High Schooler Dresses up as KKK member for Halloween

[tarheeljks]

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In this case, they're effectively preventing them from doing something that does absolutely no harm beyond making someone think that they're acting in poor taste. The next step would be to ban other costumes because they're too scary, which is kind of the whole point of halloween. Really scaring someone is worse for their psyche than offending their sensibilities.

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i see where you are coming from and agree to an extent. i'm not talking about whether they should have been sent home, although i'm not sorry that they were. i just don't see how you can say someone shouldn't be offended by the wearing of the costume given the history of the kkk. it isn't comparable to someone wearing a hockey mask and carrying a plastic knife.

[jjshabado]

I think everybody is missing the most retarded point in the in the story:

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A mother of a student, who didn't want to be identified, was so horrified she pulled her daughter out of school for the day.

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WTF? People like this should have their kids taken away from them.

As for the rest of the story, I think its pretty reasonable that a teenage black girl would be offended by someone dressing up as the KKK. I'm not offended by that stuff, but I think its a reasonable response on her part. I hope this ends with the kids apologizing for being idiots and nothing else. I hate it when schools overreact to situations like this.

[aislephive]

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I would have thought that only a KKK member would be offended by a KKK costume. Like, the point is to make fun of the KKK, no?

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even so, it's still a terrible idea to wear something like that to school. I mean, the school will obviously assume the worst, and many people will find it offensive....

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Yeah I'm the wrong one to speak on this subject. I don't think that rules should be made by stupid people, and I think it takes a good deal of stupidity to be offended by any costume.

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I disagree with this. It's basically saying you have to be dumb to be offended at all more or less, because if you think being offended by a measly "costume" is stupid, then I think you would have to expand that to words as well since on the surface they're just as harmless.

In general I think people do get offended too easily, like when a school is forced to not use the word Christmas and instead replace it with the word holiday or something because some parents decide to make a big deal over semantics.

What I don't like about this is that it's something that is obviously going to cause controversy and piss people off, and nothing good can come from it, only bad. It may not offend us typical white males, but that doesn't mean everybody else should feel that way. If I was black, I probably would be offended by something like that. Likewise, I'd be offended if somebody called me the N word in a clear derogatory manner. Anyways, people that abuse the freedom to say and do what they want tend to piss me off. A good example was the Phelps church that had all those ridiculous anti-homosexual picket signs and doing stuff like protesting at the funerals of fallen U.S. soliders, saying that they deserved to die and a whole bunch of insane things. I was extremely offended and shocked after watching this documentary on these people. Do you think it's "stupid" to be offended by that or get upset over it? They didn't use anything but words, after all.

Doing things that are so obviously in bad taste that can only be hurtful and cause controversy is wrong, IMO. Freedom of speech blah blah, stop being a [censored] douche for the hell of it, period.

[aislephive]

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In this case, they're effectively preventing them from doing something that does absolutely no harm beyond making someone think that they're acting in poor taste. The next step would be to ban other costumes because they're too scary, which is kind of the whole point of halloween. Really scaring someone is worse for their psyche than offending their sensibilities.

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It's most definitely not harmless. Stuff like that can very easily cause a riot, which could lead to several bad outcomes.

Also, I thought this part of the article was pretty humorous. Love the subtlety:

'Another student, Chris Sabourin, called the costumes "stupid" and "offensive."'

HOLD THE PRESS! SOMEBODY FOUND THIS OFFENSIVE!>!#

[hoyasnaxa]

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This happened in some small town named "Cornwall" which is in Ontario (about 4 hours or so from Toronto i believe). What on earth makes a kid think that this is okay? This just seems too ridiculous to even be true....

article

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A jewish friend of mine dressed up like hitler last year for halloween. No joke his costume was a huge hit, with people saying, OMG its hitler, kill those jews to him as he walked by. Later in the night a girl punched him in the face though.

[Iconoclastic]

It's no more offensive than the geisha/terrorist/chinaman costumes I see every Halloween.

Also, I think this case gets more attention simply because most of the KKK's victims, blacks, are currently socially untouchable.

[AntonHeat]

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KKK costume is pretty awesome imo

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[Duke]

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I would have thought that only a KKK member would be offended by a KKK costume. Like, the point is to make fun of the KKK, no?

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even so, it's still a terrible idea to wear something like that to school. I mean, the school will obviously assume the worst, and many people will find it offensive....

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Yeah I'm the wrong one to speak on this subject. I don't think that rules should be made by stupid people, and I think it takes a good deal of stupidity to be offended by any costume.

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I disagree with this. It's basically saying you have to be dumb to be offended at all more or less, because if you think being offended by a measly "costume" is stupid, then I think you would have to expand that to words as well since on the surface they're just as harmless.

In general I think people do get offended too easily, like when a school is forced to not use the word Christmas and instead replace it with the word holiday or something because some parents decide to make a big deal over semantics.

What I don't like about this is that it's something that is obviously going to cause controversy and piss people off, and nothing good can come from it, only bad. It may not offend us typical white males, but that doesn't mean everybody else should feel that way. If I was black, I probably would be offended by something like that. Likewise, I'd be offended if somebody called me the N word in a clear derogatory manner. Anyways, people that abuse the freedom to say and do what they want tend to piss me off. A good example was the Phelps church that had all those ridiculous anti-homosexual picket signs and doing stuff like protesting at the funerals of fallen U.S. soliders, saying that they deserved to die and a whole bunch of insane things. I was extremely offended and shocked after watching this documentary on these people. Do you think it's "stupid" to be offended by that or get upset over it? They didn't use anything but words, after all.

Doing things that are so obviously in bad taste that can only be hurtful and cause controversy is wrong, IMO. Freedom of speech blah blah, stop being a [censored] douche for the hell of it, period.

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Yeah, I later said that people who ever feel "offense" are stupid, so I figure that takes care of the first part.

To keep the Christmas rebuttal short, I think it's stupid too. We agree on that. I love that holiday, and don't care what it's called. It's just a name. I'd obviously like it more if the Christians hadn't bastardized (look at the pun) a perfectly good pagan holiday, but it's just a word after all.

Let's see... next paragraph. Yeah it's still stupid to be offended. No exceptions. The protestors are definitely making asses of themselves, but the price to stop them from doing that is too high.

I think it's wrong to be a jackass too. Don't hire those protestors, don't befriend them, and don't do nice things for them. I don't. I guess I think that all protestors are stupid as well.

Anyhow, the proper way to respond to a "first post" or whatever canadians call Chinese people who came over here 10,000 years ago who is making light of the slaughter of your ancestors is to dress up as "the measles."

[Duke]

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This happened in some small town named "Cornwall" which is in Ontario (about 4 hours or so from Toronto i believe). What on earth makes a kid think that this is okay? This just seems too ridiculous to even be true....

article

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A jewish friend of mine dressed up like hitler last year for halloween. No joke his costume was a huge hit, with people saying, OMG its hitler, kill those jews to him as he walked by. Later in the night a girl punched him in the face though.

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Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. --not me

[dibbs]

At my college a black guy did this and it was pretty funny, he was really outgoing and well known and was basically doing that whole Chappelle thing with it.

Some random white dude doing it probably would have got his ass beat though.