Because they want to normalize the use of racial slurs yet again, separating it from “real racism”.
Guy 1 and 3 fucked up big time, now their display of love for Christmas spices is ruined. What were they thinking
A couple of Gs, an R and an E, an I and an N.
Hmmmm that man seems to have a tinge of the ginge.
That long haired guy thinks he’s the hard G. They should cancel the entire season or kick those dudes off the team. Their choice.
I am allways fascinated by people who just have to do things that will cause them a lot of problems.
I get that they lack empathy, that much is clear, but where is their sense of self preservation?
Part of me is envious that they have so few problems that they deliberately make more for themselves.
where is their sense of self preservation?
They’re high schoolers, it hasn’t developed yet lol.
What, you’re trying to tell us that you were never so comfortable with your station in life that you uh… printed off scrabble tiles to make matching necklaces that spell out a racial slur as a teen??? Geeze what a tragically empty life you must have had.
Compared to others, my teens were what they would call empty, but I had a good and calm time in my teens.
I did some things as a teen that would absolutely humiliate me today if blasted on the internet. I even bullied people as a teen, so we’re talking real dirtbag stuff.
Still. I never was even slightly tempted to take a pic with friends and a slur around my neck, so I guess I have that going for me.
They have been openly racist for a long time, and it has never mattered. Now that their racism is on the news, this is first time it has had consequences. So they never felt there was any self preservation to take into consideration.
That sounds depressingly realistic
I used to be a reckless teen. I just didn’t use my foresight. The payoff of doing the joke/dangerous thing is more worth it than self preservation when you’re a dumb kid.
Maybe they want to run to be GOP officials, this is a prerequisite
This photo looks fake.
This is the other shitty thing about the prevalence of fake images online. Even though this is easily verifiable, there are people who won’t even bother to look into it before dismissing it as fake. Acting like racism doesn’t exist only empowers the racists.
How’s it easily verifiable? I just looked at the photo and it’s bloody weird with some signs not being held. Not arguing it’s not real just questioning how you got to that…
So you think the Oklahoma town canceled their football for… ?
Rain!
The corrupt liberal propaganda machine in Tishomingo covered it up 😤
Why did they cancel the entire football game and punish the entire school, instead of just disciplining these kids?
Because being teenagers is serious business.
Schools usually punish the person who gets bullied while protecting the bully so of course they don’t know how to handle this.
Probably out of some sense of getting the rest of the school to learn a lesson, and creating anger at the racists. Probably misguided.
They might have been forced to forfeit the game for having too few players. There isn’t a game to watch if nobody is playing.
Why not? It’s just a moronic football game and maybe it’ll teach them consequences.
I hope someone puts this on a static website with their names so future employers can find it easily
I use to have this way to thinking but then we are encouraging people not to change. This is a group of kids maybe raised wrong maybe thinking it’s okay to joke about so should this ruin the rest of their lives? Should they not be given the chance to do better and learn from this? It’s not murder and nobody was harmed by it. Being offended isn’t traumatizing.
At what point is the punishment fitting the crime in a case like this. We’ve learned posting this to social media already effects people long term so wouldn’t just posting it here be enough since they may have also been reprimanded by their community.
That’s fair i guess. I did some stupid shit as a kid but I’m also a completely different person than 40 years ago. Otoh i never did anything quite like this. Id hope their eyebrows burn off from the backlash and they learn at least.
If society has gone a different direction what you did do may have been just as condemnable.
The difference is 40 years ago when i lacked better judgement, i didn’t do things that were condemnable and they still aren’t to this day.
These kids have done something current date that is condemnable. Maybe they just weren’t raised right and can turn their lives around but it’s not quite the same situation. What they did will always have been bad at the time they did it.
But it didnt and I’m glad because we shouldnt let people be racist. What’s your point here? R u js pulling a “what if some things were worse” cause they are, racism is far from the worst thing u can do today. I’m taking a guess and saying they probs didnt murder anyone as a teen. now I’d hope u could agree that is a step too far that being a dumb kid doesnt justify same deal w racism
oklahoma. drop it into a blender and start over.
