The beauty of PK Subban scoring an overtime goal is that he is the most hated player on Boston ice. TD Garden will raucously boo every time he gets the puck, so like any Hater Magnet, Subban seems to handle the puck a little bit longer in Boston, perhaps to goad the fans further. Honestly, he may know how to work that crowd a little too well these days.
Unfortunately, the most thoughtless comments are often the ones that get shouted out first. Not surprisingly, the racist slurs come flowing from Bruins fans every game (including excessive use of the big N), which will even flood my timeline by those calling attention to them. As one of my followers noted tonight, "there will always be racist assholes on twitter; don't go hunting for them."
Case in point, Avrey Fowler posted this tweet after the game:
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| Subban scored the GWG in 2OT. |
Conversely, if the intention is that Subban should kill himself, then the insinuation was that they are going to "cyber-bully" him into it, and that is a modern problem of a distinctly serious nature.
Either way, the humour was bordering on cutting edge or archaic balderdash. It was indefensible. As another follower of mine tweeted earlier this evening after PK Subban scored the first goal of the series, and Boston's fans fired its first round of N-bombs, "Bruins fans are #BostonWrong" (which made me laugh out loud, but, seriously, it too was defiantly distasteful since it mimics the courageous #BostonStrong response to their 2013 terrorist attacks and minimizes the seriousness of the lives lost and forever changed).
Shortly thereafter, and when I say "shortly," believe me, it did not take long, Avrey Fowler had a tidal wave of protests in her face. If you imagine the hatred in one's heart to belittle a stranger with dismissive use of the N-word, then multiply that hatred tenfold in the responses.
As I have said before, the bigger problem today is racial sensitivity. If the joke was that there was an angry mob in Boston with a noose, ready to hang the GWG scorer, then that joke immediately crossed a line when the game-ending goal was scored by a black man. The history in North America (thanks in most part to the US) is tainted with those conditions at a time when blacks were powerless to fend off the numbers. It is a poor reality to which North Americans must be truly empathetic. Unfortunately, ignorance is not an excuse either (albeit, the only difference between "an excuse" and "an explanation" is the listener).
Conversely, if the joke was hinting that the scorer should kill himself, e.g. Megan Meier (RIP), then the tweet is the Internet at its worst, and everyone who knows better should be working to move this current reality into our sad history as soon as possible.
Ironically, both interpretations of the tweet somewhat intersected. Cyber-bullying reared its ugly head on the perceived hater. A search of Avrey's twitter handle yielded a written barrage of protests that may have made the Westboro Baptist Church uncomfortable.
Based on what I could tell, the majority took it as a racist insinuation, which was definitely the more prevalent interpretation (and, in my opinion, the most distastefully offensive interpretation). However, the overaggressive minority blurred the lines of the second interpretation, and many of the protesters crossed those lines in an equally shameful fashion.
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| She was smart enough to acknowledge voices of support, but not to flaunt it. |
Keep in mind, these reactions were not the following day, or even an hour later, but within a span of 10 minutes (less than 15, for sure).
It paralleled the "corrective thinking measures" taken by the NBA in response to LA Clippers owner Donald Sterling. If she had a reputation to lose, she would have been banned for life and fined $2.5-million as well.
Unfortunately, both cases missed the mark. Vengeance is not the most powerful reaction. It's just torturing a murderer to death (which bares a scary resemblance to some people's reaction to a botched execution in Oklahoma this week).
Racism is indefensible, but not unforgivable. Destroying someone does not strengthen anyone. Taking those people and turning them around to the better point of view does. Despite all the lengths other individuals took to set her back, tonight may have been a success in giving her a solid history to move forward. Stronger & wiser, and better than many of her most vocal critics.------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
5/3 update:
Today I went searching for Avrie Fowler again. Her Twitter account had been deactivated, but a quick search for her name kept the conversation alive. Few people genuinely discussing what took place, many asking if her account was suspended or voicing their opinions if such were the case, and some turning the situation into a punchline.
I found one person who asked innocently asked what was racist about a noose, so I clicked on to that post to look through the conversation. The response to her question was nowhere close to an answer. In fact, I believe the response was "Why are you defending a racist?" As if understanding the situation were a waste of time. That was where I stuck my nose in.
It turned out the person asking the question was a IRL friend of hers, sticking up for her friend and seemingly fighting a winning fight as her most recent Twitter conversation was mostly winning over someone by simply engaging her in conversation. In fact, the attacker even concluded their conversation by saying "this little chat was nice ... you seem halfway reasonable, though a little naive." I figured I could at least ask my lingering questions: if her joke supposed to be cyberbullying or the angry mob and whether it was meant for PK Subban or the GWG scorer?
We had a good conversation, noting the joke was the modern cyber-bullying interpretation (which most of my younger TL correctly assumed) and the tweet was sent because PK scored the GWG. Interestingly, she said most of the loudest voices were unable to explain why the noose itself was racist, considering women also hanged for being witches in the past era. (Because it was very racially insensitive, but not explicitly racist.)
The most amusing thing about the situation was, while people were unified in outrage, they failed to appreciate how far our society has come that our teenagers were blissfully unaware how lopsided the bias against minorities used to be. Unfortunately, she got a first hand example of how angry mobs worked.
