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Comment by throwaway8582 | Hacker News Reader

These "hate hoaxes" are quite common. A few of the more prominent examples from recent years include Jussie Smollett, the Rolling Stone rape story, Yasmin Seweid, and Covington Catholic. Come to think of it, it seems like most of the major stories about some racist or sexist incident turn out to be false.

It's not surprising that people do this, given how much value modern society places on "victimhood" and being a member of some oppressed group. What's more worrying is the tendency of the media and society to accept these accusations uncritically and jump on the bandwagon to condemn the alleged wrongdoer.

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The BYU Volleyball incident is the most recent.

The BYU Volleyball incident happened.

Conveniently for itself, BYU decided that the chants were not racist. Specifically, their entire justification for this finding that the fan in question did not say anything while the targeted athlete was serving the ball. But enough white Duke coaches and athletes also heard the racist remarks during the game that the university was able to identify the fan so that they could ask BYU to ban the fan.

But apparently the anti-BYU chants this past weekend were super offensive. Hypocrites.

> their entire justification for this finding that the fan in question did not say anything while the targeted athlete was serving the ball.

Wasn't the claim that someone yelled the n-word every time the girl served the ball?

Didn't BYU interview 50 students and fans, and not find a single one who could corroborate? And they pored over all of the recorded footage of the televised game and found nothing?

Seems unlikely that NPR would be carrying water for BYU if Duke had the goods. [1]

1: https://www.npr.org/2022/09/14/1122977386/byu-apologizes-to-...

No, that's what BYU claimed.

The athlete, and her teammates, and her coaches, said that the fan was making racist comments the entire game.

NPR merely reported BYU's findings. Apparently it's not politically correct to call out Mormons on their homophobia or racism, so the Duke team's experience was left out of the NPR coverage.

NPR does not credulously report on such matters. Duke's claims were thoroughly covered in the original NPR story. So obviously NPR does report on racist behavior at BYU, when it appears to be true.

Have Duke's claims been put into a report anywhere? It sounds like you accept claims of racism over a report based on actual evidence and dozens of interviews. Even when that report is widely reported in media that has egg on its face for having jumped the gun.

Can you point to Duke's evidence, or share what more could be shown by BYU/NPR/NBC to change your mind?

The footage is out there, you can review it yourself, no racial epithets were yelled. The mens basketball team was there, with a good number of black people; not a single heard anything. The entire crowd would need to be complicit, along with the refs and the coach.

It seems very clearly, at best, the person misheard, although more likely made up.

Interesting that the Root and other publications by people of color hear slurs when watching the video but Caucasians do not.

It suggests that BYU, and whites in generally, may not even be aware of their casual use of terms considered offensive to minorities.

Was this reported on The Root? I searched their site but didn't find what you describe.

They did report on the BYU investigation and seemed to disagree. [1] But they don't mention having reviewed the footage. Nor do they provide any other evidence.

1: https://www.theroot.com/byu-finds-no-evidence-of-racist-heck...

I know this thread is long-dead, but putting this out there as additional proof that the BYU incident happened:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/stand-up-n-words-more-athl...?

TLDR: the recent volleyball incident was just one of many recent BYU racism incidents.

A thing to consider is that the hoaxers would likely over-report while real victims would tend to under-report.

Don't forget this gem, which was roundly blamed on MAGA voters:

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - An Israeli-American teenager was found guilty in Israel on Thursday of making about 2,000 hoax bomb threats against Jewish and other institutions in the United States and elsewhere during Donald Trump’s rise to the U.S. presidency in 2016 and 2017.

https://www.npr.org/2018/06/28/624338353/israel-court-convic...

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-israel-usa-hacker-idUSKBN...

Its just a series of outrageous political operations.

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