I just do not understand how anyone involved thought this was a good idea.
Surely you were a dumb high school student at one point, no?
I was definitely a dumb high school student. At no point did I think it was ever ok to use the n-word though.
Sure, but did you grow up in a community with a healthy population of minorities? If not, then you probably don’t really have the same experience as these kids.
When you don’t actually know anyone a slur references, it’s pretty easy to not take it seriously. A lot of my friends in school make “gay” jokes, until we made friends with a gay kid, at which point we stopped because we suddenly had a personal experience with it. That’s how a lot of these types of things go.
Yes but also racism and homophobia deserve derision and to be laughed and joked about in ways that don’t hurt people. Hear me out. It’s a weird situation because the people who are offended by it deserve to be and are valid but so are the people that say stuff like “telling people that you can’t say that word gives it power” because it absolutely does.
It’s why myself and my gay partner will jokingly use slurs in private. Because it’s funny and we’re mocking the people that hate us. And by using their words as a joke, we take the sting out of them. Because it’s absurd theyre used seriously in the first place.
So we exist in this weird spot where we’ve said “yes the gays can reclaim their slurs. And yes the minorities can reclaim their words. But no one else can say them” and it’s like sure but then other people aren’t able to properly take the sting out of the words.
Not saying there’s a right answer, I’m just saying that we have weird standards that may not be serving our goals.
The most compelling case I’ve seen for keeping them is to protect against exploitation and commodification. For example, there’s a long history of AAVE/BVE words and phrases that have been considered vulgar and uneducated until co-opted by white communities. “Woke” is a particularly topical example: A word meant to evoke unity and self-awareness in the black community has been co-opted by (mostly) white conservatives to rally against progressive and inclusive policies. Reclaiming the n-word means using its taboo nature as a shield, saying “this is our word, and you can’t have it.” You can’t go on the campaign trail and complain about n*ggers, but you also can’t forget where it came from and what it meant. It’s a living word that carries its history forward into the modern age so we don’t forget the crimes of the past.
I’ve likewise seen use of the f-slur as a rebellion against rainbow capitalism. Companies will take pride flags and symbols and words and sell them on t-shirts and use them in commercials. These are things that were all made with intention and symbolism by the queer* community and flown in the face of danger, but companies really don’t give a shit about that because well-meaning people will give them their money to support a cause. Come July first, though, do you see them selling that merch, donating to LGBTQ+ causes, or supporting their queer employees? Of course not, if anything that all gets thrown under the bus for whatever financial issue the company is having. The f-slur is again saying “this is our word, and you can’t have it.” It’s often used jokingly or even affectionately by the queer community, but you’re not going to see it printed on a mass produced shirt or said in an ad. It belongs to them and them only, maintaining the history of its creation and reclamation without being diluted by commodification.
It’s also important to remember that the words have not lost their sting for many people, especially those who still often hear it said with malice towards the targeted group. We should acknowledge they they are not at a point where they cannot hear the word without those strong, negative feelings, and we can do so by respecting requests not to use it in certain spaces and calling out others who are not as sensitive.
- As a side note, “queer” is a slur that is slowly working its way back into common parlance. It may be that these other slurs go that way eventually, though it’ll take longer for some of the more severe ones.
After reading your whole comment I’m left wondering if you had a point at all, none of that needed to be said…
??? I was explaining the rationale behind reclaiming slurs while making them still exclusive to the targeted group.
If your goal is to make yourself and your partner feel better than I think that makes sense. The other poster is talking about how to effect change in people like those in this picture though, which requires a different approach.
That’s sort of what I was getting at. Obviously we shouldn’t be using those words in public if they’re going to hurt people, but it almost seems like we’ve regressed and given slurs more power by not saying them as jokes like I do at home occasionally. Specifically the word in the photo is a huge no no and for good reason but it’s power isn’t decaying is the point.
So the question I’m poking at is: how do you get rid of the power of slurs without offending people? It seems impossible because I almost think that as a community we should all be able to share in reclaiming language to some extent. Otherwise it can divide us.
