Categorized | Crime, Domestic Affairs, Human Rights, I'm lazy
Kids and Mob Mentality
by kellygrrrl
Posted on 26 November 2009 | 5:28 pm 
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What do you get when you combine middle school aged children with social network sites like Facebook and MySpace: A recipe for disaster. Facebook declared last Thursday “Kick a Ginger Day,” leading to countless mob assaults on fellow students. This incident is one year to the day of a similar mob attack in Canada.
This is the second time in less than a month that Calabasas has made national headlines for the bad behavior of spoiled children with little or no guidance or values in their own lives, following the arrests of 5 teens infamously known now as the “Burglar Bunch.”
Los Angeles County sheriff’s detectives are investigating an assault on a 12-year-old middle school boy in Calabasas who may have been targeted after a Facebook group urged students to beat up redheads, a sheriff’s official said today.
The boy was kicked and hit in two separate incidents on the campus of A.E. Wright Middle School in Calabasas by as many as 14 of his classmates, Lt. Richard Erickson said. The students who participated in the attack may have been motivated by a Facebook message telling them that Nov. 20 was “Kick a Ginger Day.”
The Calabasas case has raised awareness to this mob violence, but it’s nothing new. This boy just happened to report the abuse. Most students do not ever tell anyone when they are the victim. “Many of the new victims came forward amid the publicity surrounding the bizarre attacks, authorities said.”
At least four redhaired girls and three boys are believed to have been victims of the so-called ginger attacks at a Calabasas middle school that authorities say were inspired by a Facebook message, a Los Angeles County sheriff’s investigation has revealed.
The seven victims were targeted in a series of assaults at or near A.E. Wright Middle School that began early Friday after the perpetrators acted on a Facebook message that informed them it was “Kick a Ginger Day,” authorities said. Ginger is a label given to people with red hair, freckles and fair skin
My daughter attends the high school to which A.E. Wright Middle School feeds, and explained that this has been going on all year, and several students have been assaulted. The “Kick a Ginger Day” was so worrisome for many students, that many stayed home from school that day. She was not shocked to hear of what was happening in the middle schools, though what she had witnessed in the high school seemed tame in comparison. In the few short months of this first school quarter, they have seen physical assaults on blondes and Jews.
Last week in Florida, ten middle school children were given a one-day suspension for physically assaulting Jewish students on “Kick a Jew Day,” another brilliant idea taken viral on the Facebook website.
“Kids pretended to kick her, and later at lunch, they actually kicked her. Apparently, many kids, all Jewish, were kicked. I was furious and attempted to call the parents of the girl who initiated this hatred,” one parent wrote.
“You are talking about an incident that has anti-Jewish bias, if not anti-Semitism,” Jewish Community Online quoted David Barkey of the Florida Anti-Defamation League. “You have Jewish students being singled out, harassed and assaulted. … If the allegations are true, it is possible these students violated Florida’s new anti-bullying law. And, if students were physically assaulted, it could rise to the level of criminal conduct.”
Discrmination is Discrimination, whether it is directed at someone because of their race, religion or sexual orientation.
It’s difficult to express upon these young minds the error of their ways when they are bombarded with images of adults behaving with the same vile mob mentality, like these Teabaggers at a recent town hall meeting who taunted and teased a woman as she shared the story of the loss of her daughter-in-law and unborn grandchild due to lack of health care.
The Teabaggers were in the news almost daily over the summer with similar displays of cold-hearted behavior.
How do we impress tolerance and mutual respect upon these young minds when they see and hear adults racially discriminating against the President of the United States? How do we impress upon the parents the need to monitor children on the internet? Why are all of these kids from this affluent community so cold and detached from humanity and common decency? One wonders what these children actually see and hear in the privacy of their own homes from their own role models.
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Appalling. I echo everything folks have said and I esp. blame the parents for this utter lack of responsibility, civility, decency, and morality. Money doesn’t buy everything and it doesn’t buy values. A one-day suspension is effin’ lame.
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November 27th, 2009 at 5:58 pm
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Money buys laptops and teevees and video games — aka electric babysitters — which seems to be the priority for too many parents
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November 27th, 2009 at 6:07 pm
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Yes, you’re right (and the electronic babysitters keep the kids indoors, instead of outside, playing, finding ways to amuse themselves instead of having something do it for them….that’s a whole other story…).
