Less than a week after a school resource officer body slammed a passive black girl and hurled her across her Spring Valley, South Carolina classroom, there is a reason why a video of kids in a Chicago Public School (CPS) classroom is being spread like wildfire on Facebook yesterday & today.
There is also a reason why the 40,000+ commenters on this video are blaming kids for both situations, and are calling for MORE aggression toward "entitled" youth.
And
"Savages"? I had no idea G. Stanley Hall had a Facebook account now.
That the
CPS video is from 2011 and that it clearly shows these kids
“play-acting” tough matters little here.
The video was posted on a Google-algorithm sweetheart news aggregator named The Inquisitr on November 2 under the headline "STUDENT THREATENS TO BEAT TEACHER WITH A CHAIR IN CHICAGO [WATCH]", ignoring both of these factors. Other online "news" sites carried similar stories today. A story titled "Disrespectful Black students in Chicago expose challenges of teaching" posted the video along with an article making this statement:
To be clear, the ideas being spread in these articles are not the reality within our world. They are not even the reality within the circulating video. Public school teachers do not regularly face violent Black youth. Black students are not thugs. Schools are not out-of-control spaces filled with "savage" super predators who need consistent lock-down. This is is not "news" to share to know more about our world.
In reality, U.S. students in schools such as the one shown in this dated theatrical video have to endure regularized violence. A recent study found that more than half of the homicide victims in Chicago are under the age of 25, and that one in five murder victims in this city are under the age of 18. Just today, a nine-year-old boy was shot in an area of Chicago near the school in the video.
One in 30 children in the US are homeless, marking an all-time high for our nation. A full one in five children live in poverty in Illinois, and 98.1% of homeless kids in Chicago are non-white. Why is it that we miss these types of "news stories" in our frequent internet cruising? Why do we not see videos of these realities in our Facebook feeds and social media sharing?
Also, following years of public school dismantling, defunding, and teacher skapegoating for our financial crisis, it is curious to see the last paragraph of quoted article above placing blame for poor schools on students. Don't look at the systems and policies leading to classrooms overpacked with overtested, frustrated students and poorly-supported teachers to make sense of failing schools, Facebook America! Look at those bad, bad kids.
Social and cultural conditions that shape our realities are hard to understand, let alone to critique. With the most popular news channel in this country presenting untruths as facts more than half the time, it is even more difficult to know exactly why we are working harder than ever for fewer jobs and less standing as Americans. It is not easy to make sense of the personal struggles we face within our larger economic and political spheres. However, it is easy to blame youth as fallible and as "a problem." Doing so assuages some of our unease. It also lessens social alienation, bringing American adults together in ideological allegiance like only war against a common enemy can.
A July 2015 study by Pew reports that we are increasingly looking to Facebook and Twitter for our news to help us understand the world outside our direct experience. While Pew finds more than 60% of Facebook users say they look to the site for news, our worldviews are shaped even when we are not actively seeking news and other such specific information about the world. What we think is influenced by what we see and experience. What we think is influenced by social media.
Besides allowing for friendly cat pics and social sharing in our migratory existences, Facebook gathers us here to use us for larger social projects that benefit from us blaming one another, and exempting those who profit from exploiting us.
In the case of today's Chicago Public School posting, we are being used to blame kids -- particularly non-whites kids and specifically black girls -- for the violently harsh treatment they receive in our society. We are being used to harbor ignorant beliefs to fuel policies to drive our nation's strengthening surveillance and prison state. We are being pushed images to dehumanize certain members of our society to justify their curtailed rights and unjust treatment. We are being had, took, used.
And, in this, we are being pacified.
This is a blog exploring the many ways social media is tied to the marginality of adolescence in US society.
Here be dragons, indeed.
Let us begin exploring.
The video was posted on a Google-algorithm sweetheart news aggregator named The Inquisitr on November 2 under the headline "STUDENT THREATENS TO BEAT TEACHER WITH A CHAIR IN CHICAGO [WATCH]", ignoring both of these factors. Other online "news" sites carried similar stories today. A story titled "Disrespectful Black students in Chicago expose challenges of teaching" posted the video along with an article making this statement:
To be clear, the ideas being spread in these articles are not the reality within our world. They are not even the reality within the circulating video. Public school teachers do not regularly face violent Black youth. Black students are not thugs. Schools are not out-of-control spaces filled with "savage" super predators who need consistent lock-down. This is is not "news" to share to know more about our world.
In reality, U.S. students in schools such as the one shown in this dated theatrical video have to endure regularized violence. A recent study found that more than half of the homicide victims in Chicago are under the age of 25, and that one in five murder victims in this city are under the age of 18. Just today, a nine-year-old boy was shot in an area of Chicago near the school in the video.
One in 30 children in the US are homeless, marking an all-time high for our nation. A full one in five children live in poverty in Illinois, and 98.1% of homeless kids in Chicago are non-white. Why is it that we miss these types of "news stories" in our frequent internet cruising? Why do we not see videos of these realities in our Facebook feeds and social media sharing?
Also, following years of public school dismantling, defunding, and teacher skapegoating for our financial crisis, it is curious to see the last paragraph of quoted article above placing blame for poor schools on students. Don't look at the systems and policies leading to classrooms overpacked with overtested, frustrated students and poorly-supported teachers to make sense of failing schools, Facebook America! Look at those bad, bad kids.
Social and cultural conditions that shape our realities are hard to understand, let alone to critique. With the most popular news channel in this country presenting untruths as facts more than half the time, it is even more difficult to know exactly why we are working harder than ever for fewer jobs and less standing as Americans. It is not easy to make sense of the personal struggles we face within our larger economic and political spheres. However, it is easy to blame youth as fallible and as "a problem." Doing so assuages some of our unease. It also lessens social alienation, bringing American adults together in ideological allegiance like only war against a common enemy can.
A July 2015 study by Pew reports that we are increasingly looking to Facebook and Twitter for our news to help us understand the world outside our direct experience. While Pew finds more than 60% of Facebook users say they look to the site for news, our worldviews are shaped even when we are not actively seeking news and other such specific information about the world. What we think is influenced by what we see and experience. What we think is influenced by social media.
Besides allowing for friendly cat pics and social sharing in our migratory existences, Facebook gathers us here to use us for larger social projects that benefit from us blaming one another, and exempting those who profit from exploiting us.
In the case of today's Chicago Public School posting, we are being used to blame kids -- particularly non-whites kids and specifically black girls -- for the violently harsh treatment they receive in our society. We are being used to harbor ignorant beliefs to fuel policies to drive our nation's strengthening surveillance and prison state. We are being pushed images to dehumanize certain members of our society to justify their curtailed rights and unjust treatment. We are being had, took, used.
And, in this, we are being pacified.
This is a blog exploring the many ways social media is tied to the marginality of adolescence in US society.
Here be dragons, indeed.
Let us begin exploring.
