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Ohio school taunts football team with "Trail of Tears" banner

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T

The Technomancer

card-carrying scientician
geestack said:
it gets much much worse:

e1ztchrgonqgndxxiv4f.jpg

tjzao6gfueqnwbyjxq2e.jpg
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Why the fuck is that girl with that guy
 
D

derdriu

Member
Beefy said:
Really? Who the fuck thought it was a good idea?
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Didn't the statement say it was the students themselves. I'm not sure what the connection is with the dressing up to the football game though. That wasn't clear. It just said it was 'spirit week'. Its not clear on what they are trying to portray in these pictures or if they are telling a story of an ancestor. Its just strange to me why the black kid would be a slave. That's the only reason I can think. They had presentations of certain ancestors they told in class.
 
T

The Technomancer

card-carrying scientician
At the final varsity football game of the year, a horrific mistake was made. A sign was created out of ignorance, not hate
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Lol yeah you knew just enough about the Trail of Tears to use it as a taunt but not enough to know that it was *gasp* a bad thing?
 
B

Beefy

Member
derdriu said:
Didn't the statement say it was the students themselves. I'm not sure what the connection is with the dressing up to the football game though. That wasn't clear. It just said it was 'spirit week'. Its not clear on what they are trying to portray in these pictures or if they are telling a story of an ancestor. Its just strange to me why the black kid would be a slave. That's the only reason I can think. They had presentations of certain ancestors they told in class.
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Still messed up even if it was a story about ancestors. We never did stuff like this in the UK.
 
D

derdriu

Member
Beefy said:
Still messed up even if it was a story about ancestors. We never did stuff like this in the UK.
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I was just trying to understand why they All thought it was a good idea. I know many are saying peer pressure. But not having one think it was a bad idea and strong enough to say no is strange to me. I'm obviously ignorant and you pointed that out. I'm just trying to understand and educate myself. I also don't know that much of American history.
 
D

DragonGirl

Member
Croatoan said:
I know this might come as a shock, but the vast majority of people don't care about social justice and do not think about whether something is offensive or not. They just do what they think is fun (for right, or in this case, wrong).

The media, and forums like this, tend to hyper focus on these issues, making them seem much more popular than they are, while the rest of the world ignores them.

I does not surprise me at all that we keep seeing examples like this.

Note: I do not condone the behavior, just trying to bring light to the reason you keep seeing it happen.
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This is disgustingly true, and it precisely describes my dad who had a perfectly "meh" reaction to these photos.
 
N

NintendoGal

Member
Viewt said:
I understand what you're saying, but it's actually really important for us to keep the spotlight on these issues. When it's easy to ignore, you lose the chance for introspection and growth. I'm sure these kids didn't set out to be racist and horrifically insensitive, but they were, and we should prioritize the feelings of the oppressed over the feelings of the perpetrators.

My hope is that, from all of the attention that's going to come from this (and already has), these kids will think twice before engaging in this kind of behavior in the future.
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I didn't see them advocating for silence on the issue, just another perspective.
 
R

Ragnorok64

Member
Seeing as the only black guy is the run away slave, I'm just going to assume the kid in the conical hat is the only Asian at the school. That's the narrative you have to invent to even try and give them the benefit of the doubt.
 
T

TheOMan

Tagged as I see fit
Oh wow - how did not a single person say "You know what, this is crossing the line and we shouldn't do this." ?

SMH.
 
Tal Shiar Agent

Tal Shiar Agent

Member
Doubly stupid is that Ohio was always free territory as established in the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 and was the first free state admitted to the Union outside of New England.
 
S

ShyMel

Member
This is very disgusting and the fact that no teacher did the right thing and stopped this is horrible as well. There is no possible way these kids don't know what the Trail of Tears is. Otherwise the sign wouldn't exist.
On the subject of the child tied up, I would imagine peer pressure got to him.
 
