racism is alive and well in upstate NY

[swamp]

so a 10 and 11 year old call a fellow black classmate "n****r" adn then beat her up.   I wonder where they learned it? 

www.nytimes.com/2019/09/25/nyregion/gouverneur-children-hate-crime.html?fbclid=IwAR2qwE0df7TSJnO9sAXZOIHkLCBCnA9z-t-Q_HUyjpMYnJJVRELY8ZhBA1A


www.wwnytv.com/2019/09/26/alleged-gouverneur-hate-crime-caught-video-court-papers-show/?fbclid=IwAR38T3LXPkK6KqNV7Tjxcv8AJHcfFi7LsSUpTmWTCil0_8Bal9z1yAOu2og

[sheilaincali]

Ugh.

I just found out my 10 year old nephew is on the verge of getting kicked out of school. He was bullying kids on the bus last year and they were going to expel him but there were only two weeks left in school so they let him off with a warning. This year he got called into the principal's office on the 3rd day of school. They told my brother one more "racist offense" and he'll be expelled. He's in the 4th grade.

In the same day he told a Hispanic girl in his class to "go back to her own country" after they said the Pledge and then called a Black child "Chocolate.  He had a big pen that was an cartoon alien and she said "are you an alien?" and he said "I don't know. Are you chocolate?" So yeah.   

Turns out he learned it from my exSIL. She admitted it. She apparently makes "go back to your country" comments if she's frustrated at the long lines at the grocery store or whatever. My nephew is a brat and they should have kicked him out last year for the bus bullying. I'm going to be shocked if he is still at his current school by Christmas.

They have 50/50 custody so 50% of the time he's exposed to his mother and her redneck, straight out of the trailer park family. 

[hoops902]

I just read this article...I had 2 thoughts aside from "racism" (though obviously racism is perfectly possible here)

1.  I was much more concerned about the adult who supposedly just let these kids beat this other child up.

2.  I'm less inclined to leap to "racism" in these cases than in adult cases.  I think a lot of these cases have the potential to not be "I don't like this person because of X (race, religion, disability, etc), let's go beat them up" and plenty of potential to be "I don't like this person and I'm going to beat them up, let me think of some nasty things I can say to them also".  I can think of too many times either when I was a kid or when I worked with kids in that age range where they'd call someone a horrible word, and then it would turn out they didn't even know what the word meant...they just knew it was really mean and they wanted to be really mean to them.  

I'm pretty sure most fights I've ever witnessed or been involved in have featured people saying horrible things to each other...but it's rarely been those horrible things that actually led to the fight.  It's often hard to know which came first...or what drove what (did wanting to fight drive the speech, or did the speech reflect real prejudice which drove the fight).  I've been called a whole lot of things by a whole lot of people who have wanted to fight me in my life...I'm pretty sure most of those things were said as a direct result of wanting to fight first and then trying to find something terrible to say to me second...rather than actually having some prejudice and wanting to fight because they hated me BASED on that prejudice.  

I'm not sure at what age I think it happens, but I always wonder what is the actual age kids even understand enough to actually be racist.  Like actually racist, thinking someone is inferior to their race (I think it's pretty young when kids say "you're different I don't like you because of it"...but I often wonder when it actually becomes "my race is superior"...it just seems in my mind to be something where the speech, or the imitation of someone else's speech, or the desire to say things which are taboo...likely comes significantly earlier than actual thoughts of racial superiority).

[Tennesseer]

Good for this student (from the second linked article).  Our schools and country need more people like him:

As the victim got ready to exit the bus, a male student got out of his seat and stood in the aisle between the victim and her attackers to prevent further harm and so she could get off.

[busymom]

It looks like the bus monitor didn't do her job, since she really did nothing to intervene.  Suspend the kids, and fire the bus monitor. 

[Tennesseer]

Sept 26, 2019 15:49:02 GMT -5 busymom said:

It looks like the bus monitor didn't do her job, since she really did nothing to intervene.  Suspend the kids, and fire the bus monitor. 

I wonder though if we put bus monitor in a awful position: what happens to the monitor if they have to physically separate/touch the students? They and the schools may get sued by the parents of the handled child(ren).

I agree though the bus monitor should have physically got involved. They sometimes have to.

[NoNamePerson]

Sept 26, 2019 15:57:04 GMT -5 Tennesseer said:

Sept 26, 2019 15:49:02 GMT -5 busymom said:

It looks like the bus monitor didn't do her job, since she really did nothing to intervene.  Suspend the kids, and fire the bus monitor. 

