Libertine Seguros said:
I am not in the "it's forgivable if you're angry and you didn't really mean it in a racist way" camp. There are lots of perfectly good ways to express your anger with somebody that doesn't involve abuse related to their ethnicity. I don't care how much you want to offend them, if you didn't mean to be racist, you wouldn't use the racist vocab, period.
I feel like I'm repeating myself here.
I don't mean that his - apparent - anger made it okay, I don't even mean that he was right to be angry. All I'm saying is that this shows that sometimes a person can say things without actually (consciously) believing them, society is so stock-full of this mentality that I honestly think it's affecting us all, even if we don't realise. Of course, if anger makes you use racist slurs, then you
really need to learn how to manage your anger, especially when the cause of your anger is something in a bike race. It's entirely possible that Moscon didn't so much
mean to be racist, as he
meant to say what was most hurtful, which - unfortunately - was a racist slur.
Besides, what more is he supposed to do for people to accept that he actually
does realise that his actions were wrong? That he regrets them, not just because of the personal repercussions it might have for himself, but because of their hurtful nature. He issued an apology. There's nothing more he can do, other than making sure it won't happen again, and why wouldn't you believe that's gonna be the case? Kevin Reza forgave him, or at least accepted his apology, and to me that's enough. Sure, they might never be best buddies in the peloton, but they don't need to be, they simply need to accept, and respect, each other as colleagues.
This might even make Moscon think about what sort of mentality has been lying underneath in his mind, and cause him to make absolutely certain those thoughts disappear from his mind entirely.
jaylew said:
RedheadDane said:
1) No, it does not excuse it in the sense that it makes it okay. It does, however, in my opinion "excuse" it in the sense that it at least partly explains why he - or anybody - might say something like that - whatever it was he said - without actually being actively racist: Anger + the tiny bits of racism in society seeping through = bad things.
Your theoretical person is a unicorn.
What if he - or any rider - had constantly being complaining about how dark-skinned people shouldn't be in the sport, simply because of their skin colour?
For all you know that's what his slur was. I don't know if we'll find out exactly what he said but from what I've gleaned, it doesn't sound like it was the kind of thing that just slips out.
What theoretical person? Other people than Moscon
have used racist slurs. It's not a theory, it's a fact.
Also, we
do know that Moscon hasn't constantly been complaining how dark-skinned people shouldn't be in sport, because it hasn't happened. (Possibly) complaining about it
once is terrible, yes, but it isn't
constantly complaining. Constantly complaining would be mentioning in interviews that he thought it was wrong at any chance he got. Constantly complaining would be using Twitter - and other social media - to voice his opinion all the time.