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Video goes viral after student is caught hurling racist insults at Black high school basketball player
January 27, 2022
A high school student in Laguna Hills, California, was caught on video making racist comments while in the stands at a basketball game Friday between Laguna Hills High School and a rival, KNX News.
The student appeared to target Portola High School player Makai Brown, who is Black, saying, “Where is his slave owner?” and “Chain him up!”
According to the Saddleback Valley Unified School District, the student who made the remarks received “immediate and appropriate consequences" but they provided no further details. A Laguna Hills assistant basketball coach was also disciplined but there were no details on that either.
Brown’s mother claimed in social media post that the team’s head coach, David Yates, and one of his assistants instigated the racist comments.
READ: Oath Keeper leader's estranged wife releases photographic evidence of his 'elaborate escape tunnels'
The OC Register reports that Portola principal John Pehrson said he did not witness racist remarks.
“Unfortunately, I didn’t see either interaction as I had just walked to another area of the gym to speak with their admin regarding some inappropriate crowd behavior of their student section,” Pehrson said. “When I returned to our player bench area the father (of the Portola player) was already being escorted out.”
KNX News reports that Brown's father was escorted from a game on Friday after getting into a verbal altercation with the unnamed assistant coach.
Laguna Hills student hurls racist slurs at player during high school basketball game | ABC7 www.youtube.com
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The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum on Wednesday countered a Tennessee school board's decision to ban the Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel Maus, directing educators to its resources for teaching about the Holocaust and warning, "It is more important than ever for students to learn this history."
"Maus has played a vital role in educating about the Holocaust through sharing detailed and personal experiences of victims and survivors."
The McMinn County school board's decision to remove Maus from its eighth grade classrooms over its depiction of the atrocities committed by the Nazis garnered national attention Wednesday—the eve of International Holocaust Remembrance Day—when The Tennessee Holler reported on the unanimous vote by the panel earlier this month.
The vote took place January 10, with school board members claiming they objected to the book's depictions of nudity—shown in the context of Holocaust victims being forced to remove their clothing in concentration camps—and "rough, objectionable language."
But writer and historian Michael Twitty urged observers to recognize "the real reason" GOP lawmakers want books like Maus banned.
"It's not cuss words/nudity," Twitty argued on social media. "It's anything that impugns the common enemy of white supremacy."
As the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum tweeted, the book, written by Art Spiegelman, whose father survived the Nazi regime's atrocities, "has played a vital role in educating about the Holocaust through sharing detailed and personal experiences of victims and survivors."
Others followed the museum's lead, including a comic book store owner in Sunnyvale, California and a podcast host who each offered to donate copies of Maus to families and libraries in McMinn County and a German Studies professor at Davidson College in North Carolina who offered a free online course on Maus for students in the county.
The ban on Maus comes as part of a wave of book banning in recent months as the Republican Party has promoted so-called "parental control" in public schools. GOP governors including Glenn Youngkin of Virginia, Greg Abbott of Texas, and Ron DeSantis of Florida have pushed the notion that parents should have more say regarding Covid-19 public health measures, the teaching of the history of racism in the U.S., and the books students read in schools.
Last week, school board members in Wentzville, Missouri voted to pull Toni Morrison's acclaimed novel The Bluest Eye from high school library shelves, against the recommendation of a review committee of local residents and school staffers who said removing the book would "infringe on the rights" of students.
The book, which tells the story of a Black girl growing up during the Great Depression, is frequently challenged or banned by school districts according to the American Library Association (ALA).
According to the organization, the push to control what books public school students have access to has ramped up in recent months amid the GOP crusade against educating students about the nation's history of racism, issues of gender, or other topics that might make right-wing ideologues uncomfortable.
"We're seeing an unprecedented volume of challenges in the fall of 2021," said Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the association's Office of Intellectual Freedom, in a statement late last year. "In my 20 years with the ALA, I can't recall a time when we had multiple challenges coming in on a daily basis."
The group recorded "155 unique censorship incidents" between June and September 2021.
Other recent cases involve a Republican mayor in Ridgeland, Mississippi who is currently attempting to pull $100,000 in school funding over the inclusion of LGBTQ-themed books in school libraries and the Texas governor, who has called for an investigation into what he called "pornographic books," citing two that simply depicted LGBTQ characters and relationships.
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GOP's Paul Gosar hijacks MLB team logos to promote a fundraiser – at a game that’s not scheduled
January 27, 2022
The reelection campaign for Rep. Paul Gosar is advertising a $1,500-per-person event at a spring training game February 27 between the Los Angeles Angels and Dodgers, complete with team logos that make it look pretty official.
But there are a couple of problems with the ad running on the conservative fundraising website Win Red. One, is that at least one of the teams -- the Angels -- is stating it has “no affiliation with this event & are working to have our marks removed from the advertisement,” Sam Blum, a sports reporter who covers the team for The Athletic tweeted last night.
The other problem might prove even more vexing for Gosar: The two teams are both scheduled to play Cactus League games on February 27 -- just not against each other. The Angels are scheduled to play the Chicago White Sox and the Dodgers square off with the San Diego Padres that day.
That detail aside, the ad features the insurrectionist Gosar grinning next to a baseball slightly largely than the size of his head. Below are the words:
“Greetings fellow Patriots. I’m looking forward to a great day at the ballpark and I’d love for you to join me.”
Gosar likes to refer to himself as “the most dangerous man in Congress.” But as his latest fundraiser suggests, he’s better just described as the strangest.
We’ve emailed the campaign contact for the event about tickets and will keep you posted.
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