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Father Robert Ballecer Dismisses TWiT’s Race Problem

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I am one of many African American TWiT viewers. Many people have brought up that TWiT has a problem, there are no black employees and may never have been any. And TWiT is not a small operation.

This lack of diversity is a common issue in many fields including some of the largest tech companies. Without diving into the socioeconomic causes and solutions or handing out blame, I do want to bring up something I find offensive. All minorities have issues regardless of which minority had it worse. But look at how Padre handles it:

padre-dismisses-racism

These are a few bad examples but every time this issue comes up he refuses to admit the problem and instead talks about himself. (Being shot at for his race?) Why not address the problem instead of turning the problem on its head to protect TWiT?

Hilton A. Goring could not be reached for comment.
Hilton A. Goring could not be reached for comment.

TotalDrama used to do a joke about a black camera guy who was in the TWiT directory. That is of note because it shows that instead of caring about the issue, like Padre, they care about the perception of TWiT.

Can you imagine if Google answered this criticism by saying, “well, we have a lot of Indians and Jews.” Preposterous.

72 thoughts on “Father Robert Ballecer Dismisses TWiT’s Race Problem”

      2. Liberal? Leo? Your re-definition of the word ‘liberal’ is more a reflection on your political views than on reality. Leo talks all kinds of bullshit so if you actually believe his babble that’s on you, but it’s pretty clear from his lifestyle , his actions, and his history he’s much more of a closet libertarian than anything.

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      2. Padre’s nickname is FMCP:

        F = Fat
        M = Mexican
        C = Clown
        P = Priest

        That’s his nickname. We didn’t make it up.

        FMCP was adopted by a nice Filipino family.

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  5. Black people were brought here in chains and couldn’t use the same bathrooms as whites until 40 years ago. I am not aware what issue Filipino and Hawaiian had that is similar.

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        2. Padre’s nickname is FMCP:

          F = Fat
          M = Mexican
          C = Clown
          P = Priest

          That’s his nickname. We didn’t make it up.

          FMCP was adopted by a nice Filipino family.

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    2. Joel osteen said:
      We should give peope of “color” more free money because of the stories they make up. Like somehow getting shot at

      A people were enslaved, for generations they received no education. They had no futures. They had no one to look up to. Anyone they saw who made something of their life was white. After a few generations the descendants were freed but not treated as people. They couldn’t vote or sit on a toilet a white sat on. They could be abused and raped and courts would often not care. Hopeless lives as maids and laborers. People hated them (like the people here) making it harder to get jobs. Laws were enacted for large companies ensure they hire minorities.

      But I agree with Joel Osteen, they just want handouts. Buncha crybabies.

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      1. How long do we need to pay for our forefathers’ mistakes?

        Slavery ended in the 1800s, civil rights movement was nearly 60 years ago. I don’t think blacks are systemically kept from bettering themselves anymore, so we can let go of affirmative action or whatever other name it parades under these days.

        It’s not just black people either, same goes for native Americans and many other groups.

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    2. JonnyEast said:
      To be fair, the tweeter was tweeting about POC and the Filipino spoke up. If the tweeter meant “African American” he should have said so.

      I’ve heard padre use this defense when TWiT is accused of racist hiring practices. Here, he is justified, kinda.

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  10. What black person would live in Petaluma? It’s a lilly-white farm town with nothing going on that would interest a ‘person of colour’ or a person of thought.

    It’s a POS place to live – for anyone.

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  11. So, hiring people base on their sex, “race” and/or ethnicity, is discrimination.

    And all I can read here…

    It’s people asking to hire people base on their sex, “race” and/or ethnicity.

    How interesting…

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    1. Isn’t that backwards? It’s illegal NOT to hire someone based on their sex or race, but I don’t think it’s illegal to hire them FOR their race.

      If I want to create a racially and sexually diverse workforce, I don’t think any government can stop me.

      Well, maybe the Third Reich. But they’ll need a time machine.

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    2. No, stony that’s not what you can see here, that’s what you are choosing to see here instead of looking at what is a real problem.

      The industry I work in has almost no women in it. Women never apply for jobs in my industry.

      Why? Because of sexist macho bullshit. For over a hundred years, everyone said that only men could do this job – only men were strong enough, only men had the right attitude.

