I really don’t think so. There are plenty of people who have specific things that they feel they can just overrun whenever it suits them. I’ve had them in classes, unfortunately… though not to the point of something like this, but more to the “oh, the rules don’t apply to me” kind of way. It’s frustrating.
Even so… I just can’t do it.
Green Room is fucking great. So is This is England. Trust me, on both.
One of the last movie Anton Yelchin was in, which really breaks my heart considering he’s no longer with us.
On rightist forums this firing is being denounced as another example of political correctness gone mad.
I know. He’s so great in it…
Agreed! Must have been some serious Appalachian groupthink taking place that day.
Yes, because it’s only there that racism exists… after all, that’s the only place that police brutality against communities of color has happened… and the only place that white supremacist groups exist and are active… 
The sooner we kill the “if we just get rid of white southerners our problem will be fixed” mindset, the better. It’s a nation-wide, no, a global problem. We’ll get nowhere until we treat it as such.
[ETA] To expand on this, white supremacy isn’t a problem of individuals, or a problem of a specific place or region of the country, or of mere ignorance. It’s a problem of systems of power that were created specifically to benefit some people over others, white men of means, and that privilege trickles down to others with the same skin/gender, and then skin in various ways. In order to end this, we have to think hard about that, and how we can change our systems to be more democratic, representative, and less conducive to privileging people based on spurious traits like skin color or gender (or a whole host of others, wealth, education, sexual orientation, etc). As long as we pretend it’s just some “bad apples” we will never fix these problems. It’s like treating the symptoms of cancer, but not the cancer itself.
I’m not surprised. They have no problem with corrections officers appearing to be Nazis, or at least supporting Nazi ideals, since they figure they will either never be under them, or they are right there with them. It takes empathy to care about things like this.
Amen. West Virginia gets a lot of shit it doesn’t deserve.
I mean West Virginia exists because the counties comprising it refused to secede from the Union and even though it was admitted as a slave state they ended up abolishing slavery 18 months later.
Hell, Virginia is the state where you can marry your first cousin, not WV.
When Byrd asked a secretary to print the photo with the caption “Hail Byrd,“ she was pressed by a secretary on what the class was doing, the report said. State investigators say Byrd responded with “because I’m a hardass like Hitler.”
Does she mean that horrid little coward who took his own life when all the shit he was doing in the world caught up to him? Way to live up to her idol, I suppose.
The report concluded: “There is no dispute that the ‘Hail Byrd’ gesture and photograph were highly offensive and egregious in appearance, but the investigation did not reveal any overt motivation or intent that this was a discriminatory act towards any racial, religious, or ethnic group.”
No overt motivation or intent? What was it then? Just “boys being boys,” I suppose.
I disagree with that. The only reason I mentioned Appalachia is because this particular incident took place in West Virginia.
The scarier answer is that this happens so often so many places and it’s never brought to light. Maybe that’s why they did it: they thought they could get away with it, because they had so many other times before.
Agreed, but my larger point is that the problem isn’t a particular regional culture, as all regional cultures have serious short comings, as well as some good aspects. Rather, racism is a entirely modern system which helped build the modern capitalist system that we all are a part of.
Then how about not malign an entire region? Appalachia has a rich culture and history that gave us some of our core American culture (music, for example, some of the origins of folk/country) and does have a history of labor radicalism (such as the Battle of Blair mountain).
And yes, it does have a history of racism, because it’s part of the US (and the modern world). And as @agies noted, WV, which gets shit on quite often as nothing but backwards hicks and rednecks, broke away from the Confederacy. Let’s not forget that large swaths of Appalachia were hot beds of unionism, primarily because the mountain folk did not materially benefit from slavery, as they’d been pushed off into the least productive lands by slave owners.
My point is that it’s not “Appalachia” that’s the core of the problem here, it’s the very institutions in which we ALL live within. Blaming particular groups of people in particular regions because of how the mass media has painted that region is highly counter productive, and only serves to break down any attempt at moving forward productively.
Telling you facts about the ingrained nature of white supremacy in America is virtue signaling?
“Hail, Bird!”
When I pass a picket line, I raise my fist and shout “Solidarity!”.
That’s a good one, too. Based a bit on a real story I believe. Seems like there was a wave of those films in English language films in the late 90s and early 2000s. There is also Romper Stompers, which is an Australian film.
I’d still say that This is England is probably the best of the lot, honestly, at least in terms of not mistaking Hammer Skins for all Skinheads. Green Room is a ton of fun, but is less of a “message” kind of movie, and more of tense almost horror-like thriller.
The Believer taught me things about being a Jew that I should have known but didn’t.
It looks like a major house cleaning from the part Ben highlighted.
A third staff member who failed to report the contents of the photograph will also be fired, bringing the total number of staff terminations to three. Additionally, four academy instructors who are known to have seen the picture and failed to report it will also be suspended without pay.
It sounds like the closed-fisters actually resisted raising a hand over several shots, finally resorting to the fists.
Looks like original quote you commented on was removed, but to be clear if you get beyond the summary, their instructor Karrie Byrd insisted they to do it “because I’m a hard-ass like Hitler.” So, was the implication that she knew it had to do with Hitler but didn’t, umm… uh. I’m losing my cattle-car of thought here.
And they were fired. Unfortunately they all were recruited by police forces from all over the country with promises of higher pay and absolute immunity from prosecution.
