The ignorance I’ve come across living here is often so absurd that I almost feel as if these people are willfully and pridefully ignorant. Especially in today’s world. With Google at most of our fingertips and an endless supply of information at our disposal, how can so many people be so incredibly stupid?
AND NOW White supremacists yelling “Heil Hitler,” waving Confederate flag wallet attack Latino teens at LA park: local mediaThe three knife-wielding racists were arrested; Los Angeles police are investigating the attack as a hate crime. HISPANIC Heritage or Racism: The Confederate Flag AND NOW HISPANIC KID IS WAVING A CONFEDERATE FLAG FROM HIS TRUCK. WHAT AN INSULT.
School resumed Tuesday at Rim of the World High School in Lake Arrowhead with something noticeably missing: pickup trucks with Confederate flags staked in their beds, a top school district official said.
“There’s nothing this morning. There’s no Confederate flags,” said Lawrence King, assistance superintendent of personnel for the Rim of the World Unified School District.
From 6:30 a.m. until school let out at 2 p.m., none of the pickup trucks sporting the Confederate flags, whichtriggered ire with some students and parents, were present on campus, and King could not say why. He said neither the school principal nor anyone from the school district ordered the students to remove the flags from their vehicles.
“They parked in the same location each morning. This morning, none of those trucks were seen,” King said.
Christel Gomez, the parent of a 17-year-old senior who is one of the students who has a Confederate flag displayed in the back of his pickup, said that is because some of the students may now be parking in the rear parking lot instead of the front lot due to the controversy. But she did say her son’s pickup was not at school Tuesday because it was loaded with trash her son was moving for an elderly man who needed help hauling it away.
King, however, said he had been in communication with high school principal Derek Swem, who had been monitoring the situation, and none of the trucks were seen.
King said neither the school nor school district fielded any additional complaints Tuesday from students or parents on the matter, which began when the 2016-2017 school year began in mid-August.
In July, a small group of students, who Gomez said included her son, began displaying the Confederate and American flags in the backs of their pickups. She said it all started with their support of presidential candidate and real estate mogul Donald Trump, whose flags they displayed in their trucks first — until all five were stolen at a July 2 holiday weekend barbecue in Crestline at a friend’s house.
Gomez’s son and his friends also ordered American and Confederate flags, and began displaying them, and then others followed suit, Gomez said.
“After the Fourth of July, other kids started doing it. It was like every couple of days we’d see a few other kids with them,” Gomez said Tuesday.
Gomez said her son and friends are not racist, are merely showing their national pride and support for Trump, and are now being targeted by others who do not agree with them or their beliefs. She said someone kicked a dent in the door of her son’s pickup Saturday, causing $1,900 in damage.
The flags have created a stir in the otherwise tranquil, upscale and mountain resort community where 86.4 percent of its 12,424 residents are white and only 8 percent are black, according to Census data.
During the 2015-2016 school year at Rim of the World High School, 722 of the school’s 1,151 students, or 62 percent, were white. Only 10 students at the school were black, constituting 0.008 percent of the student population. And 344 students, or 29 percent, were Latino, according to the California Department of Education.
The students’ display of the Confederate flags, long considered a symbol of racism for some and patriotism to others, has fueled a debate over the students’ First Amendment right of free speech versus the rights of others to be free from what they feel is hate speech.
“You can’t really stop them from doing it. It’s their right,” said Minnie Hadley-Hempstead, spokeswoman for NAACP’s Los Angeles branch. She said she has never seen a country more divided than during this year’s presidential campaign.
Hadley-Hempstead considers the Confederate flag a form of hate speech, and said she personally witnessed Confederate flags flying in the backs of pickup trucks in Southern states including Arkansas and Mississippi, which has a Confederate flag embedded in its state flag.
“It’s hatred. That’s all it represents, and they do it to intimidate,” Hadley-Hempstead said. “This election has caused so much division in this country. I’m just afraid we’re going to lose this wonderful country.”
Since the school year began, school district officials have fielded complaints from two parents about the flags and met with several students offended by the display of the flags on campus, King said in a news release Tuesday.
Officials also met with the boys displaying the flags and the father of one of the boys, King said.
“In total, we met with fewer than 10 individuals,” King said in his statement. “In a school of 1,100 students this was further evidence that there was little or no disruption to the educational process.”
In response to one parent’s allegations of a pattern of racially-motivated bullying at the school, King said only one student has been suspended since the school year began for using language that was racially or ethnically offensive or charged.
“It is important to note that this type of conduct occurs very seldom on our school campus,” King said in his statement.