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I want to address a major incident that occurred in our school district last week: racist social media threats. I’m not going to spread the photos of the threats these students made to Black students—while posing with guns—but you can watch news coverage here:
To call this concerning would be an understatement. It’s a mixture of infuriating, terrifying, and heartbreaking.
But something else that upset me was the parents whose reaction was that kids shouldn’t have cell phones.
CELL
PHONES
DON’T
CAUSE
RACISM.
Racists want you to blame everything but racism for their racism. Don’t fall for it. These kids would have been a threat to Black classmates with or without cell phones in their hands.
These cell phones didn’t cause racism—they documented it.
Without cell phones, this would have been a he-said-she-said situation. The kids would have been able to say “we didn’t say that,” their parents would’ve been able to say, “my kid would never do that,” and the school would have been able to say, “it’s just rumors and we can’t take any action.”
Cell phones make it harder to sweep racism under the rug.
I’m not saying kids should be on their phones all day in school (*sigh* my own kid needs to get off her phone), but I AM saying to shift your focus off of the cell phones and onto the racists.
Racism isn’t always this blatant, this glaring. Racism doesn’t always pose with guns. But when it does—when racism rears its ugly head on social media—don’t blame cell phones; don’t blame social media.
Blame racists.
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[…] if I’m exaggerating about the racist behavior in our region, I point you to the post I recently wrote about the gun-toting racist students threatening Black students in our district on social […]