Running racism in America thread

BYU investigation of BYU clears BYU.

 

I’m not super trustful of BYU (or any D-I school come to think of it) but in many ways it would be easier for them to pin this on a single bad actor and declare the problem handled than to have to walk this back and take the heat they know is coming.

 

There's another thread, but it appears to have withered, and this seems like a reasonable place to note ... Oberlin is finally done with its feet-dragging and is gonna pay those poor souls it defamed. Here's hoping the check arrives ahead of the sheriff.

Oberlin College to pay $36.59M to bakery owners who claim they were falsely accused of racism - CNN

 

This is my shocked face.

 

In a era when being accused of racism is akin to being accused a witch, you’ve lost when accused. When the legend became libel, print the libel. Oberlin went with the libel rather have the students feel bad. Similar to what Duke did some years ago.

 

See NASCAR, noose and Bubba Wallace.

 

Question is, why would anyone believe pronouncements from Duke? It’s not like they don’t have a history of lies, cover ups, athletic inappropriateness with the occasional blind political correctness?

 

I don't feel bad for Oberlin -- their handling of this from start to finish was appalling. But 36M is kind of ridiculous. The jury determined the family that owns the store suffered $5M in compensatory damages (loss of goodwill, emotional distress, loss of revenue, reputational harm, etc.). That plus pre and postjudgment interest would give them a nice chunk of change to make up for their harm. I also agree with the assessment of punitive damages in this case -- Oberlin and other colleges need to be sent a strong message to deter such conduct in the future. But 20M in punitives is ridiculous. Especially when people who have been maimed and killed by corporate malfeasance are begrudged a couple million in punitives by the same screech machine nodding its head over this award. I mean, the 79-year-old woman in the McDonald's case -- who was NOT driving and was in a car that was parked -- suffered third degree burns over a good portion of her body, and her genitals and inner thighs were charred black from the coffee, requiring skin grafts, debridement treatments and a lengthy hospital stay. And McDonald's despite having similar claims in the past still required franchises to keep the coffee at that holding temperature, knowing the burn hazard it created. All she asked for was reimbursement for medical expenses and was told to fuck off. So the $1.9M punitive award she received (one day of McDonald's worldwide coffees sales as a way of sending a message to one of the biggest corporations in the world) turned this elderly, seriously injured woman, who was never the same again, into a national punchline (partially because of a lazy media that didn't report what actually happened). Same holds true in other cases with grievous injuries. But again, the same people screeching about "jackpot justice" and stupid incompetent "victims" are all like "You go!" just because they don't like the "woke mob." I don't either, but I don't like hypocrisy. And 2-3M in punitives above and beyond the compensatory damages and interest would certainly be enough to send a message and leave the family in a better place than they were before, given that 5M was what it took to make them whole.