Stay Classy, Herald Readers
When the Herald’s revamped website launched in September, we were excited it was the first of the big dailies to add a commenting feature to its articles. Finally, we would get an unedited view into the mind of the paper’s readers.
But after reading the comments on a story about racism at the MBTA, we’re kind of regretting it.
If you haven’t been paying attention this week, it was revealed on Wednesday that an MBTA customer service agent was suspended for five days after he wore a noose to work on Halloween. The man said it was a pagan ritual, but his coworkers were understandably upset by his “choice of neckwear.”
The paper kept working the story, and found a Kenyan woman who was harassed and assaulted on bus because of her race. When she complained to the bus driver, he did nothing. Now that there seems to be a system-wide permissiveness of racism, Gov. Deval Patrick and Mayor Tom Menino are calling for an investigation. The Herald commenters, however, don’t see a problem.
jj writes
I ride the red line to Ashmont each day, the black school kid rise hell all the way. Yelling and calling each other the n word, they cannot complete a sentence without using the F word, taking up seats with bags so people can’t sit down. Same thing each day and nothing is ever done about it. How about the har***ment I take each day? I know most of them will never do anything with their life and its another generation of where is mine.
Dewane H. helpfully adds, “WHOA!! That is one fugly woman!”
Another crybaby hater…. writes:
Blah Blah noose blah blah n-word blah blah racial equality…Come on now do you see me and my irish friends saying ban potato’s or how about the english, they hung more people than any other race and they arent whining. MANIPULATION, is all its about, something for nothing, because as a race blacks are pitiful people playing the pity card! Hang ‘em all let god sort them out!
We know the anonymity of the Internet makes it easy to be a hateful bigot, but we would be ashamed to even attach our pseudonym to comments that terrible. If you need us, we’ll be restoring our faith in humanity by watching the laughing baby video on YouTube.
November 16th, 2007 at 11:53 am
Just to pick one little point here: I don’t think the Internet makes it easy to be a hateful bigot. That is, I don’t think people *become* hateful bigots because they use the web. It just happens that in polite company, when they can’t be anonymous or pseudonymous, they would tend to keep their noxious ideas to themselves. So I think they’re just saying what would otherwise remain silent.
Another possibility for the world’s bigots, absent the Internet, is that they’d confine their comments to a small group of like-minded people in person or over the phone. It’s easy to find like-minded people on the net, so maybe people come to believe that these ideas are okay in a wider audience.
November 16th, 2007 at 3:57 pm
Some people in Boston are racists! Stop the presses! While everything you said is true, you said too little. Also true is that snarky comments can have a corrosive effect on the elusive civility we all seek. Hmm, where would I go to find those wiseass ad hominems? Let me think now…..