We don’t have get well cards for healthy people either
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Hi – I am the neighbor Tammy Weisenberger mentioned in her article. If you were shocked by the behavior of these middle schoolers, then I hope you will listen to what I have to say. (I don’t know anything about Boing Boing, I just happen to have a dog in this fight. My comment is long, but I believe very important if you care about kids and the adults they turn into.)
When my son told me that some punk was trying to scare him with swastikas, I asked him if he felt like he was handling the situation ok by himself. He said he was. That was a relief to me for two reasons: 1) it told me that he is a much more mature person than I was at his age, and 2) it meant that I didn’t have to go talk to the school. Which I did not want to do. Why ever not?
Last year, my then 6th-grader came home extremely upset because he had seen a boy he knew screaming the N-word at a boy he didn’t know. He had tried to shut the first boy up, but the kid was out of control (and the coach on duty in the locker room didn’t want to hear about it). So I called the school and told the counsellor everything I knew (including that the coach refused to handle it right then and there). She said that was “clearly unacceptable” and that she would talk to Boy 1.
So then I asked her if the school used restorative practices. Crickets. “What?” she asked.
And that made my heart hurt. That the counsellor at my son’s middle school didn’t know what I was talking about. This is a huge topic in the field of education right now. (Here’s a local story if you’re interested: http://kcts9.org/programs/in-close/restorative-justice-school-discipline-new-approach)
I don’t remember her exact words, but she said that Boy 1 would get a warning and be expelled if he kept up the behavior (screaming the N-word at a child of color). That’s called zero-tolerance.
Folks, we are hurting children every single day that we continue to practice zero-tolerance. Boy 1 is hurt because he gets expelled (if not this year, then next year – believe me, it’s coming). Boy 2 is hurt because he never gets a sincere apology from Boy 1. No one ever really makes amends. Restorative practices is all about making amends and fixing relationships instead of dumping problem kids into the school to prison pipeline.
So back to the swastika situation that brought us here together on Facebook. Maybe I should have called the school first thing. But here I want to quote my brother (US Army major, combat veteran and soon PhD in History): “If you do that, what will happen?” (This is how he talks people down in really, truly dangerous situations.)
I was pretty sure I knew what would happen. The little alt-right wannabe would get a talking-to. Maybe the teacher would be told to reseat him away from my son. He would be reminded that other people’s parents can use the school as a weapon against him. Would anything meaningful change in the kid’s life? Would someone sit down with him and figure out where this was all coming from? Would they help him to actually grow into a young man of character who empathizes with others and uses his words to build people up?
Wanna bet me? I’ll put down money that the answer is no. So I didn’t call.
But now I’ve read here in Tammy’s article about sieg heil in the hallways. About how this is more than one kid. My hands are shaking as I type this. Children’s lives are a treasure that we hold in our hands for a brief moment. We can’t do our duty as adults if we are afraid of them when they punch our buttons (and that is what zero-tolerance is – “your behavior scares us so you’re outta here”). We have to sit with them and do this work of becoming humans together.
So here’s what I’ll do. I’ll go see the principal and try to get her interested in training the teachers in restorative practices. I don’t want to do this. I don’t have time to do this. But I will.
PS: My son said this today: “Mom, I remember telling Papa that when I grew up I would go fight in World War II against the fascists and he told me that it was over a long time ago. I was so disappointed. Now I don’t know what to think.”
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Thanks for posting this.
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I truly, honestly know where you’re coming from. I went to grade school in the 80s, high school in the late 80s and early 90s. Yeah, kids back then said ridiculous things that would be hateful if there was any force behind it. For God’s sake, a lot of us knew who Mayhem was even if we’d never set a match to a church, and there were loads of kids who would write 666 without even knowing what the hell it was. I knew kids who would drunkenly drive through a poor part of the nearest town and shout racist things to try to piss people off. It wasn’t malicious, more just bone-headed hate.
The kids we don’t have to worry about are the idiots who can’t even get it right.
The same with the idiots who spout off, “Jew” in team chat on a game. Or the guy who says “nigger” any time he means “black”, even if he’s literally referring to the color of something. Le edgy kids will think back on this someday and cringe so hard.
The ones you have to worry about are the quiet ones who are absorbing the idiotic “Dumbocraps are the real racists” and “globalist conspiracy” tripe from their parents, and they’re out there. That’s what worries me. Anti-semitism and racism seems to be normalizing.
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Zero tolerance is a cancer on American schools. There are schools where if someone had punched that kid for doing the salute, both of them would be expelled. Not because the goose-stepping moron was doing an inflammatory salute, no; but because he was involved in a fight, context be damned. In that case, it would make sense, but if you want to take someone down with you in some schools, just haul off and hit the person you want to see expelled.
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I think you’re taking my words a step too far. Drawing a symbol they don’t understand is one thing. But your examples can’t be misunderstood. That’s some aggressive racism there.
