Fleming senior wears racist T-shirt to school

Jacksonville.com ^ | 9.15.05 | BRAD SCHMIDT

[conserv13]

"What's up with your shirt?"

Those are the words a former senior at Fleming Island High School remembers hearing as he walked from his fifth-period algebra class toward the gym. The 18-year-old, who is not being identified due to his family's concerns of safety, had just taken off his Dixie Outfitter T-shirt, exposing a highly offensive shirt.

"What about it?" replied the 18-year-old, skinny and white.

"Well, you know it's racial," said a black student, now in a group confronting the 18-year-old.

"Yeah. So?"

The undershirt the white student wore had a confederate flag on the front with the words "Keep it flying." On the back, a cartoon depicted a group of hooded Klansmen standing outside a church, waving to two others who had just pulled away in a car reading "Just married."

Two black men in nooses were being dragged behind.

Upset by the shirt, a 17-year-old black student hit the white student in the head. A crowd of about 100 students gathered to watch the Aug. 29 fight before authorities intervened.

[Kozak]

This young man sure is stupid. Too bad there's no anitdote for it.

Stupidity can be it's own antidote. See Darwin Awards.

[DoraC]

You're right. It is best to educate people about the Confederacy and its people.

[dfwgator]

As we say here in Texas, "He messed with the bull, and he got the horns."

[Gelato]

Fighting words doctrine. The First Amendment doctrine that holds that certain utterances are not constitutionally protected as free speech if they are inherently likely to provoke a violent response from the audience. N.A.A.C.P. v. Clairborne Hardware Co., Miss., 458 U .8. 886, 102 8.Ct. 3409, 73 L.Ed.2d 1215 (1982). Words which by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace, having direct tendency to cause acts of violence by the persons to whom, individually, remark is addressed. The test is what persons of common intelligence would understand to be words likely to cause an average addressee to fight. City of Seattle v. Camby, 104 Wash.2d 49, 701 P.2d 499, 500.

The “freedom of speech” protected by the Constitution is not absolute at all times and under all circumstances and there are well-defined and narrowly limited classes of speech, the prevention and punishment of which does not raise any constitutional problem, including the lewd and obscene, the profane, the libelous, and the insulting or “fighting words” which by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace. Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, 315 U.S. 568, 62 S.Ct. 766, 86 L.Ed. 1031. —Black's Law Dictionary, Sixth Edition, pages 627-28.

[jw777]

doesn't matter. in print or on air. same crap.

[billbears]

Okay I'll give DO a break then. Was getting concerned as I didn't believe they had done a shirt like that. Still, it's indicative of a problem that's found among those that support the South. There is a group, still a small group I hope, of uneducated Southerners that would use the Flag and the heritage I'm proud of as some sort of cover for their racist views.

[antiRepublicrat]

I wonder if the good sergeant major would like to know what kind of racist sludge is coming his way? Would any Marine here like to notify him? I'm not sure if he'd listen to an Army puke like me. :^)

Geez, just look at that guy, looks like he could tear you apart with a stare.

[When do we get liberated?]

I am not racist, but I hate people from that race. Make any sense to anyone?

[DilJective]

good point. I wonder if this really happened and isn't a planted story to incite racial tension across the country. Just when people are starting to get along this comes out. I can see Jesse Jackson pulling something like this because of jealosy - seeing white people helping black people in New Orleans more than he has (and ever will).

[Ignatius J Reilly]

I guess what I am trying to say that it was never meant as a racist symbol. That fact that a racist group utilizes it as their symbol still, IMHO, doesn't make it a racist symbol because it was never meant to be in the first place

Well same with the swastika, originally a Buddhist symbol (the footprint of the Buhdda) For thousands of years a symbol of peace co-opted by the Nazis. The Nazi symbol is a mirror reflection but most won't notice the difference, and I'm certainly not going to wear a T-shirt around with the Buhdda's footprint on it.

[jude24]

That's a silly comparison. There's a world of difference between wearing a T-shirt with a Confederate Flag and a depiction of the Klan dragging black men behind them, and having a political disagreement.

I've never worried about my safety - nor even my reputation - in being center-right in a school where that still leaves me to the right of most of my classmates. I'd be a very lonely guy indeed, however, if I were a racist.

[rintense]

When I was at MSU, the t-shirt, 'It's a black thing. You wouldn't understand' was popular. My black friends kinda scoffed because they didn't know what it meant yet wore one because they are black. So, I got one and wore it on campus. I'm white. And no one even questioned my wearing it. I got a lot of smiles and a few high fives- from blacks and whites.

The absurdity of the t-shirt was balanced by the absurdity of me wearing it. It was great.

[When do we get liberated?]

Sort of like when the Neo-Nazi's and the clan had a shootout in Greensboro, N.C. I would have paid to see that

[jude24]

It makes a world of sense.

The guy is a racist without the cajones to admit that he is.

[John Robertson]

IMO, you are right on this as anybody will be on anything on this forum today. Free speech is either free or it ain't (and now, this is NOT equivalent to yelling Fire! in a crowded theater...in that case, people at least have a reason to start acting apeshit).

[rattrap]

I was going to call him an idiot but I figured why waste the space when he did a fabulous job for me.

[hispanarepublicana]

I don't have Kanye's direct quote, and I didn't see it firsthand, but did he advocate some kind of violent act? (I'm honestly asking, since I don't know).

[DilJective]

Fantastic handle! That is too funny.

[azhenfud]

I like that - it fits!

The guy with the tee shirt is a first class jack@$$, prolly will never make it out of boot camp..

[antiRepublicrat]

So you agree the guy who threw the punch should take the consequences of his actions and plead guilty to assault and proudly serve time in jail as a felon?

Being a schoolyard brawl, I don't think the criminal courts are called for. Plus the violence was obviously incited, so he might even get off completely in front a jury. But he did break the rules, so he can't just get off without some kind of action. What action would depend on the kid's history.