James Ragland:
Banning 'thugs' is only the start
So, "The Bubble" has burst.
Students and faculty members at Highland Park High School agreed yesterday that Thug Day, a three-year-old tradition of senior class members dressing like hoodlums, would never happen again.
Thank goodness.
The pronouncement came after the NAACP and others complained that the tradition not only crossed the lines of good taste, but also was racially and culturally insensitive.
If a Highland Park student wears an Afro wig or fake gold teeth again
, he or she will be forced to change or go home. "It's just common sense," said Helen Williams, director of communications for the school district. "The bottom line is, if it creates a disruption in the learning environment, we fix it."
Student Council president Sarah Johnson, a senior, said the student body welcomes the opportunity to correct the mistake. Thug Day was not a school-sanctioned theme day for homecoming week. It emerged as a senior prank three years ago.
Sadly, it didn't die instantly.
It had to be choked to death.
"The misconception is that we were intentionally being offensive," Sarah said. "We weren't
. And that is something that we have learned. This is no longer something that can be taken lightly again – as a tradition." I think we all should accept that apology and move on – but not before we address some deeper, underlying issues.
First of all, I'm not gravely offended that a few privileged kids at a predominantly white school thought it would be amusing to wear gold chains and dress like rappers or "gangstas" for a day.
I am rather disturbed.
And I want to point fingers, the first of which may surprise you. It is directed at the chief architects of the hip-hop culture these kids were mocking – mainly young black entertainers.
You see, hip-hop has come to define what "black" means to privileged white kids who live in affluent and homogenous bubbles such as Highland Park. Turn on BET or MTV late at night, or many hours of the day, and you'll find ample evidence of the distorted and too often degrading images being projected.
So it is no stretch for me to believe that the white kids who dressed as gang members and rap stars for Thug Day didn't really believe that their antics were racially insensitive. They see black youngsters celebrating that lifestyle every day – on TV if not in the streets of urban America.
Truth be told, many white kids these days are dressing like that anyway. They aren't wearing Afro wigs perhaps, but they are buying rap records and wearing baggy jeans to the hilt. The hip-hop culture, grounded in black culture, has gone worldwide.
It's no longer just a "black thang."
What's more offensive to me is that some of these privileged white kids associate being a "thug" with being black or Hispanic.
For that, parents must accept some responsibility. As I read accounts of the white students who went to school this month dressed as maids and yard workers on Fiesta Day or gang members on Thug Day (which officially was Western Day), some obvious questions came to mind: Where were their parents? Did they think this was funny, cool or appropriate?
Were they even clued in to what was going on?
And finally, Highland Park school officials must accept some blame for allowing this unofficial tradition to carry on for three years. They turned a blind eye for far too long.
The practice of mocking black culture in Highland Park actually goes back longer than Thug Day, as my stepdaughter, who graduated from the school district in 1996, can attest. One year, before playing a predominantly black football team, some kids pulled some similar racist pranks at a pep rally. She complained about it, and we now see how much good that did.
Highland Park High has 1,976 students, and 1,865 of them are white. The school has only six black students and 65 Hispanics, 32 Asians and eight American Indians.
Which gives the white students little opportunity to appreciate people from different racial and ethnic backgrounds. That's why it concerns me that the Highland Park school district only has a handful of minorities in its nearly 400-strong teaching ranks.
Ms. Williams couldn't give me an updated number, but the last official count submitted to the Texas Education Agency in 2003-04 put the number at five. Not one was black.
So it's no surprise that Sarah, the student body president, has had only one minority teacher in four years – her Hispanic government teacher.
Maybe that explains why Sarah, when asked whether she got dressed up as a "thug," politely declined to comment.
"Let's just say that won't happen again," she said.
