Students wear "Straight Pride" shirts with Bible verses calling for death

[ponderingturtle]

You don't think it's legitimately possible for someone to take pride in their ethnic heritage if they define said heritage as "white"? Due to history and current culture, it is highly unlikely that persons doing so at this time and place would not be racists, yes; but that's not inherently always true. In a hundred or two hundred years, perhaps "white" will be a minority, and given to non-racist expressions of ethnic pride or something.

Wait are we including the Irish, German, Italian and Slavic peoples as white?

I always like to be a bit of a traditionalist myself. Like I don't consider anyone today to be truly married since they let women own property.

 

[ponderingturtle]

Well put.

I would add that its a pity that all ethnic groups can't have a 'x-pride' expression. But you're right something like 'white-pride' would never be viewed as anything but antagonistic.

But not Irish pride or italian pride or german pride(well maybe this one) and so on.

 

[AvalonXQ]

Then we disagree. I think public schools were meant to educate, it's just an unfortunate side effect that in order to do so they wind up creating conformity.

When I read about the arguments that were used to privatize public schools in the States, the issue of getting unruly children in line is pretty much the first and primary mover in what I read. Maybe my exposure is been too selective. The modern system was implemented first and foremost as a way of social control; education was the pretense but seemed to be a secondary goal.

 

[Skeptic]

The thing is that school needs to be able to be run and not devolve into constant bickering.

But if that were the case there shouldn't be any "gay pride" or "black pride" events either, since they might cause bickering. For that matter evolution shouldn't be taught, either... you can censor anything you feel like by claiming it "might cause bickering" -- something that's impossible to disprove and, teenagers being teenagers, almost certain to occur anytime anyone does anything remotely not like everybody else.

 

[Skeptic]

But not Irish pride or italian pride or german pride(well maybe this one) and so on.

Once all the Germans were warlike and mean,
But that couldn't happen again!
We taught them a lesson in 1918
And they hardly ever bothered us since then.

-- Tom Lehrer's "MLF Lullaby"

 

[TraneWreck]

I agree that that's what's going on here. I don't think the expressions are symmetrical at all.
I still think censoring the shirts is silly and wrong. Authority coming down against this sort of thing sends exactly the wrong message about how to deal with free speech, and about how to engage those with unpopular opinions.

Remember, the week is aimed at stopping bullying. The school has very legitimate, non-expression based grounds for censoring a shirt that is aimed at contributing to the very environment that the bullying comes from.

Wearing "Straight Pride" tee-shirts as a counter-protest to an event aimed at ending bullying of all students, notably homosexual students who are frequently targeted, is, in itself, a none-too-subtle threat.

Again, "Straight Pride" in this context is not a statement of feeling good for being straight, it's aimed at declaring that homosexuals should be ashamed. Thus the quote about killing.

 

[ponderingturtle]

But if that were the case there shouldn't be any "gay pride" or "black pride" events either, since they might cause bickering. For that matter evolution shouldn't be taught, either... you can censor anything you feel like by claiming it "might cause bickering" -- something that's impossible to disprove and, teenagers being teenagers, almost certain to occur anytime anyone does anything remotely not like everybody else.

True, I guess the better distinction is what is about solidarity vs discrimination. Straight pride and white pride in the US are about discrimination because they are formed as a reaction to try to keep minorities in line and out of the majorities hair.

 

[MattusMaximus]

Me, too. Heck, when I was in college back in the day, I wrote an opinion article for the newspaper on this exact topic -- there was a movement on campus to forcibly silence hate speech. I argued that we should encourage such speech to be made openly, and seek to engage it civilly.
That's always been my approach.

The solution to bad speech is not to silence it. The solution is MORE, BETTER speech.

That said, I think requiring the students who were wearing the T-shirts with Biblically-oriented death threats to remove them is perfectly appropriate. In fact, I think those particular students should have been suspended - "I didn't think it was a big deal" is no justification for threatening the lives of others, either implicitly or explicitly.

 

[TraneWreck]

The solution to bad speech is not to silence it. The solution is MORE, BETTER speech.

In general, I very much agree.

This situation, however, involves minors and bullying.

Once you're 18 and in control of your environment, have at it. In schools, safety has to be a primary concern.

"Gay Pride" in this context, anti-bullying week, essentially means, "I don't have to be ashamed of who I am, and you have to stop picking on me because of it."

It's fairly easy to understand the implication of "Straight Pride" in that context. It's a safety issue, not a speech issue.

ETA-I notice you edited your post to make the same point with less words. You win.

 

[Babbylonian]

These events don't do that; if anything they tend to make it a bit worse.

Well, it's good that you're not just dismissing out of hand an event you haven't experienced or making conclusions without supporting data, and are offering better ideas to solve the problem. Oh, wait...

