Dwight Phillips vs. Lauren Fleshman and Nick Symmonds on Twitter

pop_pop!_v2.2.1 wrote:

If the USATF was a real job he'd be gone. This is great work if one can get it.

Just so everyone is clear, Dwight is a volunteer. He was elected by AAC to be the head of AAC and he does not get paid for the gig.

how in the world does someone see the tweet that started this and then defend Phillips? there is not one hint of anything racial there. this has become some kind of crutch and auto response from any person of color. does no one see this?

polevaultpower wrote:

Party Line wrote:

Why couldn't Fleshman just phoned the office to see if any emails were sent out. She "needed" to make it public. Phillips is just telling her to F off.

end of story.

What office? No one at AAC works in Indy at the National Office. I'm not on their email list, but I assume that AAC leadership sends emails independently from the National Office, and that some random intern answering the phone at the National Office would have no idea if any emails were sent.

Lauren's question was a valid one, and asking it in a public forum was valid. It's a perfectly reasonable question to wonder if things were sent and you were left off the list, or if nothing was sent.

When you publicly criticize people regularly, sometimes they assume everything you say is an attack, fair or not...

I have trouble believe that Lauren had no way of communicating with Dwight except in a public way to criticize him. She' seems somewhat resourceful.

People only take to twitter to complain.

Dr. Pepper wrote:

My thoughts exactly. Unless she was sending him personal emails and he still wasn't responding or performing his role, asking a question over Twitter is a public call-out. His response was over the top, but wasn't without some reason.

Except that Fleshman called out the AAC, not Dwight. An organization is not its head. He chose to respond from his personal twitter account (no idea if he also manages the AAC handle).

oLD 800M DUDE wrote:

I have trouble believe that Lauren had no way of communicating with Dwight except in a public way to criticize him. She' seems somewhat resourceful.

People only take to twitter to complain.

My guess is one of the issues is who is and is not on the AAC email list. Lauren copied AAC on the tweet, but it was directed at Pro Athletes, my guess is she wanted to get a sense for whether or not emails were going to a small group of people or whether there had been no communication at all.

It's unclear to be who is supposed to get getting emails from AAC. I don't know how their email list is generated or who generates it. I hear from a lot of athletes who have no idea what AAC is.

Dwight mentioned on Twitter that he only got a dozen emails from marathoners complaining about the Trials... but the vast majority of Trials participants have no idea what AAC is or who Dwight is...

mugatu's crazy pills wrote:

how in the world does someone see the tweet that started this and then defend Phillips? there is not one hint of anything racial there. this has become some kind of crutch and auto response from any person of color. does no one see this?

I'm not defending Phillips, it was way over the top. What I was suggesting was Fleshman using twitter as her official correspondence to the ACC. Of course this is ridiculous .

The first two words in the AAC mission statement are: "To communicate ..."

Let's look at this from a different angle. Dwight was a field event/sprint guy. Oiselle - the group which he is attacking as racist - is a distance running group. If you went down to he Sprint XYZ group in Florida they would be made up mostly, if not entirely, of African Americans.

We all can agree, in general, majority of distance runners in the US are white. We all can agree, in general, African Americans make up the majority of sprinters in the US (From HS to College to Pros).

Are we really talking about race or are we talking about distrust between the distance vs sprints/field event communities?

We could all say the same thing to Dwight...why doesn't the all-black Sprint groups diversify to include more white people? They are racist!

As I posted in the other thread about this topic, it appears that Lauren was using twitter to publicly call out the AAC which is of course low balling and unprofessional.

But the way in which the Chair takes her tweet as a personal insult and goes into an aggressive Twitter argument is incredibly unprofessional, shows no diplomacy skills at all or any social awareness.

He should not be Chair of that committee, paid or volunteer.

Even if Lauren had directly targeted a full on racist insult at Dwight through Twitter, in his position he should not be publicly losing it. You have to be an adult about it, call them out and say this language and behaviour is innapropriate and offensive and you will not converse with a person who acts in that way. But flying off the handle like a crazy person in public is not the right thing to do.

mugatu's crazy pills wrote:

how in the world does someone see the tweet that started this and then defend Phillips? there is not one hint of anything racial there. this has become some kind of crutch and auto response from any person of color. does no one see this?

Dwight was wrong, there is no question about it. However, I clearly understand where his sensitivities are coming from, but as a leader, you have to keep your sensitivities to yourself and emotions in check. The geniuses of Dwight's sensitivities is perhaps the proven fact that some people judge Blacks in positions of leadership differently than Whites. There was an NFL study about 10 years ago that showed the perception of Black coaches with a losing record for one season was that they were unfit, unqualified for the job and should be replaced. The perception of White coaches with a similar a record for one season was that the team needed better players, they were in a rebuilding phase, etc. A similar study was done with corporate executives, which also showed that perceptions of competence split along racial lines notwithstanding quantitative measurements. Think about the President, by most objective measures, he has done a good job; however, there are a lot of White people who publically proclaim Obama is the worst president we've ever had. None of this probably has anything to do with Lauren's comments, but perceived notions can cause propel to react in ways on the surface seem irrational.

