The following incident actually happened in South Texas. I found it to be shocking behavior by some teens, and shows a definite lack of decent parenting -- and it likely rises to the level of a hate crime. Here is just a part of the article in Texas Monthly:
As the one-minute video begins, a young Black male is backpedaling through the grass and a figure in a white sheet is approaching him. The figure is wearing a droopy hood with a pointy top and holes cut out for eyes. “That’s not funny. Stop!” says the Black teenager, who is dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved shirt. He has a friend with him: a thin, young white male, who wanders in and out of the frame and occasionally tries to intervene.
The action is being filmed on a cellphone by a girl, who tells the Black kid, “If you say their names, they’re gonna tase you.” Then there’s the crackle of a stun gun being fired. “Get closer,” she says, and the gun is fired again. The Black young man keeps backing away.
“Surround him,” the girl says. “Surround him!” She giggles. Now a second figure in a white sheet and hood comes into the frame. In one hand, he’s holding a small purple device. A rapid-fire crackle rings out.
“Chill!” the Black teenager yells as the hooded figure with the purple device lunges for him, making a loud “Ah!” sound.
“KKK,” the girl announces.
“That’s not funny,” says the Black teen’s friend. The hooded figures ignore him.
“Wait,” says the girl to one of the white-sheeted figures, “get on this side of him.” Then, to the other: “Get on that side.” At that point, one of the figures approaches the young Black man, reaches toward him, and zaps him. “Ooh!” he calls out, recoiling, inspiring the girl to giggle even louder.
“Chill,” the Black teenager says again, now sounding agitated. “Chill!” He turns his back on his tormentors and begins walking away as the video, obtained exclusively by Texas Monthly, ends.
It was Halloween night in Woodsboro, a South Texas town of 1,400 that’s forty miles north of Corpus Christi and proclaims itself, on a large stone sign in the town square, “The Friendly City.” The teenagers in the video all knew each other. They attended Woodsboro High School (enrollment 131), and the Black kid and the two boys in sheets played on the football team. The girl was sixteen; her compatriots were both seventeen. One boy is white: Rance Bolcik, whose grandfather is Robert Bolcik, Refugio County’s sheriff from 2011 to 2019. The other is Hispanic: Noel Garcia Jr., a running back and baseball pitcher for Woodsboro High. Their target, the Black kid, was sixteen. His identity, like the girl’s, has been withheld by authorities. . . .
This past Thursday, December 16, Rance Bolcik and Noel Garcia Jr. were arrested at Woodsboro High School. Refugio’s district attorney indicted each of them on two third-degree felonies: “engaging in organized criminal activity” while committing assault on a juvenile, and tampering with evidence (they had burned their costumes). A hate-crime “enhancement” was added to the felonies, according to the indictment, because the teens “intentionally selected” their victim “primarily because of bias or prejudice against African Americans.” Both teens face sentences of two to ten years in prison if convicted. (The girl who filmed the video is considered a juvenile under Texas law, and won’t be charged in the adult justice system.)
To some, it might be surprising that one of the arrested teens is Hispanic. That’s not such a surprise in Refugio County, said one young Hispanic who was born and raised there. “A lot of people don’t want to admit it,” he told me, “but Mexicans are just as racist against Blacks as whites are. There are plenty of instances of Mexican girls dating Black guys and the parents saying, ‘You’re not bringing a Black guy home.’”
Some folks, no doubt, will feel some sympathy for the boys who now face such serious consequences. It was Halloween, after all, when kids are encouraged to dress up as monsters. The stun-gunning didn’t inflict serious physical injury. And maybe—who knows?—they didn’t understand how reprehensible the KKK is. But that’s part of the problem.
"We don't mean nothin' by it, it's just the we we was raised." It's a racist white trash world!
ReplyDelete