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A black student wrote those racist messages that shook the Air Force
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a425couple
Nov 8, 2017, 10:13:05 AM11/8/17
to
A black student wrote those racist messages that shook the Air Force
Academy, school says
By Samantha Schmidt November 8 at 6:11 AM
Play Video 5:29
Air Force general to racists: ‘Get out’
Lt. Gen. Jay Silveria, superintendent of the U.S. Air Force Academy,
spoke to cadets and cadet candidates on Sept. 28 after racial slurs were
written on the dormitory message boards of five black cadets at the
academy’s preparatory school. (USAFAOfficial/YouTube)
In late September, five black cadet candidates found racial slurs
scrawled on message boards on their doors at the U.S. Air Force Academy
Preparatory School. One candidate found the words “go home n‑‑‑‑‑‑”
written outside his room, his mother posted on social media, according
to the Air Force Times.
The racist messages roiled the academy in Colorado Springs and prompted
the school to launch an investigation. They led its superintendent to
deliver a stern speech that decried the “horrible language” and drew
national attention for its eloquence.
Surrounded by 1,500 members of the school’s staff, Lt. Gen. Jay Silveria
told cadets to take out their phones and videotape the speech, “so you
can use it . . . so that we all have the moral courage together.”
“If you can’t treat someone with dignity and respect,” Silveria said,
“then get out.”
The speech, which the academy posted on YouTube, went viral. It was
watched nearly 1.2 million times, grabbed headlines nationwide, and was
commended by former vice president Joe Biden and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).
But on Tuesday, the school made a jolting announcement. The person
responsible for the racist messages, the academy said, was, in fact, one
of the cadet candidates who reported being targeted by them.
“The individual admitted responsibility and this was validated by the
investigation,” academy spokesman Lt. Col. Allen Herritage said in a
statement to the Associated Press, adding: “Racism has no place at the
academy, in any shape or form.”
The cadet candidate accused of crafting the messages was not identified,
but the Colorado Springs Gazette reported that the individual is no
longer enrolled at the school. Sources also told the Gazette the cadet
candidate “committed the act in a bizarre bid to get out of trouble he
faced at the school for other misconduct,” the newspaper reported.
The announcement thrust the Air Force Academy Preparatory School onto a
growing list of recent “hate crime hoaxes” — instances in which acts of
racism or anti-Semitism were later found to be committed by someone in
the targeted minority group.
On Monday, police in Riley County, Kansas, revealed that a 21-year-old
black man, Dauntarius Williams, admitted to defacing his car with racist
graffiti as a “Halloween prank that got out of hand.” Scrawled in
washable paint were racist messages telling blacks to “Go Home,” “Date
your own kind,” and “Die.” The incident provoked controversy and concern
at nearby Kansas State University, especially after Williams spoke with
the Kansas City Star, claiming to be a black student who was leaving the
school because of the incident. He was not, in fact, a student.
Officials decided not to file criminal charges against Williams for
filing a false report, saying it “would not be in the best interests” of
citizens of the Manhattan, Kan., community, police said in a news
release. They said Williams was “genuinely remorseful” for his actions
and published an apology on his behalf.
“The whole situation got out of hand when it shouldn’t have even
started,” Williams said in the statement. “I wish I could go back to
that night but I can’t. I just want to apologize from the bottom of my
heart for the pain and news I have brought you all.”
When reports circulated last week about the racial slurs on the car,
African American students at the nearby Kansas State University campus
held a meeting to talk about the incident.
Andrew Hammond, a journalism student at Kansas State, told the Kansas
City Star Monday he was “outraged and hurt” to learn the crime was fake.
“As a black student who has witnessed racist incidents first-hand around
Manhattan this hurts the credibility of students who actually want to
step out and say something about it,” Hammond said. “I’m not sure what
type of human being does this kind of thing as a prank.”
About three weeks earlier, police announced that a 29-year-old black
man, a former student named Eddie Curlin, had been charged in connection
with three racist graffiti incidents at Eastern Michigan University:
“KKK” sprayed on a dorm wall, messages ordering blacks to leave scrawled
on a building, and a racist message left in a men’s restroom stall.
