How quickly might a writer be fired or reprimanded for mocking the appearance of a group of minorities as they celebrated their team's victory at a professional sporting event?
Consider that as you read sports website SB Nation's "White People Celebrate Heat Loss in Exceedingly White Fashion."
Below that disgusting headline was the following picture with this caption and subheadline:
White people, in their natural habitat. - USA TODAY Sports
Who are the happiest people when the Bulls snap the Heat's losing streak? White people.
From there, author Bill Hanstock - whose Twitter profile boasts that he's an editor and contributor to this website - wrote, "On Wednesday night, the Chicago Bulls halted the impressive winning streak of the Miami Heat at 27 games. Luckily, a gaggle of exceedingly white dudes had courtside seats (because white people looooooove courtside seats) and treated us to the above picture."
Next on the agenda were zoomed in shots of the men in the picture above with similarly disgraceful commentary such as:
- "This guy is pretty white, I guess."
- "Hey, it's the white Lewis Black."
- "Just two white guys, enjoying each others' company, wearing their finest Cherokee-brand shirts."
- "If Wallace Shawn were an even whiter Gollum, you'd STILL have to ramp several notches up the White Guy Meter to arrive at ... THIS."
Hanstock finished his piece saying, "Never change, white people. You are a GOLD MINE."
You think he'd still be an editor and contributor to this website if the word "black" appeared throughout this piece instead of "white" and the picture in question was a bunch of African-American Bulls fans celebrating last night's victory in Chicago?
For those unfamiliar with SB Nation, short for Sports Blog Nation, Wikipedia describes it as "a sports network owned and operated by Vox Media with more than 300 separate web sites maintained primarily by part-time contract writers. They put together posts, facilitate dialogue and interact with commenters."
In December 2010, Beet.tv reported the website was getting 100 million monthly views. As such, this is a big player in online sports reporting.
Makes you wonder why management tolerates racism.
*****Update: Twitter's @ed smartly points out the lack of diversity at one of the other websites Hanstock writes for. Hanstock and his co-workers don't look very different from the Chicago fans he mocked.
(HT NB reader Jim Thompson)
