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.
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.
Maybe they want to run to be GOP officials, this is a prerequisite
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.
where is their sense of self preservation?
They're high schoolers, it hasn't developed yet lol.
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.
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.
I want to go in New Orleans someday to see the hometown of Suicideboys and get to know the people there...
It looks so interesting culturally and socially
Ku Klu Klan.
Alliteration is fun but in this case it lessen the quality of your comment.
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
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.
That long haired kid looks like he means it the most
You mean the kid with dreadlocks? Lol
Some community members on social media said the students depicted are football players for Tishomingo High School and that the photo was taken as part of spirit week for the school. On Monday, students were encouraged to wear a black shirt to receive a random Scrabble tile to attach to themselves.
So the school gave teenagers individual letters to wear, not thinking that they would spell out offensive words? Sounds like dumb kids being dumb kids.
I'll bet $100 right now that they also spelled every curse word under the sun as well.
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.
Guys it was a mixup. They meant to say GINGER.
Filthy, disgusting, subhuman gingers.
As a Texan, in a purple area, this doesn't surprise me from Oklahoma.
I had the displeasure of driving through OK to get to my late father in law's hospital bed before he passed.
I ended up blowing through a toll entry because they didn't accept paper money or cards. Just coins. I went to the little building to try to pay my way, and it appeared to be abandoned.
Mother fuckers, I can buy a legal variant of weed with my fucking watch. Coins? Join this century please.
There's a few states that I just can't even.
Idaho for example.
There's only two things I hate in this world. People who are intolerant of other people's cultures and the Dutch.
-Michael Caine
The punishment fit the crime. Let the picture follow them forever and let their fellow students take out the frustration of losing homecoming on them.
oklahoma. drop it into a blender and start over.
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
Because they want to normalize the use of racial slurs yet again, separating it from "real racism".
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.
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.
Probably out of some sense of getting the rest of the school to learn a lesson, and creating anger at the racists. Probably misguided.
Because being teenagers is serious business.
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.
This was just an advertisement for Xbox Live that's all. 🤷
Parents.
Don't be Oklahoma, don't be Okla....awww shoot.
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.
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.
👌👍
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.
Nazis are real. But it's a small group with the power of the internet. What y'all do is combine half the country with these folks.
Most Republicans aren't Nazis and don't hate black people. They are dumb dumb dumb idiots yes, but tossing them into a single identity is just shitty politics if you actually want to understand the shift right.
If I see a group of racists standing around being racist. I'm not gonna evaluate every single one of them on their level of racist and excuse the guy who just likes to hang out. I'm gonna throw the entire thing away.
If there's a turd on your plate next to your dinner, do you just eat around it?
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.
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.
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.
Edit: so downvotes and no response is just as much an apologist as the other response. Why can kids taunt with words that are supposed to be off limits? It only perpetuates the issue by reminding kids that those words exist, their usage should be stopped by all so they can fade from the vocabulary.
Plenty of teenagers who not only wouldn't do this, but feel disgusted looking 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.
