Not African-American Enough?


Did they mean “award for being black?” Why not have said that in the first place? A suspension?

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2004/01/25/a_little_less_freedom_of_speech/

AWESOME Finally seeing a REAL african American. Someone FROM Africa. He better be getting tons of scolarships from the NAACP

[quote]limburg wrote:
AWESOME Finally seeing a REAL african American. Someone FROM Africa. He better be getting tons of scolarships from the NAACP[/quote]

She’s African American too!

I too, saw this on Reddit, which is why I assume you’re bringing this up as it’s 8 years old.

[quote]Bambi wrote:
I too, saw this on Reddit, which is why I assume you’re bringing this up as it’s 8 years old.[/quote]

No, not Reddit. Not sure I’ve ever been to this ‘reddit.’ Just my ‘morning stack of stuff.’ Never saw it before, and thought it was (as others seem to agree) forehead slapping ‘funny.’ Edit: Or, is that face-palmingly funny?

If you’re from Africa… why are you white

OMG Karen you can’t just ask people why they’re white!

[quote]Bambi wrote:
If you’re from Africa… why are you white

OMG Karen you can’t just ask people why they’re white![/quote]

Sloth, not Karen.

[quote]Sloth wrote:

[quote]Bambi wrote:
If you’re from Africa… why are you white

OMG Karen you can’t just ask people why they’re white![/quote]

Sloth, not Karen.
[/quote]

Someone didn’t watch Mean Girls

[quote]Makavali wrote:

[quote]Sloth wrote:

[quote]Bambi wrote:
If you’re from Africa… why are you white

OMG Karen you can’t just ask people why they’re white![/quote]

Sloth, not Karen.
[/quote]

Someone didn’t watch Mean Girls[/quote]

Who’d want to watch mean girls? I get all the meanness I can stand from here.


Picture: Annette Sax - Conservative journalist and commentator Andrew Bolt was charged with racial vilification for suggesting she and others had far more European ancestry than aboriginal and used the term ‘political aborigine.’

Found guilty.

[quote]Sloth wrote:

[quote]Makavali wrote:

[quote]Sloth wrote:

[quote]Bambi wrote:
If you’re from Africa… why are you white

OMG Karen you can’t just ask people why they’re white![/quote]

Sloth, not Karen.
[/quote]

Someone didn’t watch Mean Girls[/quote]

Who’d want to watch mean girls? I get all the meanness I can stand from here.[/quote]

No one wants to watch Mean Girls, you just end up watching because of a girlfriend.

[quote]SexMachine wrote:
Picture: Annette Sax - Conservative journalist and commentator Andrew Bolt was charged with racial vilification for suggesting she and others had far more European ancestry than aboriginal and used the term ‘political aborigine.’

Found guilty.[/quote]

Hmm… I woulda’ thought newspapers were covered under free speech. Guess not.

http://old.news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120204/ap_on_re_us/us_black_or_african_american

To ponder.

[quote]Makavali wrote:

[quote]Sloth wrote:

[quote]Makavali wrote:

[quote]Sloth wrote:

[quote]Bambi wrote:
If you’re from Africa… why are you white

OMG Karen you can’t just ask people why they’re white![/quote]

Sloth, not Karen.
[/quote]

Someone didn’t watch Mean Girls[/quote]

Who’d want to watch mean girls? I get all the meanness I can stand from here.[/quote]

No one wants to watch Mean Girls, you just end up watching because of a girlfriend.[/quote]

That bad, huh? I’ll do my best to avoid it.

[quote]Sloth wrote:

[quote]Makavali wrote:

[quote]Sloth wrote:

[quote]Makavali wrote:

[quote]Sloth wrote:

[quote]Bambi wrote:
If you’re from Africa… why are you white

OMG Karen you can’t just ask people why they’re white![/quote]

Sloth, not Karen.
[/quote]

Someone didn’t watch Mean Girls[/quote]

Who’d want to watch mean girls? I get all the meanness I can stand from here.[/quote]

No one wants to watch Mean Girls, you just end up watching because of a girlfriend.[/quote]

That bad, huh? I’ll do my best to avoid it.[/quote]

I love that movie. I have no idea why.

[quote]Sloth wrote:
Did they mean “award for being black?” Why not have said that in the first place? A suspension?