Last thing, the word here in this photo is something that is often fine for black people to say but not others. Again I get why. But doesn’t that inherently enforce a divide? Like sorry I actually cannot share in your reclamation culture because I am racially barred from doing so. From my perspective (which could be wrong) I’d rather let people and friends outside my community use those words with me in a casual and inoffensive manner than dividing us by enforcing language rules against them. Just a thought.
I’d rather let people and friends outside my community use those words with me in a casual and inoffensive manner than dividing us by enforcing language rules against them
If that’s what you want, tell them. If you came to me and asked me to use certain slurs with you in a joking way, I’d try my best to do so, but only in private and only with you. It would probably take me some time to get over my barrier to using them, but it’s something I’m willing to do if a friend asks.
But that’s not going to really help the next person. Slurs only have power because we give them power. The solution here isn’t to normalize using particular words, the solution is to educate people about the people who those slurs target. I live in a very conservative area and have very conservative parents, and my neighbors and parents have both softened their anti-homosexual stance due to actually meeting and interacting with LGBT people. In fact, there’s a trans woman at my library, and she seems to be very accepted. This works because people are exposed to real people and understand that using those slurs hurts real people.
Normalizing the terms won’t do anything, bigots will just come up with new slurs. The real solution is greater exposure so people can get past the discomfort and arrive at understanding. That’s what’s likely missing for the boys in this picture, and it’s what we desperately need if we want more acceptance.
Im not condoning it but you were probably born post Xbox 360 Xbox live era.
Not this level of “putting a needle in your arm” dumb. We did stupid shit like Jackass, not hateful shit.
Not sure thats a great example if you meant to show difference. Maybe you did jackass-lite?
No … We could have given CKY/JA a genuine run for their money had we taped it, before they had a budget. When we were little little Evel Knievel was in full swing and we would build ramps out of anything, Volkswagen beatles, ramps on roofs, then later in life surfing during a hurricane (Elana '85), Big Wheels towed behind a car, skydiving, highspeed water skiing, surfing, … adrenaline junkies. No spirituality to it, just getting rad for the sake of getting rad.
Stupid, yes, idiotic hatefulness with evidence, not so much.
Posing for a picture to commemorate it too is wild. I wonder if literally noone was offended until it got posted online.
I couldn’t imagine doing this though. I’m imagining they somehow expected social benefit for this, and that blows me mind SpongeBob
The picture is someone taking a picture of another phone. I haven’t used it in years but it sort of looks like Snapchat. It’s possible they did this thinking it’s merely an edgy joke and sent it to friends on Snapchat rather than being so bold as to directly post it to media.
Nah, I’m pretty sure they were just going for shock factor, that’s it. Kids these age acting out like this are generally just looking for attention.
As dumb and as racist as the kids at my high school were, I don’t think any of them even came close to this level.
Did your high school have a meaningful number of POC? (i.e. more than the token black kid)
If not, I don’t think your high school experience is directly comparable here. Not having faces to place next to slurs can make the slurs seem funny instead of actually hurtful.
It did, actually. I think it was more due to being just a few years before the smart phone craze really took off. I graduated in 2010. It was still extremely common for kids to not have any phone at all or just a very basic phone. We had social media, but not the constant access to HD cameras and ability to post whenever.
Ironically this probably saved a lot of them from stupid shit. It takes a certain combination of hatred and stupidity to do this.
I honestly don’t know these boys, but I can honestly see this as not involving any form of hatred. I’ve been to a fair amount of small towns, and they really don’t have any kind of conception of what these words actually mean to people. They certainly understand that it’s hurtful, but I think it is closer to curse words (i.e. “taboo” and “edgy”) than an actual intent to cause harm to someone.
If you see it from that perspective, I think it’s unfair to hold these boys accountable for it for the rest of their lives. It’s a dumb move, but they’ll hopefully get some exposure to POC and change their ways. I would honestly be pretty surprised if these kids actually hate black people, I think they’re just doing it for attention, and this kind of “shock” is an effective way to get attention.
