Olympic Trials Racist Remarks by Announcer

fed-up wrote:

womens 5000 -(with 200 to go)"being the African American in the group, Treniere Clement definately has the advantage this final 200" (again don't remember word for word)

Unbelievable.

You are really clueless.

Ghost of Ashenfelter wrote:

If I'm not mistaken, Lewis Johnson identified Clement as the African-American and said she would have an advantage in a sprint, but he did NOT make a cause-effect statement to suggest that African-Americans are necessarily faster sprinters. It was something like, "Treniere Clement--she's the African-American athlete--should have an advantage if it comes down to a sprint." In other words, T.C. would have an advantage in a sprint, and by the way, if you don't know which one she is, she's the African-American. He identified her as the African-American athlete because if he had identified her as the Nike athlete she would have been indistiguishable from the other eight Nike athletes in that heat.

Someone needs to ring up the Bros. Johnson and inform them that we've found one of the 5 LetsRun posters with even the hint of a clue.

better yet wrote:

Why not, "TC, the runner in 5th wearing blue and white has great finishing speed, and may have the advantage over the final 200".

Lets face it, it was a racist comment.

No dipspit, he was indentifying Clement by the characteristic that distinguished her from the rest of the ladies all wearing blue outfits.

What a plethora of complete dilweeds exist on this board.

obama un-supporter wrote:

think racism isn't a problem in America?...then why is Obama getting over 80% of the vote from black people

Because John McCain represents the dingbats who once opposed desegregation and now oppose any kind of initiative which combats social injustice.

shortshorts wrote:

obama un-supporter wrote:

think racism isn't a problem in America?...then why is Obama getting over 80% of the vote from black people

Sort of a dumb statment to pose. Black ppl usually vote democratic for one and what percent of white voters do you think McCain draws?

alot less than 80

dopameter -you are correct, the ONLY difference that we would be able to tell all of these runners a part is the color of their skin. And because of the color of her skin, she would have the advantage over the last 200. You ignorant idiot.

annonniminimus wrote:

shortshorts wrote:

Sort of a dumb statment to pose. Black ppl usually vote democratic for one and what percent of white voters do you think McCain draws?

alot less than 80

That's not really relevant at all. As I pointed out earlier, African Americans have always heavily supported the Democratic candidate. Last election it was 88% for Kerry. Bush had 52% or so of the white vote, reasonable considering that the white population in this country vastly outnumbers the African American population and this number would match well with the overall vote totals. To truly explore racism in elections I would look towards the increase in percentage that white voters go to McCain as compared to previous voting patterns.

Hybrid vigor is actually silly. Look into it a bit more.

There are fast whites turned away from certain sports early on. But there is a higher percentage of blacks with the ability to run fast in sprints. The flip side is whites have been discouraged from all kinds of sports or they freeze up when they could do well. Track is also a numbers game, and face it, not a lot of people are into track in this country or in Europe these days as soccer is now super-king over there. Look at our 1500 trials. Lagat aside, we should have 10 guys faster and stronger than Lomong or Manzano. It's embarrassing to realize that if they line up against say, our guys in the '84 trails, they'd have been dusted (yes, I'm aware of Maree back then - look at how much better he was than our current crop, "native" or otherwise).

lol wrote:

shortshorts wrote:

In a couple generations there wont be racism (everything wont be percieved as being racist)...

I think racism will end when people STOP BEING RACIST, not when people stop pointing it out.

That's not ending racism, that's pretending there's no problem, which is pretty much the problem and the reason why racism persists in the first place.

I think you were missing my point. When everyone knit picks everything and labels it as racist it just adds to the problem. Who cares if someone is black white or whatever. By getting all hot and bothered by someone pointing out the obvious you just make everything worse. Obviously there are differences between people but were are all more or less the same.

obama un-supporter wrote:

think racism isn't a problem in America?...then why is Obama getting over 80% of the vote from black people

it's not because he is black, it is because he isn't white

I hate the PC "African-American" title we're given to describe people who are no more African than I am. I could maybe see it to describe runners like Bernard Lagat, or Lopez Lomong, who have recently come from Africa. But Treniere Clement? Certainly tracing her roots back in time, you'll eventually find yourself in Africa. But you can say the same for anyone, as it was the origin of our species. Why am I not African American, even though I'm white and live in a rural town in america? Or better yet why am I not Irish-European-Turkish-Sudanese-Ethiopian-American (this is a good record of the movement of my ancestors since the beginning of homo sapiens). I guess because I'm white, that makes me true American. Other with darker complexions, aren't true Americans, only a partly hyphenated one. How is that even Politically Correct? Oh wait maybe our politics are racists.

