Trump uses the word “bimbo” repeatedly to refer to women, including his own daughter, and the press literally ignores it, so who are we to complain about what children say?
Tell me, is there any difference making fun of someone’s haircut, height, weight vs. their skin color?
But honestly, if a kid is in a formal debate, and says “go back to Africa,” I would have to say unless it is in context somehow, there should be repercussions.
Then again, my son was grabbed by the neck by another child in elementary school, and he was told the student would be suspended, and not only was I not called about the incident although both boys went to the principal, the other student never missed a day of class after that.
So calling names is bad and all, but glossing over infractions is the norm in both public and private schools.
Race is an immutable condition, and there are federal laws regarding discrimination in public schools. The other attributes are not immutable. Haircut is a matter of taste.
Tell that to Rachel Dolezal. I also thought sex was immutable but since Bruce Jenner is no longer male and is now a female know as Caitlyn Jenner, I am unsure there is an immutable condition any longer.
My concern is that this type of discord will only continue if one group of students are treated differently from another group because of their race. I am guessing that much of the discord concerns the level of achievement and preferences given to one group over another.
I don 't know if the students who are making their concerns heard are the recipients of such preferential admissions, but if the data of academic achievement in Boston is consistent with college admission data of different races, it is highly likely that these students were the recipients of preferential admission treatment.
Can one really argue for equality if the students at Boston Latin arguing for equal treatment are there as a result of preferential treatment based upon race?
@ripak14 “Can one really argue for equality if the students at Boston Latin arguing for equal treatment are there as a result of preferential treatment based upon race?”
If such arguments can be honestly made, that in no way justifies insults and intimidation. This is not Little Rock Central High School of 1957.
I am frankly astounded that people would dismiss this on the grounds that nasty behavior is a fact of life.
Shouldn’t we be striving for something better?
I really had thought that the events of the last year or so might have convinced almost everyone that racist attitudes, speech, and actions actively harm our entire society, and that it is something we all need to confront and work on.
A HS is a community. The HS has a vested interest in encouraging its students to treat each other with mutual respect. Should the school punish students who make statements like “go back to Africa” in conversations outside of school? No, I don’t think they really can or should, unless the forum is school sponsored, in which case moderation should deal with it. But the school can and should actively foster an atmosphere of mutual respect and kindness that would forestall such behavior. I would love to think that rather than repeating this kind of stuff, if it is what they hear at home, they would look at the older members of the family in wonderment and almost pity. After all, millions of people from the 60s onward turned away from the prejudices of their parents and grandparents towards other races and ethnic groups and religions, women, people of other sexual orientations.
BTW, the whole “go back to Africa” thing is so totally ludicrous that it is difficult to imagine anyone saying it in this day and age. Aren’t those people aware that A) black Americans, unless they are immigrants, didn’t come here by choice, for doG’s sake, and B) in many if not most cases, the families of black Americans were here and were building this country for at least a hundred years before THEIR ancestors showed up. Maybe if they don’t like living in a diverse society THEY should go back to wherever their grandparents came from!
It is pretty much a fact that it helps a person to be an URM, an athlete (only if recruited), a legacy, a development admit, a female or a male, a celebrity or the child of one–or a person from Idaho --and so forth to get into many colleges.
This can be acknowledged pleasantly and respectfully in the proper context, say a mutually respectful conversation about making up a college list… It should not be thrown rudely in someone’s face, nor should it be assumed that that was the ONLY reason the person got in, as in “the only reason YOU got in is because you are an X.”
Look, it’s natural for a person to feel a twinge of resentment about someone else’s perceived advantage towards a greatly desired goal. But you can’t live your life that way, ultimately.
Depends on the public or private school and the quality of its teachers/admins in this area.
Private schools actually have more leeway and at least in my old childhood neighborhood in NYC, one of their strong selling points WAS their ability and willingness to discipline students for infractions such as these IN OR OUTSIDE* of the school campus. That and the implicit threat that if the student concerned gets “too rowdy” and the parents don’t find some way of curbing that after a short period, the school reserves the right to permanently expel him/her.
This was these were some key factors in why the private/Catholic school classrooms in my area were relative seas of calm whereas the neighborhood public school classrooms in the '80s and early '90s era were so chaotically noisy and violent that little viable instruction could be had back then.
