Slashdot Mirror
Florida Teen Expelled and Arrested For Science Experiment
First time accepted submitter ruhri writes "A 16 year-old girl in Florida not only has been expelled from her high school but also is being charged as an adult with a felony after replicating the classic toilet-bowl cleaner and aluminum foil experiment. This has quite a number of scientists and science educators up in arms. The fact that she's African American and that the same assistant state attorney has decided not to charge a white teenager who accidentally killed his brother with a BB gun has some thinking whether this is a case of doing science while black."
There we go, playing the race card. Sigh. What does a kid with a BB gun have to do with this? Nothing, but it "creates the narrative". We all know what the narrative is, race race race. It's always first on the list and it always gets shoehorned in even if it doesn't belong. Everyone sees it but due to the mainstream media's gatekeeper role nobody can talk back. This is why Americans distrust the media, with 60% saying they have little or no trust in the mass media to report the news fully, accurately, and fairly.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Lets not attribute to malice what can be attributed to stupidity.
And in this case, I hardly believe its about one being black,although it could play a part, it beingthe us,it seems more a thing about one being gun related and the other science related.
We all know what many americans hate most.
I don't think that this is race related, I think that the punishment is so harsh because everyone is scared of improvised explosive devices after Boston. When I first heard the story it was reported as "An Acid Bomb was Set Off At a Local High School".
Those who know, do not speak. Those who speak, do not know. ~Lao Tzu
Jails for the mind. NCLB has ruined education, by far GWB worst piece of policy. That coupled with "zero tolerance" which equates to "no thinking by staff" we are ruining a generation of kids. Teaching to tests, which NCLB does prohibits this kind of "thinking" to experiment.
I'd have a rap sheet a mile long if I was in school and I only graduated 14y ago. And I didn't even do anything bad!
America is a bunch of pussies now. Had something like this happened in the 50s-80s..maybe even the 90s, the result would have been a stern reprimand and at most a couple days suspension. This "Daddy" syndrome needs to end. I doubt even the French would freak out the way the school and DA have.
So now anything that blows up is automatically a weapon? I hope their school buses don't run on gas or diesel engines, then they would have to charge all the bus drivers with bringing weapons to school every day.
This is almost as stupid as suspending a 7 year old for having a pastry that's vaguely gun-shaped.
http://www.loweringthebar.net/2013/03/pastry-gun.html
When I was in school, it was basically a full time job for many of us boys to figure out ways to make ever larger and more dramatic explosions happen. We used to fill trash bags full of methane from the lab, seal them with tape, then release them with a lit fuse and watch this huge fireball in the sky (I stopped before the principal took notice, so I didn't get caught:). I mean, kids just do stuff like that.
The difference today is the zero-tolerance rules in many public schools where even a little 6-year-old boy making a shape of a gun with his hand and going "bang!" at another kid is grounds for suspension.
As usual, bureaucracy gets it wrong. That girl should be reinstated and an apology should be issued, otherwise she'll be barred for life from many professions (albeit, as a minor theoretically her record is sealed, but in reality she's screwed).
And racism? That was just an extra little tidbit the OP added to spice things up. Ridiculous.
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
Was this really a science experiment? She was mixing household chemicals in a plastic bottle on school property. It had nothing to do with her science class. It's more likely she got this stuff out of the janitor's closet or something like that. It sounds more like a kid being stupid rather than one experimenting.
Not that I agree with the penalty in any way. Detention or suspension would be ok here since no real harm came from it. It doesn't merit police involvement, or comparison to an accidental shooting.
Zero Tolerance means zero intelligence. Circumstances are always different. Thanks to our wonderful school and legal systems, there's less discretion. The bad and good part of discretion is bias. A straight-A good kid will be given the benefit of a doubt over a kid that has a reputation for being a troublemaker. On one hand, it's possibly a good rule of thumb... but it can lead to folks getting railroaded unfairly.
