by Curmie

[It turns out that Curmie and I were writing about the same issue more or less simultaneously. Shortly after I posted “The Great Stupid: Child Abuse Edition,” Curmie sent me this installment of his  periodic column, expressing concern that it was redundant. It’s not, and I’m putting up Curmie’s take for several reasons: 1) I love his writing and style; 2) he approaches the incident from some different angles than I did; 3) I believe this incident is an important one that involves many critical ethics problems: the public school disaster; hypersensitivity to racial offense, real or imagined; the indoctrination and intimidation of children; and more. The plight of J.A. is not just the metaphorical canary dying in the mine, but strong evidence of just how badly our society’s air is poisoned. It is worth more than one post. Finally, I especially want this essay read after Curmie commented recently that he disagreed with my analysis on “countless” topics. In fact, I find that his values and ethical navigation equipment are closely aligned with mine. If they weren’t, he couldn’t have dissected this story so expertly.—JM.]

***

A few days ago, I commented on Jack’s post on the high school principal in Sherman, Texas who declared that the musical Oklahoma! contains “mature adult themes, profane language, and sexual content” “would come in third place in a battle of wits with a sack of hair and an anvil.”

I hereby retract that characterization.  It appears that Sherman Principal Scott Johnson was merely a good soldier, enforcing the dictates of a superintendent and school board that can’t decide if the Victorian age was a little too permissive.  So… Johnson appears capable of giving that anvil a run for its money. 

The good news is that the international attention this case received resulted first in a decision to re-instate the original student cast but in a shortened “kids” version of the musical that would have cut the solo from Max Hightower, the trans student at the center of the controversy, and finally—when the students and parents wouldn’t accept that utterly stupid “compromise” or the notion that Oklahoma!, of all plays, ought to be bowdlerized—a return to the original version with the students the director cast.

More to the present point, when compared to Jeff Luna, the principal at Muirland Middle School in La Jolla, California, even the folks who did make the idiotic decisions that led to the kerfuffle would appear to embody all the best attributes of Solomon, Socrates, Confucius, Albert Einstein and Leonardo da Vinci rolled into one.  We do sorta know what Ado Annie means when she laments her inability to “say no,” after all.

I was about to say that what Luna did surpasses credulity, but, alas, it does not.  There are a lot of adjectives that do apply—”boneheaded,” “irrational,” and “unconstitutional” come to mind—but unfortunately “unbelievable” has no place on the list.

Last month, a Muirland 8^th-grader identified as J.A. attended a high school football game, looking like he does in the photo above.  That is, he wore eye black, just as he’s seen countless football players (and not a few baseball players) do; I won’t bother you with the literally dozens of photos of players of all races doing so.  Now, whether eye black has any direct practicality is a matter for debate.  It started as a means of keeping glare out of the eyes.  I have no idea whether it actually does that, and even if it does, it doesn’t require the amount used by J.A.  But that, of course, is irrelevant.

There’s little difference between J.A. and those fans who paint their faces red because their favorite team is the Alabama Crimson Tide or who wear “cheeseheads” to support the Green Bay Packers.  Maybe the allure is primal, maybe it’s that face-painting is linked to war paint.  But there’s no “maybe” about the fact that used as J.A. did, it’s completely and utterly harmless… not to mention the fact that, according to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), “many game attendees wore face or body paint.”

There were, of course, no incidents at the game in question, and literally no one took any offense.  That’s because most people have more than a couple of brain cells.  Not so, apparently, the Idiot Luna.  A week or so after the game, he called J.A. and his parents to a meeting, at which the boy was suspended for two days and barred from attending future athletic contests.  Why?  Because, according to the official paperwork, J.A. “painted his face black at a football game,” which qualifies as an “offensive comment, intent to harm.”  In other words, Luna would need to undergo a couple of millennia of evolution to attain the mental acumen of pond scum. 

You can read an excellent delineation of the facts in the letter from FIRE’s Director of Public Advocacy Aaron Terr.  A brief précis: 1). J.A. “emulated the style of eye black worn by many athletes.”  2). “J.A. wore his eye black throughout the game without incident.”  3). “J.A.’s non-disruptive, objectively inoffensive face paint was constitutionally protected expression.”  4). “The complete lack of disruption is unsurprising, as the sight of fans in face paint is familiar to anyone who has ever attended a football game or other sporting event.”  5). “The claim that J.A.’s face paint constituted blackface is frivolous.”  6). “Muirland Middle School has no authority to discipline J.A. for his non-disruptive, constitutionally protected display of team spirit.”

The only part of this missive with which anyone could reasonably demur even slightly is the characterization of the eye black as a display of “team spirit.”  I doubt it was necessarily that, but it was certainly inoffensive, non-disruptive, commonplace, and constitutionally protected.  Terr needs to be more polite than I do, so I’ll allow his characterization of the assertion of blackface as “frivolous,” as opposed to the more accurate “fucking ridiculous.”

But, as they say in the late-night infomercials, “Wait!  There’s more!”  The family appealed the suspension, but the appeal was denied by the San Diego Unified School District, suggesting that they, too, are cognitively impaired.  The correct response, of course, would have been to uphold the appeal and fire Luna.

Alas, the situation is worse than even FIRE suggests.  Whereas it is obvious that J.A.’s actions are utterly innocuous, and that the punishment is about three steps beyond absurd, that isn’t always the case.  Racial animus does indeed exist, and it is occasionally manifested at sporting events; there was a case less than an hour from Chez Curmie a year or so ago. 

I’m not going to get into whether expression that actually is offensive is constitutionally protected on school property.  This in an ethics blog; racism and its equivalents are unethical even if legal.  Luna and the district have demeaned all attempts to protect the Others (whoever that might be in terms of race, religion, gender identity, etc.) from harassment based simply on who they are. 

What is at play here is a variation on the Boy Who Cried Wolf.  When we accumulate enough examples of utterly inane allegations being brought by authority figures, we start to discount all such claims, even those which have merit.  J.A. and his family are bearing the brunt of this outrage, but we all suffer the consequences.

***