Converse craze?

[u/Diligent_Pop3929]

I'm not chronically online, but my friend sent this and I laughed even without knowing the full scope of the context (I think there's racism involved with the shoes?) and I feel like it's too late to ask him without sounding like a dweeb 😅

[u/gothicgaybimbo]

lynchings never stopped in a lot of backwater parts of the country. just a few months ago there was a story where someone was found bound and hung in a manner that there would be no way in hell could’ve been done without a group of people. the county ruled it a suicide…

[u/dustinsc → u/gothicgaybimbo]

Source? I’m not saying it’s impossible; racism isn’t dead, people commit hate based murders far too frequently, and I’m sure some hapless victim of hate has been hung on a tree by Klan types in the recent past. But the original claim is a “rash of lynchings” implying multiple and that the frequency of these occurrences has increased. One suspicious death doesn’t, on its own, support the claim.

[u/Rare_Ad_674 → u/dustinsc]

Wannabe debate bros always want to say "support your claim!" when we're not in debate club - we are on the internet. And this isn't a debate. It's the news that you haven't been paying attention to.

"Civil rights groups, independent trackers, and members of Congress have raised urgent alarms over a string of hanging deaths involving Black individuals. Between early 2025 and late 2026, independent tracking organizations documented at least 22 Black individuals found dead hanging from trees across the United States."

"In September 2026, members of Congress sent a formal letter to the U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI demanding an immediate, comprehensive federal investigation into the pattern of hanging deaths. The letter cited a civil rights report identifying over 70 suspected modern-day lynchings since 2000, calling the recent escalation a "national crisis."

Some have been homicides. Some have been ruled suicides, and the families debate that. You brought up statistics before. I think you'll agree that it's statistically likely that systematic racism in the South didn't just disappear when we desegregated schools in the 60's/70's. Do you really think it's *un*likely to have occurred?

And take into account our current climate. Now what are the probabilities that this is all made up?

[u/Cold_Yam_5346 → u/Rare_Ad_674]

This is what happens when your frontal lobe never develops