Black Player's White Teammates In Little League World Series Putting Cotton In His Hair

Some governors want to make sure that children never understand anything related to slavery.

 

Being offended is now a sport of its own smh

 

I looked for, and failed to find, a picture of the supposedly awesome white-dyed mohawk. Kid is always wearing a hat!

 

He's the tall one. The kid is twelve and can throw 80mph

 

So should cotton no longer be grown, picked and utilized? Should we eliminate cotton and all cotton products? What about snow ? Some could say that snow conjures up thoughts and images of bodies being burned and ashes falling to the ground during the holocaust, should we eliminate snow as well as cotton?

 

The way to get past that is to understand the nation's history, acknowledge mistakes, understand why some things might be interpreted in a negative way, and listen to and respect people that are feel offended.

 

this kid should be drummed out of Little League for culturally appropriating the Pawnee hairstyle

https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/a-spiky-history-of-the-mohawk

 

I disagree. In fact, it is the events that are constantly dredged up, taught extensively in school, and people are very sensitive to offense over (like slavery and the Holocaust) that America seems to have much more trouble getting past. How much is the Holodomor or the killing fields of Cambodia talked about in school? Less than the Holocaust and slavery? Why? How come it isn't national news when a kid gets picked on for having glasses? What about the Great Leap Forward? Why are we able to move past that? More locally, what about mistreatment of the Irish and Italians. When someone says, "Thatsa spicy meatball," is there a national news story about it? Slavery has been acknowledged, no one doesn't know slavery happened. The 13th amendment was the acknowledgement of the mistake, and now it is best left in the past. Teach it the same way you teach World War I or the building of the railroads.

 

I think the media highlights incidents which makes people believe they are constantly taught and dredged up. But obviously we have incidents where people didn't know, understand how things might be taken.

It isn't a national incident when a kid gets picked on for having glasses because our nation doesn't have a history and continued experiencing, enslaving, segregating, denying housing, education, etc. for people with glasses. There isn't a significant segment of the population that believes people with glasses are more likely to be criminals, would rather just complain and get handouts than actually work, etc.

Sure slavery has been taught thus far. The Holocaust has been taught thus far. Those teachings, of course, are now threatened. The lasting effects haven't been taught extensively.

 

Seriously? Why? Well, because the USA enslaved Africans and brought them to the USA for many, many years. Because the founding fathers considered it in the documents that govern our country? Because we fought a domestic war over it that almost split the country in half? Because we have amendments that directly deal with it? Because we had separate but equal which was the law of the land according to the SCOTUS until the 1960's..... because we still have serious racial issues and most measures show that some of the oldest Americans historically (black Americans) remain behind even new immigrants on most measures of success and health.

You cannot see how that is different than The Great Leap Forward in the context of the history of the people that live in the USA?

 

This is the problem with social media and current times. All sorts of things can be easily portrayed to be a completely different scenario. The easiest scenario to portray nowadays: whites being racist. The media eats this stuff up and they know it will gain the most traction.

 

I don't think kids today are 'aware' of history as were or the teachers aren't teaching them about the south

 

@AroundTheWorld

 

It strikes me as inappropriate for older generations to be burdening a 12 year old black boy with their own racial baggage about cotton. He apparently didn't have any baggage until they gave him some. His bodily autonomy was not violated and he was not disrespected because none of the boys thought at all about the historical significance of cotton in racial politics. Now influencers on twitter want to make him feel bad about allowing stuffing to be put on his head in what had been an innocent and fun bit of team camaraderie. Reminds me a lot of my wife telling her grandmother she was mixed and her grandmother retorting that she wasn't mixed, she was black, because everyone was going to treat her like she's black. Times change, but grandmas don't.

 

I sort of admire the innocence of these kids and you can tell they are great kids having fun and not seeing color but seeing friends just from that small clip,… We as older people realize what the historic connotations are unfortunately but I do still admire the innocence and having a joy moment

 

As with everything, context is important. Clearly, the context here was not that of racism or making fun of slavery. It was literally kids being kids. But the fact that there is nothing to see here doesn't mean that there's always nothing to see.