The "solution" then is to treat EVERYONE badly. I'm not that old, and my school had a policy of "both kids in a fight get punished." Didn't matter if you got jumped for being a geek with pacifist philosophy. OTOH, it was a learning experience about bureaucracy, government and pacifism. I dumped the pacifism, and the next kid that jumped me, I earned every ounce of my administrative punishment because I had no incentive NOT to do so. Zero tolerance and "everyone involved is equally guilty" is bunk, and a bad idea.
I clicked the link already angry at what I expected to find - a story about an ignorant, probably racist bureaucrat ruining a smart kid's life for no good reason.
But as someone who (as a kid) did more than my share of disruptive, loud, messy things, I can tell you that even before 9/11 and IEDs and "zero tolerance" doing this in a school bathroom would have resulted in punishment. This wasn't a classroom experiment - no teachers were aware of it - and, like it or not, Drano (or an equivalent toilet cleaner) is a pretty harsh chemical.
This won't be a popular post, but I don't think the story lives up to the headline.
Sorry, but schools are run by bed wetting morons all over the country.
But you keep going with that shit because I believe we should clearly know who all the stupid fucking morons are.
Not many are saying that punishment isn't warranted. The problem is that the police were involved at all, that's the ridiculous part. Frankly if the police and DA have time to get involved in this sort of thing layoffs are long past due in this district.
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
...tells me that it is massively unlikely this was intellectual curiosity. Some kid thought it would be funny to make a huge bang at a place where huge bangs are known to cause massive administrative overreaction.
When I first read this, I thought it was horrible. One of the articles linked in the story here called it a botched experiment. What kind of loony racist throws the book so hard at a kid who messed up a project? Then I went looking for the "experiment" and learned there was pretty much definitely nothing botched about this. Youtube is full of works bombs, which is apparently what these are called. A popular chemistry blog I stumbled into explains these are actually illegal to make. And I really don't see what else you could do with these components.
Now, this kid certainly doesn't deserve to be tried as an adult for multiple felonies just because they made a total dipshit choice that hurt nobody. But what's going on here is just usual-business prosecutorial excess, not racism. Ruining dumb high school kids' lives is practically what these fuckers live for lately, regardless of skin tone.
Its exactly that kind of stuff that got me into chemistry in the first place
SURELY NOT!!!!!
No one is saying it's OK. We're saying it's not a felony. Make the kid clean up the mess and suspend her for a week. Problem solved.
Excessive criminalization is a much bigger threat to us all than kids with drano bombs.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
How and where can I contribute to the legal costs for the family of this student? I want them to hire the best advocates money can provide, I want to see that judge humiliated for attempting to destroy the future of a curious student who made a mistake leading to an incident where no harm was either done or intended.
I see no mention in the article about a bathroom; it was outside near a gazebo and she stated that she was doing a science fair experiment.
-SaNo
No. Apparently they have charged rape suspects as Juveniles in that area, but a good student who hurt nobody will be tried as an adult??? It will never drop off her record. Freaking insane.
There is a petition to get the charges dropped and it has well over 10k signatures already:
http://www.change.org/petitions/the-bartow-police-and-bartow-high-school-drop-charges-against-kiera-wilmot?share_id=dFwlXuyxHk&utm_campaign=signature_receipt&utm_medium=email&utm_source=share_petition
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
What exactly is the non-racist explanation for that lack of proportionality?
Think "war on drugs" logic. This chemistry experiment ended up producing what is technically an improvised explosive device, and IEDs like this are a "gateway drug" of sorts to IEDs that terrorists have used within the past month to kill or maim dozens of people.
I'm thinking it has more to do with a heightened public sensitivity to bomb-making in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing...
"Murphy was an optimist" - O'Toole's commentary on Murphy's Law
I was far from a bad teenager. I loved science though and if it went bang that was all the better. Draino and aluminium foil? Jesus. I made fertiliser bombs. I synthesised Nitrogen triiodide and all manner of other fun compounds.