I think it’s unfair to hold these boys accountable for it for the rest of their lives.
Not sure where that came from.
They’re teenage boys. They’re dumber than hammers.
Yeah but hammers are useful.
Hate to be so cynical, but so are dumber than hammer 18 year olds in wars.
Touche
even with extra credit they come up short in that competition
Oh I absolutely see how it happened. It’s rooted in that love of “Technically correct.” I can absolutely see one of them saying “All I did was have a picture of a scrabble tile with the letter G on it. Is having a single scrabble tile illegal? You can’t simply keep us from associating with each other, the first amendment protects the right to peaceably assemble!” All the while they know very obviously what they did, it’s just that they thought they could technically get away with it. They figured that if no one of them openly used the whole word, they couldn’t possibly face any consequences.
kek
wow, that’s something I was happy to not have heard in a while
Why? It’s basically just 'lol, isn’t it? Same as the Brazilian ‘jajaja’
it was related to trump bullshit involving Pepe being racist around 2015-16
It’s lol in orcish from wow and pre-dates whichever facepalming shenanigans of… that guy
that’s true, there was that, but then on 4chan it became “pepe says kek on doubles” and then “meme things into existence” and then it got all twisted with meming trump into the presidency by saying kek a lot or something, and that sort of ruined it
Bur
I hope they all get the punishment they deserve for not only posting that, but thinking it was an ok thing to do in the first place.
That said, I have zero weight in the discussion, but I’d like to see such racially charged words, lose all their power. I understand why people from certain races have issues with such words, though I kind of see it as giving the racists some measure of control over you and your emotional state. IMO, that gives them power that they do not deserve to have and they can, will, and do, use it against the people who take issue with it.
Like I said, I have no weight in the discussion at all, and even if the power of such words is stripped from them, I still don’t think it’s okay to return such words to people’s common vernacular. These words should be all but stricken from record and forgotten. The only record that should exist is in history books saying that it existed and that it should never be used, and why.
It’s not a good chapter in anyone’s books that humans were owned by other humans, regardless of race, but race seems to be permanently tied to owning people. Non-African slaves existed, and still exist, but it’s not what people think of when someone says “slavery”. Regardless, it shouldn’t happen, but it did.
Fact is, reparations are long overdue.
The reality that people like the kids in the picture are basically being groomed to be the next generation of asshole racist motherfuckers we’re fighting so hard to keep away from any position of power, is sickening. Fuck everyone involved in the production of this photo.
I’m not a POC, and bluntly, I don’t see why anyone treats anyone any differently because they have more, or less melanin. What a stupid thing to judge someone on.
I was really hoping this was photoshop. It is not. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/tishomingo-public-schools-respond-to-viral-image-of-six-students-displaying-racial-slur/ar-AA1qRmlj
Sure this is racist, but it’s also just teenagers doing stupid teenagers stuff. They probably thought this was incredibly edgy… They should just be punished accordingly, maybe a mandatory course on racism or something.
The racist rhetoric is definitely out there, I don’t know who is denying that. I don’t expect it will ever go away. It’s like when you break a bone at age 40, it will heal but will always remain a weak spot. However, I do think the current generation overall is doing a good effort to push the rhetoric away.
Plenty of teenagers who not only wouldn’t do this, but feel disgusted looked at it.
I read your comment thread this morning and it’s been bouncing around my head all day. I agree with you, and there’s something I can’t quite put my finger on about how everything online is so serious and black and white. If you do something wrong you’re evil incarnate and you deserve instant excommunication.
Your comment being so heavily downvoted is a good example. I think your stance is the most reasonable, and I think if this all played out in the real world you’d have a vast majority of people agreeing with you. But for some reason once it’s on the internet you’re unanimously wrong and it’s not up for discussion.
I’ve been on the wrong side of an “am I the asshole” post one time and it was bizarre seeing the anger of people on the internet compared to the relaxed opinions of real people that heard the story. I wish there was a term for this phenomenon because I see it everywhere. Terminally online people who can’t just see nuance and realise that we all do stupid shit.
