The NYT Helped a Vindictive Teen Destroy a Classmate Who Uttered a Racial Slur
reason.com
reason.com
Fear is winning.
I'd also guess the ratio of effort to page views is especially high with these sorts of stories. the outrage is already happening on twitter/fb/whatever. all you have to do is take some screenshots, summarize them, and maybe add a generic blurb about the greater context. you already know there's an audience, so there's very little risk involved.
The Wall Street Journal and The Economist are two I use regularly.
Meh. It’s vindictive, don’t get me wrong, but should he have just ignored this forever?
I feel kind of bad for the girl, but at the end of the day she said what she said. And maybe that’s a lesson for others.
I just came from reddit where a post about Chinese fishing boats fishing quasi-legally off the coast of Peru has a top comment where someone is seemingly making up a Chinese proverb that magically explains Chinese power projection, so I'm a little iffy
But yeah, maybe don’t go around saying racial slurs on camera no matter where you learned it.
It's not as if racists don't exist, she goes to a school full of then aided by parents and teachers in full agreement with the status quo.
Hopefully this will encourage administrators, teachers, and parents to take this as seriously as the rest of the world does.
This is exactly what mob justice is. It is always an emotional overreaction to a legitimate transgression.
> Hopefully this will encourage administrators, teachers, and parents to take this as seriously as the rest of the world does.
Unlikely. The reaction I've seen at other schools is to be so terrified of these mob overreactions that they stifle all critical thinking with draconian rules that limit any form of expression.
For that same reason, we are seeing many school districts banning classical literature, because it doesn't conform to the modern ethical norms. Works like The Odyssey and works of Shakespeare...
https://www.wsj.com/articles/even-homer-gets-mobbed-11609095...
We are creating a culture of fear and regression.
How many times has history demonstrated that angry groups of people can go out of control and lash out at innocents? The term "witch hunt" entered our lexicon for a reason.
There are racists and racial slurs. It might be difficult to identify a racist, but it's easy to identify the oldest and most famous racial slur. It's also easy not to say it.
As for racism, I imagine this guy would have something to say about whether the witch hunt mentality for racists is real: https://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/sdge-worker-fired-ove...
> "In interviews, current and former students of color described an environment rife with racial insensitivity, including casual uses of slurs," notes Levin. "A report commissioned last year by the school district documented a pattern of school leaders ignoring the widespread use of racial slurs by both students and teachers, fostering a 'growing sense of despair' among students of color, some of whom faced disproportionate disciplinary measures compared with white students."
> Levin connects the outcry from aggrieved students to the broader Black Lives Matter movement and protests that occurred this summer following the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor at the hands of police. But nowhere does his article reckon with a very basic fact: The New York Times has opted to assist a teenager's desperate quest to ruin the life of a young woman who said something stupid when she was 15.
The entire place is rampant with racial bullshit and the article writer is like, "But this poor girl's life is ruined!"
They then equivocate the experience of racial prejudice with cheating on a math test, amongst other relative frivolities:
> Or better yet, he could have simply not written this story, which concerns bad but by no means uncommon teenager behavior. If Groves had cheated on her math test, or planted a kick-me sign on a rival's back, would this constitute national news? No crime was committed; the utterance of the word did not even take place at school. The only thing novel about this situation is that it attracted the national media's attention.
Like, you just got finished explaining there's a whole big racial problem at the joint, confirmed by third-parties and yet we're still talking about how there's "no crime" and "it didn't happen at school"... like, what? Amazing feats of hand-waving going on.
I'd take the writer more seriously if they gave any kind of weight to the racist experiences occuring there, but those just aren't actual problems to them. Like, where do you think racist behavior comes from?
This entire culture of looking the other way when casual racism is happening is a massive problem, and I've seen this stuff from educated, affluent people (whom apparently are also the subjects of the article). You can't really talk about how society is crumbling when you don't give two shits about recognizing the qualms at hand.
I'd feel bad for the girl, if she truly 'gets' the seriousness of what she said, and changes her behavior. I don't know her, the context, or how she's changed since then...she could've been a Trump supporter turned Bernie supporter and feel hugely ashamed or she could feel ashamed she 'got caught'.
TIL Community colleges are filled with people who've all ruined their lives in some way to have got themselves enrolled in community college, instead of a prestigious school.
Painting the consequence of her actions as 'having to attend community college' as 'ruining her life', literally is an elitist white-privilege thing.
This is a valuable lesson, perhaps it'll be a wake up call saving her from growing up to be the stereotypical 'Karen'.
A ruined life??
She's still alive, and likely has parents to take care of her and a roof over her head.
Millions are losing homes, many teens have lost both parents to covid and are now orphaned. A black veteran, possessing a tiny amount of weed, gets 5 years in prison, while Aunt Becky from "Full House" gets 2 months for fraud in excess of half a million dollars.
I guess, I have a much different view of what constitutes a 'ruined life' than the author. Aunt Becky, and this girl will bounce back fine. Homeless restaurant and hospitality and entertainment workers? Not so much. This black veteran? Maybe, if his record doesn't make getting a job impossible when he gets out...
Other people really did have their lives ruined this year: Died of covid, lost both parents, lost all income, became homeless, died by gunshots from police while sleeping.
Somehow, being forced to attend community college (well it isn't fascism, she's not being forced), is hardly a 'ruined life'. Suggesting otherwise, is almost if not more racist and elitist than the girl's slur.
I call BS on you!
It's almost assuredly the overrefined and effete that would argue this; they've got theirs and they'll justify whatever tragedy befalls a person with a certain sanctimonious, boundless, superior empathy.
You go to community college first.
as for the cheerleader, well well well, look what showed up. it’s your own bad decisions!
NYT is reporting on something that happened and providing context. They interview the girl who got cancelled, which means she gave them permission to use her name and direct quotes. They paint her in a very sympathetic light. They don't demonize her at all. They allow her to repeatedly say that she was young and behaving like a typical thoughtless teenager.
> The New York Times has opted to assist a teenager's desperate quest to ruin the life of a young woman who said something stupid when she was 15.
So what does Reason want?
Should NYT ignore the story altogether, even though it's of public interest (as a microcosm of cancel culture)? Should they write it only from the perspective of the girl who was cancelled?
They did what they should have done, which is try to get into the heads of both students. Their attempts to sympathize with the white student will anger some liberals, and their attempts to sympathize with the Black student(s) will anger some conservatives.
This is just Reason intentionally ignoring half the article to throw some rage-chum into the water for their readers.