Redneck Row causes racial tensions at high school .. suppression of free speech?

CNN

I am so sick of this crap.

Here we go again, racist whiteys come to ruin everyones good times.

For years, a clique of high school students in this prosperous and overwhelmingly white borough have worn clothes adorned with Confederate flags and parked their pickups in a section of the school parking lot known as "redneck row."

Now. Stop what your doing. Clearly these whites are racist for being different, correct? I know I never remember their being a "gangster" section of my high school. (there actually was)

That's when three white 16-year-old students allegedly yelled racial slurs and threw paper wads at minority students outside the 1,600-student Warwick High School.

So, some of these kids got stupid and yelled racist remakrs (allegedly) .. grounds for suspension I am sure, I see nothing wrong with that choice, racism when acted out onto someone should be punished.....

However..

School officials vowed to discipline the three students, tighten security and ban Confederate flags on school property. On Wednesday, police charged the three with disorderly conduct.

They ban the Confederate flag. Absolutly disgusting, this is a suppression of free speech! .. If the white kids who called them selves red necks don't want to associate with blacks, WHO CARES.. its none of your damn business, you CANNOT force kids to be friends with other people. When they is an actual racial issue, such as the kids who supposedly yelled derogatory remarks, punish them! .. But to go to an extreme and "ban flags" .. why not ban trucks as thats what they all drive???

But then, what gets me even more mad, is that the police ARREST the kids for SAYING SOMETHING!!!! ... Disorderly Conduct.

Maybe I am the only one that sees crap like this slowly morphing into the government deciding that what you say, if it angers people, can be grounds for punishment, who knows, twenty years down the line, maybe it will be voicing political dissent is grounds for arrest. Ah. Thats already happening to isnt it?

"What is racial intimidation? It's trying to have power over someone else," Sease said. "I think that's their motivation."

throwing paper wads.

Rednecks can't get chicks, scratch that, chicks that aren't bred for their meat, milk, and hide, that's why they're so angry. It's no excuse mind you, I'm just trying to tell you the hardships they face.

Peace

Originally posted by Dr Love
Rednecks can't get chicks, scratch that, chicks that aren't bred for their meat, milk, and hide, that's why they're so angry. It's no excuse mind you, I'm just trying to tell you the hardships they face.

Peace

Thank you, Dr. Love for that lovely insight.

Its not so much the severity of the punishment from calling someone a name, but the censorship of the school.

Yet when white kids that go to schools in which THEY are the minority are harassed threatened and called cracker, white-bread and ganged up on, it never makes the news..
Then there are the black people that just want to get along with everyone of all colors called "Uncle Toms" or "Oreos" or the Mexicans that do the same thing called "Coconuts"..
Where the hell is the School intervention, the Police or the Press when that happens??!!
What I REALLY find hilarious is when I hear people say that blacks or some other race, saying that minorities CANT be racists
Racism exists, no doubt about it but whites arent the only ones that have that attitude.

I graduated from a High School in East Tx after moving there from Dallas.
There were about 300 people in my school, my graduating class was 60 students
This school was about 70 miles East of Dallas and was full of Rednecks and hicks, they were actually some of the nicest people that I've ever met.
There were 2 black brothers in HS and maybe 4-5 in the entire district, they were also some of the coolest kids I've known.
Iin the entire 3 years that I was there, not a single person messed with these 2 black kids. Even if someone wouldve tried, they wouldve gotten their asses kicked by every other white kid in the school.
The ignorance spouted off by some people about so called "Rednecks" is just that ignorance..
I grew up in Dallas Tx, one of the biggest cities in Tx so I can attest to the fact that there are just as many ignorant people living in a big city than there are in rural areas..
Yea, try going to an inner-city school in a big City and see if your white, I guaranty you wont make one day without having racist comments said about you.

Originally posted by Kr0n0s
The ignorance spouted off by some people about so called "Rednecks" is just that ignorance..
I grew up in Dallas Tx, one of the biggest cities in Tx so I can attest to the fact that there are just as many ignorant people living in a big city than there are in rural areas..

Not sure if this was aimed at me or not, if it was, no offense taken.

I live in Houston and let me say there are funny funny ha ha rednecks, and then there are REDNECKS! These boys fall into the latter category, and that's the category I was speaking of.

Peace

reply to post by Dr Love

Not sure if this was aimed at me or not, if it was, no offense taken.

Nope.. I wasnt referring to anyone in particular, I was just generalizing, no offense intended..
I just think its funny how some people will voice their hatred for people that are prejudiced towards a minority group and then two sentences later they make an ignorant prejudiced statement themselves..