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2004/01/25/a_little_less_freedom_of_speech/[/quote]

There are two reasons this happened:

1-the school administrators and anyone that complained are stupid motherfuckers who think everyone in Africa is black

and 2-People trying to be SOOOOOOO politically correct and not offend anyone that they use a term (african-american) that doesn’t even apply to the people they use it for. The black kids at that school are not african-american. They were not born in Africa, have not been to Africa, don’t know anyone in Africa, and are not affiliated with Africa in any fucking way.

Just like white people are not called European american, because the vast majority are not from fucking Europe.

[quote]Chris87 wrote:

[quote]Sloth wrote:
Did they mean “award for being black?” Why not have said that in the first place? A suspension?

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2004/01/25/a_little_less_freedom_of_speech/[/quote]

There are two reasons this happened:

1-the school administrators and anyone that complained are stupid motherfuckers who think everyone in Africa is black

and 2-People trying to be SOOOOOOO politically correct and not offend anyone that they use a term (african-american) that doesn’t even apply to the people they use it for. The black kids at that school are not african-american. They were not born in Africa, have not been to Africa, don’t know anyone in Africa, and are not affiliated with Africa in any fucking way.

Just like white people are not called European american, because the vast majority are not from fucking Europe.[/quote]

Pretty much sums it up.

[quote]Sloth wrote:
Did they mean “award for being black?” Why not have said that in the first place? A suspension?

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2004/01/25/a_little_less_freedom_of_speech/[/quote]

“Every time a case like this occurs – every time someone is sued or punished or forced to hire a lawyer just for expressing an opinion or making a comment that someone of a different color finds offensive, all of us are left with a little less freedom of speech. Dismayingly, such cases seem to be occurring more frequently than ever. Now and then one of these incidents draws national scorn. A few years ago, a wave of ridicule forced the mayor of Washington, D.C., to rehire an aide who had been accused of racism and forced to resign for using the word “niggardly” – a synonym for stingy.”

This paragraph confused me and I think it illustrates an erroneous line of thought that many have about free speech and inflammatory speech.

First of all, every time a case like this occurs–as regrettable as it is that the defendants had to deal with all of this in the first place–free speech is expanded and/or protected. Think about it: this case could have gone one of two ways, for or against free speech and the defendants’ right to it. The decision went in favor of the defendants/speech.

Had it NOT gone in the defendants’ favor, they would simply have appealed, possibly all the way to the Supreme Court, where the Brandenburg v. Ohio decision is still the binding, dominant piece of case precedent that protects inflammatory speech as long as it is not clearly designed to incite/provoke imminent lawless action. The Court would clearly rule in favor of the defendant, maybe even in a 9-0 decision, as they largely have in these sorts of cases. In fact, there have been almost no challenges to the Brandenburg rationale since its release in 1969. I can’t really think of any that don’t reaffirm it.

Regarding the school vote/poster thing: this may in fact be an area in which the Court would actually rule in favor of the school removing the posters and effectively infringing upon the white students’ speech rights. I don’t think it would go that way necessarily, but the Court does have to take into consideration the phrase “designed to cause imminent lawless action” and whether that is a possibility here. They also need to devise some sort of test so that determining what may and may not cause lawless action is not entirely arbitrary.

Two rights are at odds here, for all intents and purposes, and in my opinion the matter should be left to the schools or their districts rather than the courts. I don’t know where Supreme Court precedent goes in this direction, but I’d have to think they’d really only be concerned with handling it in a way that doesn’t allow for segregation/racial inequality as defined by Brown v. Brd of Ed. and subsequent cases. They’d probably allow the school districts to determine for themselves what “imminent lawless action” constitutes in their “jurisdiction”, and only hear cases if someone felt that a speech rights violation occurred that was not consistent with a reasonable definition of “lawless action”. In this case, the plaintiff (white students) would have to file suit and appeal all the way to the SC in the hopes that they’d actually even take the case, assuming that the decision at the local court level wasn’t in their favor to begin with.

And nobody is really going to pursue all of that for some bullshit like this, so while the media may like to play this up as another example of The Man coming down on free speech or some other likewise erosion of the fundamental right, the reality is that it isn’t happening at all in this manner. The only issue in this particular case that really matters is whether or not the white students’ or the black students’ behavior constitutes action that will clearly and is intentionally designed to cause imminent lawless action.