Posted on 09/04/2017 8:34:37 AM PDT by SteveH
As a student journalist, I value our first amendment right to free speech. But wearing a ‘Make America Great Again’ (MAGA) hat on the campus of Howard University, a historically black college, is not exercising your right to free speech. It is downright ignorant and disrespectful.
The average American with half a brain would not think twice about wearing memorabilia that shows support for someone who provokes hate and racism on the campus of a university that is devoted to serving a people that has been historically oppressed.
However, that is exactly what two high school students did.
Let’s back up a little and make sure everyone is on the same page. For those of you who might not have heard, a group of high schoolers were visiting colleges in the Washington, D.C. area.
The group stopped for lunch at Howard, a school that, according to its website, considers itself to be “the only truly comprehensive predominantly Black university.”
Two of the students in the group, Allie Vandee and Sarah Applequist, were sporting MAGA hats and other apparel, like t-shirts, that had President Donald Trump on them.
The girls claim that, because of the way they were treated by Howard University students, they were the victims of racism and it’s their constitutional right to wear whatever they want. In reality, Vandee and Applequist were in the wrong and were offensive.
That evening, Vandee took to Twitter to vent about the situation.
“What happened to my friend and I today was absolutely pathetic. These are the people who are racist and disrespectful,” Vandee tweeted.
According to Vandee and Applequist, students in the Howard dining hall grabbed their hats and shouted profanities, like “F--- y’all” at them. Shortly after the group left the campus.
“We had to leave Howard [because] people who chose to wear [T]rump stuff at a BLACK university felt uncomfortable,” Eunissa Pullium, another student on the tour tweeted about the situation.
Howard student Essence Dalton tweeted a photo of the girls, Vandee and Applequist, in the dining hall.
The caption insinuated Vandee and Applequist were treating their trip to Howard as a joke.
“My personal concern isn’t the young girls,” Dalton told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. It’s the adults who should have better informed the girls of the history of our university and why the Trump paraphernalia might be inappropriate in light of recent racial tensions especially coming from non- POCs (people of color).”
Howard was founded after the Civil War to ensure that black students had a place to learn without having to worry about discrimination or being the target of racist acts.
It is supposed to be a place where students can come study and be themselves without having to worry about standing up for their beliefs.
I understand why students at Howard responded the way they did. Trump is someone who incites hate and discrimination and his acts do not represent the values of Howard University.
The Howard administration and its students absolutely responded appropriately in this situation.
The university tweeted a ten-part statement from its official Twitter that states, “Though this is an institution where freedom of thought, choice, and expression are ever-present, we will never compromise our values or allow others to convince us to do so.”
Vandee and Applequist’s actions are a perfect example of white privilege. The girls should have been more aware of how their MAGA hats would be perceived, especially given the tension and division throughout the county due to recent events in Charlottesville. Their advisors should have been aware, too.
It’s not ignorance. It’s evil.
So grabbing the girl’s hats and yelling profanities was the appropriate action, ok.
The stupid is strong with this one....
“As a student journalist, I value our first amendment right to free speech”
...so long as the speech conforms to her beliefs and prejudices. Otherwise it is appropriate to suppress it with violence.
These Teenagers Showed Up To Howard University Wearing MAGA Hats And Quickly Got Criticized
Questions remain about the incident, which took place a week after the violence at UVA, and days after Trump’s widely repudiated remarks. “Our campus is a space for educational engagement to occur between both those who do and do not share our values,” university officials responded.
Originally posted on August 21, 2017, at 12:23 p.m.
Updated on August 22, 2017, at 2:46 p.m.
By Nidhi Prakash (BuzzFeed News Reporter) Salvador Hernandez (BuzzFeed News Reporter) Brianna Sacks (BuzzFeed News Reporter)
Lol...now I see where the ignorance comes in.
The average American with half a brain knows that this is a lie. The hate and racism was on the other side.
Let's be honest. The worst part for the racist SJW's at Howard was being WHITE and wearing a MAGA hat.
Sounds like Howard is a campus chock-full of emotional INFANTS who are not up to acting like adults. They have been indulged in their every self-perceived insult or slight and thus are overly sensitized. You don't like someone's hat? Don't look at them, imbecile!
Thuggish behavior is allowed when liberals approve of the threats.
The answer is “a student journalist.”
The question was, “What’s the only thing in the universe that displays even less intelligence than a journalist?”
So no, you don't value Free Speech. Lie number one.
Blonde women in Trump gear TRIGGER students at Howard University
Twitchy ^
Posted on 8/20/2017, 6:45:22 PM by TigerClaws
A group of white women, some of whom were wearing Trump gear, triggered the Howard University community over the weekend when they dared attempt to eat lunch in the school’s cafeteria, according to posts on Twitter...
http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3579216/posts
The ignorance is alive, well, and thriving in the students of this school and this writer.
The claim that President Trump is racist is simply false, but it allows the intellectually lazy to claim a reason to hate him, as well as blaming all their supposed “oppression” on “Whitey.”
There is no longer any sort of institutional racism enshrined in government laws or agencies in the USA, at least not that designed to “keep the Black Man down.”
If anything, the pendulum has swung so far in the other direction that it’s caused some bad feelings, due to the “racism of low expectations” or even what some call “reverse-racism,” which is a silly expression in itself.
The fact is that the SJWs the BLM crowd have so strayed from the concept of decency and equal rights that I have no doubt that had Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. been alive and speaking out today, they would denounce and pillory him, shutting down his speaking events.
How dare anyone claim that the content of one’s character is more important than the color of their skin?!?!
Mark
Sometime back in the 90s, I remember listening to a radio show called "For the People" by Chuck Harder, out of Florida, and he featured an interview of some girl at University of MO, a "journalism" student. She said that the reason she wanted to be a journalist was "to make the world a better place." The interviewer gave her an opportunity to clarify her statement, but words like "bring truth to the people" never came up. As she spoke, it was clear that she wanted to be an advocate, not a reporter.
I knew we were in deep trouble at that point.
Mark
This says far more about the writer than it does about President Trump.
Mark
It readily exposes the stupid, the ignorant, the ant-American, as well as the well informed decent .
And it clearly displays the ignorance and the prejudice of the author.
No need to read further than that last word.
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