Pennsylvania School Officials Sent the Most Racist Texts Ever (this is where I live!)

[bbernardini]

http://gawker.com/pennsylvania-school-officials-sent-the-most-racist-text-1374006949

Ladies and gentlemen, the town where I live has gone national for all the wrong reasons. We made it to Gawker! U-S-A! U-S-A!

Quick summary: the superintendent of the school district and the high school's athletic director were exchanging multiple texts that were extremely racist on district-provided cell phones.

[madashelltoo]

1. And they want to insist

The issue with President Obama has nothing to do with race. Geese! get a clue.

[brush]

27. And just think how many . . .

black, Latino, Jewish and women's careers these two must have roadblocked over the years.

It's totally disgusting that this kind of institutionalized bigotry has been ensconced in power for years stifling careers and affecting families lives . And these two are by no means the only blatant, out-and-out racists out there in positions of power.

Post racial? Not even close to being there yet. Just think what blacks, Latinos, Jews and women are confronted with and don't even know it.

Glad these two racist jerks have been exposed.

[Warpy]

2. Couple of real floaters you got there

you know, turds that rise to the top and stink the place up.

I don't fancy their longevity. It doesn't seem too many people are as amused as they are with the level of the repartee.

[Junkdrawer]

3. My favorite comment:

GeorgeTheMan

"Texas good butt fuck while yell BEEVO lick my balls you CUNT from Gaul !!!"

Little known fact - this was Dickens's first choice for the opening line of A Tale of Two Cities. Today 7:55pm

[bluestate10]

4. Two disgusting creeps. They shouldn't have been allowed to resign, they should have

been fired with extensive public notice.

[bbernardini]

5. Technically, their resignations haven't been accepted yet.

The school board meeting at which they can be officially accepted is tomorrow night. As you can imagine, many people are demanding that they refuse the resignations and flat out fire them.

[Vanje]

9. Fire them

Have them turn in their keys and their district supplied filthy cell-phones to a uniformed security guard who will stand nearby while they empty out their desks. They put their personal belongings into a box. The guard will silently escort them, while they carry their own sad box, by themselves, from the building. The guard avoids words or eye contact as he locks the door after them.

[TreasonousBastard]

6. HOLY SHIT! I thought maybe it was just some loose words, but...

reading those texts I can't believe in this day some sick fucks like that can be school officials. That's Klan talk.

OK, yeah, I can. But now that it's out, fire the sorry bastards and let the criminal investigations continue-- from those little snippets it looked like they were talking about some nasty business going on.

[alp227]

7. Is everywhere outside of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh just crazy dumb like this?

Last edited Tue Sep 24, 2013, 12:17 PM - Edit history (1)

Hazleton: Its mayor Lou Barletta later became US House member for the district with Hazleton. He is obsessively anti-immigrant.

Gilberton: Its police chief was the crazy guy who recorded himself on video firing guns and making obscene remarks about Obama and "libtards".

Now Coatesville, one of those sleepy little towns an hour away from Philly, has bigoted high school admin?

Yikes, is this why Tom Corbett is your governor right now and why Rick Santorum got to spend a decade as Pennsylvania senator?

(PS: In summer 2010 I visited Philly and the Hershey factory, and my tour bus went through Williamsport, home of Little League Baseball!)

[OnionPatch]

10. Yes. It is.

And you will find plenty of this IN Pittsburgh and Philadelphia as well. Just not quite as much.

Too bad.....Pennsylvania is such a beautiful state and has a history to be proud of. It began as a relatively progressive colony and was also strongly anti-slavery.

[MadrasT]

12. Pretty much, yep. (n/t)

[enough]

13. Coatesville doesn't quite fit the notion of a sleepy little PA town.

Chester County is more like the western outpost of Philadelphia's sprawl, very suburban with some remaining rural areas. In 2011 Chester County was ranked the 40th wealthiest county in the US (median household income).

Chester County voted for Obama in 2008, and Romney by 500 votes in 2012. Coatesville went for Obama by about 90% both times.

Coatesville is a former steel town which now has a very large African American population in the midst of this surrounding affluence. I regularly go to the YMCA that serves Coatesville and the surrounding suburbia. The people there are very diverse by race, language, religion, age, and any other measure you might think up. And it's one place on the face of the earth where we do all get along.

I have to attest that these two school administrators to not speak for or represent this area or its people.

[msanthrope]

21. Carville had it right....Pennsylvania is Philadelphia on one side, Pittsburgh

on the other...and Tennessee in between.

[tblue37]

8. There is an interesting comment on the longer news article about the situation:

http://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/story?section=news/local&id=9257845

It's very difficult for me to even imagine that Rich Como is accused of this type of behavior as I knew the Como family and have had history with them and me being a black man makes it even more difficult . Rich's mother taught me English at General Wayne Junior High School and his dad Al was the principal at Great Valley High School which I attended . The younger brother Al Jr. ( Whom is dead due to drugs . ) was a classmate of mine . If my memory serves me correctly Rich was a quarterback for the football team at Great Valley . Al Jr. was also a prison guard at Chester County prison back in the seventies but was fired for misconduct . Also Al Como was the brother of the famous singer Perry Como.

