Tuesday, May 03, 2016
There are some things you must not say, even in satire
A satirical essay by a North County High School student that calls for the destruction of black people is stirring student and community outrage.
In the Advanced Placement Language class at the Glen Burnie school, a teacher assigned students to write a satirical essay modeled after a 1729 essay mocking heartless attitudes toward the less fortunate. "A Modest Proposal" by Jonathan Swift asserted, satirically, that poor people should sell their babies to the rich as food.
One student's satirical essay for the assignment described blacks as "single-parent households, welfare recipients, unemployed citizens..." The essay calls for a nuclear missile to "wipe the cesspool of filth some call a 'race' from the earth."
The essay quickly circulated on social media, with some commenters accusing the student of racism and others defending the satirical intent of the assignment. Anne Arundel County Public Schools spokesman Bob Mosier said he did not know who first posted the essay.
North County Principal Julie Cares sent a letter to parents Tuesday explaining the assignment and said the student's essay was "ill-advised and insensitive."
On April 7, the student whose name is on the essay posted on his Twitter account "TO WHOEVER READ THE PAPER: I do not mean anything in it. I wrote it as a parody for an English assignment, and I apologize for it."
Mosier said the school system sent administrators and counselors Wednesday to help students work through their concerns and anger.
SOURCE
That there was a considerable element of truth in the essay was probably behind much of the heartburn
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
5 comments:
Meanwhile equivalent language by blacks and Hispanics is acceptable? Sorry but would is good for one is good for all. They bang on about white privilege but ignore race privilege. Bloody hypocrites.
The entire point of the assignment has been lost. The idea behind swift's original essay was the 2nd class nature of the Irish under British law. A much better satire would have been to advise the African-American citizens of this country to sell themselves back into slavery to avoid the burdens of being responsible for their own decisions. Then the student could have at least demonstrated his grasp of the concept of satire.
One of my favorite quotes comes from E. B. White:
"Humor plays close to the big, hot fire, which is the truth, and the reader feels the heat."
This is exactly what good satire does. Judging from the reaction of the burned, he nailed it.
Stoud liberals think they have special privlages over the rest of us birds sitting lower of the roost
Slavery was supported by demacrats the Dems founded the KKK a republican President(Lincoln) ended it
Post a Comment