Lead Story
Questionable Judgments
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In October a judge in Greenock, Scotland, found 23-year-old Hui Yu, a student from Beijing, not guilty of a traffic violation. Two police officers had identified Hui as the perpetrator, but the judge accepted the defendant’s claim that he’d been elsewhere at the time of the alleged offense, ruling that “all Chinese people can look the same to a native Scot. It’s only when you have time to look that you begin to see the differences.” (Interviewed later by BBC News, an ethnically Chinese
In December 57-year-old Bonilyn Wilbanks-Free (who is white) resigned as town manager of Golden Beach, Florida, following an incident in which she addressed 55-year-old assistant town manager Barbara Tarasenko (who is black) as “mammy” in front of two other officials. According to a complaint by Tarasenko, Wilbanks-Free then tried to apologize by explaining how much she “loved Aunt Jemima.” (Wilbanks-Free maintained to an investigator that her use of the term had been a slip of the tongue–an accidental combination of “missy” and “ma’am,” two words she said she often uses playfully.)
An unidentified man fled after failing to hold up a Git ‘n’ Go convenience store in Des Moines in December; the attempt stalled when clerk Terry Cook refused to turn over any money, having noticed the robber’s extended thumb sticking out of the coat pocket where he was ostensibly holding a gun and concluded it was just his hand. Cook said that the robber briefly tried to insist he did so have a gun but soon gave up.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): illustration/Shawn Belshwender.
