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What most strikes me about this story, which is troubling in a great many different directions, is that we are saddling children with the consequences of decades of adult failures, and then calling sporadic excessive punishment "progress." https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/26/us/mimi-groves-jimmy-galligan-racial-slurs.html
Adults fail to integrate the public schools. They fail to proportionately and fairly address racism when they see children engage in it. They fail to adequately educate their student body on American history. They fail to consistently protect kids of color from racism.
And then there is a carnival of public shaming for one girl who yes obviously should not have used a racial slur four years earlier when she was 15 but also grew up in an environment where that was quietly tolerated. Then online, folks attack the teenage boy who kept the video.
I've seen tweets calling the boy "psychopathic" and "evil." But he's also just a teenager, navigating a community that hasn't taken racism seriously nor given him any tools to address it in a productive way. Both of these kids are being so poorly served by all the grown-ups here.
The most frustrating part of these conversations is that there seems to be little interest in talking about proportionality. You're either "canceling" someone or you're "giving them a pass." Might be more productive to consider what fair, proportionate consequences would be.
