.”

He did not express himself in this manner, but nevertheless that is what he really means. I challenge anyone to take the statement as I’ve rephrased it above and somehow characterize it as “racist” or even “unfair” in its comparison.

If you ask me, he isn’t really getting criticized for what he actually said, but merely because he chose to use a certain word that, unfortunately, most people interpret as inherently bad, and so inherently bad that it overrides whatever point you are trying to actually make to such a degree that you become a terrible person just for doing so.

Just look at this nonsense. The guy uses an admittedly “loaded” word, but in a context that is decidedly NOT meant to be offensive or meant to insult Davis because of her race (he was insulting her because of her hypocrisy)…and then everyone immediately interprets it as somehow “racist,” regardless of the context, and in turn he gets publicized like this, as “the worst person in the world,” and all because people are, dare I say, too stupid to read a remark in its proper context. (And, no, interpreting the word as if it were used by someone in the 1950s while waving a confederate flag is NOT the proper context to interpret his statement, if you need any help.)

Honestly, this pisses me off and it’s the silliest kind of defamation there is. It’s even worse because “negro” is one of those words that many, many people don’t even know is offensive, and see merely as historical.

And I’m adamant that anyone malicious enough to interpret this remark in the worst possible light, without any reason to other than some arbitrary “you-can’t-use-this-word” code, is the real idiot!

If we criticize him, we should do it for making unfair parallels between race/religious discrimination. But that’s another issue.

Actually I’m not criticizing Sherman (well, I didn’t start with that). I think he’s a crank more than anything else. Legislatures often have these self-appointed gadflies flitting about.

What I’m criticizing is the atheist bandwagon that seized on this incident and tried to play it up to get bigger notice than I thought it deserved.

I don’t put you in that camp, Hemant, because from the beginning you covered the whole of this story in its messy aspects, not just the stuff that made atheism look picked on.

I apologize for trying to be so much like Dr. King my whole life….

Ah yes, the ‘If I made a mistake, it was in trying to be TOO good, TOO noble, TOO loving,’ non-pology.

Here’s a hint, Rob… the more words there are in an “apology”, the less likely it IS actually an apology.

This guy needs to be off the national stage, like yesterday. He’s a harm to the atheist cause, this ‘woe-is-me’ self-made-martyr. Listen to him play the world’s smallest violin with his two-bit shitty reverse-psychology bullcrap.

Mojoey said:

We had a great opportunity to push for acceptance and understanding, instead this egregious attack against the atheist community will always come down a Rob’s dumbass racist statement.

Sherman’s ego and utter klunking cluelessness is a problem. This guy wasn’t the hero to hitch an agenda to.

For most of my lifetime, atheists have come across in the media as crackpots and cranks. His ‘I guess I just love Martin Luther King TOO much for all of you’ routine puts him squarely in that category. As does his wierdo blog that reads and looks like the atheist version of a Doc Bronner’s label.

I don’t know if you’re writing this in order to try and get Sherman to read it and agree with you, Hemant, and thereafter do the right thing and apologize. But I disagree that the “attention” should be on one remark over the other. Can you explain to me by what reasoning you determine which remarks “should” be the center of attention and which should not?

I know what you’re saying, Siamang, but I don’t think these comments are on the same level. Rep. Davis’ was slander against an entire group of people. Yes, it was directed at Sherman. But she didn’t say Sherman was dangerous. She said atheists (our philsophy, anyway) were dangerous. She’s an official representative in the IL house and her comments do matter.

Sherman’s comments were simply made in ignorance. I don’t think for a second that he meant anything racist by them; he just didn’t know any better. If we criticize him, we should do it for making unfair parallels between race/religious discrimination. But that’s another issue.