 

[AvalonXQ]

Well, it's good that you're not just dismissing out of hand an event you haven't experienced or making conclusions without supporting data,

Yes, nobody's making unsupported conclusions on this thread...

 

[Skeptic]

Straight pride and white pride in the US are about discrimination because they are formed as a reaction to try to keep minorities in line and out of the majorities hair.

True, true. But they still should have freedom of speech -- again, not to the point of threatening to kill people, of course.

Look -- I am Jewish and went to school in the USA. I constantly met with "death-to-Israel / Jews-control-the-world" so-called "peace" activists. But I would have considered it an insult to be "protected" from them by having the college ban them lest my precious self-esteem not be hurt. If one's "gay identity" is so brittle seeing someone with a "straight pride" shirt is enough to destroy it or make one hide it forever, it's not worth defending by banning the "straight pride" shirt.

Yes, the guy who wears it is probably a jerk -- but this constant hysteria to ban any sort of speech that might conceivably possibly hurt the feelings of someone in a designated "victim" class is to me totally silly, and indeed an attempt at thought control.

In the past people believed that if, God forbid, anybody publicly admitted being gay, this would instantly cause hordes of young men to "experiment" with him and turn them homosexual. We're reaching this sort of level of paranoia in reverse: a few jerks wearing an insulting T-shirt are now supposed to be capable of magically turning gay teens straight at 30 paces.

 

[PhantomWolf]

This actually brings up an interesting conversation.

While it's acceptable to declare "Black Pride" it clearly isn't acceptable to declare "White Pride" because it has been hijacked by certain groups.

Similarly the message now appears to be that "Gay Pride" is fine, but "Straight Pride" isn't because that is instantly considered to be an attack on Gays.

Unfortunately the overall message is that as a minority it's fine to be loud and proud and make a big thing of being a minority, but if you are not, then you can't be proud of who you are, in fact if you dare to be, you are a bigot because you are somehow declaring that you are superior to everyone else. It seems it's a subtle, but real, if unintentional, move towards making the larger majority feel ashamed of being who they are because unless you are a minority, you must be one of the dreadful, repressing, evil bastards, making life dreadful for everyone else, and standing up and saying, I'm proud of who I am makes you more so, because you're not allowed to be a dreadful, repressing, evil bastard, and certainly not allowed to be proud to be one.

Now having said that I have to say I don't agree with having verses from Leviticus on the T-Shirts, I think it was downright dumb, however I also think that as a society we need to start becoming aware of what speech we are allowing and what we aren't. We are walking a very fine balance between "freedom of speech" and "freedom of speech as long as it does not offend anyone." When we get too far into the second, we really lose the right that freedom of speech gives since virtually anything we say can be taking offensively by someone. I think that we need to remember that no one has the right not to be affended by others, something both sides of the fence need to remember.

In the end I wish people would just do their own thing and stop looking over the fence to see who to hate for everything wrong in their own life. I doubt it will happen, but really the sooner people start taking responsiblity for their own failings instead of blaming others, and stop trying to force people to live the way they think that everyone should live (and the far left is just as bad as the far right on that one) then perhaps the faster we'll have a world where everyone can just get along.

To steal a line from MLK, I have a dream, I have a dream that one day people will be joiners instead of haters. That we can live in a world were if there is a pride in your sexuality march, it'll be accepted for straight people to walk proudly beside gay, bis, and those that like bicycles. Where instead of demanding religious icons be removed from public place, that other are added to respresent all, where it doesn't matter how much skin pigment you have or don't have, you can be part of a "Human Pride" rally, but hey, perhaps I'm just completely crazy for believing that having a ~46 human chromosomes makes you human and therefore the same as everyone else with ~46 human chromosomes.

 

[Thunder]

This actually brings up an interesting conversation.

While it's acceptable to declare "Black Pride" it clearly isn't acceptable to declare "White Pride" because it has been hijacked by certain groups.

yes, yes it has.

slogans like "White Pride" and "Straight Pride" are typically made by bigots who hate blacks or gays.

plus the fact that most whites (Europeans) know that white people aren't really a cultural or ethnic group. Polish, Jewish, Irish, Italian, German, English, Russian pride is all fine and dandy. That's because its pride in a real culture.

Black pride, may not make much sense in a geographic/ethnic sense, it is really a statement of protest against centuries of folks telling black people that they are ****, unworthy of education, service, housing, etc etc.

 

[TraneWreck]

Unfortunately the overall message is that as a minority it's fine to be loud and proud and make a big thing of being a minority, but if you are not, then you can't be proud of who you are, in fact if you dare to be, you are a bigot because you are somehow declaring that you are superior to everyone else.

