A video posted on social media over the weekend showing athletes from two North Georgia high schools using a racial slur will be exploited for all its worth by elements of a culture today that would love to paint all small Southern towns as hotbeds of adult racists-in-training.
It’s the broad brush effect used by ideological groups of all stripes to portray the majority of members of one group as having the same thoughts, ideas and tendencies as a few individual members.
But the video can become a cautionary tale of the inhumanity expressed in such slurs, of the sense of immortality found in teenagers and of the dangers inherent in social media. It also can be an opportunity for understanding and healing by members of a generation who generally did not not grow up with the racial prejudices of previous generations.
We can’t imagine what would prompt the students to take part in a brief video in which they utter a one-word racial slur. One can picture a dare, a misguided attempt at humor among friends or even elements of a rivalry between schools.
But repeating racial slurs among friends can tend to make those expressions more likely to become part of their lexicon and thus more likely to be uttered when they’re not among friends.