One bonfire night I once had a visit from the police due to my homemade titanium salutes. They were amused and told me not to blow my hands off. These days I'd go to jail for a million years.
"Physics is to math as sex is to masturbation." -R. Feynman
I think you may be missing the point of condemning racism if you find it acceptable to casually condemn an entire region as being of similar mind. That said, the south wouldn't have as much trouble with racism as it does, if it weren't for the pervasive denial of racist things as racist. So don't take my post as defending that.
I've seen this news elsewhere and Slashdot was the first place to call it a science experiment. I guess it could be, in the same sense as a Diet Coke & Mentos experiment or an "effects of flour on your best friend's head" experiment.
What's being done to her is completely ridiculous and she deserves nothing more than maybe a nasty look and a mild talking-to, but let's not stoop to yellow geek journalism
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
My now 17 year old Son was expelled from high school two years ago for... get this... popping a regular old helium balloon. He was charged with Disorderly Conduct (the catch-all "when we want to charge you with something" summary crime in Pennsylvania) but we managed to get that dismissed at the Magisterial District Court after about $15,000 in legal fees, most of which was spent trying to obtain school surveillance video showing that the balloon popped when he leaned up against a wall, pinching the balloon between his backpack and the wall, causing it to pop.
We've home-schooled him since then. It's truly amazing how absolutely brain-dead our government has become. It really does destroy everything it touches, including the education system.
As the saying goes, "zero tolerance = zero common sense"
This has nothing to do with religion. This is the fault of so-called "educators." They have become thoughtless, lazy, and self centered. Don't think so? They pass these so-called zero tolerance policies and blindly enforce them. It lets them discipline anyone for the slightest infraction so that they don't have to deal with the real issue of discipline within their own classrooms. It's far easier, from a teacher's perspective, to get a kid suspended or expelled rather than having to deal with discipline and the child's parents. In my school district, these zero tolerance policies are used in to go after the really bad kids instead of instead of going after them for the real issues. The attitude of most teachers and administrators is that so what if an innocent kid gets caught up in the rules, rules are rules. It's just easier to follow the rules than it is to enforce the spirit of them. It's amazing that educators just aren't thinking.
I think it's great that some teachers spoke up for this kid, but the union and the board should do this as well.
I also blame parents, but the parents of this kid are the problem. IT's the problem kids that have the loudest screaming parents only because if their kid gets suspended they have to take vacations days to watch them.
Honestly, I can't stand the way we treat kids today. We say they're important and then do everything we can to show them they aren't.
I've had several cases where I needed to deal with public school administrators in a few places around the country. Usually it was computer security issues such as kids doing bad things from the school, or things like school machines infected and sending out spam. Similar kinds of things happen from businesses and universities a lot more because there are more of those around. But I can tell you that a much much higher percentage of the public school administrators are just plain totally incompetent, not just about computers and networks, but just about everything they do, including communicating in English. These people are so stupid in general (a few exceptions exist) I have to call them a totally separate breed. That's how bad it is. I would characterize half of them as wanna-be-politicians who just could not cut the rough and tumble world of dealing with adults who can fight back.
When I actually was in school, I noticed a few administrators were actually good people. Most went on to other jobs elsewhere (probably because they could not deal with the stupidity above them). One later got elected to Congress. The stupid ones stayed where they were.
The teachers, however, were almost all very good people. One friend I met in college who went through teach education graduating at the top of his class and earning other awards, ended up quitting from education after 5 years simply because he could not stand the bureaucratic BS from stupid people.
I thought people involved in educational process are better than this...
A few are. Gotta look hard to find them.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
I think you may be missing the point of condemning racism if you find it acceptable to casually condemn an entire region as being of similar mind.
Exactly, and that goes on a lot, even among otherwise intelligent people. "That *large diverse group* is so bigoted!"