It’s unclear exactly what prompts people to commit these hoaxes, stunts
and false reports. But such revelations have become a major concern for
civil rights activists who document racist and anti-Semitic incidents,
particularly amid a rise in reported hate crimes since the 2016 general
election.
“There aren’t many people claiming fake hate crimes, but when they do,
they make massive headlines,” Ryan Lenz, senior investigative writer for
the Southern Poverty Law Center Intelligence Project, told ProPublica.
All it takes is one false report, Lenz said, “to undermine the
legitimacy of other hate crimes.”
These reports have also energized many right-wing commentators and
President Trump supporters, who argue that reports about hate speech and
racist graffiti are often fake accounts disseminated by liberal media.
“Anyone (including the lapdog media) who was surprised by this hate
crime hoax hasn’t been paying attention,” Jeremy Carl, a research fellow
at the right-leaning Hoover Institution at Stanford University, tweeted
early Wednesday in response to the news about the Air Force Academy
Preparatory School. “The stream of fake hate crimes became a flood after
Trump’s election.”
“HATE HOAX: Air Force Academy Cadet Candidate Wrote Fake Racist Messages
Himself,” read a headline in the conservative Daily Caller.
There is even a website called fakehatecrimes.com committed to listing
hate crime hoaxes.
In August, Sebastian Gorka, then-deputy assistant to Trump and his
spokesman on national security matters, appeared on MSNBC to explain why
the president hadn’t condemned the bombing of a mosque in Bloomington,
Minn. He suggested it was because the attack may have been a “fake” hate
crime.
“There’s a great rule: All initial reports are false,″ Gorka said.
“We’ve had a series of crimes committed, alleged hate crimes, by
right-wing individuals in the last six months, that turned out to
actually have been propagated by the left.”
Despite the string of frauds, experts on hate crimes say that false
accounts are still relatively rare.
Brian Levin, director for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California
State University at San Bernardino, told Talking Points Memo that hoaxes
do appear in hate crime reports, just as they do in reports of other
criminal offenses. But these fakes are a “tiny fraction” of the hundreds
of hate crimes reported to law enforcement every year.
“These hoaxes have become symbols for some who want to promote the idea
that most hate crimes are hoaxes,” Levin said. “That’s important to
rectify.”
And indeed, scores of these incidents are cropping up across the
country, particularly on college campuses.
Using a ProPublica database, BuzzFeed News found 154 total incidents of
hate speech at more than 120 college campuses nationwide. More than
two-thirds promoted white supremacist groups or ideology, while more
than a third cited Trump’s name or slogans, BuzzFeed News reported.
Yet authorities caught fewer than 5 percent of perpetrators in cases of
vandalism or threats. In at least three instances, college officials
determined the incident was a hoax, according to BuzzFeed News.
On Tuesday, Silveria, the Air Force general who gained national fame for
his speech condemning the September incidents at the preparatory
academy, stood by his original remarks.
“Regardless of the circumstances under which those words were written,
they were written, and that deserved to be addressed,” Silveria told the
Colorado Springs Gazette in a Tuesday email. “You can never
over-emphasize the need for a culture of dignity and respect — and those
who don’t understand those concepts, aren’t welcome here.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/11/08/a-black-student-wrote-those-racist-messages-that-shook-the-air-force-academy/?utm_term=.c9f30f313461
Academy, school says
By Samantha Schmidt November 8 at 6:11 AM
Play Video 5:29
Air Force general to racists: ‘Get out’
Lt. Gen. Jay Silveria, superintendent of the U.S. Air Force Academy,
spoke to cadets and cadet candidates on Sept. 28 after racial slurs were
written on the dormitory message boards of five black cadets at the
academy’s preparatory school. (USAFAOfficial/YouTube)
In late September, five black cadet candidates found racial slurs
scrawled on message boards on their doors at the U.S. Air Force Academy
Preparatory School. One candidate found the words “go home n‑‑‑‑‑‑”
written outside his room, his mother posted on social media, according
to the Air Force Times.