I can see how the OP feels there is a double standard where white kids are punished for relatively benign things while non-white kids may have more lattitude with regards to displaying material that could be racially offensive. The Supreme court ruled schools can sensor speech under three circumstances.

1. Schools can censor speech that is part of the school's curriculum. The case book example of such censorship is a school censoring a school newspaper article in order to teach good journalism.

2. Schools can censor speech which is lewd. Lewd speech is raunchy speech.

3. Schools can censor speech in order to prevent a disturbance.

Category #3 most applies to this case. If kids are displaying material like confederate flags or nooses that could spark a disturbance, schools can censor that material to keep the peace. The kids should be free to wave their confederate flags outside of school, but inside the school the school's administrators have the obligation to keep the school orderly. Keeping the school orderly may include preventing confederate flags from being waved.

reply to post by hotpinkurinalmint


Wow, you are sounding like someone who actually got a formal legal education (like yours truly). Yes, what you are saying is 100% true, schools *DO* have wide latitude in prohibiting certain forms of expression, as long as this is truly done to facilitate a learning environment.

Originally posted by Dr Love

Originally posted by Kr0n0s
The ignorance spouted off by some people about so called "Rednecks" is just that ignorance..
I grew up in Dallas Tx, one of the biggest cities in Tx so I can attest to the fact that there are just as many ignorant people living in a big city than there are in rural areas..

Not sure if this was aimed at me or not, if it was, no offense taken.

I live in Houston and let me say there are funny funny ha ha rednecks, and then there are REDNECKS! These boys fall into the latter category, and that's the category I was speaking of.

Peace

What exactly is a funy funy haha redneck? ..or at least how do you define it?

For that matter.... what exactly is a REDNECK, in your opinion??

My guess is you haven't a clue.

reply to post by uberarcanist


I am currently in law school, so I am only somewhat legally edumucated.

reply to post by hotpinkurinalmint


Haha, I flunked out after only one year, though I did get a B- in Constitutional Law...I plan to go back soon.

reply to post by uberarcanist


Good luck to you, and next time around you should apply yourself harder.

reply to post by hotpinkurinalmint


Yup, it was laziness and overconfidence that did me in, though I did still learn a heck of a whole lot while I was in there. I wonder if they let people sit in on law school classes? I recommend it to anyone, especially Constitutional Law.

reply to post by uberarcanist


At my school who are interested in applying to the school sit in on one or two classes. Usually they direct the school gets the prospective students to sit in on the classes taught by the best professors. Our schools best professor taught Civil procedure, so more often than not 0L's were sitting in on Civil Procedure, not Con Law. My Con Law professor happened to be really Socratic, so having a prospective student watch a Socratic professor badger students for 90 minutes was not a good selling point.

Other than that, I have not heard of people being allowed to sit in on several law school classes.

This will cause trouble. Happened at my highschool. A white kid and a black kid got in an argument over a girl and the n-word was thrown out. Now, I live in the South, at the foot of the Appalachians, so there are plenty of rednecks and at the time there were less than 10 black students (I think there was 5 to be exact). The principle blew it way out of proportion. Confederate flags on clothes were banned and the punishment for wearing them was 3 days of out of school suspension. about 20 kids were expelled, maybe more.


The Klan marched downtown (I didn't even know there was a Klan here) but nothing bad happened. The black kids family tried to start a rally downtown, nothing came of it. The whole thing ended up on the state news.

In the end, the guy over the school board overturned the principle's decision and everything went back to the way it was. Nothing like that has happened sense. Black people aren't abused at our school, in fact they're usually part of the cool kids.

The lesson? A fight is a fight is a fight. It doesn't matter what race the parties are, or what they say. One insult is just as bad as another.

To more severely punish someone for a racial altercation than someone in a regular altercation is RACIST.



[edit on 30-12-2007 by avingard]

in loco parentis

argument over. schools have the place of a parent according to american legal code, they can suppress any disruptive speech.

So, I am assuming that rap music will be banned as well - in fairness to the whites that it so often degrades - correct??? And the word "Cracker" will have zero-tolerance on school property as well? Somehow I just doubt it.