Not only are comments like that repulsive because of their innate stupidity, they're harmful because they are recasting the basic elements of racism and bigotry in a more socially tolerable guise, against a group that the poster feels it's OK to condemn based on stereotypes.
And I'm not from the south, so this isn't defensiveness. It's irritation. Just think about what you say.
It's sodium hydroxide which is basic, not acidic. Yes, it turns the fats in your body to soap, and is a very effective way to melt down a body, but the process is very slow.
As someone who has had an experiment of this very nature go haywire in my face I know from first hand experience that it's very unpleasant. But...please don't try to make out that the solution will melt someone's skin off in front of their eyes, the victim will have plenty and plenty of time to get water on the burn to dilute and remove the hydroxide. In the eyes won't be some easy, but I would be highly surprised if someone lost their vision provided they reacted in any kind of normal way: "holy shit, my eyes sting like living hell, I'd better wash them out with water *immediately*!!!"
Yes, an explosion in the face won't be good, but again, for a hydrogen explosion like this to do any real damage to life or property it has to be in a confined space and produce a lot of gas. In the open air you would have to make a monsterous amount of gas, and even then we'd be talking about a mild concussion and possibly ear-drum damage.
Anyway, the point of my response is to try and provide some rational perspective of the true *danger* and *risk* involved here.
Gallagher said in one of his specials:
"I like the shape of Florida. It looks like we're pissing on Cuba."
Perhaps it was the only time Gallagher has ever been funny.
It's worse than that, they disqualified 50,000 black people from voting by using an intentionally broad filter do disqualify ex-felons (who can't vote in Florida and a few other Southern states). They had a list of ex-felons that listed little information about them, but did list their race. If a black guy named John Smith once committed a felony in Florida and you were a black guy named John Smith you'd likely be disqualified from voting (with no advance notice that would let you challenge it). Never mind checking for little details, like the two John Smith's being born thirty years apart. The company doing the work warned about this lacking of checking, but the State of Florida told them not to refine it.
However I can see the same thing happening in up where "All dose Yankees live" It is part of the dumbing down of our system of discipline.
Our system has been so intent of getting the bad guys that they are willing to let hundreds of innocent people go to jail vs letting one real criminal go free.
We spend more time trying to find ways to get kids kicked out of school and or locked up in prison. Then we do trying to keep kids in school and out of prison. We are all humans and we make mistakes. If we don't make mistakes, we don't learn from them. Does that mean that there are no consequences, no. They are consequences but they don't mean permanent marks on your life for getting caught for making a simple mistake.
For this teen, It probably should have lead to Detention, or perhaps up to a week suspension, because setting off unsupervised explosions (even small ones) is wrong. But being that didn't cause any damage, or was meant to the punishment should face that fact.
Her biggest mistake was that she wasn't a big football player, if that was the case she would have gone off with a kids will be kids and ignored.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
There is no evidence this has anything to do with religion, and you know it. Your vile attempt to inject your pet cause into this important issue is disrespectful to the student and doesn't serve anyone except yourself.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
I'm a non-anonymous Southerner, and I can agree that while it's probably not quite as bad as people elsewhere believe it is, we've still not quite escaped our past. Things are getting better generally (look back at the 1960s and 1970s and you will see that is factual), but yes, things like this at the very least give the appearance of a socially backwards society. A friend of mine from NYC once told me, "I thought I had seen racism. Then I came to college here."
If you abhor racism, the very fact that it is stronger here than in many places is a reason to STAY - I can be an active voice against it.
For conscience is the wound, and there's naught to staunch it
Your last line is spot on.
Zero tolerance policies are for zero brained educators.
According to the incident report, "Mr. Durham advised Kiera told him she was conducting a science fair experiment... Wilmot advised she did not know what would happen when she mixed the ingredients. Wilmot advised she thought it would just cause some smoke." There were no injuries, no damage, not even clear intent. Where is the felony crime here? It's only in the mind of Assistant State Attorney Tammy Glotfelty.