I would think that’s called tolerance. Zero tolerance is when the kid gets expelled first and warned later. I prefer tolerance, but that requires the school to handle things case-by-case, and that only works out well if the staff is very wise. It upsets the lawyers, too.
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No, OP was partly correct. Party membership was a requirement for the SS, but not the Wehrmacht. Initially, Wehrmacht troops were legally forbidden from membership in any political party. There were plenty of non-Nazis in the German military, even generals.
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Punch them in the face.
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Kids in schools don’t actually have a right to freedom of speech. They get thrown out or disciplined for speech (like telling a teach to screw themselves) all the time. They’re minors. Many civil rights don’t legally apply to minors and this went all the way to the Supreme Court. So, no, you can’t run down the hall screaming about “the Jews” and get out of it because “freedom of speech, man.”
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In what world do you think people don’t know this (what the name is a contraction of)?
And, yes, despite the name, they weren’t even vaguely a left-wing party. I’ve only ever heard Republicans state that they were with a straight face (and ignorance of the history of the Nazis and how they developed).
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True story: there was never an established Nazi skinhead presence in Seattle because a couple of decades back when they tried to set up shop, the local SHARPS (anti-Nazi skinheads) got wind of it, jumped them en masse, and rumbled in the streets, kicking the shit out of the Nazis. When the cops showed up, they checked tattoos as they grabbed people and let the SHARPS go. Nazis never came back in an organized way.
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Somehow I think that was small consolation to the Jews…
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I knew a few in Gainesville, FL when I lived there in my 20s (the 1990s). There didn’t seem to be a cohesive “white power” base, but there was plenty of racist sentiment among some hometown (regional/county) residents. If you attended the University of Florida, or Santa Fe Community College, or even lived in town and were college-aged, you likely knew who was who and what was what. The SHARPS made sure the locals knew how they felt about racism.
I had a SHARP acquaintance I knew through party circles who was murdered by a guy I knew of, not at all friends with, when he was possibly baited and ambushed - shot in the head. He was black, they were white. I’m not really sure if they caught the guy(s), but I hope they did.
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I agree with most what you said but with this: [quote=“LapsedPacifist, post:18, topic:96217, full:true”]
The solution is to get these kids but not for the Nazi stuff. Ignore that, focus on other stuff, preferably something that’s profoundly uncool. They’ll get bored. Eventually. Very eventually. Sucks, but there you go.
[/quote]
No fucking way.
Ignoring is not even remotely an option.
For anyone who has enough knowledge about the Nazi reign, the second world war and the shoa, it surely must be clear that showing the Hitlergruss in public cannot be ignored. Ignoring means normalizing it. It must not be normal. Never again.
That is the whole point of the text. It must not be normal that anyone gets away with blatantly showing off racist behaviour and the very symbols of racism.
This, of course, includes kids who are testing out what they can get away with in an institution of education.
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Who said it was supposed to be consolation? It was a correction.
Not being party members doesn’t make them blameless. They were still doing the bidding of actual Nazis, even if under duress as conscripts. But perpetuating the myth that all German soldiers were frothingly enthusiastic about what they were doing leads to ahistorical nonsense like Inglourious Basterds and Goldhagen’s Hitler’s Willing Executioners. Which inadvertently promote a “it can’t happen here” notion because “we’re not all hate-crazed bigots like the Germans were.”
It doesn’t take all of us or even a majority of us to make the political environment abhorrent, toxic, and dangerous. All it takes is that good men do nothing.
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"Burn them in front of a mirror?
Meh. Just a thought…"
No, your on the right track, if someone wants to burn you and yours to the ground for giggles, maybe it’s time, no, maybe it’s now a responsibility, to respond in kind.
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bwahahaha!
I didn’t look at the 8 replies, but I suspect they have lots of infos for you to process.
if you really thought the NSDAP was not extremly right-wing the education and school system at your place should be redesigned. urgently. otherwise you’re not even an interesting trolley, good driving trollies should be surprising and with new ideas and views.
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What planet of the apes do you live on? What COUNTRY are you even describing? what is this “freedom of speech” you speak of? I’ve lived in the good ol U-S-of-A’s damn near my whole life, and I can say with the utmost confidence, you and me, we live in two VERY different worlds, and I’ve been in more then a few states and locales.
And regardless of free-dumb of speech, never, EVER, should anyone promote the idea that it is even SLIGHTLY ok to act like an asshole and put people down. Yea, sure, go tell any small group of aggressive ANYBODY that they are a bunch of assholes, the magical constitution will protecting you from the beating, I reckon.
But no, I’m dead serious, what PLANET do you live on?
Or it’s more a case of, I’ll have what ever you’ve been eating, drinking, smoking, injecting, all the above, you get the point.
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Ultimately, party membership was not a requirement to be in the SS
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