This thread was initially entitled, "Kara Goucher + Boston Marathon Controversy" . 4/20 update The BAA has issueda statement herethat amongst other things "we did not deliver on our promise to make it a great day for everyone".
That isn’t remotely what the dude said. “Racism” has lost its meaning because the left insists it can find it everywhere, up to and including washing machines that play a tune when the cycle is done. (It’s because slaves had to sing while they worked, according to a real article I read once.) Racism exists but the left has made its entire mission for ten years to be, cry racist wolf (and sexist wolf, and various -phobic wolves) so that at this point no one should credit them, and only believe racism occurred in a specific instance if their own skeptical inquiry suggests that it did. Postmodern leftism introduce the “always believe (group)” idea to politics and we’ve seen groups that idea is meant to benefit completely abuse it to the point that their credibility is shot. And that’s not even considering the pretzels they twist themselves into, like claiming the Memphis murder of a black man by black officers is explainable by “internalized” racism.
From this video and the post you see an example of what I mean: a black group was not allowed to do just literally whatever they felt like in the moment, and because they were BTFO it’s described as “ThIs Is WhAt It’S lIkE tO bE bLaCk At ThE bOsToN mArAtHoN!!!” Absolute BS.
Actually the word woke has lost its meaning because the right have a hangnail and blame it on some boogeyman they claim is wokeism. It is all very laughable to the intelligent.
If it's laughable to the intelligent, then that clearly leaves you out. The term didn't lose it's meaning because of the "right"
That statement alone removes you from the "intelligent" group.
Actually the word woke has lost its meaning because the right have a hangnail and blame it on some boogeyman they claim is wokeism. It is all very laughable to the intelligent.
If it's laughable to the intelligent, then that clearly leaves you out. The term didn't lose it's meaning because of the "right"
That statement alone removes you from the "intelligent" group.
It is now clear that you label those more intelligent than you as woke. Please define woke.
The video does look bad but definitely needs more context and explanation before automatically jumping to "it's racist." I hate people amplifying this message without actually investigating it.
I remember running by this group. It was in Newton, maybe around mile 18/19? They were loud but no more so than other groups and not disruptive when I was there. So absolutely could be at least an over-reaction by the cops that was racially motivated
On the other hand, they did shoot off a cannon with confetti (you see lots of it on the ground in the video). That struck me as a stupid (jerky?) move unless they were planning to clean it up everywhere (they would need to stay LATE on the course to do that!) and it littered the course for some period. Not particularly nice IMO.
That alone doesn't justify this police presence but does indicate that maybe there were other actions that led to what we saw in a 1 minute video.
I know this crew. It’s the cheer zone at the top of heartbreak hill. They show up early (7 am) to set up and they clean up after themselves, including the confetti. The reason for being upset is the lineup of bicycles (10-15) and then being surrounded in the carriage road as well. Other parts of the course (bottom of heartbreak or after heartbreak at BC) see similar stunts by groups of people running into the course and they dont see nearly that kind of response. The insinuation is that this cheer zone received the response they did because of the color of their skin.
I know one of the groups that were there and targeted, the vast majority of them are not black. Every race they go to, they go out on to the course and try to be motivating by screaming and cheering aggressively close to people... not everyone likes that. One of the people in this group posted on their IG stories yesterday that they were told twice to get off the course and stay behind the barricades or face a fine. They didn’t see anything wrong with what they were doing ,so caused a big scene about it, arguing with police, thats when the police lined the course in front of them to stop them from going on it. I wish I had screen shot it, as the IG story is expired now.
Basically they didn't want to follow the rules, and made a big stink about it.
If they are at the top of Heartbreak Hill, wouldn’t it make sense that bicycle cops be there, because it is easier to take bikes downhill than have to respond to something by riding uphill?
Did anyone see Kara Goucher share from Twitter yesterday with a group of Black fans being surrounding by officers at the Boston Marathon? A lot of people were outraged, but a few folks have rationally pointed to the need for more context outside a 1-minute clip. Wondering what folks here think about Kara boosting the video.
I am a POC and thought it was overblown (they had police there because of the '13 bombings and wanted to be extra-careful) BUT I can see where Goucher and Allison Desir could say their thoughts about it. If I was running the Boston PD and Marathon Security I'd have tons more security than usual--and that's not a black/white/brown thing!
