A full-page newspaper defends the punishment high school student Darryl George has faced over his hairstyle.
Being an American requires conformity with the positive benefit of unity
Man, these people always out here saying the quiet part out loud these days.
“If you little fuckers would just CONFORM to how we want you to be, this country would be filled with UNITY.”
Yeah, because the only “unity” they want is forcing their conformity on everyone else.
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Except this guy is no moderate.
Laaaand of the free …
♫ Proud to be an American, where at least I know I’m
freeconforming for unity. ♫… and home of the most prisoners in the wooooooooooorld.
Unity already went the enshittification route
I’m increasingly convinced they think Gilead is portrayed as a reasonable goal.
Yes.
Ironic, but unsurprising. They’re everything they accuse the left of. The P in GOP stands for projection after all.
I literally yelled the same thing out. lol
The crazy thing is that people still think they’re being quiet at all
Unity - the name of a parasitic hive mind that spews vomit down peoples throats to spread itself throughout entire species in the show Rick and Morty.
On brand.
Oof.
Being an American requires conformity with the positive benefit of unity
Tell that to the Texas power grid.
By conformity he just means what the white people in charge want. Not like conforming to rules or ethical standards or laws or the Constitution.
Exactly. Synonyms for “conformity” include submission, obedience, surrender.
Important to keep in mind that the objective of public education is to prepare a productive workforce while conditioning that workforce to stay on its knees.
What a fucking asshole.
Seriously. Texas passes a law, and this guy thinks he can just ignore it?
Yeah, only their attorney general is allowed to do that!
Ken Paxton is the rancid piss stain left behind whenever abott waddles by.
Still I’m surprised it even became law in Texas at all- which kinda makes this asshole an even bigger asshole.
Abbott doesn’t waddle, he rolls. But for however else evil he may be, Abbott hasn’t been indicted that I know of.
According to the wording of the ad he took out, his argument is focused on length, not style. He explicitly states that the school allows braids, locs, and rows. Then he argues that the CROWN act is very specific about not applying to length.
This whole thing is really stupid. Length of styling of hair, along with clothing and other personal appearance issues, should be considered speech and protected outside of blatant attempts to disrupt an educational atmosphere. All that said, the school may not be acting in opposition to the letter of the law, even if they definitely are in spirit.
or maybe, just hear me out, the dude should join the rest of us in 2023 instead of 1923. It’s a waste of time, resources and effort. Literally nobody is benefiting from him making an issue out of something that simply does not matter.
And for the record, he’s singling the kid out for being black. I doubt he’d have an issue with a white boy wearing a man bun, or whatever the equivalent would be.
1923 was also during a period of upheaval for freedom of expression :)
Literal fascist rhetoric. Seriously wtf.
To give you an idea of just how fucking stupid this superintendent is – hair discrimination is illegal by TEXAS law. Fucking Texan Republicans looked at this and said “okay this is way too far”.
Having previously lived in Houston for a few years, let me tell you, Texas Republicans aren’t terribly bright. Being worse than them takes effort.
What’s the point of a law if it’s not only not enforced, but literally ignored by, y’know law enforcement!? Fuck you, Texas. Boycott everything they produce!
It becomes a tool of oppression and retribution. That’s the point. Welcome to fascism.
Because when you pass the law, you have completed political theater and that’s what gets reported in the news. The point of the law is to be able to say, “See, Republicans aren’t so bad after all.” Nobody is following up on it later until a story like this come around.
Not gonna lie, I thought this was some federal anti discrimination law, not a TEXAS one.
It’s actually wild.
If being American required conformity, then why isn’t the principal conforming to state law?
Because we all know it’s not about conformity.
It’s about conforming to what I personally believe
Bam
He says it’s about the hair length and the crown act doesn’t cover length.
I wonder if he sees children arguing on the playground and is intimidated by their playground argument logic?
His hairstyle is “commonly or historically associated with race”, so it’s covered under the crown act. His hair was in a very common style with a long association with his race for centuries. The law doesn’t allow for discrimination for typical hairstyles, it doesn’t give any leeway to discriminate if the superintendent thinks it should be shorter.
Oh absolutely, thanks for the clarification. His logic just struck me as childish and I was tickled by a principal with childish logic.
I teach in TX, so this is more than just a headline to me. I’m so tired of having students that are scared to come to school because they might be bullied by teachers and administrators.
