A prom photo of boys from a public high-school in Wisconsin has sparked an enormous controversy today because they are throwing Nazi salutes and flashing white power signs in the photograph. Read Jules Sudaltsev’s original thread or lishaouyun’s diary for more, including comments from students in the picture, and others who have related school authorities’ unwillingness to address racist bullying over years. This photo seems bound to have a similar impact to the Prince Harry Nazi-costume photo did.
The school district issued the following statement earlier today:
The comment threads are full of people who find this statement less than compelling. In particular, several point out a widely reported incident in 2012, where students from the same school flew confederate flags to “honor” a student who had died.
When Austin Smothers and a few others recently decided to place Confederate flags on their pickup trucks to honor the death of a friend, they also raised a few eyebrows.
“We never meant it to be a racist thing to anybody,” said Smothers, a Baraboo High School junior. “We wanted to honor our friend, Joshua Blum, who had just died. We wanted to show we cared for him.” — www.wiscnews.com/...
Clearly there are enormous problems at this school district and a problem that has been allowed to develop over several years. It is not going to be resolved in a day. It is definitely not adequately addressed by a pro-forma press-release about how these signs are “not reflective of the educational values and beliefs”. We all know that statement is perfunctory, boiler-plate bullshit.
Here is the reality.
Over 8,000 people from Wisconsin died in uniform during World War II, fighting the Axis powers. Over 12,000 men and women from Wisconsin died in uniform during the Civil War, fighting the traitorous Confederacy.
20,000 human beings from Wisconsin died fighting fascist and confederate powers during the Civil War and World War II. They are buried in graves across Wisconsin, the US and the World. They gave their lives in the struggle against powers that were in direct opposition to our own stated national ideals of equality and freedom.
If Wisconsin high school students are openly displaying the symbols of these fascist/confederate powers, it is clear that parents, schools, and politicians have failed in their task to instruct these children in our country’s history and that of the world. In a broader sense, we as a society have failed to fully reckon with these hateful symbols and ideologies.
Clearly, this picture did not happen in isolation. It was taken a few months after Laura Ingraham flashed a Nazi salute at the RNC convention. The picture appears to have been taken in May 2017, two months after the revelation that a White House adviser to Trump was a member of a Nazi society. The neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, VA was held on May 13, 2017.
If we are to reverse the neo-Nazi, white-supremacist tide that appears to be washing over us, an honest reckoning must come. This urgent task must be faced head on. We cannot stop until American children understand that these symbols and ideologies are a direct affront and insult to hundreds of thousands of Americans who died fighting against these hateful ideologies.
Statements about “values and beliefs” mean nothing if you have failed in your task to pass along these values and beliefs to the next generation.
If we are serious about addressing these failures, we have to use this as a teaching moment, and use it to spur a change in the way our history is taught and discussed. To be effective, we have to use it to drive change in our politics.
It is beyond shameful that this story is breaking on Armistice/Veteran’s Day, but that too should be a wake-up call and used as an opportunity for a more honest conversation about our history.
— @subirgrewal