This first morning of the new year begins in a corner of the backyard in a weathered wooden chair of cypress made by a long-gone friend. The coffee is good and the air washed fresh by last night’s rain.
I miss Boy Cat who passed last year and normally would, after a night of tom catting, be harassing me for attention. The vinca at my feet, impatient for spring, is starting to show its purple blooms.
The day, like the year ahead looks full of promise as moments of sunlight break through, then disappear.
I’m sending new year’s greetings to friends via texts, something 15 years ago would have been science fiction. Now it’s so routine we hardly think about it.
A story The New York Times published last week has stayed on my mind.
It concerns a Leesburg, Virginia, teenager, who four years ago upon getting her learner’s permit sent a Snapchat video message to a friend that included a racial slur. (“A racial slur, a viral video, and a reckoning,” NY Times, Dec. 26)
The slur, which wasn’t directed at anyone in particular — “I can drive [slur] — circulated among some students at her high school, Heritage High School, without causing much of a stir at the time.
A bi-racial classmate saw the video last year when he and the girl who posted it were seniors.
By then the girl was head cheerleader at their high school and had been accepted by the University of Tennessee to be on its cheer team.
In the wake of the George Floyd killing, the girl, in a public Instagram post, urged people to protest violence against African Americans and get involved in some way.
At this point the biracial classmate, who had been holding the video, put it on line. It quickly went viral.
The University of Tennessee’s athletic department immediately withdrew its offer of a slot on the cheer team and eventually admission officials at the school, who said they had received hundreds of angry responses from angry alumni, students and public, strongly discouraged the girl’s enrollment.
Wonder how this might have played out had the offender been a star quarterback?
The student who published the video justified his actions as a response to the prevailing racist attitude at the high school.
“If I never posted that video, nothing would have ever happened,” he said. “I’m going to remind myself, you started something. You taught someone a lesson.”
The girl is now enrolled in a nearby community college, the boy in a private Christian-based college in California.
In this story we have a thought-provoking morality tale about the times we live in.
A young girl’s dreams go up in a puff of smoke over an ill-advised, several-years-old internet post. A classmate exploits her indiscretion to punish his classmate and highlight racist attitudes and practices at their former high school. A major university reacting in part to the resulting social-media firestorm revokes its commitment to an incoming student.
No one emerges from this virtual melee unscarred.
The more than 1,600 readers who commented on the story offer a wide and thoughtful cross-section of responses.
One of them, Roger from the UK, wrote:
“Strange behaviour all round, in my view. Ms Groves should have realised how grossly offensive she was being, while Mr. Galligan should have tried to deal with the matter on a personal level first, rather than following the craven route of social media. Nobody comes out of this with their humanity intact.”
Seems to me, understanding in difficult situations is better served by conversations, as uncomfortable as they might be. Too often, instead, they erupt in social-media feeding frenzies, which spawn more hate than understanding and tolerance, commodities which seem to be in ever short supply.
Might we resolve then in 2021, in the interests of civility, to talk more, Tweet and SnapChat less. We and our society will be healthier for it.
Birney Imes III is the immediate past publisher of The Dispatch.
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