brach19

@LeDuke: Yes. Unfortunately you are right. My point was that is not always the case. I had a very long conversation with one of my coworkers who had absolutely no idea that comment was perceived as racist. After our conversation he had a better understanding and because of that conversation he probably wont use that statement again.

Kudos to pinkbike staff for addressing this issue. While I agree with most of the article I disagree with some points and I hope what I point out will lead to healthy and civil conversations in the comment section. I think many people disagree with the quote "silence is an implicit endorsement of the status quo." Staying silent right now can mean multiple things. For me personally it means I know police brutality and racism exists. I do not agree with or condone that in any way but I also dont agree with the violent protests that lead to the injury or death of more innocent people. Topics like this tend to be very polarizing and as mentioned people expect you to say something about it. If you dont say something you are accused of choosing the other side. That should not be the case. I also agree with the point that "all lives matter" is a terrible response to "black lives matter" but I dont think this is always intended as a hateful response. I think in some situations this is intended to mean "I know and your life matters just as much as every other life." Rather than banning and deleting these comments pinkbike and the cycling community should use this as an educational opportunity to explain how that comment can seem like a negative or racist response to the BLM movement. That way if people look back on this comment section years to come they will see a cycling community educating each other rather than arguing about wheel size and seat tube angle. Finally, the topic if inclusion and accessibility needs to be focused on the cycling community as a whole, not just mountain biking. Mountain biking is very specific to your geographic location and you cannot expect urban communities to be involved in a rural sport. Similarly you would not expect someone in Nebraska to be involved in surfing. The cycling community as a whole should and can do better. Brooklyn Bell, and Ayesha McGowan are great ambassadors for this and deserve a lot more credit than they receive for discussing this topic before it was trendy. The struggle for the cycling community will be exposing these athletes and stories to people that dont read cycling related news. For pinkbike to make a difference focus needs to be placed on exposing the non-cycling community to cycling.