It's something you may not have noticed. It's like QAnon. Or mass voter fraud. It's another conspiracy theory. This one? That Duke volleyball player Rachel Richardson, who said she was called multiple racial slurs while playing in a game at BYU, made the entire thing up.YTes, that is more likely than that there was loud racial taunting throughout the game, but none of the other players, staff, 5000 live fans, 1000s more TV audience, or anyone else heard it.My email inbox has been overwhelmed with this conspiracy theory. It's grown across social media. The right wing has spent extensive time promoting it. ...
1. Say, just for argument's sake, that Rachel Richardson made up this story. You have to believe that she did knowing she was putting not just her volleyball future at risk but her college future as a student at Duke. She'd be forever tarnished as a liar. One of the worst liars.
2. You have to believe she then lied to her dad. Which is possible. Kids lie to their parents, but about this? But also...
3. You'd have to believe she would then let her father go on CNN and repeat that lie.
What the conspiracy theories essentially all come down to is one thing: no one heard Richardson being called the slur. ...
In many ways, this story is about race and how Black people have to constantly prove we're not criminals or liars. ...
Then the right wing will call it all a hoax. Again. They will call her Jussie Smollett 2.0. In fact, some already are calling her that. ...
So at this point, according to the conspiracy theorists, she's lied to her teammates. Her coaches. The BYU coaches. The BYU athletic director. The police. Her godmother. Her father. The world because of her statement. ESPN. Then allowed her father to lie to a CNN audience.
You could say that it is not in her interests to make up a story like that, but you could say that about Jussie Smollett also.
Another possibility is that she is delusional, and does not know whether it happened or not.
Update: The NY Times reports:
The school apologized to a spectator it had banned from its sporting events and said it could not corroborate a Duke player’s accusations of racial heckling. Duke said it stood by its players, “especially when their character is called into question.”In other words, it is a hoax and no one will admit it.
Nobody can find any actual examples of Blacks suffering racial discrimination. All they can find is an example of a crazy Black women who claims that she suffered racist taunts throught a college volleyball match. Probably with the N-word, but no one wants to say.
The trouble is that no one else heard the taunts. The other players, guards, officials, and fans did not hear them. The game was recorded and televised, and the records show no taunted.
And yet it is a national news story that this Black girl claims to be offended.
What I get 08t 0f this is that the news media, and college officials, are really for stories about Blacks suffering some racial discrimination. So eager that they look long and hard for a story, and accept the most wildly implausible stories.
Duke is famous for its supposedly racist boys lacrosse team, but all that turned out to be a giant hoax. No sensible person would have believed it, but it was a huge story for about a year.
The NY Times published this correction:
Published Aug. 27, 2022No, a student newspaper proved to BYU that it never happened. The match was video recorded. Everyone there said it did not happen. Duke is lying.
Updated Sept. 15, 2022Update: After an investigation, B.Y.U. said on Sept. 9 that it had found no evidence of racial slurs and apologized to the fan it had barred. Duke said it was standing by its players.
1 comment:
Lies often have a way of taking on a life of their own. What might have been a lie told to a few for attention or advantage is suddenly seized by some wind of authority and lofted high into the awareness of many... where it is scrutinized and torn apart for the fabrication it was.
Lies have a way of outgrowing their creators.
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