Sometimes I worry that I'll develop Alzheimer's disease, but no one will notice.
No it wasn't, this experiment was done outside. The police report clearly states this if you had bothered to read. When I was a kid I did the same thing with dry ice and water as well as vinegar and baking soda. Water and baking powder were also interesting but pretty weak. Friends did all sorts of stuff with powdered iodine. All of us turned out just fine, we didn't have our lives ruined or curiosity killed. My teachers wouldn't have allowed me to do this but they might have demonstrated the reaction to our class as they did many other things. We're destroying our kids...
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
I had dinner with a H.S. teacher recently and I was amazed at how things have changed. For example, it's now SOP for them to call the police when two kids get into a FIGHT. Even a basic fistfight with no weapons and no serious injuries. "Ridiculous" is right.
How does a kid being bullied not count as assault? Certainly when I was at school there was a lot of bullying going on and the school simply didn't care (even when people inevitably ended up injured). Whilst I'll agree that the first port of call should be for it to be handled internally in the school, if that doesn't work shouldn't the police be involved if only for the protection of the kids on the receiving end?
http://blog.nexusuk.org
I agree completely.
Polk County School's justification for expullsion was (from TFA)
Anytime a student makes a bad choice it is disappointing to us. We urge our parents to join us in conveying the message that there are consequences to actions.
Yes, Polk County School, I think the 16-year-old understands what the general concept of punishment is and that actions have consequences. I don't see how they're going to be able to explain why a small explosion that produced as much force as any other gas reaction in a sealed bottle deserves expulsion, a felony charge, and being tried as an adult.
This one comment on TFA also seems appropriate:
User: [ideasrule]
Guys and girls, we should be engaging in activism instead of just posting comments! I've collected the sites and emails offered by other users into one place:
Change.org petition: http://www.change.org/petitions/the-bartow-police-and-bartow-high-school-drop-charges-against-kiera-wilmot
Police department complaint form: http://www.cityofbartow.net/index.aspx?recordid=103&page=18
School superintendent: john.stewart@polk-fl.net
School principal: Ronald.Pritchard@polk-fl.net
The other email someone offered, lbryan.pd@cityofbartow.net, is of "Crime Prevention Practioner" Lyn Bryan and it doesn't work (my email was blocked).
Remember that the school principal is a reasonable person who rightly thinks the girl didn't intend any harm, so we should be supportive of him.
As Malcolm X said, "Don't talk to me about the South. The South starts at the Canadian border." Google "stop and frisk New York City" for further evidence. Any other attitude is liberal smugness.
Yes, but the school is supposed to be the a source of wisdom and knowledge for developing adults. Instead of being the voice of reason that acknowledges and points out the heightened sensitivity to the child (and yes, a 16-year-old is still very much a child when it comes to making non-malicious mistakes like this), and teaches her to exercise better judgement, the school system is teaching her that if her curiosity leads her to accidentally crossing the line on what will freak out parents, the who system will come down on her and try to throw the book at her.
Although, after reading what I just wrote, that's probably a pretty accurate and depressing lesson of our current paranoid state. Still, I don't think kids should be subjected to such treatment.
I am fed up with people who do not know basic statistics and who want falsely "protect" groups.
It is ok to condemn groups. Speaking of groups or stereotypes is equivalent to stating group statistics.
Stereotypes is what makes us reason about groups.
A stereotype is a bad name given to group statistics. There is nothing bad about stereotypes.
What is wrong is to assume an individual represents a group. Thus assuming that group statistics apply to the individual.
This is discrimination. That's what you should be looking out for.
All statements regarding groups are statistical in nature.
I've personally encountered a lot of bigotry in the south. Am I not allowed to say so, or to notice?