I received a taste of this when I went to a public junior high school and experienced having to deal with violent bullying from gangs of juvenile delinquents whom the police knew about and arrested multiple times…only to be forced to release them due to the inclinations of the junior high school admins to side with the delinquents’ parents and view them as “misunderstood youth” to be coddled**. And mind you…this was at one of the “good” public junior high schools in the city by popular reputation back then.
In contrast, the admins at my NYC public magnet high school would have never tolerated students behaving in such a violent rowdy manner and such students are “strongly encouraged” with the emphasis on “strongly” to transfer back to their neighborhood/zoned high school. This reputation was also one of their strongest selling points…especially to those of us who would have otherwise been consigned to attending neighborhood/zoned high schools with high violence/crime rates like the one in my old neighborhood***.
One incident which illustrated this was my Catholic Elementary school calling an assembly of the entire student body by the principal to denounce two classmates who were caught fighting in a public park on a weekend by a neighbor who notified the Catholic School. Didn't matter this took place off-campus on a weekend....both were punished with this public shaming, a week's suspension, and a warning a repeat will result in permanent expulsion.
** Once they ended up in high school and committed too many crimes to be ignored, even the public school admins were no longer able to protect them and they all are serving long sentences at Rikers or one of the upstate prisons for serious felonies.
*** Ended up being closed down a few years ago due to underperformance including a graduation rate ~34%…and that’s actually an improvement from my high school years in the early-mid '90s.
I tutored/taught in South Boston HS during the school busing debacle. I had to enter and pass through a metal detector, had rocks thrown at me, and noticed there were more state troopers than students and teachers in the school. Violence was an hourly thing. Some of my students were afraid to come to school.
One teacher sat and read the newspaper during the entire class while his students completed handouts.
I also taught science in several of the elementary schools in the same school district. The one thing that was loud and clear to me was the best principals overcame outside distractions, violence, and poverty to create a learning environment second to none. You would have thought you were in a Brookline or a Newton private school. Put one of these principals in Latin High today and I’d bet they would sweep it clean.
Isn’t that the basis of Fisher II which is presently being reviewed by SCOTUS-- that selective schools want to be able to continue giving admissions preference to URMs?
@GMTplus7 - LOL you are right about the Waiting for Superman guy. I saw him interviewed on some TV show, and he said just exactly that. He was being humble I guess, saying how if he was really heroic he would have sent his kids to public school … as though that would really be just the thing to make the difference.
If someone sends his or her kids to private or parochial school, I respect that choice, But I do roll my eyes when people whose kids never set foot in a public school go on and on about how to save them.
If you walked around BLS you would be pleased with the atmosphere of the school. It is very strict. Far stricter than the affluant suburban high school I attended. I took a tour of the school a few years ago and asked our tour guide his favorite part of the school. Despite the superior acedemic and extra curricular opportunities, his answer was that the school was very safe, which I was a somewhat taken aback by.
Further, I support the young people striving to make the school more racially tolerant and I think they have done so in a responsible manner. I have followed the story and as the issue has gained more press, I think the underlying problems have been at least somewhat sensationalized. I am not saying there is not a problem that needs to be solved. But I do think the story has changed from the initial valid complaints.
If you google the underlying story, the vast majority of complaints arise from actions that happened not on campus but through social media. Often times it was not BLS students posting the offensive tweets, although I have read some highly offensive comments were re-tweeted by BLS students. It is difficult for a school to control what happens off campus. I also think that eductational institution needs to cautious about punishing free speech, no matter how inappropiate. I have read that at least some of the delay in the school administration responding to this issue was the fact that the majority of actions the students complained of arose from off campus activiites. In the 70’s school administrators did not have to deal with social media.
It sounds like the school plans to educate students about racial tolerance, which I think is the correct plan of action.
I think the white kids need to learn the lesson that racist speech has consequences in the real world. When they get their first job, they better not tell their minority coworker that he/she only got the job because of their race unless they want to look for a new job. The First Amendment applies to the government, not private employers, and racial harassment is not protected free speech in any work or school environment. Don’t tell the Black kids 'that’s life" – they know that there are racists, but they have every right to have their school address the issue to the extent possible.
Reading some of the comments gives the vibe that a lot of people are telling the students to suck it up and deal with racism because it could be worse. Yes, it could be much worse but that in no way should diminish these students claims. Racism is racism and the high school should not tolerate any such behavior.
--and so forth to get into many colleges.