Mocking Black Names in Covina: How “Liberal” are Our Youth?

Ridicule of African American and Latino (or other Americans of color) names and language or accent is usually racist because it has meaning only if one knows the underlying racist stereotypes and images. While it may appear to some relatively harmless, social science research shows that such mocking enables whites to support traditional hierarchies of racial privilege without seeming to be racist in the old-fashioned, blatant sense. Researcher Rosina Lippi-Green has noted, such mocking shows a “general unwillingness to accept the speakers of that language and the social choices they have made as viable and functional…. We are ashamed of them, and because they are part of us, we are ashamed of ourselves.” Language mocking and subordination are not about standards for speaking as much as about determining that some people are not worth listening to and treating as equals.

Texas college student blogger LeftofCollegeStation, who called my attention to this now national story (thanks!), has a good comment on local action that should be taken:

This becomes an example to white students of race relations, and the way in which the school administrators handle the situation will give the students a perception of what is acceptable. This is absolutely giving white students the wrong impression. It is giving the message that if something offensive is done to a person of another race that pacification and appeasement are acceptable. That the only yearbooks that will be changed are the yearbooks of the students that are members of the BSU sends this message. Charter Oak High School like many institutions in America is going to ignore an opportunity to talk about race in a constructive way. This incident will be brushed aside, and called an “isolated incident.” However, as many of the people in the community and in the country know, this was not an isolated incident. Racism happens every day in the hallways of our schools, in the offices where we work, and on television that we watch.

Well said. Dear readers, what do you make of this incident? Have you heard of similar mocking?

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