What seems more likely is that over the past 40 years or so that 99.9999999% of the fans yelling that chant had no idea of the racist background. I think Lawrence Wright got it going big time. "If you ain't a Gator, you're GatorBait.
It just seems to me, if black babies were being fed to alligators, we would have heard about it many, many times outside of the cheer issue.
These stories are absolutely ridiculous. It amazes me that the left think they can rewrite history based on trash journalism from decades back so no one can disprove them. It is insane how much the left will lie to make their narrative matter. From a 1908 Washington Times article. 2 black kids were plucked out of the visitors group at the reptile house section of the NY city zoo and used as bait for crocs and gators and nary a protest by anyone? Why are there no NY Times articles on this? Another one is some guy from Sanford heard a story from his grandfather?? And then there is a Ferris State article written about the article above from the Washington Times. It is a load of crap and has absolutely nothing to do with UF's Gator Bait cheer. I am surprised we don't have people coming out of the woodwork talking about how we need to quit playing Gator Jaws because somebody used to throw little girls to the sharks in Florida so it is sexist. Does anyone think we won't be able to fill up the seats in our classrooms because of these rankings? I got news for you, we were never the #1 public school in America, but UF is a great school regardless.
Yeah, I was trying to be nice and leave just the tiniest sliver of doubt of someone being knowledgeable about it. You can also be guaranteed that NOONE was yelling Gatorbait envisioning in their mind that racist cartoon.
The examples in the article are not meant to be an all-inclusive listing of every single example of Gator baiting. There is a much larger story there, but obviously there are limits of how much detail an article can or should address. The Nazi symbol was used by other civilizations previous to the Germans. We still frown upon its use due to that reason. We don’t simply say one had nothing to do with the other.
For Theo, or anyone seeking the truth, please google Gator Bait Snopes. Snopes does an exhaustive dive into the horribly racist literature that popped up in the early 20th century on this subject. But as bad as the literature was, even the far left Snopes concludes it didn't happen. Here's Snopes conclusion, which I think is fair... Apart from crocodilians and babies, the common threads running through all these reports are racism, xenophobia, and the utter lack of specifics. If we take them seriously, we have no choice but to conclude that using human infants as alligator bait was incredibly widespread at some point in time; yet, we have not encountered a single report that included enough detail to verify that even one such incident actually took place. They're just tales. We are unable to prove the negative, of course. We cannot demonstrate that no infant anywhere, irrespective of color or creed, was ever used as reptile bait. But neither has anyone proved to date that infants were, in fact, used in such a manner. We checked this conclusion with folklorist and African American studies professor Patricia Turner, who has probably done more research on the "alligator bait" motif than anyone else in the world, and asked her if she had ever come across information suggesting that the phenomenon might be real. "I have not seen any evidence to suggest that it was true," she said, adding that it would have been all the more unlikely during the era of slavery, when a black child would have been a much more valuable commodity than an alligator.
Stats. Could just ask 100 randos and come up with a close guess. It could take one really rich mofo who can mess that up? Get rid of the top ten percent and bottom 10%.
I didn't believe it then when they said we were #1 and I don't believe it now when they say we're #34. People worry too much about what other people say about them these days.
Racists and Nazis, this is the go to playbook from the left and I am sick of it. It makes you look stupid to try and keep this narrative propped up. But muh nazis, but muh racists. That’s about enough Mr. Smollet.
Forgive me for losing my religion when someone calls me racist and fascist for doing the Gator Bait cheer.
