During my elementary school years, in Kearns Utah, I remember waking up in the mornings and looking outside during the wintertime to see a strange “X” grafted into the snow on our front lawn. I asked my mother, “What is that? Who did that?” Her only response was, “It wasn't us.” She didn’t explain what the Swastika meant, or why it was on our lawn multiple mornings during that winter.Was that an act of racism?
In Sandy, Utah, at a recent Spirit Bowl Assembly at Alta High School, a bi-racial student, Larz Cosby, was taunted by a classmate wearing a white suit and a KKK hat. Cosby told the kid with the KKK hat to take it off. The kid jumped around him and continued taunting him. Cosby took the hood off from his head and threw it behind him. The administration didn't attempt to stop him from taunting Cosby until he stepped onto the basketball court and started "heiling" Hitler. Larz Cosby posted a blog on the internet where he explained the incident, reflections from past experiences, and also mentions the talks he has had with his family about racism. "Who in their right mind would plan to blatantly enforce their hate for others in a large gathering in a public school? How is it a joke? How is that funny?" Cosby asked on his blog. I agree, this is not a joke, it is not funny. The goals of the Klu Klux Klan consist of racial segregation and white supremacy. The KKK is a group of hate; hate is shown through jokes, humiliation, etc. This is what the classmate was doing. Cosby says, "If your child has to attend Alta High School and they are nonwhite just know that the chances of being treated unethically are very high."
We have a long way to go for equality.
The blog post has received over 1,000 comments. Out of 1,000 comments, over 500 were violent and racially offensive. A comment posted by a person using the username “the real kkk member” says: “take the tampon out, because if this was a kkk deal you would’ve been wrapped in barbed wire, beat with a bat, dragged behind a car, and shot in the head.” Many of these types of comments were posted by students from Alta High School.
Does a murderous act have to take place in order for it to be considered racism?
Why do people consider racism as only physical abuse? Racism can be any type of aggression towards an individual based on that persons race that can affect them mentally or physically. Physical damage might be more obvious than mental damage, but they are both hurtful.
As a young child I saw different shades of skin color, but I never saw superiority vs. inferiority. I grew up playing with many diverse kids in a diverse neighborhood without racial hate. How did I begin to classify racism if I didn’t have an exact definition? After the incident of the Swastika grafted into my lawn, I started observing people's differences like; skin color, or the language's they spoke. We are used to defining racism as words, or actions like "nigger," but we don’t talk about the institutional racism that students and everyone experiences from work or teachers. A teacher once pulled me out of an advanced placement class because I was obviously one of the few minorities in the class, so I was seen as incapable of succeeding in the class. Our administrators need to be more aware of the issues going on in our school in order to prevent these incidents from occurring and not only promote awareness, but also equality. Race is something humans invented. Ethnicity is what is in our blood as humans. We are all of the same race, the human race.
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