What are we about to do right now?
I'm going to talk about people getting kicked out of school for saying the N-word.
So why does any of this matter to me?
Well, I'm not sure if you noticed, but I'm actually...
Let's just say I have a vested interest in ending racism someday, okay?
But unlike most situations involving slurs, I actually have mixed feelings about this
one.
But before we get into that, of course, I'd like to do my comment shout out from my last
video.
Did you lower your bass in editing software to have an even deeper voice?
No.
I've been waking up to record these videos at 6:00 AM, so the higher part of my voice
is not awake yet.
So who are we talking about today?
On the one hand, we have this girl who got dropped from her university program for saying
the N-word.
On the other hand, we have the guy who got her dropped from that program by leaking the
N-word video, and their conflict got so bad by the actually wound up in a New York Times
article.
So let's go through that.
Jimmy Galligan was in history class last year when his phone buzzed with a...
Why am I reading this like a story time?
Once he clicked on it, he found a three-second video of a White classmate looking into the
camera and uttering an anti-Black slur.
He had brought up the issue to teachers and administrators, but much to his anger and
frustration, his complaints had gone nowhere.
Ms. Groves had originally sent the video in which she looked into the camera and said,
"I can drive," followed by the slur to a friend on Snapchat in 2016, when she was a freshman
and had just gotten her learner's permit.
She was a child?
Okay, wait a second.
So this is the video, apparently.
"I can drive, [_]."
Yikes.
Mr. Galligan had not seen the video before receiving it last school year when he and
Ms. Groves were seniors.
By then, she was a varsity cheer captain who dreamed of attending the University of Tennessee,
Knoxville.
Imagine dreaming of attending the University of Tennessee.
Mr. Galligan, who had waited until Ms. Groves had chosen a college, had publicly posted
the video that afternoon.
Within hours, it had been shared to Snapchat, TikTok, and Twitter, where furious calls mounted
for the University of Tennessee to revoke its admission offer.
Over the next two days, Ms. Groves was removed from the university's cheer team.
She then withdrew from the school under pressure from admissions officials who told her they
had received hundreds of emails and phone calls from outraged alumni, students, and
the public.
Very polite way of kicking her out of school without having to deal with the smoke.
But the story behind the backlash also reveals a more complex portrait of behavior that for
generations has gone unchecked in schools in one of the nation's wealthiest counties,
where Black students said they had long been subjected to ridicule.
"Go pick cotton," some said they were told in class by White students.
Gym teachers at her elementary school organized an underground railroad game where students
were told to run through an obstacle course in the dark.
A report commissioned last year by the school district documented a pattern of school leaders
ignoring the widespread use of racial slurs.
This wasn't racism town.
This was the capitol city of racism.
Ms. Groves said the video began as a private Snapchat message to a friend.
Oh wait, this is her point of view.
"At the time, I didn't understand the severity of the word or the history and context behind
it, because I was so young," she said in a recent interview, adding that the slur was,
"in all the songs we listen to, and I'm not using that as an excuse."
She said it with the hard R, though.
Child, sit down.
The hard R is not in any of the songs you're listening to.
For the University of Tennessee, the outrage over Ms. Groves followed a string of negative
publicity over racist incidents of this flagship campus in...
Oh my gosh.
So she was from racism county, and she was trying to attend racism university.
For his role, Mr. Galligan said he had no regrets.
"If I never posted that video, nothing would have ever happened," he said.
"I'm going to remind myself, you started something," he said with satisfaction.
"You taught someone a lesson."
All right.
So what's my opinion on this?
Hate that a town like this still exists in America in current year.
I hate that a student could feel so powerless that they feel like that's the only time he's
ever felt like he's had any power against racism.
I hate that another girl was racist because she was taught that.
I mean, she's responsible for her actions, but it's clear.
Both of these people are still very young, and they're being used as scapegoats by all
the adults.
The University of Tennessee high key used this girl as a scapegoat, because they're
like, "Oh, look at us.
We didn't let one person into our university."
This other kid is being used as a scapegoat too, because now people are like, "Oh, see,
he's crazy.
