XPost: alt.niggers, alt.education, stl.general   
   XPost: sac.politics   
   From: nigger-lovers@disney.com   
      
   A Poplar Bluff High School alum wants to apologize to some 2021   
   graduates of her old high school for inadvertently spreading   
   misinformation about them on social media.   
      
   She thought she was calling out members of the school’s student   
   council for flashing a hand gesture associated with white   
   supremacy in a group photo they posted on Instagram. Only,   
   that’s not what they were doing in the shot.   
      
   In the photo, the students were mimicking a hand gesture made   
   popular by Michael Jordan after he and his Chicago Bulls twice   
   won the NBA national title three years in a row — a three-peat.   
      
   Like Jordan, the students are holding up three fingers, palms   
   turned inward. They were innocently celebrating the third   
   consecutive time they had won something called the Powder Buff   
   championships, a local whimsical volleyball tournament played by   
   the boys instead of the girls.   
      
   The woman regrets her faulty assumptions and the harm it’s done,   
   but before she learned she was wrong and took down the post from   
   her Facebook page, it had already been widely shared. “So I   
   guess the implication is that I’m partly responsible for ruining   
   innocent young lives for forwarding that screenshot,” the woman   
   said in an email to The Star Editorial Board. “If true I much   
   regret it.”   
      
   Let’s hope no one’s life will be ruined. And no, we’re not   
   naming the woman in this editorial, because the point isn’t to   
   redirect the anger mistakenly aimed at these young people at her.   
      
   But outside of their small southeast Missouri town, their faces   
   and their high school may still be linked with white supremacy   
   because their gesture was taken for the OK sign, palm turned   
   outward, that’s been associated with white supremacist groups.   
   Maybe one clue should have been that at least two of the smiling   
   seniors in the photo are students of color.   
      
   Such an accusation would be damaging for any school, but   
   especially for a school that was rightly criticized after a   
   teacher there allowed a student to come to school dressed as a   
   Ku Klux Klan member in a white robe and hood.   
      
   “It’s most unfortunate that so many are so quick to believe the   
   very worst of one another,” said Superintendent Scott Dill, who   
   knew when he first saw the picture that it might be   
   misconstrued, but was still surprised by the speed and ferocity   
   of the response.   
      
   “It was vicious,” Dill said. “People were brutal, commenting on   
   individuals, portraying it as a racist gesture.” He said school   
   officials, teachers and parents tried to shield the students but   
   that wasn’t possible.   
      
   “The students were really taken aback by the comments and when   
   you see someone attacking your kids like that it is hurtful,”   
   Dill said.   
      
   The original post has been pulled down now, but screenshots of   
   it and the false information that accompanied it, are almost   
   certainly still circulating. “Oh yeah! It’s still out there,   
   probably for a long time,” Dill said.   
      
   Which is a lesson for all of us, that what we think we see on   
   social media may not be what it looks like.   
      
   https://www.kansascity.com/opinion/editorials/article252463903.h   
   tml   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)