words are not enough

[fpb]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/6664060/Pupils-suspended-for-Kick-a-Jew-Day.html
For the record, I am a Jew-basher-basher. If one of those kids had been mine, he or she would not have been able to sit for a week, and would have been on bread and water for a month. That this sort of filth should be allowed to flourish almost unpunished (sent home? give me a break!) in a country with claims to civilization makes my blood boil.

Comments

[cheyinka]

The fact that the school allowed the Spirit Week to even have a "Hit A Jew Day" (totally pupil-instituted or not; surely this kind of thing involved at least a day's worth of planning, and could have been squashed before it started?) would be reason enough for me to, if I had children, pull them from the school at once. (Even "Hit A Tall Person Day" is bad.)

I concur that "sent home for a day" is a singularly toothless penalty, too. It's like telling them "Ooh, dear, your prank went too far!" rather than "What the hell is wrong with you little monsters?!" and the latter is definitely what they needed to hear. :(

[inverarity.livejournal.com]

I can't imagine that the school allowed "Hit A Jew Day." (The school district would be sued out of existence.) It appears that it was the brainchild of a few idiot students, and the administrators acted when they found out about it.

The instigators definitely needed more than a one-day suspension. I don't know what the best method is to uproot that kind of casual bigotry in children, though -- they probably don't even fully realize what kind of crap they're perpetrating. I doubt any of them are hard-core anti-Semites; more likely they just thought it was hee-larious.

Keep in mind, this is a country now where people will put up signs calling President Obama a n***** and then claim with a perfectly straight face that they didn't intend it to be racist.

[cheyinka]

Yeah, I'm probably expecting too much of the administrators, especially since all discussion could easily have gone on after school at somebody's house - but once there was a Hit A Tall Person Day, shouldn't there have been extra vigilance that the other Days in Spirit Week weren't terrible? :/

[elise-the-great.livejournal.com]

It is agonizing to voice any criticism of President Obama, however mild or well-informed, in this part of the USA. If the person disagrees with you, you're likely to get a ten-minute sermon on the Christlike qualities of our president; if they agree, you are treated to a ten-minute conspiratorial tirade, redolent with ear-blistering racist pejoratives.

That said, I honestly prefer the beer-bloated ranting redneck who limits his bigotry to a verbal steam-off (however disgusting) over the parents and school officials who raised, educated, and trained those children to be such vile scumwads, and then let them get away with it.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I don't know what the best method is to uproot that kind of casual bigotry in children
Serious shaming would do the trick. Children are, in general, sensitive to what others think of them, and once it gets through to them that something they did is regarded, not as bad (that appeals to their nascent contradictory feeling - check the modern meaning of the word "wicked"), but as contemptible, base, repulsive, I think the message would get home.