The chat was allegedly created by a group of 8th-grade students and involved some of the juveniles expressing “hateful and racist comments" and a mock slave auction.
Six juveniles in Massachusetts were charged in a racial online bullying incident that involved “heinous” language, threats of “violence toward people of color” and a mock slave auction, the district attorney for Hampden County said.
Students from Southwick, about 104 miles southwest of Boston, allegedly participated in a “hateful, racist online” Snapchat discussion between Feb. 8 and Feb. 9, Hampden District Attorney Anthony Gulluni said in a statement on Facebook.
Gulluni said he became aware of the incident on Feb. 15 and immediately called on the Massachusetts State Police Detective Unit to investigate.
On Thursday, at the conclusion of the investigation, the district attorney authorized members of the Detective Unit and the Chief of the Juvenile Court Unit to pursue criminal charges against the juveniles.
Where did they get all of that from? I’m guessing the racist apple doesn’t fall far from the racist tree.
Other than a few pockets of blue, Western Massachusetts is very rural and leans conservative. I try to avoid going out that far if I can help it.
These kids would be right at home in the South.
Boston has had its share of racism issues too.
Southwick is basically Connecticut. It’s literally the little weird bump at the bottom of Massachusetts (called the “Southwick Jog”). It is also, unsurprisingly, one of the most Trump-leaning areas in the entire state.
WESTERN Mass is actually deeply blue like eastern Mass. It’s really central Mass and then the area around the Southwick Jog that are the “pockets” of red. I.e., https://media.wbur.org/wp/2020/11/1105_Mass-Map-1000x531.png
Well at least we’re not teaching proper American history to these kids, or they may have realized that what they were doing was monstrous and felt guilty about it. We can’t be making white kids feel guilty, y’all.
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What is a “mock slave auction”?
Joking about setting up a venue in which white people bid on black chattel slaves. Literal human trafficking and insanely racist. It’s what Americans did in the Antebellum (pre-Civil War) South.
Seems kind of self-explanatory…?
Massachusetts
Well that explains it
Swift action though. If it was Texas, they would have given them scholarships.
Gulluni said he has met personally with the victims and their families.
This proves the article is garbage - if there are victims, the original described conduct of some racists having a group chat about racism can’t possibly be true. There has to be more to the real story.
Who were they pretending to auction and threatening violence against? Pretty sure those are the victims.
There are three possibilities, presupposing the threats are real:
- The threats were not specific (the article never claims specific theeats were made), in which case the victims either don’t exist or constitute every black person in America, and in either of those cases the victims could not be met with.
- The threats were specific and the specific targets were not in the chat (the article never claims anyone was in the chat except for the racists), in which case the “victims” do not legally qualify as victims and there is no case here (for a threat to be illegal you have to communicate it to your threatened target).
- The threats were specific and the targets were in the chat. That’s the only way this makes sense, which means the article utterly failed to tell us both that the threats were specific and that the victims were in the chat.
So any way you slice it, this article is hot garbage.
Are you one of those people that say girls aren’t victims when fake porn is made of them and distributed so long as it’s never distributed directly to them?
No. Are you?
No, but I also haven’t made comments like yours that display a profound lack of understanding for what constitutes a victim.
Point 2 is incredibly flawed.
I’d ask “in what way?”, but you already refused to elaborate, so it feels counterproductive.
I did not refuse to elaborate. You’re arguing in bad faith consistently.
Yeah dude, those are literally the only three possible scenarios 🙄
Name a fourth.
Logic isn’t your strong suit, is it?
Had this exact thought as well. The article is so vague that it doesn’t actually describe what they seem to be getting charged with, so unless the DA is completely overstepping bounds (possible but unlikely) there has to be more to it.
All six were charged with threat to commit a crime, the district attorney said. Two of those juveniles were also charged with interference with civil rights, and one of the two was additionally charged with witness interference.
From the article.
Sorry, I phrased my comment poorly. What I meant was that the article doesn’t describe what specifically led to those charges, apart from a racist group chat of some kind.
