racist-don-t-nig-anti-obama-bumper-sticker-162917634.html

[Black]

cbelt3 wrote:
And please... "make the word illegal" ? Heloooooo thought police. Do you really want to go that path?

Not really the intent of the question . . . but "hate speech" is already illegal, and we have legally codified bans on some types of language in some contexts (see FCC regulations.) So it's more a question of whether people are suggesting going further down that path when they passionately decry overtly racist messaging.

[$tevie]

It's a disgusting bumper sticker used by a disgusting person, and reflects how freaked out some people are that our President isn't a white man. Consider the source.

[Grace62]

You can encounter these attitudes anywhere, all over the country. It's just something that ails us and even though we have freedom of speech it's surprising that anyone feels free to be so hateful, but they do.

Then you hear stories like this one...

"Fairfax County (VA) school administrators are investigating a student’s allegations of racially insensitive behavior by a veteran English teacher at George C. Marshall High School. (Falls Church)

Ninth-grader Jordan Shumate said that during class this month, he was reading aloud a poem by acclaimed African American writer Langston Hughes when his teacher interrupted and directed him to read in a “blacker” style.

“She told me, ‘Blacker, Jordan — c’mon, blacker. I thought you were black,’ ” said Shumate, who is African American.

Shumate told his mother, Nicole Cober Page, about the incident Tuesday. She complained to school administrators.

“We take these allegations very seriously, and we’re investigating,” Principal Jay Pearson said Friday. He declined to provide further details.

Shumate, 14, and his mother identified the teacher as Marilyn Bart. Bart did not respond Thursday or Friday to e-mail and phone inquiries about the incident. Records show that Bart has worked in Fairfax schools since 1990.

Another ninth-grader, Kaila Denny, said she witnessed the incident. Shumate was “just sitting there reading normally like any person would,” Denny said, when Bart instructed him to speak “blacker.”

Shumate said that when he refused to continue reading the poem, Bart read it aloud herself, demonstrating what she meant.

“She sounded like a maid in the 1960s,” Shumate said. “She read the poem like a slave, basically.”

Shumate said he asked Bart that day whether she thinks all black people speak that way. She reprimanded him for talking out of turn, he said, and told him to take his seat.

Cober Page said she spoke with Pearson by telephone Friday about the incident but learned nothing more from him about Bart’s side of the story.

“My feeling is that he is an advocate for the kids and wants this to be taken seriously,” Cober Page said of the principal.

The poem Shumate read in class was Hughes’s “Ballad of the Landlord.” The poem, written in 1940, tells of a black tenant thrown in jail for challenging a deadbeat landlord.

“Landlord, landlord,” it begins. “My roof has sprung a leak./Don’t you ’member I told you about it/Way last week?”

If the teacher thought the poem should be delivered in a Southern dialect, she could have said so without referring to race, Cober Page said.

Shumate said it wasn’t the only time that he felt singled out in English class because of his race.

This week, in preparation for reading literature about the Holocaust, the teacher showed photographs to illustrate common stereotypes about different groups of people, Shumate said.

Shumate said Bart showed an image of grape soda — a drink of choice among African Americans, according to a racial stereotype — and asked him to explain its meaning. Denny corroborated his account.

“I do know the stereotypes,” Shumate said, “but she could change the questions so I’m not like the king of black people.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/educ...tml?sub=AR

[August West]

I rode in the back of the bus through East Cleveland at 2AM once after being chased there by a few angry young men in gang colors. Happy ?

They probably were not aware of your deep sensitivity to the disenfranchised, but, then again, maybe they were.

[Black]

Grace62 wrote:
You can encounter these attitudes anywhere, all over the country. It's just something that ails us and even though we have freedom of speech it's surprising that anyone feels free to be so hateful, but they do.

Then you hear stories like this one...

"Fairfax County (VA) school administrators are investigating a student’s allegations of racially insensitive behavior by a veteran English teacher at George C. Marshall High School. (Falls Church)

Ninth-grader Jordan Shumate said that during class this month, he was reading aloud a poem by acclaimed African American writer Langston Hughes when his teacher interrupted and directed him to read in a “blacker” style.

“She told me, ‘Blacker, Jordan — c’mon, blacker. I thought you were black,’ ” said Shumate, who is African American.

Shumate told his mother, Nicole Cober Page, about the incident Tuesday. She complained to school administrators.

“We take these allegations very seriously, and we’re investigating,” Principal Jay Pearson said Friday. He declined to provide further details.

Shumate, 14, and his mother identified the teacher as Marilyn Bart. Bart did not respond Thursday or Friday to e-mail and phone inquiries about the incident. Records show that Bart has worked in Fairfax schools since 1990.

Another ninth-grader, Kaila Denny, said she witnessed the incident. Shumate was “just sitting there reading normally like any person would,” Denny said, when Bart instructed him to speak “blacker.”

Shumate said that when he refused to continue reading the poem, Bart read it aloud herself, demonstrating what she meant.

“She sounded like a maid in the 1960s,” Shumate said. “She read the poem like a slave, basically.”

