Fleming senior wears racist T-shirt to school
Incident triggered fight; no criminal charges filed. He has left the school.

By BRAD SCHMIDT, The Times-Union [Jacksonville, Florida]

"What's up with your shirt?"

Those are the words a former senior at Fleming Island High School remembers hearing as he walked from his fifth-period algebra class toward the gym. The 18-year-old, who is not being identified due to his family's concerns of safety, had just taken off his Dixie Outfitter T-shirt, exposing a highly offensive shirt.

"What about it?" replied the 18-year-old, skinny and white.

"Well, you know it's racial," said a black student, now in a group confronting the 18-year-old.

"Yeah. So?"

The undershirt the white student wore had a confederate flag on the front with the words "Keep it flying." On the back, a cartoon depicted a group of hooded Klansmen standing outside a church, waving to two others who had just pulled away in a car reading "Just married."

Two black men in nooses were being dragged behind.

. . . .

The white student, who is now enrolled at a community college, said he got the shirt about a week before the incident for $10 at a flea market. He said he typically took off his shirt on the way to the gym, and on that day he didn't think about what he wore underneath.

He said he put the shirt on in the morning because he planned to wear it to a party that night with others who, like him, had enlisted in the Marines.

"I'm not racist or anything," he said. "It's just, some people I hate, some people I don't get along with. And black people just happen to be the ones because they think they're better than everyone else."

"I'm a redneck," he said. "But no, I'm not racist."

The article, for as long as it stays archived on-line, ishere.

You might be thinking that I am shocked to read things like this in this day and age. But hatred and racism are eternal, and I am resigned to the fact that I will always be reading about racists and hatemongers here in the United States of America. I am not surprised to read this. I am even more unsurprised to note that it happened in Florida, although if it had happened in Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia or Texas I would have been just as unsurprised.

Actually, what was more disturbing to me was reading about this on Fark.com, where people of all sorts leave comments (both intelligent and not so), and noticing that as many people defended it as were outraged. I guess I would like to think most Americans are more reticent about demonstrating their rabid racism but apparently not.

I cannot see the cartoon of Blacks being dragged behind a vehicle by nooses as anything but offensive. I am disappointed beyond words to think there are those who do not. I'll be they're all "devout Christians" as well.