Over the weekend, a photo of six smiling Desert Vista High School students dressed in black shirts emblazoned with gold letters as they arranged to spell a racial slur, surfaced on the internet. The viral image sparked nationwide headlines and responses on social media. We’Ced reporters discussed the incident and the aftermath. Below are their reflections.
Back in June, while announcing his presidential candidacy, Donald Trump made divisive comments regarding Mexican immigrants. He voiced his concerns that the United States had become a “dumping ground for everyone else’s problems” and that Mexico was “bringing drugs, and bringing crime, and their rapists.”
If signed, the California Racial Mascot Act would ban the use of "Redskin" as a school mascot name. Currently four high schools in California still use what many call a Native American slur as their school mascot. Three of the four high schools--Gustine, Tulare and Chowchilla--are located in the Central Valley.
Organizers and community members gathered in Merced on June 24th to pay homage to the nine African-American victims killed at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church in Charleston, South Carolina. Organized in conjunction with Live Free Merced and Mt. Pisgah, the local AME church, the event brought together about 60 people.
We’Ced youth journalists recently spent time discussing the massacre at the Emanuel African African Methodist Episcopalian Church in downtown Charleston, which had a white shooter killing nine African-Americans. Many We’Ced members expressed outrage at the actions of the shooter, but the conversation soon began to circle around another issue: gun control. The tragic violence of this incident rekindled questions about how we regulate guns and guns access in our country.
This incident has again raised the issue of racism into the national spotlight. We'Ced took time to reflect and think: Do we see this type of behavior in other places of our lives? Sterling had a reputation for being a slumlord for many years prior to the tape leaks, why are we more fascinated by racist words than racist actions?