The racist messages roiled the academy in Colorado Springs and prompted
the school to launch an investigation. They led its superintendent to
deliver a stern speech that decried the “horrible language” and drew
national attention for its eloquence.
Surrounded by 1,500 members of the school’s staff, Lt. Gen. Jay Silveria
told cadets to take out their phones and videotape the speech, “so you
can use it . . . so that we all have the moral courage together.”
“If you can’t treat someone with dignity and respect,” Silveria said,
“then get out.”
The speech, which the academy posted on YouTube, went viral. It was
watched nearly 1.2 million times, grabbed headlines nationwide, and was
commended by former vice president Joe Biden and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).
But on Tuesday, the school made a jolting announcement. The person
responsible for the racist messages, the academy said, was, in fact, one
of the cadet candidates who reported being targeted by them.
“The individual admitted responsibility and this was validated by the
investigation,” academy spokesman Lt. Col. Allen Herritage said in a
statement to the Associated Press, adding: “Racism has no place at the
academy, in any shape or form.”
The cadet candidate accused of crafting the messages was not identified,
but the Colorado Springs Gazette reported that the individual is no
longer enrolled at the school. Sources also told the Gazette the cadet
candidate “committed the act in a bizarre bid to get out of trouble he
faced at the school for other misconduct,” the newspaper reported.
The announcement thrust the Air Force Academy Preparatory School onto a
growing list of recent “hate crime hoaxes” — instances in which acts of
racism or anti-Semitism were later found to be committed by someone in
the targeted minority group.
On Monday, police in Riley County, Kansas, revealed that a 21-year-old
black man, Dauntarius Williams, admitted to defacing his car with racist
graffiti as a “Halloween prank that got out of hand.” Scrawled in
washable paint were racist messages telling blacks to “Go Home,” “Date
your own kind,” and “Die.” The incident provoked controversy and concern
at nearby Kansas State University, especially after Williams spoke with
the Kansas City Star, claiming to be a black student who was leaving the
school because of the incident. He was not, in fact, a student.
Officials decided not to file criminal charges against Williams for
filing a false report, saying it “would not be in the best interests” of
citizens of the Manhattan, Kan., community, police said in a news
release. They said Williams was “genuinely remorseful” for his actions
and published an apology on his behalf.
“The whole situation got out of hand when it shouldn’t have even
started,” Williams said in the statement. “I wish I could go back to
that night but I can’t. I just want to apologize from the bottom of my
heart for the pain and news I have brought you all.”
When reports circulated last week about the racial slurs on the car,
African American students at the nearby Kansas State University campus
held a meeting to talk about the incident.
Andrew Hammond, a journalism student at Kansas State, told the Kansas
City Star Monday he was “outraged and hurt” to learn the crime was fake.
“As a black student who has witnessed racist incidents first-hand around
Manhattan this hurts the credibility of students who actually want to
step out and say something about it,” Hammond said. “I’m not sure what
type of human being does this kind of thing as a prank.”
About three weeks earlier, police announced that a 29-year-old black
man, a former student named Eddie Curlin, had been charged in connection
with three racist graffiti incidents at Eastern Michigan University:
“KKK” sprayed on a dorm wall, messages ordering blacks to leave scrawled
on a building, and a racist message left in a men’s restroom stall.
It’s unclear exactly what prompts people to commit these hoaxes, stunts
and false reports. But such revelations have become a major concern for
civil rights activists who document racist and anti-Semitic incidents,
particularly amid a rise in reported hate crimes since the 2016 general
election.
“There aren’t many people claiming fake hate crimes, but when they do,
they make massive headlines,” Ryan Lenz, senior investigative writer for
the Southern Poverty Law Center Intelligence Project, told ProPublica.
All it takes is one false report, Lenz said, “to undermine the
legitimacy of other hate crimes.”
These reports have also energized many right-wing commentators and
President Trump supporters, who argue that reports about hate speech and
racist graffiti are often fake accounts disseminated by liberal media.
“Anyone (including the lapdog media) who was surprised by this hate
crime hoax hasn’t been paying attention,” Jeremy Carl, a research fellow
at the right-leaning Hoover Institution at Stanford University, tweeted
early Wednesday in response to the news about the Air Force Academy
Preparatory School. “The stream of fake hate crimes became a flood after
Trump’s election.”