R

RibMan

Member
Interesting spin. "We're not racist, just uninformed" -- it makes you feel sorry for them and also makes you believe that their actions were done out of ignorance and not malicious intent.
 
Tal Shiar Agent

Tal Shiar Agent

Member
ShyMel said:
This is very disgusting and the fact that no teacher did the right thing and stopped this is horrible as well. There is no possible way these kids don't know what the Trail of Tears is. Otherwise the sign wouldn't exist.
On the subject of the child tied up, I would imagine peer pressure got to him.
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The sign says "Trail of Tears, Part 2".
 
P

PsychoSoldier

Banned
RibMan said:
Interesting spin. "We're not racist, just uninformed" -- it makes you feel sorry for them and also makes you believe that their actions were done out of ignorance and not malicious intent.
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But they had to know that the Trail of Tears was where a ton of Native Americans died, right?

Them referring to that to taunt a team called the Indians seems less like ignorance and more like an inability to empathize with others.
 
B

Beefy

Member
derdriu said:
I was just trying to understand why they All thought it was a good idea. I know many are saying peer pressure. But not having one think it was a bad idea and strong enough to say no is strange to me. I'm obviously ignorant and you pointed that out. I'm just trying to understand and educate myself. I also don't know that much of American history.
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Peer pressure, people being dumb and sadly a lot of racism. But then peer pressure can only be at fault for a limited amount.
 
B

bluepolicebox

Member
Seminole person here. I wish I was shocked by this as some of you are but I'm just not anymore. I've spent years arguing against the use of our image as mascots, our names as teams, our music as sports chants, and the shameful practice of encouraging fans to smear bright red makeup on their faces, don sacred headdresses, and dance around like fools. The lack of education in our schools coupled with our cartoony pop culture image allows this kind of thing to flourish.

As people around here have frequently pointed out, a lot of NAs just don't care anymore. If the rest of the country doesn't, why should they? How are high school kids supposed to know this is wrong when they can turn on a Washington Redskins or Atlanta Braves game and see adults dressed the exact same way? This happens because we never fought back and we've come to accept it as okay when no other group in this country would ever allow this kind of thing without pushing back.

We are spoken about in the past tense, we are invisible outside of charicatures, and the pride and self-respect we once had has been replaced with apathy. It's a sad state for a culture that has so much to share with its fellow Americans.
 
Goro Majima

Goro Majima

Kitty Genovese Member
I was going to limit this post to a comment about how a lot of white ignorance of Native Americans is stemmed from how they're viewed almost entirely in the past tense. Like Native Americans only exist in history books fighting against or working with cowboys/soldiers/pilgrims and as sports team mascots. Native Americans kind of disappear out of most high school/college US history books before World War 1 - over 100 years ago!

Past that, it's more of a novelty thing that's discussed when talking about genetic makeup like "oh I'm 1/64th Cherokee" or something - to which someone will inevitably reply "doesn't that mean you get free college?".

Basically Native Americans are nearly entirely forgotten in the day to day lives of white people (and maybe other minorities as well?). Which leads to the kinds of fuckery that you see here and on Halloween and in sports in general. I feel like only recently with a few pockets on the internet is there an actual presence of Native American voices being heard nationally.

With all that said, I then saw the black kid dressed as a slave and the Asian kid with a pointed hat. Yeah I can't even begin to explain that.
 
S

Skel1ingt0n

I can't *believe* these lazy developers keep making file sizes so damn large. Btw, how does technology work?
y3WTWv3.jpg


looking at it remind me of this:

Ziz87.jpg
 
S

stupei

Member
Spirit week has different themes for each day, decided on by student council. Almost every school does a Nerd Day. One time we had Hippie Day. Wouldn't be surprised if this was just Old West.

SG-17 said:
Doubly stupid is that Ohio was always free territory as established in the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 and was the first free state admitted to the Union outside of New England.
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And yet some people still sport the Confederate flag there.
 
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