Last week, we told you about a Tumblr account called "Hello There, Racist!" which is tracking racist tweets in the wake of Obama's re-election.
The website identified six Missourians who threw around the N-word pretty freely and even hinted at assassination. It was disheartening.
But, we were also curious what kind of Twitter-shaming these boys were receiving and searched their handles. Maybe this is naive, but we were shocked by how many people thought it was appropriate to answer racial slurs with homophobic slurs.
Come ON! Does anybody know how to use Twitter appropriately?
For example, @NoahPatt54 (whose account has since been deleted) tweeted some pretty vile things, according to HTR, including: "As if it were possible I hate niggers even more now" and "One of my favorite quotes of all time from my grandma before she died: 'I'm tired of that nigger stinkin up my white house.'"
Now, clearly the point of outing these boys on Tumblr is to draw attention to them and get people to tweet-shame them, but this is just a sample of the direction some folks took it in:
@noahpatt54 Hey tough guy, go suck your dad's cock after football practice.
— Footguru (@footguru2010) November 16, 2012
@noahpatt54 @thesamnickelson yp a moose hunting right wing trigger happy racist faggot! I let God deal with ur type! may u urn in hell
— Mona Rox (@Monarox999) November 16, 2012
@dwnthalane @noahpatt54 We coming after you 240 lbs ass faggit
— SlumKeyz (@SlumKeyz) November 14, 2012
Alright! So much for fighting hate with love. We won't bore you too much more with this garbage, but here's just one more:
@kenton_david You get 40 hours at a glory-hole? You must have gums of iron.
— Hot Rod Redux (@Hotrodius) November 16, 2012
This is not to diminish any of the horrible things these racist Twitter users said or to make anyone feel sorry for them. But hate speech is hate speech. If the worst thing somebody could think to say to a racist is, "Well, you're gay," then we got problems all over town.
In conclusion, everyone is on Twitter time-out.
