My frustration is the bigotry and prejudice that’s taking place at my school.
Certainly in my own year, but also in others, there’s this typical ‘adolescent boy’ culture that dominates (the school’s all-boys for my year and all the earlier years than mine).
Girls are sluts (some teachers too, apparently) or ugly and therefore near-worthless pieces of meat whose meagre worth is exactly and only their sexual worth (if they’re ‘fit’—if not, they can just die). It’s cool to make racist jokes because ‘It’s just a joke and we [kids of different races] have an understanding’. It’s cool to pick on people for their height. It’s cool to express bigotry towards people based on their size. It’s cool to act like drunken louts, vandalising and being rowdy. It’s cool to actually get drunk at the weekends and act like one’s not only not even sapient but to act lower than any fucking ‘animal’ possibly could. It’s cool to make fun of people with Down’s syndrome and use it as an insult along with ‘retarded’. It’s cool to disrupt lessons intentionally…just ‘cause, y’know? Chinks all look the same. Blonds are dumb. Gingers are subhuman. Being a bender or a faggot or a homo is the worst possible thing anyone could ever experience. It’s still funny to make fun of Indian accents. Heck, it’s funny in general to make jokes about immigrants and people who aren’t white. But remember that the BNP are bigots—they’re different from us. We’re good people. We don’t deny the Holocaust. Although we do say that Jews are dirty or imply their inferiority. And maybe we did make that ‘Jews in an ashtray’ joke. And, I suppose, that ‘Jews in an oven’ joke. And maybe some gas chamber jokes. Rape’s a joke and girls are ‘asking for it’ if they wear short skirts…
That mentality is mainstream in my year. But it’s nothing surprising and nothing original. What’s most disturbing is that not only does this take place just between the boys, but that it’s thinly veiled and done in front of teachers, who do nothing. Some teachers are apparently so spineless that they’ve learned to tune it out; apparently they don’t hear when kids are shouting this shit in class, calling each other ‘gay’, or ‘retarded’ or laughing when a brown person comes up in a video. All this at ‘one of the best state schools in the country’, whose alumni ‘will be tomorrow’s leaders’.
The Rugby captain and other popular kids walk all over my registration group teacher, so I went to the person next up in the pecking order about this—the person in charge of our year. He told me to note it down over the course of two weeks. Of course, a lot of this requires one to be there to understand, so I only took down the most obvious things (such as one kid seeing a kid in another year and jeering, ‘Ha ha! You’re black!’). I reported back to him and apparently he spoke to the people I told him about. I didn’t hear any talk about it though amongst ‘my peers’, and the same people continue doing it. The school claims to ‘take racism very seriously’, and that ‘If any member of the school is racist they will be expelled immediately.’ And yet, these kids have outright said to each other that they know they have nothing to fear from this because it’s a complete fucking lie. Just like how ‘all racial incidents that come to the school’s attention have to be reported to the borough’.
So I’m continuing with reporting. In all honesty, the person I’ve been reporting to hasn’t done much so far, and I wouldn’t be surprised if I end up having to submit a report to council myself if nobody else takes it seriously enough; the school’s seeming ever more full of shit on this. If this weren’t in school but were at work or anywhere in the general public, these trash would be taken the fuck out for racism, sexism, sexual harassment, general harassment and anti-Semitism. Maybe also for bigotry towards the mentally impaired. Definitely not for sizeism or rape apologism or any of the ‘subtle’ discrimination, since people of this kind are exactly the ones that stop society from outlawing this shit. The people on the receiving end have been conditioned to accept it or, in the more ‘subtle’ cases, not even recognize it. If this escalates, I’ll probably be ‘found out’ and targeted and I wouldn’t be surprised if I were assaulted or cornered or threatened.
Bleagh.
That’s my frustration!