No, I'm not overlooking this. Obviously I don't know Frederick Joseph at all. I'm not rying to judge what he's been through.

But the point you're trying to make here sums up the flaw in the logic of those who defend this kind of behaviour. The impact of whatever past racist events he may have experienced doesn't justify his behavior here.

This should be obvious, right? For example, when Liam Neeson was walking the streets looking for a random black man to kill because some other black man had raped his friend, we don't say, "oh, but we have to consider what Liam might have endured and let go." We say (or at least I'd say), if he wanted to take revenge on that rapist, I can understand that. But if he takes out his frustration on the first black man who looks at him wrong, he's a racist scumbag who, at the very least, deserves to go to jail.

And by the way, I'm not saying black people should turn the other cheek with regards racism at all. If that's how they choose to react, more power to them, Christian Cooper did this with Amy Cooper for example, but I absolutely wouldn't have judged him if he'd pressed charges (chances are high that I would have done soin his shoes).

I'm saying that whatever theoretical past racist incidents that Joseph might have experienced don't justify a real-life witch hunt over an incredibly minor incident. I'm saying that black people are more than capable of understanding proportionality and we should never allow the idea that we aren't to be normlalised.

I'm saying that in the case of Amy Cooper or Jacquline DeLuca or any of the other women I mentioned who were clearly guilty of racism, nobody was asking the black people involved to turn the other cheek and, indeed, it wasn't even necessary to try to stir up drama to see those women face consequences (again, Christian Cooper actively tried to dampen the outrage around his incident with Amy and she still got the outcome she deserved).

I'm 1000% in favour of black people standing up for themselves. The point I'm making is a) Joseph didn't stand up for himself, he weaponised a Twitter mob of over 100,000 people to stand up for him, and b) this was a trifling incident that could, and I'd strongly argue should, have been handled between two adults.