“HATE HOAX: Air Force Academy Cadet Candidate Wrote Fake Racist Messages
Himself,” read a headline in the conservative Daily Caller.
There is even a website called fakehatecrimes.com committed to listing
hate crime hoaxes.
In August, Sebastian Gorka, then-deputy assistant to Trump and his
spokesman on national security matters, appeared on MSNBC to explain why
the president hadn’t condemned the bombing of a mosque in Bloomington,
Minn. He suggested it was because the attack may have been a “fake” hate
crime.
“There’s a great rule: All initial reports are false,″ Gorka said.
“We’ve had a series of crimes committed, alleged hate crimes, by
right-wing individuals in the last six months, that turned out to
actually have been propagated by the left.”
Despite the string of frauds, experts on hate crimes say that false
accounts are still relatively rare.
Brian Levin, director for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California
State University at San Bernardino, told Talking Points Memo that hoaxes
do appear in hate crime reports, just as they do in reports of other
criminal offenses. But these fakes are a “tiny fraction” of the hundreds
of hate crimes reported to law enforcement every year.
“These hoaxes have become symbols for some who want to promote the idea
that most hate crimes are hoaxes,” Levin said. “That’s important to
rectify.”
And indeed, scores of these incidents are cropping up across the
country, particularly on college campuses.
Using a ProPublica database, BuzzFeed News found 154 total incidents of
hate speech at more than 120 college campuses nationwide. More than
two-thirds promoted white supremacist groups or ideology, while more
than a third cited Trump’s name or slogans, BuzzFeed News reported.
Yet authorities caught fewer than 5 percent of perpetrators in cases of
vandalism or threats. In at least three instances, college officials
determined the incident was a hoax, according to BuzzFeed News.
On Tuesday, Silveria, the Air Force general who gained national fame for
his speech condemning the September incidents at the preparatory
academy, stood by his original remarks.
“Regardless of the circumstances under which those words were written,
they were written, and that deserved to be addressed,” Silveria told the
Colorado Springs Gazette in a Tuesday email. “You can never
over-emphasize the need for a culture of dignity and respect — and those
who don’t understand those concepts, aren’t welcome here.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/11/08/a-black-student-wrote-those-racist-messages-that-shook-the-air-force-academy/?utm_term=.c9f30f313461
Byker
Nov 8, 2017, 11:51:30 AM11/8/17
to
"a425couple" wrote in message news:otv72...@news6.newsguy.com...
What did I tell ya'?
On Oct. 1, 2017:
------------------------------------
BEGIN TEXT:
"The Sad State Of The USAF" wrote in message
news:be1a47a34ba03921...@dizum.com...
>
> Lt. Gen. Jay Silveria had an important message for U.S. Air Force Academy
> cadets at a moment of crisis.
>
> Five black cadet candidates at the academy’s preparatory school in
> Colorado Springs had found racial slurs written on the message boards on
> their doors.
No doubt hoaxes perpetrated by the "victims".
> Silveria, who took over as the school’s superintendent in August, urged
> cadets to reach for their phones.
With a Latino surname, he's just trying to win brownie points with the
MSM...
> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2017/09/29/meet-the-air-force-general-who-delivered-a-powerful-lesson-in-leadership/?utm_term=.3df491923ff5
>
> Dear General Silveria,
>
> Niggers are a problem in the military just like faggots. You were never
> in the real Air Force where we had to put up with niggers building locker
> ghettos at their end of the squadbay, hanging Christmas lights on them and
> smoking reefer. They'd shave, then rub their faces with aircraft
> hydraulic fluid so they would get "the bumps" and not have to shave. Most
> of the scumbags also took that to mean no showers.
>
> You want to kiss nigger ass, you do it on your own fucking time.
>
> Maybe it's time you retired and got the fuck out so you can suck Obama's
> dick.
END TEXT
Then on Oct. 7:
-----------------------------
BEGIN TEXT:
"The Sad State Of The USAF" wrote in message
news:c7a874198ea1a091...@dizum.com...