      It was absolute shit. But it meant that no women ever applied for a job in my industry.

      My employer isn’t sexist – they don’t refuse to hire women. But women simply don’t apply.

      To me, that’s a perfect example of where an employer can actively try to make a difference.

      And to its credit, my employer actively started reaching out to women. Adverts were put in women’s magazines, recruitment material was radically changed to show women that the macho stuff was just a myth.

      Women still had to pass the strict entrance requirements and pass the training etc. but the employer went a few extra steps to try to encourage women to apply.

      That’s not discriminatory in any way. In fact, as in tech and so many other industries, racism and sexism is the *default* position – as in my industry, doing *nothing* was sexist – doing nothing to counter the male macho myth about my job. That is what they call “privilege”, where men benefit simply by being men, and women don’t even think it’s their place to try to work in such an industry.

      White people get a ton of advantages in this society – so much research has been done with people submitting identical applications with a name like “Smith” and “Ahmed”, the the white-sounding name is always more likely to get the job, people can deny it all they like – but you’ll notice how it’s always white people who deny it.

      There’s this idea from bleating white men that somehow we are suffering due to attempts to correct these issues. It’s just nonsense. White men still have a ton of advantages that women and black people simply don’t have. Bleat about it all you want, lie about history all you want. But right here, right now, in countries such as the US and UK, if you’re black you will have fewer opportunities; if you’re female you’ll have far less likelihood of being promoted to senior management, and you’ll still earn less than your white counterparts – no matter what the well-funded right-wing “why can’t we be racist anymore?” groups try to make us think.

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      1. Evilpants. Yes that’s exactly what I’m seeing here because if I want to please everyone on every issue they can find I will have to hire people for their sex, race and/or ethnicity… and not for what is actually important… they’re experience and knowledge.

        And don’t forget, if I refuse to hire people base on their sex, race and/or ethnicity it’s because I prefer to hire people for their sex, race and/or ethnicity.

        And by forcing people to hire a specific gender, race or ethnicity you’re doing it at the expense of people of another gender, race or ethnicity.

        I’ll teach you something today… If I look at people eye color, hair color, etc in relation of employment I’ll probably find a lot of discrepancy and call it discrimination and ask for parity.

        And no one has any proof that Twit refused to hired any one base on their sex, race and/or ethnicity.

        Some people a real victim of discrimination, but playing a witch-hunt game won’t help anyone.

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        1. stony said:

          And no one has any proof that Twit refused to hired any one base on their sex, race and/or ethnicity.

          Some people a real victim of discrimination, but playing a witch-hunt game won’t help anyone.

          Companies of a certain size have to make an effort. Leo hired his girlfriend, his girlfriends sister, he hired someones brother. He hired a fan to do IT and a fan to be a TD. Were these the most qualified people he could find? This perpetuates the historic problem. This is not handouts. There is a mathematical disadvantage based on history. White people have white kids etc.

          TWiT has a people page, 61 people are there.
          61 people. Ok. 61 . 0 African Americans. In the entertainment industry, crews are well over 10% African American.

          MAKE AN EFFORT.

          Lying and saying he offered Liberty Madison and MKHD a job or putting a camera guy who worked there for 8 hours once is not making an effort.

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      2. evilpants said:
        In fact, as in tech and so many other industries, racism and sexism is the *default* position – as in my industry, doing *nothing* was sexist – doing nothing to counter the male macho myth about my job. That is what they call “privilege”, where men benefit simply by being men, and women don’t even think it’s their place to try to work in such an industry.

        Let’s address this, why are you describing the tech industry as sexist(and racist) in 2016? Because there are many more men attracted to it as a career than women? So on that basis professions dominated by women are sexist as well and need to be aggressively attacked and smeared in the media and by gender activists? Yeah thought not …

        So why are there more men and women in different professions, is it discrimination, is it down to arbitrary gender roles – actually, as far as tech goes, the underlying reason runs deeper than wanting to believe in discrimination or gender as a social construct.

        If you look at international surveys of men’s and women’s career interests you will see an interesting thing – from the most backward country to the most modern(with excellent gender equality) there is a strong bias for men to be attracted to systems based careers and women to be attracted to people based careers – when women are given more freedom they show a natural strong bias for non-technical careers.