I wonder though if we put bus monitor in a awful position: what happens to the monitor if they have to physically separate/touch the students? They and the schools may get sued by the parents of the handled child(ren).

I agree though the bus monitor should have physically got involved. They sometimes have to.

Or the parents of the touched children hunt the monitor down and shoot them dead in their driveway. Or the children pull knives and stab monitor. No win situation. Damed if do and damned if don’t Yeah, I know that’s extreme but given climate today who knows?

[raeoflyte]

You don't just sit idly by and watch a 10 year old get beaten up. We're not talking highschool students the same size as an adult.

[GRG a/k/a goldenrulegirl]

Sadly, I do believe children can be taught racism and racial superiority at an early age. There was a documentary or 60 Minutes segment or newspaper article that described how the daily “indoctrination” pushes out any other humanity, even in young children.

That said, I also agree with Hoops that, in some cases, the hate speech is an ugly side effect of the desire to fight and hurt someone. I saw it in my own driveway. ODS has ALWAYS been deeply compassionate. Social justice runs through his veins. Yet, when an adult neighborhood bully came charging up and across my street enraged that I would dare spray paint some old chairs in my own driveway on a still day — unaware that ODS was also in the driveway — ODS, afraid that the neighbor was going to hit me, said some absolutely revolting things to draw the neighbor toward him and away from me. I know ODS does not believe ANY of what he said, and he even admitted he said them in the heat of the moment, but I was still absolutely devastated to hear them come out of his mouth.

ETA: ODS’ comments that day were NOT racist, but still heartbreakingly mean and often hurled at other people who are undeserving of such vile hatred.

[azucena]

Unfortunately my husband's parents were/are very racist.  The town I grew up in Southern IL and he moved into in high school was 100% white and still is - no other race or ethnicity. This wasn't coincidental, the town very much kept it that way. Fortunately my parents and most of my close relatives are not racist so I while I grew up in an all white town, I didn't personally inherit racism. I will admit that I was/can still be kind of naïve though.

Anyway, my husband heard racist crap day in and day out at home and it didn't help that his family had moved from a very poor area with lots of crime where my husband was often jumped and beat up on the way to middle school mostly by African American kids most likely since that town was probably only 20% white.  His parents blamed a lot of their problems on racist things even though they directly caused most of their problems. 

When we started dating at 16, he'd spout off the craziest most vile stuff and think nothing of it because he didn't know any different or really any better. Didn't help that our current town and most of our friends reinforced those views. I quickly made it a stipulation that I wasn't going to be around that and keep dating him if he continued. Since it was such a habit, he'd forget and start and I'd get up and leave the room. Took a long while before he really stopped. Even now 20 years later sometimes he'll say something off putting (not nearly as bad as it once was) and I'll have to ask him to really think about what he just said.  It's very, very hard to overcome one's initial upbringing.

[Wisconsin Beth]

www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-49849722

A 12-year-old African-American girl has accused three white classmates of pinning her down and cutting off her dreadlocks with scissors.

Amari Allen says the assault happened during break time at her private school in Springfield, Virginia, on Monday.

She alleges that the boys held her down on a slide and called her hair "ugly" and "nappy" and cut some off.

The alleged attack took place at the Immanuel Christian School, where the US Vice-President's wife teaches.

[TheOtherMe]

My parents, both born in 1924, were very racist.  

I grew up in Des Moines, but grade school and junior high were totally white kids, so it wasn't until high school that I attended school with people who didn't look like me.  This was in the late 60's and we had many racial problems between students my junior and senior year.  The black students I went to school with want absolutely nothing to do with the white students.  Actually, I pretty much feel the same way about the clique.

It wasn't until I moved to Boulder and, through my job, got my eyes opened and learned my own world view.  

I find that it's nothing like that of the cousins who never left the little town where I was born.  Their world view is still the white view, for the most part.  

[TheOtherMe]

Sept 27, 2019 9:53:44 GMT -5 Wisconsin Beth said:

www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-49849722

A 12-year-old African-American girl has accused three white classmates of pinning her down and cutting off her dreadlocks with scissors.

Amari Allen says the assault happened during break time at her private school in Springfield, Virginia, on Monday.

She alleges that the boys held her down on a slide and called her hair "ugly" and "nappy" and cut some off.

The alleged attack took place at the Immanuel Christian School, where the US Vice-President's wife teaches.