The ad was paid for by the Barbers Hill Education Foundation, which has contact information on their website. I sure hope nobody decides to tell them how they feel about this.
I feel that hiring cops that actually defend kids when being fired upon is a conformity rather than a hairstyle. What if his grew only in that pattern. Get your shit together Texas. Your are quickly approaching Alabama or Florida style of embarrassment.
Aw come on, leave Florida out of it! At least our national embarrassment voluntarily stepped down from his presidential campaign, that’s got to count for something, right?
How many cocaine pythons are there currently?
So the Barbers are making someone cut their hair
Big scissors is at again!
I thought being American was about freedom? Right? Isn’t that what these folks usually croon about?
I thought America was already past this in-your-face type of racism and was more into the less obvious types of racism.
Maybe I’m right and Texas is special. While the rest of the US is more subtle about it but still have it.
Not trying to shit specifically on America. Racism is a worldwide problem. I just thought America was beyond that type of super obvious discrimination.
If it was really common would you be reading about it?
Yes, racism is out there. Yes, it’s sometimes outrageous. Yes, there are more racists than there should be.
But most racism is subtle. It’s a higher loan rate. It’s not landing a job you’re overqualified for. It’s being watched closely at the store. It’s being treated like you’re older than you are when you’re a child.
I don’t have first hand experience to speak of in this area but I’ve seen it. It makes me sad. People are people. We’re all just trying to get by out here, I don’t know how you could look at the state of things and conclude that it’s poor people of any color making things shitty.
If they’re taking your benefits or jobs, who hands those out? Is it the poor immigrants or is it the ruling class? People are out here so brainwashed they’re blaming people who are being exploited BY THE SAME PEOPLE WHO ARE EXPLOITING THEM for their problems. Damn man it’s depressing.
It’s only even a political issue because that’s a great way to make people get mad at other people of their class.
Racism is a really great way to get the exploited to hate the “other” exploited rather than the exploiters.
Lee Atwater knew…
What a guy. His Wikipedia page is like an album of Republican shittiness greatest hits. Some snippets:
- Rollins described Atwater as “ruthless”, “Ollie North in civilian clothes”, and someone who “just had to drive in one more stake”.
Then this section has racism and fear of OTHER others! Plus personally attacking somebody’s medical history.
- Atwater’s tactics in that campaign included push polling in the form of fake surveys by so-called independent pollsters, to inform white suburbanites that Turnipseed was a member of the NAACP.[8] He also sent out last-minute letters from Senator Thurmond telling voters that Turnipseed would disarm the United States, and turn it over to liberals and Communists.[9] At a press briefing, Atwater planted a fake reporter who rose and said, “We understand that Turnipseed has had psychiatric treatment”.
The censoring in this one is something I had to add myself.
- Atwater: Y’all don’t quote me on this. You start out in 1954 by saying, “Ner, ner, ner". By 1968, you can’t say "ner”—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.
And the fucking cherry on the top. Things are going bad for me so now I realize that other people matter.
- In a June 28, 1990, letter to Tom Turnipseed, he stated, “It is very important to me that I let you know that out of everything that has happened in my career, one of the low points remains the so-called ‘jumper cable’ episode”, adding, “My illness has taught me something about the nature of humanity, love, brotherhood, and relationships that I never understood, and probably never would have. So, from that standpoint, there is some truth and good in everything.”
Four years of Trump did so much damage to our nation. We were already not doing great.
Yeah, the racists aren’t afraid anymore. For a while, people (mostly) weren’t in your face with the racism. Racism definitely still happened, but it usually wasn’t overt. It was the slow, quiet, insidious type of racism. The manager who takes over a department, and slowly makes all the black people quit one at a time. The HOA president that only cites houses owned by BIPOC. The police getting called because a black person went for a jog, and that’s somehow “suspicious”. The loan officer increasing interest rates for black families looking to buy a home. 12 year old kids being treated as adults by the legal system, and grown adults being talked down to like children.
It’s all still very damaging, but it’s hard for any one person to prove, so the racist is allowed to continue doing it. It’s the type of stuff that requires months or even years of paperwork in order to establish a pattern of behavior. The type of stuff that is so spread out that no single person has enough evidence to prove, even when they’ve all been harmed by it.
All of those covert forms of racism still happen, but it also includes all of the overt racism now. We have legislators who have incorporated racism directly into their campaign promises. We have nazis holding rallies and recruitment drives. America is not okay right now, and it’s going to take a lot more than one or two election cycles to fix things.
