https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/26/us/mimi-groves-jimmy-galligan-racial-slurs.html
“I wanted to get her where she would understand the severity of that word,” Mr. Galligan, 18, whose mother is Black and father is white, said of the classmate who uttered the slur, Mimi Groves. He tucked the video away, deciding to post it publicly when the time was right.
Ms. Groves had originally sent the video, in which she looked into the camera and said, “I can drive,” followed by the slur, to a friend on Snapchat in 2016, when she was a freshman and had just gotten her learner’s permit. It later circulated among some students at Heritage High School, which she and Mr. Galligan attended, but did not cause much of a stir.
When you think of the sheer vindictiveness of what happened to Oklahoma quarterback Kyler Murray, it takes your breath away. On the very night of his greatest career triumph, a reporter dug up his old tweets (composed when he was a young teenager), reported on the most offensive insults, and immediately and irrevocably transformed his online legacy. Now he’s not just “Kyler Murray, gifted quarterback and humble Heisman winner,” but also the man who was forced to apologize for his alleged homophobia. And for what purpose? Which cause did the reporter advance? Where was the cultural gain in Murray’s pain?
It is hard to imagine standing in the shoes of Wisconsin’s West High School security guard Marlon Anderson. An African American father of four, he generally had positive relationships with the kids at his school. But one day a student, also African American, got teed off at him and called him a bunch of names including the n-word. Anderson retorted “Don’t call me [that word]” and used the word himself. As a result, he was fired last Wednesday pursuant to the school’s zero-tolerance policy.
Anderson, who is diabetic, not only faced lost wages, but also faced losing his family health insurance. He posted on Facebook: “The reality is that I did not just [lose] wages but also benefits. Most importantly we will soon be without health insurance.”
Anderson tried to get his job back but was told by the principal that under the school’s zero-tolerance policy for racial slurs “context or circumstances” don’t matter.
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