OT: Jason Whitlock disgrace

[Wite3]

To me this is just like the steroid argument. Steroids are a form of cheating but who is it hurting? My answer is the kids who are growing up watching these men slowly kill themselves with drugs. The kids do not have the maturity or impulse control or reasoning skills to realize this and they try different things that can be VERY harmful to them to try to get an edge.

Same thing with this kind of hate speech. It is nothing more than that. The statistics on the "harmless" jokes are staggering. I urge people to visit websites like "Teaching Tolerance" and the Southern Poverty Law Center if you want to see some of the stats on how harmful this kind of speech is.

I personally had an example of this just this week and have been dying to get here to post it...I have students come into my class (4th grade) and repeat the dumb and disgusting all the time. Friday, a student in my class who idolizes Kobe Bryant said to me he "can't wait for Kobe to play the Knicks and drop the bomb on Lin!" I asked him what he meant...he told me just like the A-bomb on Hiroshima. I told him that Lin was from Taiwan and not Japan and that his comment was out of line. Thousands of people died that day and it is not a joke. He just could not understand, being 10 years old, that what he said was bad. When I asked him where he heard that joke, he said his older brother heard it from his father. I emailed the father and he emailed back saying it was harmless. I then asked him if it would have been harmless had the japanese girl in my class said that "Lin was going to enslave Kobe next time they met on the court." That drove the point home. The family I spoke to was black. They immediately apologized and were horrified when I turned it around. They also assured me that they would be more mindful about what they say in front of the kids.

People need to understand they are not alone in this world and often there are young ears either watching the channels, reading the web, or just looking over your shoulders. These comments are neither harmless nor appropriate at any time.

Joshua