        So now you’re going to argue that that’s all a societal construct producing “traditional” gender roles – and you’d be wrong. There are numerous experiments showing that boys and girls(and other animals) behave differently depending on their exposure to testosterone – the more testosterone a girl is exposed to the more likely she show bias towards the same system based activities as boys. This can be measured in babies – before any social conditioning.

        The result of all this is that you are always going to see a bias for men and women to gravitate to different careers – some women will be attracted to technical jobs, some men to people based jobs – but overall, given free choice, different genders think and behave differently enough to produce many more, or less of them in a particular profession.

        Watch this if you want more understanding(recommended by Richard Dawkins – famous biologist, though I watched it a year or two before him 😉 ) –

        The Gender Equality Paradox – Documentary NRK – 2011

        Demanding a 50/50 split, obviously in male dominated fields only, is an ideological position based on bullshit. There is practically zero barrier to entry for anybody in a 1st world country wanting to study IT – but of course most women actually don’t want to – so when that fact exists all people can do is scream discrimination because the makeup of IT doesn’t reflect the makeup of society as a whole, which as I’ve explained is also a bullshit argument(you also have to assume that all the highly educated IT professional are actually knuckle dragging women haters – again knee deep in horseshit).

        You are falling for the same old gender cliches … there is a whole industry in the media, academia, and politics portraying women as victims and oppressed. Far more women graduate from college than men, and have done for decades, women get paid the same as men for the same job – there is a difference in lifetime earnings because women prefer different careers and take time off for raising families, ** but that is basically free choice and not discrimination **.

        Essentially in 1st world countries women can do whatever they are capable of and it’s about time this identity politics nonsense was given a good kick in the teeth together with its supporters.

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    1. I get the impression he makes it up as he goes. When he’s on TWIT his comments don’t flow with the other guests’, it sounds like he is not paying attention to what other people say. He should stick to writing, or whatever he is known for

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  14. Actually Friar Robert was not beaten or shot at because of his skin color or race, he was beaten and shot at because in relation to him propositioning a guy in a public restroom on one occasion and on the other it was not bullets being shot at him, it was something else shooting into him and neither occasion was concerning skin color it was all about his bad choice of potential sex partners.

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  17. TWiT does have a race problem. All they’ve ever had on are drone races. They’ve left out Mario Kart, Crash Bandicoot Racing, and even Grand Turismo and Need for Speed.

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      1. btw, i can’t get into chat for the last week.That sucks.no one to commiserate with is not good for the mind or soul.

        You don’t appear to be banned, your hostmask is not listed in the ban list.

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  19. I love that this site deletes my comments like it is some fine upstanding site. Never mind this site is known for simply attacking somebodies looks

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      1. The incredibly racist tirade thread was removed, including responses to it. Total Drama is not a safe haven for racists. Racist comments, comments which threaten people with sexual violence, etc are removed regularly and will continue to be removed.

        Racists can eat a dick.

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        1. Lady Bird Johnson said:
          The incredibly racist tirade thread was removed, including responses to it. Total Drama is not a safe haven for racists. Racist comments, comments which threaten people with sexual violence, etc are removed regularly and will continue to be removed.

          Racists can eat a dick.

          They weren’t racist. Because you didn’t like something doesn’t make it racist. It makes you an intolerant moron

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  21. Speaking of racist Leo, reminds me of the time Leo called himself a “Honorary Jew ” because he would “only date Jews”. Hmm… maybe it’s not racial but a religious thing, but doesn’t Leo describe himself as an atheist?

    Does not compute…

    https://youtu.be/qaD00tXmQKg?t=44m7s

    (I’m probably on Dr Mom’s “list” now…)

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  23. His hiring practice is not the worst of it, observe which blacks he puts on the air. Baratunde was a real guest, smart, funny and employed. But Leo feels that an obese, unemployed kiss-ass is what he wants to show his audience. So Leo gets Oh Doctah to represent black people. I don’t have an issue with Owen, but come on Leo. If you want a clown on the show fine, but why make your token black also the clown? The guy nicknamed hinself “oh doctah” for gods sake. Better to not have no blacks.

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