Go over to From My Brown Eyed View and read about the morons in the Georgia public school who got themselves in trouble.
It was your typical idiotic public education approach, an ill-advised attempt to combine subjects and stimulate thought but instead they came up with something quite offensive.
I brought this up for a couple reasons.
1. I've got nothing really to say this morning...
2. Public purposeful misunderstandings are a pet peeve ever since my clever jokes about Al Gore inventing the internet got state.
3. I left a meandering spiel on someone else Weblog and I really hope she is understanding of my lack of racial sensitivity training.
4. The comments on the BBC article show only certain types of hate speech are actionable.
5. I misspoke on Brown Eyed View. I said I thought the teachers should have to be janitors for a couple weeks and see what it is like to have to work for a living. What I meant was, they should have to trade their "high status' status job for a "low status" job and see what it is like to have to function in a job with a diverse group of people. I know this because my wife who is a teacher took on janitorial work at the school in an attempt to maintain her full time status. It was an eye-opener and she teaches at a private school.
Anyway...
I have come to believe we are, shall we say, "racist" by our very make up. We form social structures at an early age. Like people group together. Other groups form. Alliances are made, insults are given, challenges are made. It is the nature of our instinctive social makeup. Like chickens and cows and other herd animals.
Instead of recognizing there will always be conflict and trying to develop ways to minimize the conflict we alternate between ignoring it, exploiting it, and making it a sin above all other sins.
What really amazes me is the hatred expressed by liberals and progressives towards poor white Southerners and Christians. They are only groups left that it is acceptable to hate.
So what is the point?
I think we all should get along. I think it is harmful to confuse insensitivity or stupidity to racism. I thing the charge of racism should be restricted to a purposeful and malicious intentional action against another race and I think the term hate speech should be eliminated. I don't think that name calling should be prosecuted.
Here is another example.
I went to George Fox College. Private Quaker College with a lot of Volvo's in the parking lot. In 2008 some students used clear fishing line to suspend a cardboard cutout of our future dear leader from a tree. They attached a sign with an obscure reference to a scholarship program at the school.
Here is the first story on Oregon Live.
and
Here is the second story on Oregon Live.
Nowhere do you see an explanation of what really happened.
Even though I had long since graduated I can tell you what happened.
Our dear leader was not hung in effigy.
The clear fishing line was used to suspend a cardboard cutout from the tree to make it appear that he was standing in front of the building that the liberal arts stuff is housed. The sign said he was a reject of a minority scholarship program. I think it is a statement about internal GFU frustrations.
I have to laugh. A wry cynical laugh. Some George Fox students actually thought on their own about something and tried to make a statement. Boy did that go wrong.
When I was there the only social statement seemed to be the peace and love people hating on the Zionists and loving the exploding people... (See, I just made a racist statement and some of you laughed)
Anyway... This topic now bores me. I lost my point somewhere along the line. I hope I didn't offend MsLadyD on her own blog!
I'm going to work.
Have a nice day...