i saw the picture and thought it was pretty mundane, tbh, but i guess it's in the eye of the beholder. given the teacher's lack of malicious intent, it seems like a silly issue to get super worked up about, but the writer certainly has the right to get worked up about it, and his readers have the right to think his opinion is dumb and dismissible. comparing it to blackface seems disingenuous to me.
The author certainly didn't "get worked up about it," he expressed an opinion, he didn't call for anyone to get fired, he offered an alternate way to look at the situation, those things used to be of value, pretty clear that has been diminished. Of course anyone has the option to think his opinion is dumb and dismissable, that's well within anyone's right. It certainly sends a very strong message to dismiss a black man's opinion on white people wearing afros as dumb and dismissable. I have to wonder what opinion this gentleman has about things that he deems important to who he is, merits being taken seriously. I can't help but to extend that to how you feel about opinions that I have that you can't wrap your hands around.
No one compared this to blackface, so I don't know where you got that from. I do think they are very comparable though, as in most cases the intent isn't harm. I assure you that 99% of people wearing blackface didn't do so with the intent of offending anyone.
By "worked up" i mean feel strongly enough about it to write an opinion article about it and publish it in the newspaper, and refer to the picture as "hideous." It's not like this was a subtle passive critique -- not that I'm saying it needed to be. Like I said, that's his prerogative, and mission accomplished: he got people to consider his argument -- it's just that a good portion of his audience disagreed with him pretty strongly about it -- which is their prerogative too. I certainly don't think anyone should be threatening or doxxing him or going over the top in response, but his opinion that "wearing a patrick mahomes whig is distasteful" is subject to criticism too. I don't think opinion articles are really supposed to be met with total deferential respect for the substance of the article.
No one is asking for total deference, but I don't understand doing anything other than saying "okay, good to know" if you can't understand why he feels that way. The pushback isn't a thirst for more knowledge to understand why he feels the way he does, it's a bunch of people telling him he's wrong, or assigning words to him that he didn't use, or crying about the media.
I'm not asking anyone to agree with his thoughts, y'all keep dancing around the fact that I said I don't agree with him. What is well beyond reasonable and what should be the decent thing to do is to not be dismissive on what he's telling you. His opinion comes from a place that all of the people, for some reason pissed that he expressed it, doesn't understand. You have the right to say, "i don't give a crap about your opinion" but just know that to people who empathize with him, you telling him that his opinion is wrong, stupid, or any of that crap, has severe repercussions. He isn't offering his opinion about the chiefs offensive line, or what he thinks of everything bagels, he's telling you something very real about how he sees your world as an outsider, and the response he's been given speaks volumes about what people thinks about offering said opinion. I'm telling you the reaction is hideous, and I don't feel like the wigs are a big deal. I do know that I hold opinions as a black man, living, working, and playing around 80% white people that most would find trivial, and it is real discouraging that expressing that opinion would essentially lead to people telling me to shut the eff up and I have no right to express them to anyone but my other black friends.
