A black student wrote those racist messages that shook the Air Force Academy, school says
Source: Washington Post
In late September, five black cadet candidates found racial slurs scrawled on message boards on their doors at the U.S. Air Force Academy Preparatory School. One candidate found the words go home n‑‑‑‑‑‑ written outside his room, his mother posted on social media, according to the Air Force Times.
But on Tuesday, the school made a jolting announcement. The person responsible for the racist messages, the academy said, was, in fact, one of the cadet candidates who reported being targeted by them.
The individual admitted responsibility and this was validated by the investigation, academy spokesman Lt. Col. Allen Herritage said in a statement to the Associated Press, adding: Racism has no place at the academy, in any shape or form." The cadet candidate accused of crafting the messages was not identified, but the Colorado Springs Gazette reported that the individual is no longer enrolled at the school. Sources also told the Gazette the cadet candidate committed the act in a bizarre bid to get out of trouble he faced at the school for other misconduct, the newspaper reported.
The announcement thrust the Air Force Academy Preparatory School onto a growing list of recent hate crime hoaxes instances in which acts of racism or anti-Semitism were later found to be committed by someone in the targeted minority group. Its unclear exactly what prompts people to commit these hoaxes, stunts and false reports. But such revelations have become a major concern for civil rights activists who document racist and anti-Semitic incidents, particularly amid a rise in reported hate crimes since the 2016 general election.
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/11/08/a-black-student-wrote-those-racist-messages-that-shook-the-air-force-academy/?utm_term=.178a42dc5c9a
This is heartbreaking; I don't think people realize how much damage this causes...
BumRushDaShow
(128,717 posts)They haven't been around long enough to realize the end results and nowadays, social media helps to propel any and all allegations, legitimate or not.
Blue_Tires
(55,445 posts)ripcord
(5,313 posts)Does this make sense to anyone?
JustABozoOnThisBus
(23,336 posts)... and divert attention from whatever the other trouble was.
I'm not sure what the Air Force Academy Cadet Prep School is, but I'm sure the pressure is high.
Baconator
(1,459 posts)... and they often, not always, are filled by cadets who haven't meet the same performance standards that the rest of the cadets did.
The Prep School is, by my understanding, where they send these folks who need support to meet minimum standards.
It's not only athletes but there's a lot of them.
Fluke a Snooker
(404 posts)I don't care how the problem is exposed. The bottom line is that this incident got the Academy to address racial disparity, particularly white oppression, to the entire body of cadets. The ends justifies the means, in my opinion.
EX500rider
(10,832 posts)Said Stalin and Mao and Hitler, etc...
GulfCoast66
(11,949 posts)A young African American in the Academy writes racist things in a classroom to deflect his problems. And that is no big deal?