>
> Lt. Gen. Jay Silveria had an important message for U.S. Air Force Academy
> cadets at a moment of crisis.
>
> Five black cadet candidates at the academy’s preparatory school in
> Colorado Springs had found racial slurs written on the message boards on
> their doors.
Will he step forward to wipe the egg off his face when the "slurs" turn out
to be hoax, perpetrated by the "victims"?
END TEXT
>
> A black student wrote those racist messages that shook the Air Force
> Academy, school says
>
> By Samantha Schmidt
> November 8 at 6:11 AM
>
> A black student wrote those racist messages that shook the Air Force
> Academy, school says
>
> By Samantha Schmidt
> November 8 at 6:11 AM
>
> The announcement thrust the Air Force Academy Preparatory School onto a
> growing list of recent “hate crime hoaxes” — instances in which acts of
> racism or anti-Semitism were later found to be committed by someone in the
> targeted minority group.
>
> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/11/08/a-black-student-wrote-those-racist-messages-that-shook-the-air-force-academy/?utm_term=.c9f30f313461
> growing list of recent “hate crime hoaxes” — instances in which acts of
> racism or anti-Semitism were later found to be committed by someone in the
> targeted minority group.
>
What did I tell ya'?
On Oct. 1, 2017:
------------------------------------
BEGIN TEXT:
"The Sad State Of The USAF" wrote in message
news:be1a47a34ba03921...@dizum.com...
>
> Lt. Gen. Jay Silveria had an important message for U.S. Air Force Academy
> cadets at a moment of crisis.
>
> Five black cadet candidates at the academy’s preparatory school in
> Colorado Springs had found racial slurs written on the message boards on
> their doors.
No doubt hoaxes perpetrated by the "victims".
> Silveria, who took over as the school’s superintendent in August, urged
> cadets to reach for their phones.
With a Latino surname, he's just trying to win brownie points with the
MSM...
> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2017/09/29/meet-the-air-force-general-who-delivered-a-powerful-lesson-in-leadership/?utm_term=.3df491923ff5
>
> Dear General Silveria,
>
> Niggers are a problem in the military just like faggots. You were never
> in the real Air Force where we had to put up with niggers building locker
> ghettos at their end of the squadbay, hanging Christmas lights on them and
> smoking reefer. They'd shave, then rub their faces with aircraft
> hydraulic fluid so they would get "the bumps" and not have to shave. Most
> of the scumbags also took that to mean no showers.
>
> You want to kiss nigger ass, you do it on your own fucking time.
>
> Maybe it's time you retired and got the fuck out so you can suck Obama's
> dick.
END TEXT
Then on Oct. 7:
-----------------------------
BEGIN TEXT:
"The Sad State Of The USAF" wrote in message
news:c7a874198ea1a091...@dizum.com...
>
> Lt. Gen. Jay Silveria had an important message for U.S. Air Force Academy
> cadets at a moment of crisis.
>
> Five black cadet candidates at the academy’s preparatory school in
> Colorado Springs had found racial slurs written on the message boards on
> their doors.
Will he step forward to wipe the egg off his face when the "slurs" turn out
to be hoax, perpetrated by the "victims"?
END TEXT
Jonathan
Nov 8, 2017, 7:53:27 PM11/8/17
to
On 11/8/2017 10:12 AM, a425couple wrote:
> A black student wrote those racist messages that shook the Air Force
> Academy, school says
> By Samantha Schmidt November 8 at 6:11 AM
> Play Video 5:29
> Air Force general to racists: ‘Get out’
>
So I suppose this is an attempt to show this single
> A black student wrote those racist messages that shook the Air Force
> Academy, school says
> By Samantha Schmidt November 8 at 6:11 AM
> Play Video 5:29
> Air Force general to racists: ‘Get out’
>
incident proves there is no racism or hate crimes
in America?
Well then, I guess all I need to do is show a single
instance of racism or a single hate crime to prove
they are rampant in America?
Is that how it goes?
Anecdotes may be interesting but they prove nothing.
Grantland
Nov 9, 2017, 1:51:14 AM11/9/17
to
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