Believe it or not, this week, a group of progressives got themselves all worked up over evidence of overt racism that turned out to be absolutely nothing of the sort.
Shocking, I know.
When, in recent memory, has anything like this ever happened? Certainly not with great and even painful frequency throughout the whole of the last horrible, painful, culturally insane decade. Not at all.
I’ll give you a moment to recover. Take a deep breath. We can get through this together.
So here’s the deal: A group of white teenagers at a Catholic high school in Chicago was the cause of much pearl-clutching this week after a video of them sitting down during a Spanish-language song at a homecoming dance went viral.
A Hispanic student claimed that the students had done this because they were, of course, irredeemably racist, as we all know that every white person who has not admitted that they’re a racist and in need of listening to learned experiences indubitably is.
However, this appears to have not been the whole story — imagine that.
It turns out that details of the dance in question have emerged that strongly indicate the kids are not, in fact, bigoted little punks. They’re just regular, equal-opportunity offender little punks who were sitting down during songs that were in English, too, because they didn’t like many of the tracks that the DJ was playing.
In fact, it was the DJ himself whose music selection was so ill-received by the fussy little youngsters who has come forward to clarify that nothing racist took place, at all.
The song that students at Marist High School in Chicago did not want to dance to at their homecoming dance on Oct. 6 was the 1997 track Payaso de Rodeo by the Mexican country music group Caballo Dorado.
I don’t know anything at all about what today’s kids are listening to, but I have a feeling that ’90s era Mexican country music is probably not super hot with the youth these days — just throwing that out there.
However, one young woman apparently took this as a sign of — what else? — virulent racism and went on social media to vent.
“You send us emails asking for pictures of our families during Hispanic Heritage Month. You hang up our banners of papel picado throughout the school. If you love our food, ethnic fashion, and energy so much … why do you resent us. How would you like it if we kneeled to your country music?” the indignant student wrote, according to the U.K.’s Daily Mail.
This is honestly an extraordinary statement in itself, as it was most likely not her peers who were mobilizing students to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month. I’m guessing literally no one would be offended if she kneeled to American country music, as the actual figure of white teenagers in Chicago who listen to country music is probably remarkably low.
The video of the supposedly racist students was originally posted to Instagram earlier this week and spread around social media with predictable speed.
High school students in Chicago kneel during a Spanish song at homecoming pic.twitter.com/2vZ1jtO7qK
— Fifty Shades of Whey (@davenewworld_2) October 12, 2021
It had all the ingredients for a cancel culture storm — and thus, one was produced.
DJ Brian Stepanek, however, who had the honor of spinning tracks for this awesome gig, said that the kids were kneeling during all kinds of songs and also danced during different Spanish-language tracks that were probably a bit more appealing to Gen Z high school students.
What do ya know?
“There were other times at this dance that the students were protesting the music being played,” he said, according to WFLD-TV. “It wasn’t related to any music genre. It was just if they didn’t like the song, they would sit down.”
“With 800 kids in attendance and only time allowed for 60 songs to be played, our DJs were constantly being heckled by the students to change up the tunes,” he told the Mail.
“Basically, the students just wanted to control our DJs to change the song at that and other times,” Stepanek said.
On Tuesday, the school also released a statement that acknowledged that the students had kneeled down during plenty of other songs as well, yet profusely apologized to the angry Hispanic students in question.
“Students showed displeasure of the songs (being played at Homecoming) by kneeling, crouching down, or sitting at multiple times throughout the dance,” administrators said in a statement, according to WFLD.
“At the outset, we acknowledge and apologize for the hurt this incident has caused our students, staff, alumni, and the many others who have expressed their feelings related to the video posted on social media,” they also said.
“Although these are the facts, we recognize there are still students at Marist who viewed this video or who were at the Homecoming dance that were hurt by these actions,” the school said.
“Marist is a family, and when one of us hurts, we all hurt,” they added.
Administrators reportedly met with several Hispanic students while a handful of the offended parties also protested at the school on Tuesday.
“The fact that there were students who left the homecoming dance hurt by what they witnessed shows us that there is work to do,” the school added in beautifully executed modern progressive penance.
What’s truly disturbing about today’s current cultural climate is that the truth doesn’t seem to matter anymore.
It’s so easy to have a knee-jerk reaction to a headline or edited clip we see circulating online. You would have thought that society learned from the Covington kids’ fiasco, but no. Even after massive, high-profile lawsuits which vindicated the most demonized of the MAGA-hat-wearing bunch of kids who got heckled by leftists protesters and became the target of a nationwide hate campaign, people are still jumping to conclusions when they’re told they’re looking at a case of racism.
And in this case, even as the accused offense has been so quickly debunked, the school fully acknowledged the truth still coddled the misguided young minds that were offended in the first place as though a racist incident did occur.
This is not only insane, it’s incredibly irresponsible.
As a mom, I know all too well that I simply cannot validate every feeling my child has, because as young, immature, irrational human beings, they will have all sorts of feelings that are erroneously founded. It’s my job to help them sort out what’s reasonable to get upset about (your brother hitting you for no reason) and what’s unrealistic to get upset about (your parents supposedly wanting to starve you because you’re denied a fourth cookie).
Now, I have elementary schoolers. Teenagers, meanwhile, are notorious both for an over-inflated sense of indignity and extreme irrationality. The school administrators, who are the adults here, are simply not responsible for soothing their unfounded sense of hurt and offense, they are responsible for overseeing their education.
In this, they seem to have failed them. Rather than correct a display of some of the toxic, anti-intellectual rhetoric on race that has so dominated our mainstream culture today, they’re fully bowing to the confused outrage of impressionable young progressives in spite of the facts that redeem their other students, who appear to have done essentially nothing wrong beyond disliking the DJ the school hired for them.
This is everything wrong with our country and the current state of race relations in a single story.
It doesn’t even matter to the progressive left whether or not racism exists. They will go out of their way to punish others for perceived racism and demand that everyone agrees with them, lest they be considered racist themselves.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