I feel like Malcolm X was right and it really would behoove us Americans of the melanated type to just go start our own country.
Maybe I’m right and Texas is special. While the rest of the US is more subtle about it but still have it.
this isn’t wrong; I’ve lived all over the US, but only in Texas did I see blatant outright racism time and time again explained as “well that’s just the way we are sweetie it’s not racist that’s just Texas”.
In short, Texas is crazy racist, even compared to the racism experienced throughout the US.
Remember that the reason Texas fought a war of independence was partially because of slavery. Mexico abolished slavery in 1829, and among other grievances, the Guerrero Decree was a BIG reason why Texas seceded from Mexico - slavery made Texas a hell of a lot of cash, like it did for every other Southern state.
Valid point, most texans don’t even know it was a primary pain point that drove the Texans to secede from mexico, inciting the Alamo. They certainly didn’t teach me when I was growing up there.
Texas has a unique history. Before it was part of the USA, it was it’s own nation. And before that, it was a Mexican State. The first time Texas seceded, it was from Mexico, because Mexico had banned slavery, and Texas, being run by cattle barons before it was run by oil barons, did not like that. It became it’s own independent State known as the Republic of Texas. However, the Mexican military was quick to attempt to stifle the rebellion. Texas did not really have the ability to stand on its own as a country, but the USA made them an offer to help defend Texas in exchange for being annexed into the United States. The US had not yet banned slavery, so Texas was quick to agree and join the US. Then the Mexican-American War happened.
Oh wow, I didn’t know that. Amazing.
I think it was a Trevor Noah quote, but racism is the South is explicit and direct, and racism in the north is subtle and indirect.
Maybe I’m right and Texas is special. While the rest of the US is more subtle about it but still have it.
As a general example, Texas and California are almost like their own unique countries in many ways, and are very different from each other.
In California, especially Central and Southern California, so many different peoples and cultures live together next to each other, so those kind of concerns about looks/difference and “the other” doesn’t even come into play, day to day.
Texas (with the exception of the City of Austin perhaps), are very much focused on a specific religious mindset and culture, and “the other”/different are seen through a magnifying lens.
Not trying to shit specifically on America. Racism is a worldwide problem.
It’s actually a species problem, it’s so deeply hardwired into our lizard brains, the " ‘other’ is dangerous" mindset, but it takes a lot of higher thinking to override it, not something that everyone bothers or wants to do.
I just thought America was beyond that type of super obvious discrimination.
No, we’ve always just been two countries in one geographical location. It’s just these later years that the cultural norms, the unspoken rules, have all been broken, so the truth of things are coming to the surface.
Being American Requires Conformity to an Open Mind, Open Heart, Open Society, Open Cultures, Democratic Ideals, and Mutual Respect.
None of which this Superintendent Greg Poole demonstrates.
Edit: You know what, full on fuck Superintendent Greg Poole. Rules for thee, not for me:
May 1, 2008
Key excerpts:
When Greg Poole was arrested and put in jail this past weekend, he said he was acting as a father and not as superintendent of the Barbers Hill Independent School District in Chambers County.
A Texas Department of Public Safety trooper has charged the Chambers County school superintendent with obstructing the investigation of an accident involving Poole’s 16-year-old son.
The teen flipped his father’s pickup and knocked over a utility pole about 3 a.m. Saturday on FM 565 near Cove, about 30 minutes east of Houston, authorities said.
The trooper arrested Poole for refusing to make his son available for questioning about the accident, the Texas Department of Public Safety said.
“Trooper Dunn asked him twice to produce his son, and he would not,” said Stephanie Davis, Texas Department of Public Safety spokeswoman in Beaumont. “He never informed the trooper where he could find his son.”
EDIT 2: Just to be clear, it’s not the trying to cover for his son that is the problem to look at. As a parent myself, I get trying to protect your children even if it’s poor judgement, everyone is allowed to make mistakes, child and parent alike.
What I CANNOT FUCKING ABIDE is the insane hypocrisy this fuck demonstrates through allowing exceptions to the LAWS for his child that he will defend and go to jail over, while demanding someone else’s child fall in line to school guidelines that are malleable and far less rigid in both application and enforcement than any legal criminality. RULES FOR THEE NOT FOR ME.
When you objectively consider all of the information, it looks a hell of a lot like run of the mill racial prejudice.
Kid was obviously drunk, that’s why his dad kept him from the cops, so he would have time to sober tf up for the breathalyzer.
