There’s a partial link to a newspaper article visible in the screenshot.

This seems to be the full link: https://eu.oklahoman.com/story/news/2024/09/19/tishomingo-oklahoma-students-disciplined-after-racial-slur-shown-in-viral-image/75294249007/

I am not defending anything, I am merely saying that teenagers are stupid and that eventhough this is racist, it might have been born from stupidity rather than racism, because that’s what teenagers boys often do. It is not an excuse, but a different view point. The reasons matter. A stupid teenager making a stupid mistake is different from a grown adult trying to purposefully hurt people because of some misguided hate or something. And a punishment should be manufactured accordingly.

I hadn’t read the article before, but it states that the school provided these scrabble letter to all students as some kind of school spirit stunt. Therefor I can imagine that these boys thought it would be funny to spell “nigger”, a spur of the moment thought, not thinking about any consequences. They took a picture, posted it on the Internet, because that’s what teenagers do these days and the rest is history.

They did put it online and it being shared is therfor an obvious result. I don’t know if it’s a fitting punishment though. Maybe these kids are actual scum and they just enjoy the attention. Maybe these kids aren’t that bad, just immensely stupid and they never intended it to go viral and are regretting their decision now. Maybe that is a fitting punishment. But it’s dangerous if it goes so viral that people with strong opinions decide to take matters in their own hand. The person from the doesn’t seem to be involved with the school(but that’s an assumption on my part). That’s the kind of different viewpoint I wanted to offer. Don’t get too angry over this. This is a problem to be solved by the school, the parents and the people involved, not a national witch Hunt.