WHAT IS HAPPENING IN THIS WORLD?
Seriously, I donât get it. Graduation is the last place you should expect conformity and at least heâs wearing the cap and gown.
Because nothing says, âGO OUT IN THE WORLD AND DO WONDERFULLY GREAT THINGSâ like, âuh, no, graduate, you may not wear that little piece of cloth to the ceremony meant to celebrate you and your accomplishments and if you donât like it weâll boot you via the Boys In Blue. And why yes, that is my boot on your face.â
Mods: I need to update our List of Things That Frighten Police but the âEditâ option has been removed. Any way to reactivate that option?
Clearly, he should have carried a mattress.
On the bright side, they didnât shoot or beat him to a pulp, so⌠progress, right?
anyone? (crickets, very angry crickets)
A two-second Google image search for âgraduation mortarboard decorationâ will bring up hundreds, if not thousands, of results that wouldâif the same principle were appliedâresult in many students being kicked out of their graduation ceremonies.
To be clear I donât think the principle should be applied, and, strictly speaking, Iâm not sure itâs exactly the same principle. The tops of mortarboards may be visible to the audience while the students are sitting and this young manâs kente cloth would only be seen while he was getting his diploma.
I wonder if they kicked out the Jewish kid for wearing a yamulke?
Plus, whatever the origin of Americans sporting a kente cloth as part of American graduations (I seem to remember seeing this certainly by the 1980s), itâs now certainly part of a family tradition â Dad wore one in the 1980s, his daughter wants to wear one now, or uncles or nephews or what-nt â boom, we now have a well-established and excellent American tradition, that I â as a center-right white dude â think is fucking awesome.
Of course, like so many of these incidents, itâs not about the thing itself (no one seriously thinks a Kinte cloth is going to disrupt anything), but once the government says âyou canâtâ, no matter how reflexively, and a citizen tells the government to fuck right off, then we cannot allow that sort of disobedience.
The government is not the dispensing chemist of my freedom, nor to that of this young man and damn straight for standing up for it.
My read of this was the school officials wanted it gone, and the kid wouldnât obey, so the school officials ordered the police to take the kid out. Not sure itâs the police who were frightened but the school district.
Hey, they probably thought it was a Muslim Terrorist cloth.
Thereâs nothing wrong with trying to enforce rules (if there is a rule against this). The misdeed was using jackbooted thugs to do the enforcement that the administration couldnât do.
If Americans are allowed to exercise their freedoms, the terrorists win!
Right?
I donât think youâll find all that much agreement with this, as it relates to this story, or as a universal truth, around these parts.
âStudent ejected from ceremony for graduating while black.â
Uh-huh. I see. So it is Boingboingâs position that a white student who refused to take off such a cloth â or similar adornment â would not have been kicked out.
Right. Got it.
//As far as creds go, let me note that I think itâs a dumb policy, and the kid should have been allowed to wear it. But as far as crying RAYYYCCISSTTT!! about almost literally everything, man â what a warped view of the world.
I donât think Tinker applies, it was addressing officials blocking students from wearing black armbands to protest the Vietnam war:
The Court held that for school officials to justify censoring speech, they âmust be able to show that [their] action was caused by something more than a mere desire to avoid the discomfort and unpleasantness that always accompany an unpopular viewpoint,â allowing schools to forbid conduct that would âmaterially and substantially interfere with the requirements of appropriate discipline in the operation of the school.â
Basically you can ban stuff as long as youâre viewpoint neutral and have some valid motive. So theyâre allowed to have a policy that says youâre not allowed to wear other garments over your graduation gown as long as itâs being applied fairly and wasnât invented just to avoid kente cloths. The motive could be they want an orderly graduation without a lot of fuss over all the random stuff people are trying to customize their gowns with.
