Who's that guy's lawyer? Hate speech isn't prohibited under the 1st Amendment except when it's directed at someone specifically, as it is here, at which point it becomes a hate crime. You know... the thing they were charged with.
A black principal, four white teens and the ‘senior prank’ that became a hate crime (WaPo)
- Thread starter Piecake
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So 3 of them might get out of the hate crime charges but the one who actually spraypainted that statement is screwed
You know that every important figure in their life is comforting them and assuring them that they're right.
All of that and they still don't have the capability to understand that racism isn't about intent.
Edit: I also like how he acknowledges that he knew Nazis literally murdered Jews but has to clarify that he didn't know about the "other things" as if that somehow would have made a difference.
He knew enough to know better. This was not a fault in his education.
Edit2: the idea of these mother fuckers having their parents rent them a fucking beach house for an entire week to celebrate makes me fucking sick.
It's a weak ass excuse but tbh I would buy it if that wasn't taught at their school
Our schools absolutely suck at teaching that kind of stuff
Obviously though fuck them and they are 100% racist
This was still taught:
"They just included the burning and the train cars."
That's enough to know the symbol isn't some innocuous thing.
Yeah I definitely agree. It's a separate issue from this case that needs to be addressed.
No way is it an excuse for what they did.
His dad got it.
Another dude said said something about this, and I'm starting to feel that there is this screwed up psycho thing that's happening with the last generation or two of white folks. Reading about this stuff in books is merely academic, and doesn't portray the truly horrid stuff that people did to each other throughout history. They don't have relatives that are alive that give them anchors to the reality of the past - its just stuff that you read on the internet, or play in a game.
They don't get the ramifications of the word nigger. Hell, they probably get called that themselves when they're playing online. KKK? All they know is the stuff they see in pictures, or the angry shit they read on sites like Stormfront. They don't have relatives who ran for their lives to not get lynched. They don't have the grandfather or great uncle who told them about needing to wrap their arms or legs in bandages, because the firemen's water hoses literally flayed the skin off of them. They don't know any one who actually fought Nazis in World War 2. They don't have Jewish ancestors who talk about how their parents sent them away while they made the trip to Auschwitz, and never saw them again. They don't know anyone who fled from Panama, or Nicaragua, or Somalia, or Sudan. They're so cocooned and cushioned that they just know that drawing dicks and swastikas and saying death to jews and niggers gets a funny rise out of people. Yeah, they know it pisses people off, but it's not HATE speech, right? RIGHT?
This is the kind of shit that really scares me. It scares me because there's plenty of REALLY hateful people who can hide within the idiots like the kids who did the vandalism. There's SO many of these ignorant ass motherfuckers that would be mortified to walk up to a mexican dude and call him a wetback, but just need to get the right bit of pushing to start hating people for fucking no reason, and the next thing you know they're wondering what it would be like to drive by a black guy and just wack him with a baseball bat. Because fuck niggers, right? lol
This was an extremely powerful, moving, and well written article. I'm from NYC where diversity is the norm but I have a good friend who teaches in the South. She's black and this kind of thing wasn't surprising at all. These kids really think this shit is all a joke.
The punishment was way too week. Only WEEKENDS in jail? Wtf.
Also the end of the article, with that years senior prank being Trump 2020 hit especially hard. He really made these people even more brazen than they already were, and normalized this hate even more than I already thought was possible.
The punishment was way too week. Only WEEKENDS in jail? Wtf.
Also the end of the article, with that years senior prank being Trump 2020 hit especially hard. He really made these people even more brazen than they already were, and normalized this hate even more than I already thought was possible.
Please tell me every single university is being notified for these kids. None of these kids deserve higher education.
Baylor is probably tryin to give them scholarships after hearing this
Uhhhh where is the prank? This is like, well, writing hate speech everywhere and claiming it was a prank.
The prank is that the principal thought the kids accepted him but deep down they didn't truly respect him.
PUNK'D.
I don't know why I read threads like this. They just make me want to log off for the day and go to sleep. Really demoralizing.
Those punks got a slap on the wrist.
By the time I got to the end of the article and read what happened I was pissed.
By the time I got to the end of the article and read what happened I was pissed.
These kids are spoiled rotten snobs
Is this a thing now?
Fuck these shits for real. They learned absolutely nothing and it seems the community didn't either. Swept under the rug or push aside good boys who did bad things. Major respect for the principal, but it looks like you might still have a long road ahead.
What's dumb is they'd have been hosed anyway. No way they planned that well enough to not been seen. And I'm sure you could whittle down people by their builds as well.
Done in by their phones autoconnecting to the wifi.
Kind of amazing how you can make that leap from "class of 2018" to racist graffiti. As a DC area native this was an interesting story because this is the part of Howard County Id never spent time in and knew nothing about.
This shitty bunch learned nothing from this in the end, it seems. Fuck them to hell.
Saying racist shit and hurting people for no reason other than hate isn't "having a good heart".
Saying racist shit and hurting people for no reason other than hate isn't "having a good heart".
Great article. These kids still probably don't get it. The comments Seth made at his sentencing show absolutely zero understanding of racism. White folk don't understand that they're born racist in America because society is systemically built that way. You don't have to be outwardly racist and waving Confederate flags to be racist. You can be racist by being complacent with the system that targets minorities every day in this country. You're not off the hook because your dad and grandfather were the ones who set up the system, and now you just get to ride off the rewards of that system without fixing it.
