Idaho Racists Menace Visiting NCAA Basketball Team

The fundamentalist republicans and maga people keep telling us there is no need to DEI programs because racism, especially systemic racism is gone.  Racism in the US is only against white people says Stephen Miller and his ilk.  But then we have this stuff.  Hugs.  Scottie


 

NPR reports:

Police in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, and the FBI are investigating after a team in the NCAA Women’s basketball tournament said they were racially harassed while staying in the city.

Members of the University of Utah women’s team told police someone in a truck displaying a confederate flag yelled racial slurs and revved the engine in a menacing way as players and staff walked to dinner last Thursday. They say that same truck and a second were waiting as the team returned from dinner and followed them back to their hotel.

Utah’s team, and the women’s team from the University of California, Irvine, were staying in the north Idaho town to participate in the basketball tournament in nearby Spokane, Wash.

CNN reports:

The Utah women’s basketball team had to switch hotels after experiencing what head coach Lynne Roberts called “racial hate crimes” ahead of its first NCAA tournament game. Roberts said the Utes switched hotels after just one night before their games in Spokane.

“For our players and staff to not feel safe in an NCAA tournament environment, it’s messed up, and so we moved hotels,” she explained. “The NCAA and ([host university) Gonzaga worked to get us in a new hotel and we appreciate that. That’s what happened. It was a distraction and upsetting and unfortunate.

Axios reports:

 


Officials in Idaho tried to apologize Tuesday for the racism the University of Utah’s women’s basketball team faced in Coeur d’Alene before an NCAA tournament game at Gonzaga.

They abruptly shut down the news conference when a far-right operative began shouting questions at a human rights advocate. Spokesman Review reporter Alex Duggan identified the agitator as Dave Reilly, a far-right activist and consultant with the powerful Idaho Freedom Foundation.

The harassment “was a distraction and upsetting and unfortunate,” Utah head coach Lynne Roberts said Monday in a news conference following the Utes’ loss to Gonzaga.

 

Idaho officials: hold my hood, I have to make a statement.
Also Idaho officials: we feel bad that our racism offended you. See, how welcoming we are?

The majority of Idahoans have always been racist, homophobic, misogynistic and xenophobic. Ask any LGBTQ+ escapee from Idaho – I’ve known several.

My dad was raised in Idaho long ago, and while he did get over some of his Idahoan attitudes, others stuck with him his whole life, and damaged him and the people around him.

I’ve been the target of an incident similar to the one described: Bigfoot pickup plastered with the usual stickers and full of young white men. As I walked across a nearly empty parking lot, the truck circled me, revving, as the men shouted abuse. I can tell you it scared the crap out of me. Then there was the rolling coal pickup that tailgated me for miles on a rural road. Fun times in Florida!

I’m so glad you got through those events in one piece. American violence is so pervasive that most people there don’t notice it anymore. I live in Mexico now, where old people are treated pretty well, and the US seems casually violent in so many, many ways when I visit. I’m no longer used to American levels of violence and constant, continuous, low-level threat.

It’s always a huge shock to me, returning to the United States after a few months in Europe. It starts with the omnipresent television screens in all the airports broadcasting CNN and the men with guns patrolling everywhere.

IMO, way too much white supremacy nonsense in Idaho and Montana for me. I won’t be planning any excursions up there.

I sat at a diner in Billings MT some years ago as an acquaintance explained to me how socialistic health care was destroying Canada. Telling her that since I was a resident of Vancouver B.C., a dual citizen, and a regular user of Canadian health care, that she was dead wrong, made no impression on her or her friends whatsoever. She knew better than me. After all, she was an American Moron, me, WTF did I know?

Idaho in general and northern Idaho especially is a hotbed for racist morons. My chiropractor, who’s a middle of the road conservative, took his family on vacation to Idaho last year and when I asked him how it was he said Idaho was beautiful but a lot of people up there are “scary militia types.”

“I’m proud to sign this bill and ensure Idahoans are hired or accepted into college based on merit and hard work.”

It is so hard to be white, christian, and male. So hard

Notice the racism? They’re saying that Black people can’t earn their position the way everyone else does. It’s always there under the surface.

3 thoughts on “Idaho Racists Menace Visiting NCAA Basketball Team

  1. In part Europe has learnt the lesson. We have relatively tough Hate Crimes legislation, far from perfect. Also the top politicians tend to band together on the issue, again not in a perfect way, but the extreme Right here is treated like any other terrorists.
    Of course that doesn’t stop extremists from trying to slither in in other ways.

    Liked by 2 people

    1. Hello Roger. I wish the US would. Instead we seem drive by a segment of the population to regress into a gang torn nation governed by regional warlords. Sad to think what greed, bigotry, racism, and hate has done to a once progressive growing country. Hugs. Scottie

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Yes it is sad to think that once there was progress and consensus across the board.
        The great cartoonist Jeff Danzig drew one of Uncle Sam being shown a political manifesto by a Democratic mule point out a line in which the Democrats were different from the Republicans while in the background Republican Elephants and other Democrat mules examined documents with magnifying glasses trying to find differences, that was about the year 2000- happier times.
        The trouble was the guard was let down and folk just treated the extremists on the right as figures of fun and ridicule. Intolerance never rests.
        I am so upset and sorry for my adopted country.
        Take care you guys.

        Liked by 1 person

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