The term "Caucasian" is even worse. I'm of Scandinavian descent and Scandinavia is pretty fu\cking far from Caucasus. How many blond, blue-eyed, pale-skinned people have you ever met from Azerbaijan? (Other than Russians who moved there during Soviet times, that is.)

Sure if you go back thousands of years, there was migration from the Middle East to Western Europe, but those "Caucasians" also migrated from somewhere. Or is this some big Creationist conspiracy to treat 4000 BC as "Time Zero" and everything that was at that time was put there by the big fictional emcee?

So although I agree with your point, today's "African-Americans" are a lot more African than I'm Caucasian.

So don't call them African-American. Nobody is making you. Do you call used cars "pre-owned" cars just because the industry coined a new term? No. I still say "stewardess" instead of "flight attendant". But that's just me.

Don't let the media or society frame who you are.

haha, YO wrote:

obama un-supporter wrote:

think racism isn't a problem in America?...then why is Obama getting over 80% of the vote from black people

Because African Americans have historically always supported Democratic candidates. Look at 2004, Kerry got 88% of the African American vote. Have you ever payed attention to politics or voting patterns in your life?

you're a dipsh!t. Why don't you look at the "voting patterns" of blacks in the democratic PA primary, then come back and talk.

There is a blatant double standard in this country when it comes to race. When a black person says something racist it gets excused pretty quickly - not so much for a white person. It does not rank high on my daily concern list, but to deny that this double standard exists is pretty stupid.

As for the OP, let me quote the great Artie Lange. "Waaaaahhh, why don't you go wash your pu$$y?"

dmb wrote:

you're a dipsh!t. Why don't you look at the "voting patterns" of blacks in the democratic PA primary, then come back and talk.

Ok, one primary. Why shouldn't African Americans vote for someone like them who they think will advance policies that will help them out? It's not racism, it's politics you idiots.

I will take this one step further. There are social factors and those that are enviornmental. The dude who brought up jimmy the greek is not on the right page. Africans Americans do well in sprinting in this country.

Now looking at steriod abuse that runs deep amongst our sprinters has a lot more to with their dominating. Think about it! How many have proven cheaters. Combined that with young people get turned away at as a youth. Along with the combination of many fast whites playing a more deverse set of sports. Its easy to point a lot more reasons then just the color of ones skin.

To comment on the subject of African Americans. I agree we should probobly do better calling them South African, Nigerian, etc. In fact Ethopians considers themselves a totally different race. In many ways they are genetically.

Again there dominace has a lot to do with social factors. There was an awesome article on how the Kenyas used to be awesome at more then just running at the olympics it would be a good read if you are interested.

Finally, I just wanted to point out that I believe we are different. But, again the social aspects cant be overlooked or diminished. Did you all remember or know how dominate the Japanese were at the Triple Jump in the early 1900s in the olympics? Is that genetic??? Maybe or just it was coool to triple jump just like it is to play soccer in brazil?

There is racism and there is political correctness. This falls under the extreme category of political correctess, where you apparently can't use physical characteristics to identify someone. What if she had red hair and the announcer said; "Clement - the woman with the red hair - has superior footspeed and should strike hard in the last 200m"? That wouldn't be offensive at all, and neither should identifying her as an African-American.

As for the "Why can't she just be called an American? Why Make her only half an american?" argument, thats stupid. Many people are called Irish-American, Italian-American etc. Because the U.S.A. is a country of immigrants, hyphenations are often used to distinguish race. The descendants of slaves have cleary changed from their ancestors to become a different "race", and thus are designated so.

Finally, for the argument saying "Blacks are better at sports" is just as racist as saying "Blacks are dumb" is equally or moreso retarded as the rest of filth spewing from politically-correct whackjobs mouths. Something is only racist when it denotes hatred towards a certain group. Complementing West-Africans, and thus African-Americans on their superior genetics is not an act of hatred. Saying blacks are uneducated, something that brings back racial predjudices and human rights violations from American history, has a little bit more hatred behind it.

Its the same reason why the word "N*****" denotes hatred and is unnacceptable, whereas the word "Cracker" does not stem from any time where whites were horribly mistreated and the word itself was not used to demean human life.

Except maybe on the basketball court.

I can't believe I'm saying this about a Canuck, but you're easily the smartest person on this thread.

And yes, the first half of that sentence was meant to be something of an ironic joke - don't take it too seriously PC America.

If you can compliment an ethnic group on its superior genetic disposition for certain types of performance, then that should extend to all areas. Saying black people are unintelligent is the equivalent of saying white people are slow or weak. Both are derogatory generalizing statements and the outrage over each is roughly inversely proportional to the social standing of the ethnic group in question.

Turn both statements into compliments and you would say that blacks are athletically gifted and whites are intellectually gifted. So now we're good, right? Both statements are positive, so nobody has any problem with them.

Hmmmm....?