A few runners on Insta I follow mentioned it as well.
People who say “this is not ok, or problematic, or toxic, or cringy” are usually upper class and white
Blogsnark ladies call out Kara and other pro runners (and instafluencers) for things like this. At least it's not just LRC. Reddit has its own running communities like we do that call out stupid crap.
The guy in the video mentions that he would like a high-five if he was doing the race. Did the police show up because this clown was on the course trying to high-five people? What an idiot!
I know one of the groups that were there and targeted, the vast majority of them are not black. Every race they go to, they go out on to the course and try to be motivating by screaming and cheering aggressively close to people... not everyone likes that. One of the people in this group posted on their IG stories yesterday that they were told twice to get off the course and stay behind the barricades or face a fine. They didn’t see anything wrong with what they were doing ,so caused a big scene about it, arguing with police, thats when the police lined the course in front of them to stop them from going on it. I wish I had screen shot it, as the IG story is expired now.
Basically they didn't want to follow the rules, and made a big stink about it.
The video shows no racisme at all and seems it is not an all black group either (from what I can see). It's typical to state racism because police barricades you from standing on the course "highfiving" people...
The guy in the video mentions that he would like a high-five if he was doing the race. Did the police show up because this clown was on the course trying to high-five people? What an idiot!
Ding-ding-ding! We have a winner. That guy was in the wrong. He's clearly never run a marathon. The last thing anyone wants is to have some stranger trying to "high five" them, at any point in the marathon. This ain't no Disney movie. GTFOH with that.
Remember the Nicholas Sandmann incident?.... If you do......context is very thing....btw....the kid won millions based on videos that were nothing more than lies!
But not one that is continually treated this way by police.
How do you know? How do you know the people in the video are "continually treated this way by police?" How do you NOT know by now that crying racism is just about the standard defense mechanism for certain groups of people when they don't get their way. About a month ago I saw a black woman get nabbed trying to walk out of Walgreen's with a bunch of merchandise stuffed in her jacket and that's exactly what she did, started screaming that the store staff was racist, and also that the whole city we were in was racist, and then also the whole country was racist. It became a whole rant that escalated very quickly. It's a diversionary technique, nothing more or less, and it works sometimes because no one wants to get the reputation of being a racist, and it only takes one viral incident to get that reputation, especially in an era where all it takes is one person to whip out their phone and record the incident once its underway, so you don't get the context that led up to it, and them to post that video on twitter.
More to the point, as another poster said just look at how Ms. Desir is trying to make her money. She was going to find some half-baked racism charge against Boston / the BAA / the city to promote, because after the BAA included her as part of a little pre-race conversation event where she was given a place of equal standing alongside several much more accomplished athletes and authors, she had to keep that momentum going somehow. Notice how in her post retweeting the incident, she tags the other women she appeared at the talk with and asks them to do their bit in promoting the BS video. Ms. Desir didn't want the association of her name with the other more accomplished women to end just because the pre-race talk had already ended. And she doesn't want to have to move on from calling the marathon that included her at a talk racist just because the marathon is over. She's a grifter and she was able to guilt a guilty white liberal mom, Kara Goucher, into doing some work for her. Pretty standard stuff in the 2020s, honestly. We'll have to get over this sort of crap eventually but I suspect it will take us a while - at least as long as it takes for nice liberal moms to not feel so guilty about everything all the time.
Remember the Nicholas Sandmann incident?.... If you do......context is very thing....btw....the kid won millions based on videos that were nothing more than lies!
That's the problem with team politics, you get forced into believing a specific interpretation of everything you see. Everybody who has declared allegiance to a political team does it, it isn't just the left. But to this example, leftists saw an Indian and a white kid in apparent conflict and they all knew the white kid was in the wrong. Not just believed it, or decided it must be the case, but at the time they knew it. It just couldn't be any other way. ...until more video and testimony came out showing it wasn't how the "knew" the situation to be. Of course, in cases like this many people don't even watch the original low-context video but simply let twitter influencers and headline-writers tell them what happened. And then they repost the articles they only read the headlines of, to be inserted into the feeds of other people who will spread them further having also only read the headline.
