Lesli Frye, a senior at Oakwood High School in Oakwood, Illinois (located in the west central part of Vermilion County, which is in the east central part of the state), sent out a racist tweet not long after a St. Louis County, Missouri grand jury refused to file charges against Ferguson (MO) Police Officer Darren Wilson:
Socially | Effective, a blog mostly about social media,
identified the student as Lesli Frye. The tweet was sent out at 9:16 P.M. on a Monday night, so Frye was, more than likely, not attending school or any kind of school activity at the time she sent out the tweet. Frye has since locked her Twitter account and, according to Buzzfeed,
Frye has refused to delete and/or apologize for the tweet, only apologizing for a spelling error in the tweet.
While I personally believe that Frye should not be disciplined by her school unless she was on school grounds or was at a school activity at the time she sent out the tweet, Frye's remarks are some of the most racist I've ever seen in my life. By saying that she thinks that black people should go back to Africa, she apparently believes that white people are entitled to this country, which is also known as white supremacy.
This hits close to home for me, because I live in the same county (Vermilion County, Illinois) as Frye, in a village (Westville, Illinois) about nine miles to the southeast of where Frye attends school (Oakwood, Illinois). I certainly do NOT share the white supremacist views of Frye, as this country has been a melting pot of cultures and a nation of immigrants for hundreds of years. While most black people in this country are the descendants of those who came to what is now the United States of America by way of the horrible institutions of the slave trade and slavery, for Frye to suggest that all black people in this country should go back to Africa clearly indicates to me that she thinks that white people are the only people that should be allowed to live here. That is, in my opinion, a barbaric way of viewing society.
With the young people in this county, this state, and this country becoming more conservative and more bigoted by the day, I fear for this country.