If you legitimately feel this way, I'm sorry, but I have no idea how you arrived at that position.

I'm German and Swedish. Never once have I felt uncomfortable in expressing pride in my forebearers.

As a white American I have a great deal of pride in what my nation has accomplished, but I also realize how that occurred. We are where we are because we nearly wiped out America's indegenous population and had quite a bit of free labor you may have heard about.

We justified these attrocious acts by declaring the victims of our excess to be inferior, less than human. Even other groups of whites went through similar periods of humiliation before they were mixed into the group.

"Irish Pride" or "Italian Pride" or "Black Pride" or "Gay Pride" are about groups that have suffered incredible abuse and severe humiliation straightening their shoulders and announcing that such degredation will no longer be tolerated.

As a group, WASP's in America have never experienced such treatment.

"White Pride" has its connotation because that's what people screamed before they formed mobs to hunt down black people and hung them from trees. It's not a mysterious occurrance.

I have a great deal of pride in my German roots. I have absolutely no pride and, in fact, a great deal of loathing for the Swastika and all it represents.

All of these movements must be understood in their historical context. If the act of other people demanding to be treated as equals and demanding that humiliation and subjugation cease threatens you to the point that you no longer feel pride in your ancestors, I can only shake my head at the fragility of your identity.

 

[ponderingturtle]

True, true. But they still should have freedom of speech -- again, not to the point of threatening to kill people, of course.

Look -- I am Jewish and went to school in the USA. I constantly met with "death-to-Israel / Jews-control-the-world" so-called "peace" activists. But I would have considered it an insult to be "protected" from them by having the college ban them lest my precious self-esteem not be hurt. If one's "gay identity" is so brittle seeing someone with a "straight pride" shirt is enough to destroy it or make one hide it forever, it's not worth defending by banning the "straight pride" shirt.

And if the jewish teen suicide rate was similar to the gay teen suicide rate you might have a point. This is a lot of a reaction to people suddenly noticing how high the rate of suicide in gay teens is.

 

[AvalonXQ]

And if the jewish teen suicide rate was similar to the gay teen suicide rate you might have a point. This is a lot of a reaction to people suddenly noticing how high the rate of suicide in gay teens is.

There's little or no evidence to support the notion that gay teens commit suicide at a significantly higher rate than teens in general. So I guess he has a point, right?

 

[Thunder]

Unfortunately the overall message is that as a minority it's fine to be loud and proud and make a big thing of being a minority, but if you are not, then you can't be proud of who you are, in fact if you dare to be, you are a bigot because you are somehow declaring that you are superior to everyone else.

wrong. and you know it.

except for the fact that most folks who wear "white pride" or "straight pride" t-shirts tend to be bigots. you were right about that one.

 

[PhantomWolf]

plus the fact that most whites (Europeans) know that white people aren't really a cultural or ethnic group. Polish, Jewish, Irish, Italian, German, English, Russian pride is all fine and dandy. That's because its pride in a real culture.

Most of us whites aren't straight Polish, Jewish, Irish, Italian, German, English, or Russian though. Most of us are complete bitsas. For example I have have at least Welsh, Scottish, English, German, and French ancestry. My fiancee has Native American, Spainish, Andorian, Mexican, Enligish, Italian, and likely a few others. We're a complete melting pot of half of Europe so don't really have the ability to point to one culture and say "I'm that."

 

[PhantomWolf]

If the act of other people demanding to be treated as equals and demanding that humiliation and subjugation cease threatens you to the point that you no longer feel pride in your ancestors, I can only shake my head at the fragility of your identity.

You seem to have a habit of addressing arguments I don't make. Nowhere did I say that "the act of other people demanding to be treated as equals and demanding that humiliation and subjugation cease threatens" me. I stated that there is a movement, however unintended, towards making non-minorities feel ashamed for being who they are by telling them that they can't stand up and say "I'm proud of who I am" because doing so is putting others down.

Whether we like it or not, if a person stands up and says "I'm proud to be a white straight male," the inference is instantly that this is an attack against coloureds, gays, and females, and the speaker is therefore a bigot. Again, whether we like it or not, the message then becomes, "you can't be proud of being a white, straight, male because if you are you're a bigot."

If you had actually bothered to read my posting, you'd have noticed that I stated that I believe everyone should be treated as a human being, nothing more, nothing less. Colour of skin, sexuality, gender, religion, these are all, or should all be, irrelevant. Except in today's society they aren't, and it's coming from both sides. Both sides need to get over themselves, those that hate anyone for being different, and those that instantly label anyone that isn't a minority (or one of the previously repressed) and who isn't filled with guilt and remorse over the actions of their forebears as a bigot.