What you are about to read is horrible. As in, test your blood pressure and heart rate while you read it, horrible.
From The New York Times:
A Racial Slur, a Viral Video, and a Reckoning
A white high school student withdrew from her chosen college after a three-second video caused an uproar online. The classmate who shared it publicly has no regrets.
Jimmy Galligan was in history class last school year when his phone buzzed with a message. Once he clicked on it, he found a three-second video of a white classmate looking into the camera and uttering an anti-Black racial slur.
So he held on to the video, which was sent to him by a friend, and made a decision that would ricochet across Leesburg, Va.
“I wanted to get her where she would understand the severity of that word,” Mr. Galligan, 18, whose mother is Black and father is white, said of the classmate who uttered the slur, Mimi Groves. He tucked the video away, deciding to post it publicly when the time was right.
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.
Mr. Galligan had not seen the video before receiving it last school year, when he and Ms. Groves were seniors.
Her alarm at the stranger’s comment turned to panic as friends began calling, directing her to the source of a brewing social media furor. 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.
The consequences were swift. 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.
Ms. Groves said the video began as a private Snapchat message to a friend. “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 listened to, and I’m not using that as an excuse.”
Shortly after his 18th birthday in July, Mr. Galligan asked his father, a former law enforcement officer, what he thought about white privilege. “The first thing he said to me is that it doesn’t exist,” Mr. Galligan recalled. He then asked his father if he had ever been scared while walking at night, or while reaching into the glove box after getting pulled over by the police.
He said his father had not.
“That is your white privilege,” Mr. Galligan said he told him.
For his role, Mr. Galligan said he had no regrets. “If I never posted that video, nothing would have ever happened,” he said. And because the internet never forgets, the clip will always be available to watch.
“I’m going to remind myself, you started something,” he said with satisfaction. “You taught someone a lesson.”
Are you still with me or have you stroked out yet?
There are several things to address here.
This girl sent a private Snapchat to a friend as a Freshman in high school after getting her learner’s permit, so she was 15. In that message she said a word she shouldn’t have used, however, she didn’t direct that word at anyone. She didn’t call Mr. Gilligan or anyone else that word, especially in a malicious context.
That video was spread around.
A mixed-race classmate got the video and sat on it for three years until he knew it would do the most harm, then released it on social media for the express purpose of destroying this girl’s life.
He has no regrets and triumphantly considers this to be a good deed as he taught her a lesson. The New York Times seems to wholeheartedly support his actions.
This child is such a true believer that he attacked his own father for having white privilege.
Let me say that again. He attacked his own father for having white privilege.
There is a principle in Western jurisprudence that comes from the Old Testament and is part of Judeo-Christian values: the punishment should fit the crime.
What this girl did was not a crime.
It was at most a stupid mistake. The sort that teenagers made since the dawn of civilization.
These sorts of mistakes shouldn’t be life-ending but now they are.
In every conceivable way, this ended her life. She was kicked off her college team. She had to withdraw from school under pressure and the threats of physical violence.
This girl is now taking online classes at a community college. This internet has not forgotten her name. Any employer that does the slightest background search for her will find out about what she did as a high school Freshman and turn her down for a job. They would have to or they would be targeted by the hate mob for hiring a girl who used a racial slur in a private Snapchat as a 15-year-old high school Freshman.
The punishment she received did not fit the crime.
Teenagers do stupid things. Using the wrong word at 15-years-old in a private message should not be eternally damnable.
The top New York Times comment really lay bare the problem here.
Ms. Groves is quoted in this piece:
‘Her despair has given way to resignation. “I’ve learned how quickly social media can take something they know very little about, twist the truth and potentially ruin somebody’s life,” she said.’ No, Ms. Groves. And that’s not resignation: Resignation involves acceptance, however reluctant. Instead, you are blaming the victims of all your thoughtless, cruel, hateful use of that word. It doesn’t matter when you said it or how young you were; It is never, ever acceptable. You “ruined” (doubtful) your own life of privilege by hurting people. It would be a sign of true growth and learning if you were to say, “I am sorry for what I said. I hurt many people by doing this and I take full responsibility” — and then take full responsibility. Grow up, be humble, and teach others not about your own discomfort at the consequences, but about how much it hurts other people to use hate language.
Remember your Orwell.
There will be no loyalty, except loyalty towards the Party. There will be no love, except the love of Big Brother. There will be no laughter, except the laugh of triumph over a defeated enemy. There will be no art, no literature, no science. When we are omnipotent we shall have no more need of science. There will be no distinction between beauty and ugliness. There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always — do not forget this, Winston — always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever.’
‘And remember that it is forever. The face will always be there to be stamped upon. The heretic, the enemy of society, will always be there, so that he can be defeated and humiliated over again.
This girl made a stupid mistake at 15-years-old in a private Snapchat.
Now the readers of The New York Times are intoxicated by the pleasure of kicking this poor girl when she was brought down.
There is no empathy for this girl. There is no one saying “yeah, I did some dumb shit when I was with my friends when I was a high school Freshman.”
Again, she didn’t curse out anybody with this work, she used it jokingly.
Speaking of 1984, Mr. Gilligan is the perfect Child Hero, calling out his own father’s white privilege.
Something has to be done to stop things like this from happening.
Society cannot function normally like this. This is the dystopia of 1984. This is the Cultural Revolution, in all of its horrors.
I’m not sure how to fix this legislatively but I know it must.
I know, if something doesn’t happen soon, someone is going to get canceled and go all Falling Down on the people that canceled him.
I know if I was this girl’s father, I’d inclined to cancel a few people with a chainsaw.
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