Do schools care more about racism than homophobia?
Bullies Can't Be Blamed for the Recent String of LGBT Suicides
by Keli Goff
There’s a famous story in the Goff household about my mom’s first week back in school shortly after it was integrated. There was a boy who apparently wasn’t a fan of the progress our country was making and decided to take it out on my mom by shouting the N-word at her repeatedly, every single day. For days mom turned the other cheek, so to speak, but on the fifth day she declared loud enough for everyone to hear, that she was going to beat the stuffing out of the guy. Now anyone who knows my mother knows that she would have, had the principal, who was white, not stepped in and warned Mr. Bully that if he didn’t leave her alone she would have the principal’s permission to hit him and would also be kicked out of school.
That was the end of Mr. Bully.
Most of us believe that the kind of prejudice my mom faced is a thing of the past. The thinking goes, “sure prejudice exists but it’s more subtle” or as an older family friend once said, “people no longer spit in your face but in your food.”
But in recent days we’ve all been reminded that this is not true and that the kind of prejudice and open hostility my mom faced fifty years ago is still alive and well in America’s schools.
In recent weeks Asher Brown, Billy Lucas, Seth Walsh, Tyler Clementi and Raymond Chase killed themselves. While we are still awaiting key details in some of the cases, we do know this: All of the boys either self-identified as gay or their classmates believed that they were. Billy Lucas was 15 years old, while Asher Brown and Seth Walsh were just thirteen years old yet they faced constantly bullying, ranging from verbal to physical, at the hands of classmates for their perceived sexual orientation. In the case of Tyler Clementi, the college freshman is believed to have jumped from the George Washington Bridge after his roommate allegedly tweeted, then recorded and broadcast an intimate encounter Tyler had with another man.
Sadly these are not the first instances of this type of bullying resulting in death. Last year the suicide of 11-year old Carl Walker made national headlines when he hung himself after being teased relentlessly by classmates who accused him of being gay.
Let me ask you a question. If a young student was called the N-word every day for weeks or months on end, and after repeated cries for help finally took his own life, how quickly do you think citizens of all races would take to the streets to protest? Or better yet how quickly would Al Sharpton and co. demand accountability from the school, and elected officials under the threat of casting the kind of media spotlight that people like Don Imus have nightmares about?
Read the Full Essay @ theLoop21
***
Keli Goff is a political blogger for TheLoop21.com. She is the author of the critically acclaimed book Party Crashing: How the Hip-Hop Generation Declared Political Independence (Basic Books, March 2008).
Bullies Can't Be Blamed for the Recent String of LGBT Suicides
by Keli Goff
There’s a famous story in the Goff household about my mom’s first week back in school shortly after it was integrated. There was a boy who apparently wasn’t a fan of the progress our country was making and decided to take it out on my mom by shouting the N-word at her repeatedly, every single day. For days mom turned the other cheek, so to speak, but on the fifth day she declared loud enough for everyone to hear, that she was going to beat the stuffing out of the guy. Now anyone who knows my mother knows that she would have, had the principal, who was white, not stepped in and warned Mr. Bully that if he didn’t leave her alone she would have the principal’s permission to hit him and would also be kicked out of school.
That was the end of Mr. Bully.
Most of us believe that the kind of prejudice my mom faced is a thing of the past. The thinking goes, “sure prejudice exists but it’s more subtle” or as an older family friend once said, “people no longer spit in your face but in your food.”
But in recent days we’ve all been reminded that this is not true and that the kind of prejudice and open hostility my mom faced fifty years ago is still alive and well in America’s schools.
In recent weeks Asher Brown, Billy Lucas, Seth Walsh, Tyler Clementi and Raymond Chase killed themselves. While we are still awaiting key details in some of the cases, we do know this: All of the boys either self-identified as gay or their classmates believed that they were. Billy Lucas was 15 years old, while Asher Brown and Seth Walsh were just thirteen years old yet they faced constantly bullying, ranging from verbal to physical, at the hands of classmates for their perceived sexual orientation. In the case of Tyler Clementi, the college freshman is believed to have jumped from the George Washington Bridge after his roommate allegedly tweeted, then recorded and broadcast an intimate encounter Tyler had with another man.
Sadly these are not the first instances of this type of bullying resulting in death. Last year the suicide of 11-year old Carl Walker made national headlines when he hung himself after being teased relentlessly by classmates who accused him of being gay.
Let me ask you a question. If a young student was called the N-word every day for weeks or months on end, and after repeated cries for help finally took his own life, how quickly do you think citizens of all races would take to the streets to protest? Or better yet how quickly would Al Sharpton and co. demand accountability from the school, and elected officials under the threat of casting the kind of media spotlight that people like Don Imus have nightmares about?
Read the Full Essay @ theLoop21
***
Keli Goff is a political blogger for TheLoop21.com. She is the author of the critically acclaimed book Party Crashing: How the Hip-Hop Generation Declared Political Independence (Basic Books, March 2008).
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