i’m glad you covered this, auguste.  i was HORRIFIED when i heard it on the local news from the eugene radio station this morning.

my first thought was, WTF isn’t george fox university a quaker school?  and secondly, where are these kids from, that they did not understand the import of what they were doing.

I’m sure the students knew what they were doing.  They have justified to themselves why being racist is okay and that’s it’s okay to show it in the most hateful way.  Their thinking is probably something like, “I know people won’t like this (that’s why the did it when no one was around), but I don’t care.  I have a right to say/do what I want.”

Who gives a flying effigy? Thousands of people burn their own country’s flag and hang Bush in effigy ... Obama’s just part of our “dialogue.”

Thousands of people burn their own country’s flag

I seem to have been missing some of the news recently, then. Or perhaps this item is only playing on the screen inside one wingnut’s head.

In addition to the other idiocy inherent in SRR’s comment,

HANGING

A

WHITE

MAN

IN

EFFIGY

IS

NOT

EQUIVALENT.

Thousands of people burn their own country’s flag and hang Bush in effigy

Links please?

The FBI is investigating whether any civil rights were violated, but I guess that means the secret service is not investigating whether the law forbidding death threats against presidential candidates might have been broken…

HANGING A WHITE MAN IN EFFIGY IS NOT EQUIVALENT.
YES.
But then one wonders if people who argue with this are just being obtuse or if they really do believe that racism and sexism doesn’t exist. Or they like to “argue” like 5 year olds.
“It doesn’t exist!” “Yes it does and it’s broken” “No! NO NO NO! I say it’s NOT and I make the rules!”
Guh.

I got community service for smoking a cigarette off campus, for crying out loud!

You should have gone to Art Skool (tm) like me- ANYTHING goes.
There was one girl making plaster casts of her vagina right by the lunchroom once.

y’know, as someone who grew up in the South, i’m not inclined to believe ANYBODY when they attempt to excuse this kind of thing with an ” I didn’t know !?!”. they’re lying, cased closed.

I’m sure they knew it was offensive - I just doubt that they understand just how deeply offensive and why.

I grew up in a lot of these very same remote places with a lot of very sheltered people, including members of my extended family.  Being generally ignorant of history and never or rarely having seen or met an African American, they would *know* it was a bad thing and still think it was only on the level of a prank like toilet papering a house or letting the air out of somebody’s tires.  They would be wholly ignorant of the larger reality that made their actions despicable and actionable.

I had no idea Auguste was a fellow Foxie.  I also got service + counseling for smoking off campus.

Now if only we could get you to talk about the murder of Jamiel Shaw. Or the Two-tear-old Black boy SHOT IN THE HEAD by racists in L.A. a few ago. or any of the dozens of murders of Blacks that the Southern Poverty Law Center claims is aimed at driving Blacks from their homes in L.A. in a report they released called Blackout LA

You know real hate crimes where somebody dies because of racist violence.

Just as you and commenters have rightly pointed out there is no excuse for racism, it is equally unacceptable for Whites to pretend to be outraged by this sort of petty bigotry when you won’t even bother blogging about a literal genocide in the big cities.

As an aside, you guys know Barack Obama, like me, is Bi-racial not Black right? It’s a little different and I won’t speak for the big O but it kinda bugs me when a bunch of White folk decide I’m black because it makes them sound hip.

Oh wait, I know your answer already. You guys know Pam Spaulding so it’s “O.K.”

This is simply the price you pay for living in a country that champions FREE SPEECH.

Democracy isn’t always pretty and having rights doesn’t mean that people will always use them the way that you wish they would.