The primary question, before I even post anything else, is whether the coverage and outcomes of this incident are conducive to making people more or less sympathetic towards racism.
Earlier this week a video emerged of a 15 year old school boy, a Syrian refugee, being attacked on school grounds by a larger English kid of the same age (or possibly 16 depending which source you believe). The latter repeatedly demands, "What have you been saying now?" and attempts to headbutt the smaller kid but misses. He then grabs the kid round the neck, pushes him to the ground and pours water on his face saying, "I'll drown you." The smaller kid, uninjured, gets up and walks off.
When I first saw the video I thought it was pretty low. Not really the sort of welcome that places this country in a good light. I hate bullies and hoped the school would take immediate action against the boy and caution all the other kids against this kind of behaviour.
Then came the reaction, and the coverage. The news media played the video repeatedly on prime time, second only to BREXIT. Little or no background was given. The incident was framed as a racist assault and the pouring of water over the boy's face as 'waterboarding'. It was also reported as front page news in the papers where, in some cases, it is still running today.
The bully was immediately arrested by the police, attended court and was bailed pending further action. The charge is common assault with no racial motivation. The public backlash against the boy went into full swing and after social media death threats and carloads of individuals shouting outside his house he fled the country in the middle of the night with his mother.
Several Go Fund Me pages were set up for the Syrian boy and his family. The largest one has accrued over £150,000.
Large groups of Pakistanis, led by a local imam, gathered outside the school and demanded a meeting with the headmaster, which they got. The school was criticised for allowing this bullying to occur. "Schools in the area," said one protester, "need to do more to integrate refugee families.”
The imam leading the protest said of the country that saved the refugee family from almost certain death and torture in Syria; “There is a problem with the whole system, they should never have been placed here [in a white area]. There are so many other areas locally which would have been better suited to their needs and we would have been able to avoid this situation.”
It is claimed that the Syrian boy who, with his family, was rescued from the city of Homs that has been flattened by bombs and poisoned by chemical attacks, is too traumatised to return to the school.
Rumours circulating include
* The bully and the Syrian kid were friends until they had a falling out, resulting the in the altercation.
* The Syrian's arm had been broken in an earlier attack by four other (different) kids.
* The Syrian kid's sister had been subject to racist bullying the day before and her headscarf pulled off.
* The school had a history of tensions between Muslim and non-Muslim pupils, with a 13 year old white kid beaten by a gang of Muslims the week before.
The Syrian boy reportedly said, “I am very concerned about the violent comments going out on social media about the bully. I don’t want anything terrible to happen to him at all. I just don’t want anything bad to happen to anyone.”
The Syrian sounds like a decent lad and certainly doesn't come across like a trouble-maker, but the over-reaction by the media and on social platforms to what is an everyday school yard incident is, IMO, so vastly over the top I can't bring myself to care about any of those involved.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...ies-bully.html
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/785094...blames-victim/
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/...rsfield-school
via International Skeptics Forum https://ift.tt/2zxmaSS