Shumate said he asked Bart that day whether she thinks all black people speak that way. She reprimanded him for talking out of turn, he said, and told him to take his seat.

Cober Page said she spoke with Pearson by telephone Friday about the incident but learned nothing more from him about Bart’s side of the story.

“My feeling is that he is an advocate for the kids and wants this to be taken seriously,” Cober Page said of the principal.

The poem Shumate read in class was Hughes’s “Ballad of the Landlord.” The poem, written in 1940, tells of a black tenant thrown in jail for challenging a deadbeat landlord.

“Landlord, landlord,” it begins. “My roof has sprung a leak./Don’t you ’member I told you about it/Way last week?”

If the teacher thought the poem should be delivered in a Southern dialect, she could have said so without referring to race, Cober Page said.

Shumate said it wasn’t the only time that he felt singled out in English class because of his race.

This week, in preparation for reading literature about the Holocaust, the teacher showed photographs to illustrate common stereotypes about different groups of people, Shumate said.

Shumate said Bart showed an image of grape soda — a drink of choice among African Americans, according to a racial stereotype — and asked him to explain its meaning. Denny corroborated his account.

“I do know the stereotypes,” Shumate said, “but she could change the questions so I’m not like the king of black people.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/educ...tml?sub=AR

Deserves its own thread.
The "talking out of turn" comment suggests there's a chance this teacher could be an ignoramis, but my money is on this possibly being a great teacher with the potential to turn out students with a deeper understanding of race, culture, and history than they might get from someone just going through the motions and taking pains not to call any attention to themselves professionally.

[Grace62]

Black wrote:


Deserves its own thread.
The "talking out of turn" comment suggests there's a chance this teacher could be an ignoramis, but my money is on this possibly being a great teacher with the potential to turn out students with a deeper understanding of race, culture, and history than they might get from someone just going through the motions and taking pains not to call any attention to themselves professionally.

I'd want to know more about the teacher and her intentions. All I know is that she is around 65 and has been teaching at the school for 22 years. It's an unusual thing for an experienced teacher to do, and if the student felt humiliated by it I have a hard time seeing how she was helping or what she was teaching. This is a famous poem with many recorded readings, she could have played a recording of it being read "in character" instead of calling on the only black kid in the class to do so, when he didn't volunteer.
Saying that a black person was "talking white" or "talking black" was a very racially charged thing to say when I was growing up in the south, definitely considered very rude. Maybe she just made a poor word choice, absent more information that's the best I can think that happened here.

[Black]

Grace62 wrote:
[quote=Black]


Deserves its own thread.
The "talking out of turn" comment suggests there's a chance this teacher could be an ignoramis, but my money is on this possibly being a great teacher with the potential to turn out students with a deeper understanding of race, culture, and history than they might get from someone just going through the motions and taking pains not to call any attention to themselves professionally.

I'd want to know more about the teacher and her intentions. All I know is that she is around 65 and has been teaching at the school for 22 years. It's an unusual thing for an experienced teacher to do, and if the student felt humiliated by it I have a hard time seeing how she was helping or what she was teaching. This is a famous poem with many recorded readings, she could have played a recording of it being read "in character" instead of calling on the only black kid in the class to do so, when he didn't volunteer. Agree that more needs to be known to make an assessment, hence my use of "possible." I missed that there was only one black kid in the class somehow and assumed it was a predominantly or completely African-American school. I also assumed the teacher was black. In re-reading, I can see from context that the fact that the kid feels singled out often suggests my assumptions are wrong, but otherwise I don't see anything definitive.

Saying that a black person was "talking white" or "talking black" was a very racially charged thing to say when I was growing up in the south, definitely considered very rude. Maybe she just made a poor word choice, absent more information that's the best I can think that happened here.

I'm not gonna fall into "some of my best friends" here but based on what I know I don't think "talking black" is particularly 'charged', at least among people my age and younger.
My guess, if this teacher is white, is that they are lucky enough to have familiarity with and insight into some aspects of African American culture via friends or family, but is edging on recklessness in terms of who knows what her experience is and how they might perceive the things that come out of her mouth, knowing little to nothing about her.
Plus, she needs to check in with this particular kid to see if he's comfortable with this unusual sort of attention.

[decay]

it IS racist and rude.

so is calling an Arab a "towel-head" or "camel jockey" but many Americans feel they are patriotic when saying crap like that.

you ought to see the signs that a small independent car dealer near me puts up - all anti-Obama and pro-Santorum.

at least it helps me know where not to spend any of my money. it probably brings him the anti-O business.

http://rahautos.com/

http://www.merchantcircle.com/business/R...0-682-7480

http://www.berksmontnews.com/articles/20...=fullstory

[graylocks]

decay wrote:

at least it helps me know where not to spend any of my money. it probably brings him the anti-O business.

without a doubt it cuts both ways.

[SteveO]

I'm a fan of the freedom of speech bumper sticker that bill posted. But this "don't re-nig" thing is so totally stupid and practiced by people for whom stickers like the former are completely lost. Why? Did I mention they are stupid?

I just think we should all call this crap out whenever and wherever we see it. There are always going to be assholes. Maybe we can minimize their impact, though.