<SNIP>

If this is accurate, that would make that racist superintendent Perry Como's nephew!

[alp227]

15. Al is Perry's brother!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/thom-nickels/why-todays-high-schools-c_b_3281431.html

[tblue37]

16. "Big Al" is the *father* of the guy making the racist comments.

Apparently he was a gym teacher, and his wife was also a teacher at the same school.

[Fumesucker]

11. Damn Southerners will always be racists

[tblue37]

17. PA is not the South.

My father was born in northeastern PA and most of his family still live in that area. His parents and a bunch of other relatives came over from Sicily in the early 20th century. I love my Sicilian relatives to pieces, and they are genuinely good people in most ways.

BUT they are die-hard Republican low-info voters, and many of the older ones are also pretty racist.

In fact, my father was a total racist--until my older sister adopted a mixed race baby. Her second child is also dark-skinned, though his bio-parents were from India. The dark skin is enough for my relatives to consider him black, too. Her kids (adults now) are members of the family, and my relatives take family very seriously, so my niece and nephew have never been treated differently by our relatives, but family gets special dispensation. Even today I think many of my older relatives would have an immediate racist response to most people with dark skin.

I don't think Dad ever completely overcame his general racism, but it was definitely softened by having a cute black grand-daughter and then a baby grand-son whose skin was even darker than hers. (My parents adored babies.)

Actually, because of his personal style (clothing, facial hair, etc.), my nephew is often assumed to be African-American by people who don't see anything but skin color. His facial features look quite Indian to me, but many people I know who have seen his pictures have assumed he is black, so I assume that happens when he meets people in person, too.

Ironically, many Italians immigrants and their kids have also been subjected to prejudice because of their darker skin tone.

ON EDIT:
Ah--I guess you are being sarcastic, since so many people assume that racism is a problem only in the South.

[kentauros]

18. I'm sure Fumesucker knows it's not just the South.

I took his post as being a dig at the other Duers here that seem to think the majority of the racism in this country comes from the South. When instances of racism are pointed out to happen in other parts of the country, specifically those deemed the "bluest", then they're just "isolated incidents", and not indicative of of "their" region, be it the NE or the NW.

I see plenty of accounts of deep-seated racism coming from Pennsylvania. Yet, it rarely generates the kind of overblown-reaction threads common around here just for South-Bashing.

[tblue37]

19. Yes--*immediately* after posting I realized that and amended my post. nt

[kentauros]

20. I didn't see your amendment right away,

because I was still writing my post

[tblue37]

22. That is what I figured.

BTW, I was born in Biloxi, Mississippi, and was raised largely in the deep South until Dad retired from the Air Force when I was almost 13, at which time we moved to the area in PA where he was born. We did spend a little time at Lackland AFB in California, but for the most part, I spent my childhood in the deep South, so I am also a Southerner in many ways. I don't take the comments about Southern racism personally, though, because I know from experience that despite the racism that still contaminates all parts of the country--including the "northerest" parts of the North, the South is still the place where the roots of racism grow deepest and strongest. It has been mitigated, thank goodness, by education and by the movement of more liberal minded people to the South in search of jobs. But even as a Southerner, I won't deny that as bad as it is all through the US, racism is generally worse in the South.

I don't think those who complain about Florida or Texas or the South in general are aiming their attacks at everyone in those places. They know we liberals are there, too. But they also know that the other tendencies are in the ascendancy in those places.

I have lived in Kansas since 1970, and though my city, Lawrence, is an island of blue in a sea of red, and I am very far left, I am not offended when DU posters comment on the political outrageousness of Kansas in general. I know they don't mean me or other liberals like me.

[kentauros]

23. While the majority here don't broadbrush whole regions,

I've argued with far too many that do indeed think all people in the South are racist. They've had one or two lifetime incidents happen to them, and so the broadbrushes come out, and we're all guilty. Just watch the comments the next time one of our idiot reps speaks of secession.

I'm a native Texan, so I know firsthand the hate from my "fellow" Duers, thanks to Dumbya and Parry. Hopefully, we'll be able to vote in and I'll be able to say "Governor Wendy Davis" sometime late next year

Is there a Lackland AFB in California, too? I know of the one in San Antonio (due to mistakenly spending 6 weeks there in 1985) as that's the only training center for the AF. Had I not gotten injured in training, I might have actually remained in it. I do sometimes wonder if I would have remained liberal, though...

[Donald Ian Rankin]

28. Now there's a strikingly hypocritical observation... N.T.

[Fumesucker]

29. Not a connoisseur of irony, eh?

[jsr]

14. Good thing they have been unmasked.

[sufrommich]

24. I'm glad to see the community is demanding

they be fired as opposed to letting them resign. That's the only positive about this.

[bbernardini]

25. School board meeting is streaming here:

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/daily-local-news

Audience comment time right now. Apparently they had to turn people away because the auditorium was packed.

[lunasun]

26. good bring this out in the open where it should be