I've encountered bigotry in the north and in the south. I know it can be hard for anyone not a white male to get a job at a small business. It is also difficult for anyone who IS a white male to get a job at a large company. It works both ways. As long as we enforce quotas and give preference to a group, no matter who the group is, that is racism.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
You forgot the worst part of zero tolerance: that the lesson schools are teaching to kids is that heavy-handed, inflexible rules and imposing authority is normal. The next generation isn't going to overturn the patriot act or roll back arbitrary and secret no fly lists, or demand that the government abide by the constitution because they will be used to having absolutely no rights, save what the authority lets them have.
I don't know if it will actually turn out that way, I had it drilled into me up through high school that marijuana was basically heroin, that condoms didn't work, that premarital sex would destroy my life, that God hates both of those things and that homosexuality is evil. Granted, I hate being high, was unsuccessful in most attempts to get laid, and am not gay, but none of that was due to what they told me in classes. Moreover I'm agnostic now. So hopefully zero tolerance will have an opposite effect and get kids to realize from an early age that they MUST fight for their rights. Still, I'd rather us not run that experiment. If when I'm an old man, I have to submit to a prostate check every time I get on a hoverbus because these youngsters were trained with zero tolerance not to question authority, I'm gonna be pissed.
The girl wanted to find out what happens if she mixes aluminum and drain cleaner. Her findings: under the experimental conditions (unsupervised, on school property, post-9/11), there is a fizz and a bang, a bunch of adults overreact, and you get charged with a felony. :-(
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
My immediate response to this item was to wonder whether the student in question was a constant annoyance to the teachers and administrators. The original article makes it clear that she is a model student: "Kiera Wilmot got good grades and had a perfect behavior record. She wasn't the kind of kid you'd expect to find hauled away in handcuffs and expelled from school, but that's exactly what happened after an attempt at a science project went horribly wrong."
That additional information (which really should have been in Slashdot's summary, as it was properly used in the reporter's lede) makes it clear that the student is being wronged. Whether she is being wronged as a result of racism or as a result of the inherent stupidity of zero-tolerance policies (policies from which exceptions are often made for the children of the wealthy and/or powerful) remains to be determined. Perhaps both are involved.
This is a teachable moment for the school. It is an opportunity for students and faculty together to examine the nature of fairness and the nature of bureaucracy. I hope there are some tenured faculty members at the school who are interested in making good use of the opportunity.
My own suspicion is that the administrators should be fired, but I think that way about a great many administrators.
I do think the race issue is worth discussing. As well as the gender issue.
But there's something more fundamental and less likely to stoke passions at play here:
DOING SCIENCE IS ABOUT MAKING MISTAKES. Her "punishment" should be to write a paper on what she was trying to do and why the results were not what she expected. Simple, end of story.
There should be no real punishment of any kind, much less the over the top expulsion and arrest.
The simple fact is that she should be encouraged to make mistakes, not punished for them. And the most basic problem we are dealing with is that our school systems don't understand this fact.
Oh, please. I have brown skin living in South Carolina, and have never encountered any racism.
That's nice for you. In other news, the US has a black President, and recently had a female Secretary of State, so obviously there's neither racism nor sexism anywhere in the country.
Truly, America is a land of wonders.
Pretty much, yes.
I'm not saying racism and sexism doesn't exist. But if it's possible for people of all races and genders to live their lives without discrimination, then we, as a society, don't have a racism problem. Not having a racism problem doesn't mean that you're never going to encounter discrimination every once in a while. It means those cases of discrimination are due to individual fuckwads. In the same way that there will always be morons who think killing people watching a marathon is a good idea, or shooting up an elementary school fool of kids is a good idea. Individual fuckwads will always exist, but as long as their actions isn't met with acceptance and encouragement from our society, it's not a problem with our society.
seems everyone needs to RTFA: "The assistant principal called police after talking to Wilmot's science teacher and determining he didn't know about the experiment."
assistant principal hears explosion, sees smoke, runs over and student claims "bomb" is science experiment. Seems reasonable, but teacher knows nothing about it. Of course expell student and possibly charge with crime, after all the things that have been going on recently at schools the school would be neglectful if they didn't expell student and call the police. Would a student be expelled and police notified for bringing a "harmless" BB gun to school or firecrackers? Of course, so should this student. But I'm a little perplexed why skin color was brought into this, or why a story of an accidental death has anything to do with this. People die all the time accidentally and it is not always a crime. Seems submitter is focused on racism rather than just looking at what happened and determining if punishment fit the crime.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
Suppose that she had been a he, had been white, had been the star quarterback and was expelled and charged as an adult for exactly the same act.