I don’t really have a point but I thought I’d let you know you inspired some thought in a single person from the void.
There’s certain topics that seem to instigate this kind of polarisation. Racism being one of them. I posted my comment with the intention to not talk about racism, but talk about teenagers being stupid. That was my naivety, I see that now. Another topic I avoid most of the time are discussions about gender and sexuality and of course politics, but sometimes I can’t help myself and I mingle in these discussions against my better judgement. I try to thread carefully but often burn myself regardless.
I’m clearly a brutal racist, according to the downvotes. I’m also clearly a nazi and an American liberal. And I’m also a bad parent who’ll never speak to their children again when they grow old enough to leave the house. I think maybe the size of Lemmy makes the extremes more obvious, because there is no separate areas for different groups of people. They all come together in the same places. Also maybe it’s the kinds of people that get drawn to places like this, it’s not mainstream, so casual Internet users don’t find their way here, you’ll have to be a techy or a “terminally online” person, as you put it so nicely.
I don’t take all these people all to serious though. I’m fortunate enough to have an active life that gets me out into the real world a lot. I’ve learned a lot of life by just living it. There’s many parts of life I don’t get to experience or understand though, but it seems like this isn’t the place to get to know them.
Maybe it’s best if I just stick to the memes and the star trek and get my news feed from a different source.
I’m the same, I have an active life and don’t take it seriously. I find it easier on Lemmy because you can put it down to a crazy instance and you can’t see your overall upvotes so nothing matters! Me and my friends enjoy going back to my AITAH post to laugh at the insanity of online people, it makes a great party story. Keep posting sense!
Apologists like you are part of the problem and one big reason why it’s still there.
This is not an abstract problem of rhetoric. Shit like this is actively hurting people. It normalises hateful speech and behaviour against minorities.
I’ve done some pretty stupid stuff as a teenager, because I thought it was funny to upset people. I thought I was being edgy. It never occurred to me that hurting people actually hurt people. I was a teenager, all I cared about was me and my friends.
I could’ve done this as a teenager, but I would see the error of my ways after it was pointed out to me by the entire school and the news papers and the whole world. I would not be thinking about the Co sequences of my actions before hand. That’s not what teenagers do. That’s what teenagers need to learn, some are just a bit slower in learning that.
I’m not an apologists. This a hurtful act, a disgrace and it should be punished. All I’m saying is that teenage boys can be stupid like this. If this was done by grown man, it would’ve been pure evil. Now it is a large part stupidity, not less hurtful, just a different origin. If these were grown men, they would be scum. I don’t know these boys, they might be scum already, but maybe they can still change and grow up to be normal, tolerable, non-racist people.
I’m sorry, nobody taught you that “that hurting people actually hurt people.”
But that’s just the point. We can’t excuse behaviour like this as “boys will be boys”. Behaviour like this needs to have consequences that actually hurt, not a slap on the wrist, so these kids have a chance to learn.
If they get away with this with just a “Hey, that’s not okay, don’t do it again. Teenagers haha”, what you actually teaching them, is that it’s not that bad. And they grow up into adults who think hateful language is not that bad.
Teenagers might have underdeveloped judgment, but thats not necessarily something they learn on their own. Moral judgment isn’t genetic and something that you grow into on your own. Moral standards and judgments are taught by your society and your environment.
So do me a favour and teach teenagers instead of excusing them with their age.
physical harm is obvious, mental harm is not. This is even more true when that harm is distributed over a wide area that you are not near.
The OP didn’t say they should get away with it, they’re just pointing out how idiotic teenage boys are. I think we can all agree that they deserve serious consequences for this, it’s vile. Do they deserve to have their lives ruined?
Beyond typical teenage stupidity, they learned this behavior from somewhere and that’s usually at home. So I think they don’t bear sole responsibility here. This happened as a result of their environment. The boneheaded teenager says the quiet part out loud to be edgy or whatever. The solution is to punish them, but also take a deeper look into the situation which allowed it in the first place.
Also, I can tell from that picture that the ringleaders # 1 and 3 are total dickwads.