Of course it did.  

[NastyWoman]

Sept 26, 2019 16:39:48 GMT -5 raeoflyte said:

You don't just sit idly by and watch a 10 year old get beaten up. We're not talking highschool students the same size as an adult.

Both my sons were taller than I am by that age and I am not short (5'7") so that is not a given

[raeoflyte]

Sept 27, 2019 10:15:12 GMT -5 NastyWoman said:

Sept 26, 2019 16:39:48 GMT -5 raeoflyte said:

You don't just sit idly by and watch a 10 year old get beaten up. We're not talking highschool students the same size as an adult.

Both my sons were taller than I am by that age and I am not short (5'7") so that is not a given

Even if they have the height, the stature is different.  They're just tiny, even if they're not actually small.  If the attendant was too scared to intervene with the kids, talk about a bad job placement.  Regardless of size even if I would be fired or arrested for having grabbed a kid I would rather that than have done nothing to help a child (and still get fired and arrested).  

[The Walk of the Penguin Mich]

I was just there....sadly, it is.  

[Rukh O'Rorke]

but at only 16 racism is flexible.....carson king....cough cough

[weltschmerz]

Sept 27, 2019 10:08:59 GMT -5 TheOtherMe said:

My parents, both born in 1924, were very racist.  

I grew up in Des Moines, but grade school and junior high were totally white kids, so it wasn't until high school that I attended school with people who didn't look like me.  This was in the late 60's and we had many racial problems between students my junior and senior year.  The black students I went to school with want absolutely nothing to do with the white students.  Actually, I pretty much feel the same way about the clique.

It wasn't until I moved to Boulder and, through my job, got my eyes opened and learned my own world view.  

I find that it's nothing like that of the cousins who never left the little town where I was born.  Their world view is still the white view, for the most part.  

My dad brought black people from his job to our house for Christmas/Thanksgiving. "They have nowhere else to go. Nobody should be alone for the holidays."

[TheOtherMe]

I don't think my parents knew black people or worked with any black people.  I don't know what they would have done.  I do know that over the years, many family members lived with us when they were having problems in their lives and had no where else to go.  They never turned anyone away.

[zibazinski]

Sept 27, 2019 9:53:44 GMT -5 Wisconsin Beth said:

www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-49849722

A 12-year-old African-American girl has accused three white classmates of pinning her down and cutting off her dreadlocks with scissors.

Amari Allen says the assault happened during break time at her private school in Springfield, Virginia, on Monday.

She alleges that the boys held her down on a slide and called her hair "ugly" and "nappy" and cut some off.

The alleged attack took place at the Immanuel Christian School, where the US Vice-President's wife teaches.

You are aware that she lied, right?

[sesfw]

That's what I thought I heard later.  Do you know any more about this?

Or has this been swept under the carpet.

[Tennesseer]

Oct 19, 2019 17:29:29 GMT -5 sesfw said:

That's what I thought I heard later.  Do you know any more about this?

Or has this been swept under the carpet.

Fortunately, the young girl's name is public. Why don't you periodically look her up and give us an update.

[Deleted]

Sept 26, 2019 15:57:04 GMT -5 Tennesseer said:

Sept 26, 2019 15:49:02 GMT -5 busymom said:

It looks like the bus monitor didn't do her job, since she really did nothing to intervene.  Suspend the kids, and fire the bus monitor. 

I wonder though if we put bus monitor in a awful position: what happens to the monitor if they have to physically separate/touch the students? They and the schools may get sued by the parents of the handled child(ren).

I agree though the bus monitor should have physically got involved. They sometimes have to.

No. You try to separate them by standing between them, but you do not physically restrain them.  We were told as teachers never to touch a student during a fight.  It is similar to how sales associates don't apprehend shoplifters, and bank tellers don't try to thwart robberies except to press a silent alarm if available.

But monitors (called aides around here) are working for minimum wage for a few hours a day.  They aren't required to risk their lives or even their safety.  They are, however, required to do whatever else they can to prevent this situation.  And they should be actively monitoring to prevent stuff like this from escalating.

[zibazinski]

Her grandparents have apologized. I don’t imagine she’ll be welcome back at that school.

[countrygirl2]

My dad worked with a few black men and we went to the ones restaurant to eat, the food was outstanding, this was when I little. I loved to play the juke box because the music was so different, loved it.  Dad thought nothing of this.

