After racial slurs were yelled at University of Utah women’s basketball players on Thursday evening, many North Idahoans acknowledged the region’s decadeslong struggle with hate speech and white supremacist groups.
The Utah team was staying at the Coeur d’Alene Resort after it was selected to play in the NCAA Tournament hosted by Gonzaga University. As team members walked from the hotel to a downtown restaurant, they were followed by a driver in a truck who was shouting racial slurs at them.
When they left dinner to return to their hotel, the driver and others who were recruited to harass the team followed them back to the hotel, revving their trucks’ engines and harassing them further, according to a police report.
Cecil Kelly III, a longtime resident of Coeur d’Alene, was not shocked by what happened, but he is saddened.
Kelly remembers in the 1960s there were agreements between the business community that “you would not rent a room to a Black person.”
Was there any question of that? Idaho has people doing things like establishing white supremacist compounds. Even attempting to take over entire towns.
Yes, there is a question if open, explicit racist harassment is occurring in 2024.
Nobody thinks racism isn't dead, but brazen public racial epithets and physical threats are not something many expect or should expect 80 years after MLK and the civil rights movement.
People should be shocked, this should be reported on and everyone in Ohio and the US should be upset and up in arms that this is happening in their state, at the least.
To be surprised about this would mean not having noticed anything that occurred since Obama first started his campaign. It's the thing that specifically brought Trump and others into the fray.
That's just it. No one is shocked because this is completely normal. We could argue whether parts of Idaho are worse than parts of Ohio - which you seem to confuse for some reason - but no one with a passing familiarity with either is going to be surprised to hear that this happened quite openly in Coeur D'Alene, Wapakoneta, Piketon....
It's not some secret.
It's bad, definitely. And it should be reported. But if we're being honest about our neighbors, no one can be surprised.
This is not shocking. It happens all the time. Racial slurs and threats of violence shouldn't be accepted, but they are expected. I do agree that people should be upset.
Any person of color living in East Washington absolutely knows about the level of racism there. Utah is a shit hole. There domestic terrorist Matt Shea, who wanted to start a new state in that area.
They're also the state that was anti-vax and was punishing medical staff for trying to save people. So you had situations where people were infected and flooded Spokane for care, since doctor & nurses were leaving.
Although Mormons can be assholes, there is very much a cultural part of Mormonism of being a nice person. Seriously, Mormons are the nicest people you will ever meet even if they support or do terribly evil things.