I agree. But I think that this kind of public shaming in a newspaper is already beyond “a slap on the wrist”, but it is not enough on it’s own. However, an actual criminal sentence would be too much, because that would ruin their futures, which would create resentment and that eventual creates actual nazis.
In the Netherlands we have some form of criminal sentencing for teenagers which gets deleted from your record after you turn 18 or 21 or something. These kids usually get 50 or a 100 hours or so work sentence, like picking garbage or some other tedious manual labour (after school, of course). Maybe it would even be fitting to have them work in some sort of slavery memorial centre or museum. I think such a punishment could be applied here… I don’t know if the US has such an arrangement though or if it’s even legally fitting for this case.
I don’t know where your outcry about newspapers, criminal charges and completely ruined lives comes from.
What do you defending here?
This is a Tweet and not a newspaper. It states facts and the reaction from an affected person. Nobody mentioned lifelong consequences. Bot even in the comments when I replied to your first comment.
These boys put this online themselves. That someone shares it should not surprise nor is it a disproportionate consequence.You just assumed something and started excusing their behaviour as teenage stupidity.
I’m not American, but afaik social service hours and the sealing of a juvenile record are a thing there too. I doubt however, that there is any crime committed here, that can be punished in a court of law.
There’s a partial link to a newspaper article visible in the screenshot.
This seems to be the full link: https://eu.oklahoman.com/story/news/2024/09/19/tishomingo-oklahoma-students-disciplined-after-racial-slur-shown-in-viral-image/75294249007/
I am not defending anything, I am merely saying that teenagers are stupid and that eventhough this is racist, it might have been born from stupidity rather than racism, because that’s what teenagers boys often do. It is not an excuse, but a different view point. The reasons matter. A stupid teenager making a stupid mistake is different from a grown adult trying to purposefully hurt people because of some misguided hate or something. And a punishment should be manufactured accordingly.
I hadn’t read the article before, but it states that the school provided these scrabble letter to all students as some kind of school spirit stunt. Therefor I can imagine that these boys thought it would be funny to spell “nigger”, a spur of the moment thought, not thinking about any consequences. They took a picture, posted it on the Internet, because that’s what teenagers do these days and the rest is history.
They did put it online and it being shared is therfor an obvious result. I don’t know if it’s a fitting punishment though. Maybe these kids are actual scum and they just enjoy the attention. Maybe these kids aren’t that bad, just immensely stupid and they never intended it to go viral and are regretting their decision now. Maybe that is a fitting punishment. But it’s dangerous if it goes so viral that people with strong opinions decide to take matters in their own hand. The person from the doesn’t seem to be involved with the school(but that’s an assumption on my part). That’s the kind of different viewpoint I wanted to offer. Don’t get too angry over this. This is a problem to be solved by the school, the parents and the people involved, not a national witch Hunt.
I am not defending anything
Writes 3 paragraphs defending racist teenagers.
What are you defending here?
Racism. They’re defending what they perceive as the “right” of racists to be racist without consequence. The excuses they’re making for themselves, and these teens, don’t change that.
Meanwhile my white daughter is being taunted at school by black children calling her the n-word (with hard R) and saying “you can’t say it but we can”. Soo what can we do about that? If it’s going to be an unspoken word it should be for all. Kids will do stupid shit.
Soo what can we do about that?
Talk to the school authorities? That’s what I would do if my kid were being bullied.
The bullying is the problem here, not the word being used.
Why can kids taunt with words that are supposed to be off limits?
They can’t? Bullying is wrong no matter what words you use.
“you can’t say it but we can”
Presumably the same punishment is given whoever says it.
Because it’s not your place to tell people from a marginalized group how they are allowed to interact with the slurs that have been used against them. Reclaiming words and for once holding the power around the word is their right if they so choose.
It’s your job as a parent to explain the historical and social context to your children. You have work to do if your child is bothered they can’t call other kids a slur that those children have reclaimed. It does nobody any good to bury our heads in the sand, say persecuted people can’t say it if my privileged child can’t say it, and pretend there’s no complex history there.
