Racist kids at camp
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Anonymous
| We are spending the summer in a rural part of New England and my kids recently started attending an all-outdoor camp. This week they had picture day, and when our oldest, who is 10 and going into 6th grade, showed us her group photo my husband and I were horrified to see one of the kids in her group flashing an obvious white power sign with his hand. We asked her about this kid and he is one who has been bullying her and the other girls in their group, and she had already told us he isn’t nice. However, this goes beyond “not nice”. There is one kid who isn’t white in their group, that kid is a friend of my daughter. My daughter also said she thought she heard this guy looking at the photo with other boys and saying “you see what I did with my hand?”. He is 12. We are going to email the camp director but I have no idea what her “politics” are and what she can or will do about it. What would you say? |
Anonymous
| Absolutely email the director, it doesn’t matter what her politics are, this needs to be clearly called out. |
Anonymous
| Include the offending photo and be very factual. |
Anonymous
We are, and including links to several articles on the subject. |
Anonymous
| I would calm down and remember that these kids are 11/12, including my own, and that stories often become exaggerated |
Anonymous
There is a photograph with an obvious hand gesture. It isn’t exaggeration. |
Anonymous
| What is the hand gesture? |
Anonymous
+1. I suspect op is a troll and the same person who just posted about racist kids at baseball |
Anonymous
+1 and ask specifically for her to respond with info re: addressing (or she may treat it as a “thanks for the info” situation.) having said that if it was the former ok symbol that has been co-opted there is a chance the kid was playing the “circle game” (and his meanness is unrelated.) I think adults and older teens are almost always using it as a a racist gesture if done for the camera but for a kid that young it’s genuinely possible he’s not aware of the connotation. |
Anonymous
| Are you talking about the circle game? |
Anonymous
I’m not a troll and I don’t know what baseball thing someone referred to. The gesture was making the ok sign, but with his arms at his side. This has been classified as a hate symbol. https://www.google.com/amp/s/kutv.com/amp/news/offbeat/okay-hand-gesture-labeled-a-hate-symbol-by-anti-defamation-league https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2019/12/15/us/ok-sign-white-power.amp.html |
Anonymous
What is the circle game? |
Anonymous
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Anonymous
I didn't even know I would not interpret this so harshly. You need a white power march for it to be racist. Most likely the kids didn't even know The rest sounds like just regular kid squabbles when there is a new group. Kids that age all struggle when placed with people they do not know |
Anonymous
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My eight year old flashed this sign in a picture! I was shocked. He doesn't spend time online, so the only thing I could think of is that he picked it up from another kid, who picked it up online or from a sibling. To him, all he knew is that it was something funny/different/cool to do in a picture.
Even if this 12 year old did it on purpose, he's likely just doing it to be a jerk, not because he's a nazi or even racist. He may not even know what it means, just that it's transgressive. |