I'm am so sick and tired of this BS liberal diversity ibndoctrination crap! Let me dis-like who I want to dis-like, let me hate those I want to hae and let me like those who I choose to like. NOBODY is going to have control of my feelings toward other people. In fact, I am adopting a ZERO TOLERANCE POLICY against any m-f'er that tells me how I have to think and feel about other people!

reply to post by Rockpuck


Anything that is offensive to a minority or homos is racisim or some other kind of "ism"! You can do or say anything against whites or christians however! You can say anything against conservatives to but, not liberals. Minority rights trump majority rights as well. This is liberalism 101.Libers believe in free speach, as long as it has cleard the political speach rules (politically correctness) hurdels. In other words if a liberal is insulting to one of their detracters its ok. But, id it offends a liberal then it must be put to the politcal correctness test, administered by liberals of course. I keep seeing liberals talk about the comming civil war or the comming revolution. What a laugh, the rest of us sit back hoping they do it so we can make thing right and sane again. because it doesnt take alot to know who would win that that fight!

reply to post by slimpickens93



RedNeck
People stereotyped as rednecks are largely descendants of the Irish, Ulster-Scots and Lowland Scots immigrants who traveled to North America from Northern Ireland and Scotland in the late 17th and 18th centuries, although some of them are descended from people of Germanic and other stock. The Ulster-Scots had historically settled the major part of Ulster province in Northern Ireland, after previous migration from the Scottish Lowlands and Border Country. These pioneering people and their descendants are known in North America as the Scots-Irish. (The 18th century influx of Highland Scots into the Carolinas also contributed to the bloodlines.) [2] [3]


Redneck has two general uses: first, as a pejorative used by outsiders, and, second, as a term used by members within that group. To outsiders, it is generally a term for those of Southern or Appalachian rural poor backgrounds — or more loosely, rural poor to working-class people of rural extraction. (Appalachia also includes large parts of Pennsylvania, New York and other states.) Within that group, however, it is used to describe the more downscale members. Rednecks span from the poor to the working class.

Respectfully
GEO

[edit on 12/31/2007 by geocom]

reply to post by kozmo


Rap music??? Are you comparing rap music to the confederate flag?

A discussion for another thread.

The confederate flag is, in my opinion, the equivalent of a Nazi swastika. It's the symbol for a government that endorsed the use of slave labor and believed that white people were a superior race and rightfully could use black people as slaves. The swastika was the symbol of a government that used the same type of racism to kill those of lesser races.

Just as with the confederacy, the Nazi party had other policies and government actions, but they were still supportive of the concept of certain races of people having less value than others.

That said, I'm pretty sure the school can ban whatever it wants on school grounds. They've been doing it forever. I don't see the difference between this and instituting a dress code.

Here's an interesting but similar situation on which the supreme court ruled.

www.crf-usa.org...
Over the past decade, some states and cities have prohibited certain acts as hate crimes. For example, in 1989, St. Paul, Minnesota, passed the following city ordinance:

Whoever places on public or private property a symbol, object, appellation [name], characterization or graffiti including . . . a burning cross or Nazi swastika, which one knows or has reasonable grounds to know arouses anger, alarm, or resentment in others on the basis of race, color, creed, religion, or gender, commits disorderly conduct and shall be guilty of a misdemeanor. ......

Very well intentioned, but how did the city react?

About a year after St. Paul’s hate-crime law was enacted, police arrested a group of white juveniles for a series of cross burnings. In one instance, the youths taped chair legs together into a crude cross and set it ablaze inside the fenced yard of a black family.

So, let's take it to court.....

In an appeal that reached the U.S. Supreme Court, attorneys for the juvenile defendants argued that the St. Paul law violated the free-speech provision of the First Amendment. The city responded that by prohibiting such acts as cross burnings, the ordinance served “a compelling governmental interest” to protect the community against hate-motivated threats.

In June 1992, a unanimous Supreme Court agreed with the juvenile defendants. Writing the opinion for the court, Justice Antonin Scalia stated that while government may outlaw activities that present a danger to the community, it may not outlaw them simply because they express ideas that most people or the government find despicable.

Scalia also pointed out that other laws existed to control and punish such acts as cross burnings. In this case, the city could have prosecuted the juvenile offenders under laws against trespassing, arson, vandalism, and terrorism. “Let there be no mistake about our belief that burning a cross in someone’s front yard is reprehensible,” Scalia wrote. “But St. Paul has sufficient means at its disposal to prevent such behavior without adding the First Amendment to the fire.” (R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul.)

So, if this law made it's way off of school grounds these "redneck row" inhabitants might have a chance at overturning the rule, but as of now, it's a dress code issue.

My high school had rules against gang signs and colors being prominently displayed for the safety of it's students and to limit gang related violence. I don't see the difference here.