But then we lived in the city north of us and they were going to consolidate I would have to go to school with black kids. OH MY GOD! You would have thought the world had ended, we moved back to our old house in the country, it was about the 4th grade I was so lonesome I could have died.  And another couple we knew moved back to the one next door, I suspect the same reason.  They had 3 kids we played some but was about 1/4 mile away.  My mom worked from the time I was maybe 8 or 9 so was home alone in summer.

And yes dad was racist. One of my favorite profs in college was black and brilliant, dad said I send you to college to be around that?  I never said anything more, kept it to myself, never could understand the attitude.  I was told many times I did not belong in this area because my ideas were so different, and back then I had no exposure to different peoples but had a different view, I read and listened.

That attitude is still here, we have in the nearest city a few people of color not many, some asian, some Indian, and Mexican, most run restaurants.

But here is an example, nutty woman talking to me the other day told me this.  We have a lady of color working at the post office, she and I had been chatting off and on while I was up there, very friendly and nice. She is vacation relief out of the city here. Nutty lady says well you know we don't have many people "like her" around here so I asked her if people were treating her ok, oh my God, she didn't. Oh yes, she did.  I noticed the next time I talked to her she was way more reserved, I would have been too.  Why would anyone say something like that?  That is your small town community for you. And who knows what else she said.  I could see she was more closed off, I wasn't going to add to it, there is nothing you can say or should say.  That is rural Americana, still looking down on people of color as less.  Will it never end? And trump is making it all worse.

[Deleted]

DH is NOT racist. I can't tell you how much money he gave a black friend to try to save their house. He still lost if, but DH never says a word about it.

That said, DH's filters are slipping. In the hospital several weeks ago, he said, "Have you noticed black people want to sit with other black people?" On a similar visit, he said, " Have you noticed how great black people are with colors? "

Neither comment is inherently offensive, but you don't generalize about other races. So it makes me wonder if we are all racist without realizing it.

[countrygirl2]

I wonder if I am sometimes.  I don't think so, but being white and being around people like I am now, I worry about it. I never want to be like these people, never.  We had been gone a lot of years and I forgot a lot of the stuff I hated back then.  It is better but a lot of the bigotry is still here.

[zibazinski]

Oct 19, 2019 22:46:57 GMT -5 @bamafan1954 said:

DH is NOT racist. I can't tell you how much money he gave a black friend to try to save their house. He still lost if, but DH never says a word about it.

That said, DH's filters are slipping. In the hospital several weeks ago, he said, "Have you noticed black people want to sit with other black people?" On a similar visit, he said, " Have you noticed how great black people are with colors? "

Neither comment is inherently offensive, but you don't generalize about other races. So it makes me wonder if we are all racist without realizing it.

Well, as far as wearing colors, he has a point. I have dark complected friends and they can rock colors I can only dream about. Envy is real!! I’ve never noticed the sitting together. I sit wherever there’s an empty seat. I’m pretty oblivious obviously.

[countrygirl2]

Well I like a lot of color in clothing too.  Like my neon pink robe!  So not unique to other ethnicities. I may wear dark trousers, but my tops and accessories have tons of color.

[hoops902]

Oct 19, 2019 17:35:17 GMT -5 @bamafan1954 said:

Sept 26, 2019 15:57:04 GMT -5 Tennesseer said:

I wonder though if we put bus monitor in a awful position: what happens to the monitor if they have to physically separate/touch the students? They and the schools may get sued by the parents of the handled child(ren).

I agree though the bus monitor should have physically got involved. They sometimes have to.

No. You try to separate them by standing between them, but you do not physically restrain them.  We were told as teachers never to touch a student during a fight.  It is similar to how sales associates don't apprehend shoplifters, and bank tellers don't try to thwart robberies except to press a silent alarm if available.

But monitors (called aides around here) are working for minimum wage for a few hours a day.  They aren't required to risk their lives or even their safety.  They are, however, required to do whatever else they can to prevent this situation.  And they should be actively monitoring to prevent stuff like this from escalating.

I'll point out that it's really nothing like this at all.  People don't apprehend shoplifters or thwart robberies because the act that is occurring is not directly physically harming anyone.  The idea behind these things is "don't put your physical safety at risk for things" (nor are they told to stand between the person and the thing they're trying to steal in an attempt to stop them but without "touching them").  This is a situation of potentially putting your own safety at risk to protect the physical safety of someone you are charged with protecting and who is likely smaller and less able to protect themselves.  

I'll also point out that "standing between them" is potentially putting your safety at risk as it is.