Having spent a fair amount of my growing-up youth in Virginia and born to parents both from Virginia, I’m not at all surprised.
Instead of the catcher’s mitt he married?
That was my assumption as well. A joke about the presumed racist attitude of white fathers. In fact, I could see posting it as being intented as an anti-racist statement : “look at all our biracial couples! racist people won’t be happy seeing that!”.
I can perfectly see a black assistant principal posting that, for instance. So, no, the racism doesn’t seems obvious to me.
The caption said ***EVERY ***white father’s worst nightmare.
If schools can fire teachers for having posted nude and partially nude photos (and they have), it would make me seethe if they can’t fire her for this.
So you’re saying she posted a racist caption but it’s okay because she was doing it ironically? Her intent was “I’m posting this racist message in order to show that racist messages are bad. In case there’s anyone left in 2014 who doesn’t know that.”
Eek! A sandstone-American!
[Moderating]
Telling other posters to fuck themselves, even conditionally, is a violation of the Pit language rules. Please avoid this in the future.
No warning issued.
[/Moderating]
With some trepidation I will confess that I suspect she meant something like this as well. What makes me think this possible is the “or nah?” she added at the end–googling around seems to show that “or nah?” is a kind of twitter/meme thing, which AFAICT is used mainly by African Americans, and which communicates (among other things, as part of a joke,) that the accompanying image isn’t really what it’s being described as.
But. It’s not obvious that she meant this. And even if she did, intent isn’t magic. What she said had the effects it had regardless of her intentions.
And plus, she WAAAY should have known better.
I don’t think she viewed it as racist. You never heard of sarcasm, irony, second degree, etc? You can’t imagine someone triomphally posting pictures of biracial couples to rub them in the face of presumed racists?
Yes, this explanation makes much more sense to me than imagining a principal not just being racist, but openly displaying her racism.
I’m certain I would have interpreted the caption this way, if I had seen it. Humour. not outrage at seeing white girls kissing black dudes. Outside of white supremacist boards, people aren’t going to admit to such feelings publically by adding such a caption. Let alone a school official. I’ve a hard time grasping the idea that someone seeing such a picture in this time and age would assume it’s a straightforward, first degree, statement, in fact. I think I often see ironical pictures/captions like this one on social networks, mocking homophobes, sexist people or what have you.
Anyway, what does she say about it?
She claims that both of her daughters went to prom with African-American dates so I’ll take her at her word that she meant to mock racism not support it, but it was still an extremely stupid tweet to send out.
Just as a point of reference, this is currently two threads below this one on the front page of the Pit.
Never underestimate the stupidity of racists.
How does the dating preferences of her daughters support her plea of innocence? There are plenty of racists who didn’t know they were racist until “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” played out in their dining rooms.
According to Strickland, she forwarded the tweet to her daughter as a joke. Apparently this occurred at some time prior to her being hired as an assistant principal.
Source: http://wavy.com/2014/11/20/asst-principal-responds-to-retweet-uproar/
I imagine they do. I have a few friends who are teachers, and they are VERY careful what they post on social media because of guidelines within the school system.
Even Abraham Lincoln held some “problematic ideas” about race by today’s standards. Quit being so incredibly stupid.
My opinion won’t be popular. I want to live in a country where offering up offensive or unpopular opinions is not normally punished with a pink slip, a jail sentence or a successful tort claim. Those students are not entitled to a society without racist opinions or to a school district that does not employ racists. They are entitled to an educational environment that does not tolerate racism or remarks. Her twitter page is not to be construed as school property and her employer ought to stand for the rights of each and every employee to have a life beyond the bounds of the job.
There are plenty of social consequences to unpopular, controversial or bigoted speech that I do support, but threatening people’s jobs or their personal freedom are not among them.
I get very nervous at the scope of ‘morals’ clauses in employment contracts designed to protect employers from embarrassment induced by off the clock behavior. they can become far too pervasive and far too oppressive to those who just don’t tow the societal line.
I think we need to get started teaching these high schoolers to grow a tough enough skin, that they don’t demand a pound of proverbial flesh every time someone says or does something that deeply offends shocks or insults them.
Well said.
I agree with you completely. It is an anti-racist joke if anything and the only way I read it was a statement that was mocking the potential racist fathers out there. Others are free to disagree but I am certain they just missed the innocent or even well-intended motivations.
I agree with you too. It gets scary enough when the most easily misinformed and insulted among us can object to forms of speech that they couldn’t comprehend in the first place. It is much worse when they have the power to enforce penalties on pare with egregious acts like violence in the work place or embezzlement just because they lack the ability to understand some other people’s expression of perfectly reasonable, rationally nonoffensive and defensible ideas.
Yes of course. Your normal posting style is of reasonably high quality but you missed a joke and a bunch of nuances in this case (I am sure through no fault of your own). She didn’t do anything wrong, especially nothing to deserve the guillotine or even a written warning over. It was ironic social commentary sort of like the Daily Show or the Colbert Report does every day on TV and most people think is hilarious. Recalibrate your social humor meter because yours is off.
I communicated my beliefs poorly.
I certainly don’t think she’s “innocent”. I think her tweet was extremely stupid, grossly unprofessional, and extremely insensitive because most reasonable people would be horrified and jumpy to the conclusion that she was expressing a racist sentiment.
People have compared her comment to statements made on the Daily Show or the Colbert Report, but such jokes and comments are always made in such a way as to let people know they were jokes.
Context matters.
Now, yes, is it possible I’m wrong and she really is racist and perhaps may have been inspired by being upset at the prospect of her daughters dating black men? Sure.
In fact, I’ll go further than you. I’m sure there are white people MARRIED to Black people who are quite racist. I can’t think of any examples off the top of my head, but I recently learned that H.P. Lovecraft who was violent bigoted against just about all non-WASPs was married to a Jew.
However, yes the fact that she doesn’t seem to have no problem with her daughters dating black men and seems to have dedicated her life to helping black students would lead me to give her the benefit of the doubt in this case that she was not motivated by disgust at the idea of black men and white women going out together.
That said, at a certain point, I do get tired of hearing white people making and laughing at racist jokes and insisting they’re just mocking racism.