$20m suit: Bay Area school forced boys out for ‘blackface’, was green acne meds | Hacker News Reader

$20m suit: Bay Area school forced boys out for ‘blackface’, was green acne meds

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It's really incredible that the adults took a rumor so far without hearing all sides of it. Sounds like the boys had their whole lives upended for a picture of some stupid green face mask they didn't even intend to share publicly

It's only getting worse for the next generations. The stupid stuff you do before you know better is suddenly judged much harder than it should be. I don't feel like the resulting punishment was appropriate even if it was a legitimate blackface picture. Teens can be offensive without necessarily understanding the effects it has on others. It's very possible to be an asshole at 14 and turn into a better adult without needing to be traumatized

This is exactly how all SJW witch hunts work:

- The accused is not heard even once.

- The accused is presented with sentence and extorted: leave quietly or else ...

- The reason is presented as a vague "harmful and damaging to the X community".

The winners are always bureaucrats who have to justify their existence and love power games. Probably they also have psychopathic tendencies.

And the school's gonna eat that 20 million dollar lawsuit for it. Witch hunts on social media are one thing. Forcing students out on on a rumor of something that happened years ago is another

At least there's a silver lining! I'd happily take expulsion for $20 mil in my (and a lawyer's) pocket!

It's happened with many male sexual assault cases where schools vilified men on pure accusations alone and even expelled them. Then with some of these bureaucrats realized they aren't above the law to deny someone educational rights by nothing short of hearsay, they began to realize you can't crucify someone because of it.

That's a bit of a different thing. There's more obviously a possible victim in that one than with some old photo being taken.

Read this quote:

> On June 5, Principal Katie Teekell phoned H.H.’s parents and said their son was not welcome back to the school, the lawsuit says. His father again referenced the acne masks. She replied, according to the lawsuit, that “this isn’t about intent, it’s about optics.”

It's surreal.

Surprising that this a $20m ask when the Oberlin result was 2x that for what seems (albeit with very different levels of information) to be much more superficial institutional involvement.

I’ll be interested to read reporting on the trial, if it gets to one.

The suit is even more interesting:

> Without any meaningful investigation, or any involvement whatsoever by the school's Review Board, SFHS's president, Jason Curtis, publicly confirmed to reporters that the Photograph depicted the boys in "blackface", and promised that they would face "serious consequences"

> Directly below the Photograph of Plantiffs, Ms. Labana included text that read ..."kids participating in black face and thinking that this is all a joke"

> During the protest march, Ms Labana made public demands for the boys' explusions from SFHS

https://www.mv-voice.com/news/reports/1614639661.pdf

I think Ms Labana is in for a rude awakening if this goes to trial. Ms Labana wasn't a student, she was a parent of a student. A grown ass adult. Reading through the rest of the suit, she behaves like a petulant fascist. Can't wait to see how her employer reacts - a taste of her own medicine.

It's crazy to me to think that even if the boys were engaging in black face that they would be expelled for it. Children say and do offensive things, they were 14 years old. It seems like punishing them is the right call, not branding them as racists and expelling them. It's sociopathic to treat developing humans the same way we treat developed humans, if they make a mistake they need correction and guidance - not shaming and expulsion.

"According to the suit, the principal told the families that the decision to remove two of the boys — the third attended a different school and is not involved with the lawsuit — was based on 'optics'."

This is crazy to me. You're an elementary school, not a politician or a celebrity. How is "optics" a consideration in the fair treatment of children? If someone asks you about it just say "The students misbehaved and faced punishment" and if activists on twitter think your school is racist, who cares? I wish more institutions tried to do what is right rather than appease grievance seekers on social media.

America is a train wreck right now.

Instead of taking a moment and having a teaching opportunity the school has shown that it is in fact not worth the tuition. I guess a private school can do what it wants but without due process it's certainly not acting in accordance with Christian ideals.

The filing of a lawsuit itself suggests that the school administrators have clearly failed.

My experience is that it's always the parents who make things worse.

How incredibly silly. Some people have so little to do with their lives that they're compelled to find things to be outraged about.

I've used a similar mask many times-- bentonite clay-- I like this one: Aztec Clay Mask

Here's a review of it:

https://www.businessinsider.com/aztec-bentonite-clay-mask-re...

Smart people, even educators can act like degenerates... It's unfortunate, but unfortunately a reality of modern life.

A.k.a. “it is what it is.”

Well said, nuance and meter are the best measures of intelligence / reason I've come to find in the real world. Many VC types or intellectuals in the Bay Area also think this stuff is insane if you know them well enough. Otherwise, many of them are willing to put up a facade to avoid being taken down by degenerate morons without a real moral or ethical prerogative, other than attention seeking.

They can always drop out and become Prime Ministers of Canada [0].

[0] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-49758613

Wow. Private schools often have the option to exercise common sense. I don't know what happened here.

Also: green? What'll happen when somebody tells St. Francis what people do on St. Patrick's Day?

Зеленка (aka Brilliant green)?

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