Hi Leah, I meant to just write a quick reply but it turned out to be a fairly long one😅 So I thought I'd put this TLDR up top.

We do seem a little at odds, but there are productive versions of being at odds with people. I think this is one. Disagreeing on an issue doesn't make us enemies in my book and clearly not in yours ether. So if you'd prefer to drop it that's totally fine. We can agree to disagree. I appreciate your support.

I had a few more thoughts on your reply, so if you fancy reading them then have at it!

Yeah, I absolutely agree with this. I certainly wouldn't be surprised if Chauvin was racist, but I've never described him as such or presumed that it was a motivation in the killing. And if not for Amy Cooper repeatedly leveraging Christian's race, I wouldn't have presumed it in her case either.

But as you say, the most obvious, and by far the most logical explanation in her case is racism. Any other explanation relies on mind-reading and context-shifting and whataboutism that is far less likely to be correct. So I'll just say that I've been in many disagreements in my life with people of all colours. And only the racists thought my skin colour was relevant. Adrenaline doesn't cause racism. It just makes it that little bit more likely to expose itself.

In the end, there's no such thing as definitive or "indisputable" proof of racism. Or of any internal motivation. I couldn't prove definitively that Chauvin didn't believe that Floyd was about to jump up and kill him if he moved his knee. I couldn't prove definitively that Arbery's murderers were racist. I couldn't prove definitively that Kimberly Potter didn't intend to kill Daunte Wright. There is always room to second guess internal motivations or the impact of past trauma or police reports or eyewitness testimony or even video evidence.

What concerns and saddens me, is the idea that we've hit such a saturation point with the stupid, woke "racism is everywhere" stuff, that the burden of proof for racism is becoming impossibly high. On one side of the scale we have video evidence, police reports, and official charges, and on the other side we have the word of the lying woman accused of being racist, and somehow I'm arguing with you (and others) about which holds more weight.

I don't think Foster came to Amy's defence (no, I would never dream of calling him or anybody an Uncle Tom) so much as he wanted to offer fair, measured context to the story. So do I. I laid out the faults in Christian's behaviour in detail because I also wanted to highlight that it wasn't simply a case of a perfect villain vs a perfect victim. Human interaction can be and often is messy. But the point I was making with the article is that Christian didn't need to be an angel to be a victim of racism. Amy doesn't need to be a monster in order to be racist. Understanding this is important in order to deal with racism. It's not only men in white hoods who are racist.