Castrate people like this.*
*allegedly
We’re on the same page for the ‘fuck this guy’ sentiment but I don’t specifically fault him for poor judgements made while trying to protect his kid. At the very least his son left the scene of an accident, but most likely his son was driving recklessly and/or drinking (drinking is the only remotely rational reasoning as to why a parent would go so far as to go to jail to keep the kid away from police in that scenario). Parents can be irrational when it comes to protecting their kids.
I fault him for being such a piece a shit that he will publicly in-a-goddamn-full-newspaper-ad demand conformity to malleable school rules of someone else’s kids, while breaking the law himself to keep his own child from having to conform to society’s legal rules.
Look, we’d all do the same for our kids and more, you know that, it’s the hypocrisy that’s the problem obviously, but I know we already agree.
Wow, a police officer in my town did this with his wife when she crashed into my mom while leaving a liquor store at noon. She did a blood alcohol test the next day, and that ruled she wasn’t drunk at the time of the accident.
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You csn get arrested for not snitching on your own sons location?
You can get arrested for obstructing a police investigation. In this particular case, it appears that the father picked up and removed his son from the crime scene. Possibly also tampering with the crime scene. He has made himself an accessory to the crime after the fact. No different than a get-away driver for a bank robbery.
Also, I dont think holding a father responsible for the crimes of his son
The father isn’t being indicted for crashing a pickup truck. He’s being held for obstructing justice, which is an entirely different crime.
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If a minor is being protected by his legal guardian over an illegal act, yes the legal guardian has responsibility.
His son shouldn’t be on the road if he’s crashing a five-ton vehicle into a telephone pole. Hiding him in order to sober him up means putting him back out on the road to do this shit again.
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I won’t fault anyone for not wanting to turn their kid over to police over property damage
When the same guy is pulling kids out of school for their haircuts, I will absolutely fault him. This guy has no concern for anyone outside of his immediate social circle. He’s immiserating children under the pretext of conformity, while keeping his drunk-driving son on the road to potentially kill another family with his reckless behavior.
Its easy to when you already have a reason to dislike them.
The contradiction between behaviors - one that’s strictly authoritarian for “conformity” sake and the other that’s hostile to basic traffic laws - illustrates a guy who has no business operating in an administrative capacity.
Bingo. If he kicked a kid out for locs and turned his son over to the authorities with a rousing “laws were broken, and I’m not asking for mercy” speech during sentencing, then he’s just an authoritarian-loving jerk and you can respect that even if you won’t grab a drink with him.
But this guy just likes to exert his white authority over black people. Not his innocent lilly-white drunk-driving son.
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I meant using his sons fuck up as an example of him being a bad person.
That’s where everyone is going off the fucking rails in different directions from my edit.
I get trying to protect your children as a parent. I’m a father myself and can fathom a reaction of trying to protect a child to the point of going to jail over something.
You entirely missed the point yourself when you misunderstood the issue as related to him being held responsible for the crimes of his son. He committed the crime of obstruction regardless of whatever crime his son was suspected of, but that’s not even the problem here.
What I CANNOT FUCKING ABIDE is the insane hypocrisy this fuck demonstrates through allowing exceptions to the LAWS for his child that he will defend and go to jail over, while demanding someone else’s child fall in line to school guidelines that are malleable and far less rigid in both application and enforcement than any legal criminality.
This all reads like some purebred racial prejudice fully baked into governing committees remaining alive and well in pockets of Texas even close to major cities. Not that it’s that different literally everywhere else that isn’t a major metro/suburb/college town.
What’s next? All students are required to wear white skin and blonde hair to adhere to conformity?
Don’t forget blue eyes. Maybe raising your right hand straight to greet higher authority would be a great idea! /s
Maybe some kind of emblem on their coats?
That’s what the death camps will be for.
Unironicly yes.
Conformity to what? That kid’s roots are just as American, if not more so, then that of the white principal.
Sort of the joke with these “PoCs need to learn to conform!” You never seen white kids held to the beauty and wardrobe standards of their minority peers.
Kids who show up to school in blue jeans aren’t dinged for dressing informally. Kids who bleach their hair or have it curled aren’t harassed. Nobody is losing their shit over some dipshit in a dented pickup blasting “Rich Men From Richmond” on his after-market speaker system.
“Conformity” is entirely white-facing.