White people don't get that. I say that as a white guy who has had countless conversations with people about this and get thrown back, "I'm not responsible for what my dad did. I'm not a racist for being white." No, you are. You just bury it, and continue to teach your kids that racism isn't real anymore and then act shocked when they spray paint slurs and swastikas all over their school.
I'm very interested in that memoir that principal was reading. Sounds exactly like what I've been thinking about my own life.
White people don't get that. I say that as a white guy who has had countless conversations with people about this and get thrown back, "I'm not responsible for what my dad did. I'm not a racist for being white." No, you are. You just bury it, and continue to teach your kids that racism isn't real anymore and then act shocked when they spray paint slurs and swastikas all over their school.
I'm very interested in that memoir that principal was reading. Sounds exactly like what I've been thinking about my own life.
I'm sure they will have a movie written about them where they are the innocent good natured teens who just got in over there heads. Maybe the principal will get 2 minutes at the end to say something. Maybe not. We got it with American Animals.
For sure. Given the quality of the video and their shit disguises even without the phones it should have been easy to ID them.
Everything about these boys reeks of white privilege.
I can't believe they got caught by the wifi connection. That is genius. (I think this should be mandatory to see who is on campus at all times.)
Pretty fucked up that the kids are going on to careers and jobs, and will be able to have the hate crime expunged from their records. Any POC even brushing by a crime gets the harshest sentence and their life is essentially over from that day forward, zero tolerance from prosecutors and judges.
Shoulda gotten at LEAST 2 years in prison, tried as an adult, and no possibility of erasing their crime from their record. Not to punish them specifically, but to send a message to all teenagers in America, that if you do stupid ass shit like this it WILL haunt you for the rest of your life.
Shoulda gotten at LEAST 2 years in prison, tried as an adult, and no possibility of erasing their crime from their record. Not to punish them specifically, but to send a message to all teenagers in America, that if you do stupid ass shit like this it WILL haunt you for the rest of your life.
It goes from a 2 to a 10 REAL quick. "Things got hot and heavy, and next thing you know, there was penises, swastikas, and N-words everywhere!"
People who paint such symbols definitely know what is behind them and what they mean. That's the point. They only act all shocked or ignorant when caught. It's a common theme in such cases. If they didn't know they wouldn't paint them.
I do get that they probably didn't really think it through. That they might have been "just" doing something taboo, and maybe not out of hate.
But it doesn't really matter. Actions do speak louder than words. They deserve every bit of punishment allowed, and I hope that is enough to teach them, and others, a lesson.
But probably not. The end of that article is heartbreaking. A Trump/MAGA cart as the next year's prank is basically exactly the same thing, but not punishable.
But it doesn't really matter. Actions do speak louder than words. They deserve every bit of punishment allowed, and I hope that is enough to teach them, and others, a lesson.
But probably not. The end of that article is heartbreaking. A Trump/MAGA cart as the next year's prank is basically exactly the same thing, but not punishable.
Evidently. Have to say "I was drunk and decided to call my principal a racial slur" is one of the more damning cases of "well, you're probably racist" that I think I've seen.
What's kind of hilarious is that how they retell the story they went from absolutely stereotypical pranks (has anyone actually ever released pigs or is it something people have just talked about forever) to "let's cover our own school with as much derogatory graffiti as possible."
Entertaining story. So the phones is what did them in, huh. I like how it's framed that Seth couldn't even pretend he hadn't done it when he was called aside at the graduation. Definitely didn't have the mindset for it, unlike his friends.
I guess the ending is kinda good? They didn't get completely off the hook. I'm sure if the judge wasn't black, it'd have been a different story.
I like how this happened a year later:
And this line:
And the emphasis that the kids weren't racist and all of that activity they were doing to lessen their verdicts preemptively was good stuff. I had to smh at the statement from the pastor:
I guess the ending is kinda good? They didn't get completely off the hook. I'm sure if the judge wasn't black, it'd have been a different story.
I like how this happened a year later:
And this line:
It'll never truly end.
And the emphasis that the kids weren't racist and all of that activity they were doing to lessen their verdicts preemptively was good stuff. I had to smh at the statement from the pastor:
Nah, especially with the statement from the principal that they were properly educated on what they graffitied. There are way too many outs these days people claim so that one isn't assigned the label of "racist." What they did is a racist act that does prove their underlying racism.
I think the worst part of this (which was a hard contest for sure) was during the sentencing where Principal Burton knows that these kids are full of shit with their "I swear I didn't know that swastikas and the KKK were racist imagery!" because the school did teach students about that history, but he can't say anything about it because he's an authority figure and he needs to "be responsible" and politically correct.
It's obvious why Seth consented to an interview with the Post, to paint himself as an innocent who had no idea his friends were going to commit hate crimes, he swears! It would have been interesting if the reporters could have cross referenced his protestations of innocence with the surveillance footage of the graffiti.
It's obvious why Seth consented to an interview with the Post, to paint himself as an innocent who had no idea his friends were going to commit hate crimes, he swears! It would have been interesting if the reporters could have cross referenced his protestations of innocence with the surveillance footage of the graffiti.
Emphasis on the fact that they were playing the court and those who would listen to their "I'm not racist, I swear" stories. The principal clearly knows what's up, from his own experience.
THEY are the hateful ones. You don't need to be calling a black person nigger to their face to be hateful.