Marginalization is not universal or absolute. You can easily have people who are marginalized in some contexts, and privileged in others.
An easy example is religion.
A christian in Spain is probably considered part of the majority and privileged, meanwhile, that same person could be subject to intense persecution in a country like Saudi Arabia because of the same beliefs.
The same can be applied to this child being bullied by their racist peers.
My kids should not be punished for things they have never caused and never said. We need to stop punishing for sins of the past.
It isn’t punishing for sins of the past, it’s punishing for sins if the present. If your daughter calls a black classmate a slur today, then that happened today. The reason why it’s bad has to do with a whole lot if history, but it was still said today.
Nobody is going around suspending students because their great granddaddy used a slur in 1840.
No my daughter doesn’t say that. The black students taunt her and call her it and say she can’t say it. She is respectful.
Then what are you complaining about? A white girl saying “nigger” is disgusting anyway. They might as well taunt her for not being allowed to eat feces. If she’s a decent person she’ll have the same inclination to do that as to say slurs.
How is it taunting if she doesn’t want to say it back? The entirety of her response could be, “Yep.” It wouldn’t be taunting for someone to tell me, “You can’t do nuclear physics.” I would agree with them and be slightly confused why they were apparently out of the blue stating it.
If she’s truly being randomly bullied, that’s not going to be solved by telling black people they can’t use that word. A bully would just say something else. This is a rather easy one to deflect.
My high school from a red state was like 99% white and also 99% conservative and had this attitude of racism is bad but also racism doesn’t exist anymore then proceeds to make racist jokes and support racist politics (including students who were very academically focused), although it never evolved to anything as stupid as taking a group photo holding up a racial slur. There was a lot of stuff from there though that seemed normal at the time then after I left realized how fucked it was, and I know of other people who think the same thing.
although it never evolved to anything as stupid as taking a group photo holding up a racial slur
The fundamental difference between the Conservative Citizens Councils and the Klu Klux Klan was the veneer of political correctness the former utilized to make the violence they doled out via the police appear legitimate.
There was a lot of stuff from there though that seemed normal at the time then after I left realized how fucked it was, and I know of other people who think the same thing.
Lots of code words and turns of phrase, intended to alienate certain kinds of people and entitle others. Dog whistles are very popular in conservative communities.
We recently had a high school marching band get selected to perform at the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans. After the students raised $15k to pay for the trip, the Superintendent shut it down on the grounds that “New Orleans isn’t a safe place for teenagers”. Why was our city safe but the majority African American city dangerous? Who can say?
The main problem at my high school was that people, both students and faculty, were constantly parroting shit they heard from Fox News (which is constantly promoting stuff under a racist agenda) and weren’t in an environment that made them think about how their actions impact other people (which means the education system obviously failed at its job), so they would believe stuff like actual racism doesn’t exist anymore and black people are oppressing white people and speech doesn’t hurt anybody, and the extreme lack of diversity didn’t help either. However, if you were to have a serious conversation with them most of them would say that racism is bad, so I think that if people actually had an understanding of the world beyond Fox News propaganda a lot of the edgy racist stuff would die off. With queerphobia there was the opposite problem, where people would bring up queer stuff in jokes to look edgy but in a serious context they would say that queerness is morally wrong.
Ku Klu Klan.
Alliteration is fun but in this case it lessen the quality of your comment.
Oklahoma the prototypical red state shithole.
Where if the black community becomes peacefully prosperous, it’s too much for the numerous white inferiority-complex shitkickers to take, they boil and fester like an infection until one night they swarm like a biblical plague of locusts to burn and raze the black community to the ground.
Hollow and ignorant, lazy and angry white madness is synonymous with republican-voting states.
Most of my experience in Oklahoma was in Norman, a fantastic college town. When I would go outside of the Norman/Moore/OKC area to visit the families of my fellow students, it was surprising how much and how quickly things changed.
I mean, I know the dichotomy between rural and urban is everywhere in this nation, but it seemed more stark somehow.
I live in Norman. Only place in Oklahoma that I would live.
