Just after Halloween this past year, the Baltimore Sun, the
local news paper, posted a story about students attending Baltimore private schools,
and their choices of costumes. These pictures were taken from snapchat, and
then posted on Facebook by a former class mate of mine, and the pictures of the
current students were wearing jumpsuits. In one of the pictures, it was of two
kids wearing regular jumpsuits with the caption saying “n------ broke out”. In
the other picture at a non related high school, there was a picture of the back
of a student wearing a jumpsuit, on which was written “Freddie Gray”. Weeks
after this happened, stories are still coming out about the incident from the
Baltimore Sun, and I was lucky enough to talk to my friend who called out these
students on Facebook and wrote to the schools and local news sources. His
original Facebook post got so much attention and several thousand shares. But
what happened to the post was really suppressing.
It was not suppressing
at all that my friend received plenty of backlash from other friends and
members of the school. A lot of people wanted to know why he publicly called the
students out, after all, they weren’t the ones who made the caption over
snapchat, in fact, all they did was dress up as members of the hit T.V. show, Orange is the New Black. Regardless of whether
what this man posted on Facebook was right or wrong, Facebook saw how much
attention that it was getting and removed the post from Facebook, and tried to
act like it never happened. They also suspended his Facebook account and
wrongly silenced him from sharing the truth. This is a major issue regarding
freedom of speech, and I was upset that a major company like Facebook can get
away with something like that.
The schools
responded the best that they could have to a really obscured situation like
this. They sent emails out to all of the students, alumni, parents, and news sources
to try and correct this incident. Still, in November, there are rallies against
this kid of racist nature organized by the faculty and staff. This brings up so
many questions that go a lot further then “what do you do with the kids who are
involved”. I personally think that it was right to call out these kids who were
involved, not to shame them or get them in trouble, but to further on the
conversations and make the naive realized that racism is still very much a part
of this country, even in Baltimore city where I grew up, which is predominantly
black and liberal. It is our job to further these conversations in our communities.
I feel as if the school needs to better educate kids on decision making, and
realizing that some people might not see the situation as others do. I’m glad
that the schools are now publicly standing up against the students involved and
are showing the community their potential for change.
Interesting post, Hudson! Thanks for sharing.
ReplyDeleteI have never understood why people feel the need to dress up in racist and/or cultural appropriating costumes. And when they are called racist, they are offended that you would even assume they could ever be such a thing. There is a PLETHORA of costumes out there that will not offend people. If you even have a slight hint of a feeling that your costume might be problematic, just DONT WEAR IT! Not that hard...
But I am very glad your friend stood up against these students. Just confused how dressing up as Freddie Gray has anything to do with "Orange is the New Black." Ugh people can be so stupid sometimes.
I was in sociology call and we were talking about how halloween allows people to display thoughts and felling on how they really feel about people cultures and how all of these things should be acceptable to do because you are just dressing up. But we talked about how this justification for these actions are totally incorrect. And even if you are joking if its not funny to the people you are dressing up as it shouldn't be done.
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