Desert Vista Student Apology

Above is the image of a child drowning on dry land. She is Rachel Steigerwald, one of the students from Desert Vista High School of Arizona that I wrote about previously that for whatever reason thought it'd be cool to wear shirts that spelled out “Ni**er.” She stepped up during a rally regarding civil rights to apologize for her actions. It didn't turn out so well.

“I have come here to say that I am incredibly, incredibly sorry. I have love for everyone in my heart. I am not a racist and I'm asking everyone for forgiveness.” School officials are pissed about the photo as well as thousands of other people around the world. Change.org has set up a petition to get all the girls expelled and has over 40,000 signatures so far. I'm not angry so much as disappointed with all six girls and the person that took the photo. They also want the principal, Christine Barela, to resign for giving the girls just a five day suspension.

As of last year the school had 66% White students and 7% Black. The Black Student Union says that the picture does not represent what their school is about. Workshops have been started for students and the principal talked to them about what happened. And the last thing that girl should've said was that the picture was taken for the boyfriend of one of the girls.

And he is Black.

Goddamn it! In my previous post I said that the girls should be expelled. It was reported that their scholarships have been yanked. In a post regarding that lady that had her credit card information stolen from a Starbucks employee and shamed her online (click here to read that) I talked about social justice warriors. It got me to thinking about something Joe Rogan mentioned on a podcast as well as others about how technology is moving faster than our monkey minds can handle. At no other time in history could we communicate the way we do right now. None! I'm not talking about just emails instead of letters or text messaging instead of calling. We can use videos and talk to (and date) people in other countries! I can check what the weather in Zimbabwe is (64 degrees with 95% humidity) by pressing a button! But...we still have the same brains as we did a thousand years ago.

Every example of punishing these kids or anyone else is new. We would have heard about these girls doing this years later if this was the 80's. It wouldn't have been something where I could find out their names, faces, and social network profiles. Which, by the way someone did and published them. There is a fine line being walked by all of us and it is not fun. I'm happy that I have enough pre-internet information in my head to have formed me as a person because I am starting to not feel as angry at these dumb ass kids as I am sorry for them that they won't know what the world was like unless we got hit by a meteor or something.

I do still have enough anger in me to get mad at parents that are 30 and over that let their kids live and behave the way they do. Getting mad when they smoke weed but throwing any pill a doctor hands them into their kids mouths. Giving their kids cell phones or letting them use them for hours. Kids don't even play or talk to each other anymore. Their phone is more fun. I love how some parents limit computer time for their kids but hand them cell phones.

These girls will be fucked over until another group of kids do something even worse because that is how the world works. Maybe these girls will move to another city. Shouldn't bother changing schools since they have a few more months until school is done for them. They are just a new kind of fucked that the world is learning how to handle.