And Black people, this is what they want."
I hate it here.
Now, I actually have two other articles I wanted to go over because I thought they were
very interesting.
So this next one is more so a question.
This spring at Stanford University, two non-Black professors read aloud the N-word in class
from a lyric in a historic text.
After this happened, Black students at Stanford published this letter where they were basically
like, "Hey, maybe if you didn't have the non-Black instructors say the N-word during class..."
Legally, people can use slurs in a university setting.
True, kind of based.
Yet, while one is free to use the N-word, one can also choose to avoid the word precisely
in order to promote better learning.
Wait, I like this article.
Okay, so basically, just because you can legally say the N-word, you can choose not to if you're
not Black.
Whichever words one prefers, inclusivity and empathy serve the same semantic principle
as respect and civility despite leaning more toward a Humian rather than a Kantian framework.
Why is she low key smart?
I love this article.
Fun fact, like this article is laying out, you legally can say whatever garbage you want
to say.
And I'm not saying reading the N-word in Huckleberry Finn makes you a bad person at all.
What I'm saying is it's your choice how you want to present yourself.
And regardless of what your intentions were, that choice is going to have a reaction from
the people listening to you, and they are free to express that as well.
You're not erasing history by changing the way we talk about it.
Ruth A. Starkman teaches writing, biomedical, and computing ethics at Stanford University.
No she doesn't.
Ruth A. Starkman teaches facts.
She didn't miss once.
So the last story that we're going to be looking at here raises yet another question.
Can you get punished by your school for saying things outside of school that make the school
look bad?
This one's not really connected to the N-word, but I just figured it would be a nice way
to wrap things up.
It's called "a cheerleader's vulgar message prompts a First Amendment showdown".
So basically, she was like, "Frick school, frick softball, frick cheer, and frick everything,"
and I support her.
Though Snapchat messages are ephemeral by design, another student took a screenshot
of this one and showed it to her mother, a coach.
Okay, snitch.
Okay, 6ix9ine.
The school suspended the student from cheerleading for a year, saying the punishment was needed
to avoid chaos and maintain a team-like environment.
The student sued the school district, winning a sweeping victory in the Third US Circuit
Court of Appeals in Philadelphia.
The court said the First Amendment did not allow public schools to punish students for
speech outside of school grounds.
The Supreme Court is deciding whether to hear the case.
Here's my opinion on that whole thing.
So the average age for someone in the ninth grade is 14 or 15.
As a 14 or 15 year old, I think you do need to be taught if you're part of a team, you
can't just go on social media and say, "Oh, screw them."
But a one year suspension from cheerleading?
She posted one Snapchat story, and here's the part about that.
She didn't attack anybody in this story.
Maybe a one week suspension from cheerleading.
You're going to have to sit this one out for a second.
You can't just say, "Screw cheer," and then stay on the cheer team.
You're making us look really bad.
If you were at a job and you posted this, you might actually be fired.
This is kind of really serious.
But a one-year suspension, that starts seeming vindictive.
Instead of addressing the fact that school is needlessly competitive and extremely taxing
on these kids' mental health, they're like, "I don't even know.
What if we just punish them or something?"
All right, so what are my final thoughts on all of this?
I think schools don't give a single care about the students who attend or whether or not
they feel safe, or whether or not there's actual racism happening.
I think schools just want to avoid the smoke.
What I'm trying to say here is let's not pretend like this kid got her kicked out of school
for no reason, because it was very clearly outlined to me why he did that.
But let's also not pretend like that's helpful at all in making progress towards, you know,
Black people not being killed in the street.
I think the lesson here is clear.
If you're born in a racist town to racist parents, then just move.
Even if you're still a baby.
Legally, it's your responsibility to remove yourself from that environment.
Anyway, I'll be here all week, folks, at 2:00 PM Central Time.
If it's Monday, Wednesday, or Friday, I'm uploading a new video here.
If it's Tuesday, Thursday, or Saturday, that means I'm going live over on Twitch.
So basically, what I'm saying is I'll see you tomorrow, unless tomorrow is Sunday, in
which case just watch this video again.
Okay, bye.