A Pennsylvania school district punished a youth wrestling coach after he called two black males "thugs" after he saw them in a video allegedly assaulting a special-needs student. (Image source: KDKA-TV videos screenshot)
What went down?
A Pennsylvania youth wrestling coach called two black males “thugs” on Facebook after watching a video of them allegedly assaulting a teenager with special learning needs.
A video shows the victim being kicked in the back and knocked to the ground.
Ringgold High School football players Dezmier Alize Majors and Tyrese Lamont Youngblood — both 18 and seniors — were charged last month with simple assault against a younger player on the team, the Observer-Reporter said.
How did the district react to the coach’s comments?
Doug Conroy — the white wrestling coach who made the “thugs” comment — received a letter from school district Superintendent Karen Polkabla saying his words “about Ringgold students” were “inappropriate and racist,” the paper reported.
So the district banned Conroy’s wrestlers — the Little Rams, consisting of kindergartners through sixth-graders — from using the high school’s facilities until he’s out as coach, the Observer-Reporter added.
Polkabla on Wednesday didn’t immediately respond to TheBlaze’s request for comment.
How did the coach respond to the ban?
Conroy stepped aside from his volunteer position so the program could continue and fight the district’s ruling, the paper said — but he’s not being quiet about it.
What else did Conroy say?
Conroy told KDKA-TV he also said as part of his Facebook comments that the males who carried out the attack “deserve what punishment was coming their way.”
Conroy added to the station that a “woman who claims to be the aunt of the man I was speaking of said I had come up with a creative way to call her nephew the N-word.”
“I’ve been labeled a racist and a homophobe, all from the word ‘thug,’” Conroy told WPXI-TV.
“I have coached for six years young athletes — every race, religion, creed, social background — and never once have I been accused of anything like that,” he added to WPXI.
“The fact that someone took what I said out of context, viewed it as offensive and tied a color to it is ridiculous to me,” Conroy also told WPXI.
“I feel the district may have come to a knee-jerk conclusion regarding this matter and sent that letter hastily,” he added to the Observer-Reporter.
He told KDKA that the district’s decision came without a board meeting or hearing, and that it ends up being a “punishment” for the 60 kids in the wrestling club.
But he added to the Observer-Reporter that he “will in no way jeopardize a program that serves the youth of our district. Until we resolve this issue, I am no longer a coach or board member.”
Conroy added to KDKA, however, that he has support from the community through a letter-writing campaign to the superintendent and phone calls to the district.
The paper said Conroy plans to speak to the school board at its next meeting, which is Oct. 25.
What else do we know about the football players charged in the attack?
Majors is listed on the team roster as a 6-4, 220-pound tight end, the paper said in an earlier story, and Youngblood is a 6-1, 220-pound running back.
Youngblood also was charged with harassment in addition to his simple assault charge from the Sept. 13 incident, the Observer-Reporter said.
Both Youngblood and Majors have a preliminary hearing Oct. 19, the paper added.
Here’s how the Observer-Reporter described the attack:
Video surveillance at Ringgold High School reportedly shows a member of its football team running about 10 feet before leaping and kicking another player from behind, causing him to fall face-first on asphalt pavement.
Dezmier Alize Majors allegedly kicked Roderick Wilson Jr. in the back with his right foot, hitting him at the base of his neck and propelling him forward at the gate to Joe Montana Stadium following a football practice Sept. 13, the district’s police chief stated in court records.
“The victim did not see or know the accused was coming at him,” district police Chief Clayton Shell stated in court records.
Shortly before that incident at 1 Ram Drive in Carroll Township, the surveillance shows Wilson, 16, of Donora, running out of the locker room being chased by teammate Tyrese Lamont Youngblood, police said.
Youngblood also is shown in the video grabbing Wilson, punching him once in the stomach and kneeing him in the stomach before running back into the team locker room, police allege in an affidavit supporting charges against Youngblood.
What did the father of the assaulted player tell the board after the attack?
“What was done to my kid was a travesty!” Roderick Wilson told the board last month, WXPI-TV reported in a separate story. “He didn’t even see some of the hits coming.”
The victim didn’t tell anyone because he was “afraid,” Wilson told the station, adding that “his teammates told him, ‘Don’t snitch.'”
How did the board respond to the father’s complaints?
One member read a brief statement, WXPI reported: “The Ringgold police and the administration immediately investigated this matter and filed the appropriate criminal charges.”
Keep these in mind as you contemplate the direction of the American government over the past 50 years and especially since the Obama election.
The Goals of Communism
(as read into the congressional record January 10, 1963, from "The Naked Communist" by Cleon Skousen)
1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.
2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.
3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament of the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.
4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.
5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.
6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.
7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.
8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev's promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.
9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.
10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.
11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)
12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.
13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.
14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.
15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.
16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.
17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
18. Gain control of all student newspapers.
19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.
20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.
21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.
22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms."
23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. "Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art."
24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them "censorship" and a violation of free speech and free press.
25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as "normal, natural, healthy."
27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a "religious crutch."
28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state."
29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.
30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the "common man."
31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the "big picture." Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.
32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture--education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.
33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.
34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.
36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.
37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.
38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand.
39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.
40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.
41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.
42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use united force to solve economic, political or social problems.
43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.
44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.
45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction over nations and individuals alike.
No comments:
Post a Comment