No one would say it was about race or anything else of that sort. Would that make it any less outrageous?
Ooh, moderator points! Five more idjits go to Minus One Hell!
Delendae sunt RIAA, MPAA et Windoze
Here here! In Arkansas -most- folks generally get along pretty well. Instances of racism are encountered occasionally... but rarely in my experience (I'm pretty pale-skinned). In any event, although pockets of racism may be found in a wide-spread geographic distribution, one doesn't generally find institutional-type discrimination anymore here in the 'South'... You'll run into an occasional crack-pot (of any color) here or there... but I've personally encountered a seemingly - alarmingly - high incidence of racist white folks up north. Once on a business trip with a black co-worker of mine, we even encountered somebody who, apparently, had never met a black person face-to-face before. So, I'm quite disappointed when I hear people - who likely live in the North - make disparaging remarks of how racist white people in the south are.
It's also important to note - there are many geographic regions here in the South where a white person is the minority... I've been to many of those places in my travels. Some of them are the most welcoming environments I've ever visited... Other places, I'll walk into a gas station, restaurant, or what have you... and all of the black folks just stare at me. So, it goes both ways... Your mileage may vary, however, depending on where you go. :-)
I'm calling *BULLSHIT* on you. I was born in South Carolina and maybe 90% of my family still lives there. For you to say you've *never* seen racism makes you a statistical anomaly far on the tail end of the curve (unless you just stepped off a bus from the North to blog). Even if you're White, you're going to hear comments from people in "safe" company. Racism just doesn't *exist* in the South, it's institutional. It's baked into the culture like apple pie and Memorial Day sales. Even the way people get hired and promoted in small towns like my home town has a racially-motivated undercurrent that favors some.
And, for you to go further to say the US doesn't have much of a problem with racism has to mean you're trying to make a point for an agenda. Just because you've never seen a banana thrown on a NBA court means nothing. Google for some articles about the crap Black pro athletes in the US hear on a regular basis during games. Just because their aren't collective chants doesn't mean there aren't just as many a-holes in the crowds. I've lived in Europe for 7 years. Their flavor of racism is different; it's almost nationalism-based but I agree that they have their problems as well.
I wonder what you mean by "brown skin." Are you Italian? Indian?
I do agree that this story is more about anti-terrorism and overreaction. That you *do* have right.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
I'm from rural Georgia and during a trip to Birmingham, Alabama I felt like I had traveled back in time over 30 years. It reminded me a lot of the attitudes I saw in my youth. There are still a lot of people who were raised in a prejudiced environment but things have improved much. I was recently talking with a very country friend of mine who said something that would be labeled racist by most here although he probably didn't intend it as such, he called a guy a "black asshole." He stopped and kind of looked down for a second and said "I really shouldn't say it was because he was black, it ain't got nothing to do with that, he's just an asshole." I was kind of surprised that he made the distinction because for him identifying people by color is just natural.
Ok. I looked at the what happened and determined that the punishment does not fit the "crime". What she needs is a lecture on responsible chemical use, to have her parents called down to the school in the middle of the day and to be sent hom with a one or two day suspension (for her relatively minor recklessness). The goal is make sure she learns the lesson that she is not allowed to mix chemicals without supervision. Expulsion, on the other hand, certainly looks like behaviour of a cowardly administrator who looking to cover their ass.
The criminal charges are just stupid.
Fanatically anti-fanatical