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Notes -
Earlier today I started doing a writeup on these events after seeing headlines to the effect of, "box knife used to carve racial slur into flesh of college student." My first thought was "if it's not a straight up hoax, then it may be the most unambiguously racist crime I've ever heard of." But I ended up abandoning the post because I couldn't figure out what to say beyond "I'd like to say 'wait and see' but I kind of doubt we'll ever see."
Reading between the lines, it seems like the actual events were: two college kids who were friends got up to some shenanigans with a sharp object, including writing "the N-word" on the chest of the black friend. The writing is variously described as "scratching," "cutting," and "carving," depending on who is talking about it, and the implement is variously described as plastic, ceramic, a box cutter, a box knife... no pictures of the implement or actual slur appear in evidence. Some upperclassmen reported these shenanigans to their coaches, who kicked both the perpetrator and the "victim" off the team.
To carve a legible word into someone's flesh requires either dramatically overpowering strength, a gang of lackeys holding the victim down, or the cooperation of the victim. The victim also was apparently not the one to report the events, though the victim's family is quite upset about the whole thing. So my best guess is that the two friends decided to do something edgy together, or maybe the victim is easily suggestible for some reason. But of course the whole story now is about racism instead of about the general foolishness one gets when young athletic males are gathered together with no purpose but to "have some fun." And not just any racism, but "carving the N-word into the flesh" of the victim! Now that's a headline to sell some papers! Nuanced discussion of how racial slurs have become one of very few kinds of language young people can use to genuinely shock and disturb, such that most utterances of racial slurs are probably disconnected from actual racism (of the "race X is inherently superior to race Y" variety), is right out.
Now, for all I know the perpetrator is 6'7" and can bench press a horse, while the victim is 5'5" and 100lbs. soaking wet, and the perpetrator is a Good Old Boy who always wanted his own scarified slave or something, and this was every bit as horrific as the headlines imply. But I don't know, and I doubt I ever will, and as long as no one really knows, we can all just tell ourselves whatever story we want to tell ourselves about how these events totally reinforce all our existing beliefs and biases.
Hopefully you can see how that's not a tangent at all, despite me not commenting on the exhausting superposition of "gravesites" which are probably mostly not gravesites. But so long as they might be, well, then there is money to be made and power to be grabbed by peddling a narrative. The story is more useful--arguably to both proponents and opponents--as long as it remains uncertain.
Truth is the only casualty, and who (but the occasional Internet autist) cares about that?
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