Last week, students at JS Waters School in North Carolina held a mock
slave auction where students were sold off by a designated ''slave master''.
Here are the horrifying details.
So the story broke last week when Ashley Palmer who was a mother of one of
the students at the auction, revealed on Facebook what had happened to her son.
She said our son experienced a slave auction by his classmates and
when he opened up, when we were made aware that this type of stuff seems
to be the norm so much that he didn't think it was worth sharing.
His friend went for $350 and
another student was the slave master because he knew how to handle them.
We even have a video of students harmonizing the n-word.
Since when were children so blatantly racist.
Why is this culture acceptable?
This week Palmer released a follow up post after the students at fault
received only minor consequences.
Palmer wrote this.
Students received a one day suspension for the slave auction.
No action taken yet pertaining to the video today at recess, the slave master
accidentally hit my son with a baseball four times upon his return to school.
Now he has decided to retaliate by making
up things that Jeremiah didn't say to attempt to get him into trouble.
She also went ahead and threatened to take legal action against the school,
which is definitely something that I would have advised.
Now Sheriff Mike Robertson, I'll be calling your office today to discuss
the legal options for the assault and continuous harassment.
It's a shame my child isn't safe at school.
Where is the staff when this is happening.
Now, when my son gets fed up,
will they protect him the way they have protected this other child.
The day after Palmer's second post while the school superintendent Dr.
Anthony Jackson released a letter condemning the incident but
of course not mentioning it specifically.
We have become aware of recent incidents involving students using racially
insensitive language and offensive imagery.
I want to assure everyone that we are working with and
will continue to work with families of students who are targeted in this way.
Those who are acting outside of our expectations will be held accountable.
Wow that is a lot but not a lot in terms of the school actually taking action.
Jay.
>> It's disheartening man.
Schools used to officially hold slave auctions throughout the country.
And it was a title they should have never given to any of those events.
And the way that it usually worked was that they would auction off people and
the people buying them would buy them for a day.
And obviously you couldn't do anything you wanted are obviously not, but
they would carry your books around and hopefully innocent things like that.
So my school had one, we talked about it in the production meeting this morning.
But there was no racial overtones as far as I could tell they were,
and no one ever said the n-word, etc, but that's still already awful.
And that was the 1980s.
Here we are, 40 years later.
Now in this case it's the students doing it, but it's almost worse because
that means it's more hostile, it's not sanctioned, it's not like,
oops, it was inappropriate, wildly inappropriate to call it that.
No, no, this was overtly racial with the chanting of the n-word etcetera.
I mean, look, honestly, I think Trump screwed up this country so so badly.
It's not that the racism wasn't already there.
He just gave them permission on a national scale.
And it became part of the culture that if you're a right winger,
it's glorious or something to be proud of, to be overtly racist.
And I don't know if that's owning the libs or whatever to be monsters,
but being deplorable,
became something that they were proud of and this is the result of it.
And it's disgusting.
>> The mom is absolutely 100% right to be asking, what the hell is
going on at the school, where the hell are the teachers and the staff.
You have kids having slave auctions,
kids harmonizing the n-word like Richard Nixon, Mel Gibson Paula Deen and
Charlie Sheen got together to form a racist barbershop quartet.
What's going on there?
I worked in education and I worked in childcare for several years and
I know that kids can be ignorant little gremlins and
they can say awful and hateful things, but
it is your job to step in and correct them to teach them to do better.
And the fact that the school seemingly was either unaware of the problem or
was allowing this to go on,
it just makes me wonder would anything have ever happened?
Would any punishment ever happened, would anything have been
rectified if the mom hadn't found out and gone public with this.
And the punishment that these kids did receive was suspension, right?
So they got to stay home from school and we all know that bigotry is not innate,
it's learned.
And oftentimes when bigotry is coming from children, it's learned from the parents.
So now you're just sending these kids to be home with their parents who
are probably more bad that their child was punished than their child was racist.
>> Yeah, now that pretty much sounds right to me.
And also if you look at the demographics of the school, it's about 65% white and
I think around 12% black.
And the thing is also, it's not one of the first incidents of racism at this school,
there was a report of a black student at Chatham Central high school around
the area that was surrounded by white supremacist who chanted the n-word at
her and dropped cards on the floor and had racist language.
Also a photo on social media appearing to show a white Chatham county student lying
on the ground, while another white student simulates holding a gun over them and
the photo's caption Black history Month.
These are the things that are going on in this community.
And so just as you pointed out, it really seems that that school and those schools,
there are just a reflection of the adults in the community.
And so I think that they're the ones who really should be looking in the mirror and
deciding how do they want to be remembered?
What do they want their legacy to be?
Do they just wanna be racist, which is cool, just own it.
But as far as I'm concerned they shouldn't be exposing these young
black kids to this.
>> Yeah.
Look, I gave a speech in Wisconsin almost a decade ago about how I believe in
fighting the cultural wars.
Because a lot of people on the left would say,
the cultural wars are terrible and I can't believe the right wing does them.
And my point was no, we need to engage and fight back.
Otherwise their side gets entrenched and
no one ever pushes back other than being outraged?
No right wing culture is poison.
And we have to try to fight it to the point where everybody
knows if you're a right winger you're a hateful immoral person.
So they've been calling the left immoral for as long as I've ever lived and why?
Based on nonsense, based on ridiculous things, you're born gay,
so I'm gonna call you immoral for who you are.
No, that's gay person is not immoral.
You're immoral for discriminating against them.
And I'm tired of right wing immorality and they're consistently immoral.
They're consistently bad people.
They teach their kids to be bad people and then we're supposed to just accept it.
Well I don't accept it, I think their culture sucks.
So when you teach your kids to harmonize the n-word and be slave masters,
well you haven't done a very good job, have you?
Are you gonna cry about that?
I get to tell my kids whatever I want.
I know because you're a terrible person.
And by the way, look,
the left would be horrified if their kids ever did anything like this.
In the old days before Trump the right wing I guess would pretend to be
horrified, but at least there was some value in them pretending to be horrified.
Nowadays, they're brazen about it.
I don't know those parents and I don't know their reaction.
But I'd be shocked if they were really mad at their kids and how dare you,
you're right, the kids should be punished and they should be punished severely.
They'll never say that if on average.
On average, the right wing basically circles the wagons and goes, so
what so what?
So we should have slave walk.
So what we should say that and we're free speech.
Right, okay.
That's because you're a bad, bad person.
I'm tired of babying the right wing.
Their culture is literally deplorable and by the way now they own it.
I mean Adrian you want them to own it and they did a little bit right and
they're proud of being deplorable.
Okay, good.
Then we're all agreed right wing culture is awful immoral and
it needs to be changed as soon as possible.