It’s like that dumbass has no concept of reality but what he imagines it should be like. Being American obviously doesn’t require “conformity” if you think about it for 5-10 seconds. All it requires to be American is to be born here or go through the citizenship process, literally.
The reality that all Americans should see is that we have a nation of many cultures and ideals that we are free to conform or not conform to. Freedom to be yourself is inherent in the concept of America in general, I would assume for the majority of humans in the world too.
Right wing propagandists have been pushing the message that a mixed society can’t function because we “aren’t all on the same page culturally.” This asshat is just following that line of reasoning, saying that “we all must be identical so we are all on the same page.”
Also, bring up communism just for laughs and watch as they pontificate on the myriad ways communism forces equality and how that’s bad… Fun stuff…
I am most definitely not on the same page culturally as Those People.
And by Those People I mean fat middle aged white racist pieces of shit.
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“We let you go from slavery, isn’t that enough? You should be grateful, instead you’re acting up, tsk tsk som peoples just can’t be civilized”
If you want to know why this school is so fucking awful, this is from the school district’s about page:
I guess we can make some assumptions about the school board members and funding sources.
“In Barbers Hill, student educational needs about the benefits of petrochemicals comes first!”
Ah yes, the land of the free
I still CANNOT believe he chose to phrase his justification like that.
One of the things we’re supposed to have is freedom to express ourselves however we see fit so long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else.
My parents have a huge “Fuck Joe Biden” banner on the front of their house, and the county hasn’t stepped in to be like “You can’t have a two foot tall ‘Fuck’ on public display”, and yet this guy gets in trouble for wearing his hair in a manner that’s comfy to him???
I shouldn’t be shocked because I live in Texas, however, I am. Maybe I’m not cynical enough.
are your parents black?
No, I’m white as white can be. I know that’s the reason but I’m just flabbergasted that this kind of racism can still be so blatant in 2024.
Ugh. I really do try to be the “I love humanity” person, but this story in particular just disgusts the fuck outta me.
I wish the George family would open a gofundme for legal costs because I’d kick some dollars their way in a heartbeat.
I hear you.
I honestly used to say I loved humanity. Each year and each observation of us as a species as made me grow more cynical and pessimestic regarding if most people are are “good” or not. The inability of people to not become childlike and selfish was during the beginning of covid was the final piece of evidence for me.
I genuinely believe if they made a gofundme they’d widely be accused of grifting, cause, you know, projection.
Please don’t give up on optimism, love and hope though, glad to hear some people haven’t :)
I find it hard sometimes, but I do genuinely believe that if humans have a fundamental nature, it’s a good one. I think the problem is that the system we live under punishes vulnerability and incentivises zero-sum thinking.
I used to be a real shitty person because of this. I faced a lot of ambient bullying in school, so I trained myself to always have a cutting retort ready for if someone tried to hurt me. I was still a decent person outwardly, but inside, I was turning my heart and mind to toxic sludge. Eventually I realised how nasty my internal dialogue was and it shocked me enough that I committed to try and change, but I don’t think I could’ve made the progress I have since then without the kind of community where I can learn what emotional vulnerability looks like and how to see that as a virtue.
A lot of hateful people seem pretty scared underneath it all. It doesn’t justify their hate, but it does make me feel sympathy towards them. I wonder what kind of person they could be if they had an environment where they could properly grow as a person.
Yeah 100% of everything you’re saying makes sense.
You sound likea very thoughtful person. Most people are no where near as thoughtful as you are in my experience. Also humans evolved to have a zero sum mentality as we evolved in a resource-scarce world. Now that that is changing for a certain portion of the population, we’re in no way inclined to start thinking differently. Some folks are, but most aren’t.
You’re right about fear and hostility though for sure. Don’t stop being compassionate! You’ve lifted my spirits a bit for what its worth :)
Damn, this is still happening?
Being an American requires conformity with the positive benefit of unity
???
The superintendent has lost it.
You assume he had “it” to begin with.
That ad is one of the dumbest attempts at damage control I think I’ve ever seen.
He spends more time on a soap box ranting about COVID-19 and masks then actually addressing what he’s actually in hot water about. It’s literally just “The student violated dress code standards and I’m totally not a racist, BUT LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT THE TYRANNICAL GOVERNMENT MAKING WEAR MASKS OVER THE COVID HOAX!!!”
America is about unity and conformity
Ok, wear a mask.
NOT LIKE THAT!
Don’t worry so much. It’s not like he’s in charge of educating the next generation or anything.
