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
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.
I just do not understand how anyone involved thought this was a good idea.
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.
Surely you were a dumb high school student at one point, no?
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.
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 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 so, 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.
Edit: not -> so (first paragraph made no sense)
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.
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.
Imagine this photo popping up whenever any one of these idiots tries to get a job.
That long haired kid looks like he means it the most
That long haired kid looks like he means it the most
You mean the kid with dreadlocks? Lol
Not to defend racists or imply this is acceptable in any way but everybody does stupid shit when they’re a teenager and something like this shouldn’t haunt them for the rest of their working lives provided they mature into well-adjusted adults.
The bigger problem is the poorly-adjusted adults in the communities that raise these kids and teach them to be hateful towards people with harmless differences.
The letters they are holding were provided by the school for some kind of event. It seems like these kids thought they could be funny by spelling out a no no word. To any rational thinking human, this isn’t funny, but teenagers aren’t rational think humans. That’s pretty much the definition of puberty.
But it’s 2024 and kids post everything online, so now it’s gone viral and everyone judges them as racist scum that deserve to never get a job in their lives. Off of a single photo.
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.
Why did they cancel the entire football game and punish the entire school, instead of just disciplining these kids?
Why not? It’s just a moronic football game and maybe it’ll teach them consequences.
Schools usually punish the person who gets bullied while protecting the bully so of course they don’t know how to handle this.
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.