Because this is all a hoax. If you want to project yourself into the spotlight and alienate your 'enemies', identify yourself as being the target of "racism!". It is a timeless classic...

pop_pop!_2.2.1 wrote:

wineturtle wrote:http://www.3wiresports.com/2016/04/01/usatf-target-racially-charged-emails/

This is one of the strangest posts ever by the head of North Korean propaganda, Mr. Abrahamson. Stranger still are the persons suddenly posting comments.

Some crazy stuff going on at USATF.

Women should be punished for speaking out against an elder like Dwight Phillips. Dwight knows a racist tweet and loves colored women!

Wow. American athletes really are more entertaining off field.

Want context?

Hint: find deleted tweets.

Throw those three, and add Stephanie Hightower, in a cage for a televised pay-for-view death match.

Hold up wrote:

I guess I'm not surprised that Rojo somewhat encouraged it being that there has always been a subtle conservative bias behind the scenes of Letsrun..

What the hell are you talking about? I wasn't even paying attention to this thread. I then responded to one comment. I said that people have been complaining about USATF for as long as I can remember.

So I wasn't encouraging anything. I was simply pointing out a flaw in the logic being used.

Bring Back the 880 wrote:

Exactly. LF was passively aggressively calling out Phillips in public and then he overreacted.

They both look like huge jerks as a result. If the tweets look that bad to those of us that read a lot of letsrun threads, i wonder what normal people think seeing the exchange!

I don't know, it's freaking April of an Olympic year and Dwight hasn't yet communicated with the Athletes???? Yet he has time to go off on Twitter.

I've said it for a long time, USATF needs to be disbanded / or the athletes need to grow the balls, just balls, to threaten and back up a General Strike.

If America's entire track and field team threatened to strike during an Olympic year..."Someones" might step up and do an investigation / intervention and get things squared away.

Did the IOC not say, what, 3 years ago, that athletes could have a second logo on their uni's? --If approved by local governing body? (And not a competing company from the official sponsor for the team?)

This whole thing, the foot dragging, the progress slower than molasses, is selfish, stupid, borderline corrupt, if not corrupt, self-serving, smacks of protecting what lines their pockets -- Sheesh, a BOYSCOUT TROOP could figure out and rectify the complaints of athletes and create Fair solutions in one day.

I suspect the average fan has no idea exactly how poorly the majority of T&F athletes actually have it. You're a pro on less than 10k a year? You can't afford your own room in an apartment? Athletes doubling up like college dorms in apartments, houses? Living rooms used as a bedroom. USA ain't Iten. --Yeah, yeah, the usual barracking replies on LRC "nobody said they had to be a pro runner." It is an American thing to pursue your dreams, and running is a great community -- these athletes support one another -- and we fans should support them over an antiquated governing body that sure as ish looks like it is all about scratching their own backs.

Meb wears TWO LOGO'S when he road races. T-Mobile, and Sketchers. BTW, FYI. He hasn't been banned, fined or otherwise.

Of course he had to cool it for the OT Trials.

I'm going to assume that anyone else who's been in an executive meeting with real businesses, she's how incompetent this whole thing is.

USATF is not serving the athletes, and they could in one day allow athletes a second logo. (They really ought to be allowed as many as the Snowboarders in the Winter Olympics).

Fleshman and Symmonds may not appeal to all in their approaches, but at least they are speaking out for all athletes. You can call out their style, maybe, but their messages are fair and reasonable.

Carry on...

I have not seen anything public from other athletes asking Lauren and Symmonds to represent them. This is just sh!t you are making up in your head. Fleshman has Phillips phone#. Her choice was to use the twitter cesspool, and Phillips freaked out in typical twitter fashion. Meb won't be banned for wearing logos at roadraces because it is allowed and encouraged. Olympic branded events are different.

TrackCoach wrote:

Dwight was wrong, there is no question about it. However, I clearly understand where his sensitivities are coming from, but as a leader, you have to keep your sensitivities to yourself and emotions in check. The geniuses of Dwight's sensitivities

Dwight responded like a wild racist ahole, and all your apologetics for him can't cover that over. But, "genius of his sensitivities"--that's some funny sh1t right there.

It's hard to follow your message when the misspelling turns out to be so funny.

brozelle fan wrote:

Dwight Phillips accomplished more in any championship year from 2011 than Nick or Lauren did in their entire career.

/thread

What does their athletic accomplishments have to do with the fact that Dwight, as a volunteer leader of ALL athletes, is showing himself lacking the qualities of a leader (poise, restraint, tact, character, equality...). Whether or not Lauren's tweet was passive aggressive to Dwight, he could have EASILY taken the high road or NOT responded.

He's in a volunteer position; why's he so uptight about a has-been, twitter blabbermouth asking about her contemporaries recieving emails?

Jose Ramon wrote:

[quote]mugatu's crazy pills wrote:

What I was suggesting was Fleshman using twitter as her official correspondence to the ACC. Of course this is ridiculous .

I don't see anything official about her throwing a query out to the limited number of athletes who follow her, let alone would respond, on twitter. I think a lot of people don't understand social media and that there are people like Lauren who throw out lots of questions as a habit, looking for attention or other bizarre personal reasons. To others, it may look like there's underlying motives or angles, but I don't see it that way (nor do I ask any questions on social media!).