Plus, given the content of video games and teevees, lord knows what you can find on the internet…… it’s no wonder some of these kids are screwed up.
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November 27th, 2009 at 6:23 pm
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yup, God forbid the children burn off a calorie or two.
I think this whole thing of keeping the kids “indoors” and safe happened over the past 20 years as parents became fearful of ’stranger danger’ — also, both parents working and kids home alone, staying indoors became the rule.
guess people didn’t anticipate just how much “stranger danger” was right there at their fingertips in the safety of their own room.
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November 27th, 2009 at 6:25 pm
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or labeled ADD!
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November 27th, 2009 at 6:34 pm
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Because they don’t get an outlet for all that energy. Precisely.
My brother and I had 15 acres to run around in & all the imagination you could ask for. And when my sister brought her three out on weekends, Lord we had fun.
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A one day suspension? Those kids got off pretty lightly.
My little guy was pretending to stick an imaginary sword at a kid, a game they’d been playing at recess & carried over into the line up to go back in the classroom. Since he “wasn’t keeping his hands to himself” he was denied recess for the rest of the week ~ 4 days. That irritated me, but the teacher felt she had to back up her instructions that the kids not touch each other in line. These are 7 yr olds, mind you. Arghh. There is zero tolerance in our school district. I can’t imagine what would happen if a kid participated in “Kick a Jew or Ginger” Day. Certainly more than a one day suspension.
I can’t understand how kids could think this was OK. Ultimately the parents are responsible, except in the cases of those who have mental/emotional issues (anti-social disorders, for example).
I feel so sorry for the kids who were attacked… makes my heart ache.
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November 27th, 2009 at 5:59 pm
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can you imagine how it would feel to learn your child had even joined this “group” on Facebook, much less participated in the physical assaults.
i was shocked when my daughter told me some of the names of kids who participated. never in my wildest dreams would I have suspected a few of the kids.
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November 27th, 2009 at 6:08 pm
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Mob mentality at work. I’d feel sick if I found out my daughter joined something like this…
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Facebook issued a statement saying that they are so ginormous that they rely on their members to police the site and report abuse.
Then they basically threw it to the parents, imploring them to monitor minors’ online activity.
While I agree that the parents need to take responsibility, I have a hard time understanding how Facebook could not have been monitoring the Kick a Ginger situation, since the exact same thing happened last year, to the day, in Canada, and Facebook was heavily implicated in that situation. Last year in Canada, Facebook tried to shift the blame to the Southpark episode.
At some point, these websites are responsible for what is going on, and in this instance, Facebook should have anticipated this.
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November 27th, 2009 at 3:16 pm
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They surely have some kind of search engine they could run once a week or so that would pick up naughty words.
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Apparently the 12 y/o boy was immediately jumped by a group of 7th and 8th graders right when he got dropped off in the morning. He was lying on the ground being kicked and stomped and could still see his father’s car in the parking lot headed to the driveway.
he was jumped again at morning nutrition break, and went to the office. He had to be cajoled into telling the staff what had happened to him. He tried to say he didn’t feel good and wanted to call him mom to pick him up.
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November 27th, 2009 at 12:38 pm
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That makes me want to cry.
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November 27th, 2009 at 6:00 pm
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me too
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So very sad…what will become of them as they grow into adults? Is this the future of the Republican party?
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November 27th, 2009 at 10:34 am
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I doubt it. Most of them will turn out semi-decent … but a few, like the boy at AE Wright who planned the assaults, and got others jacked up, he’s probably gonna be a disaster.
My daughter tells me he’s a life-long bully. Wouldn’t be surprised to hear he learned those skills at home.
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November 27th, 2009 at 10:42 am
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He learned them somewhere… I wonder what his parent’s reactions were…
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November 27th, 2009 at 6:00 pm
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I’ll try to get the 411 on any punishment from my daughter. Will let you know.
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November 27th, 2009 at 6:19 pm
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Yes – that’d be interesting to know!
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This kind of behavior nauseates me…and makes me furious beyond words. That won’t stop me, however, from saying a few.
I place the first level of blame squarely on the parents of these students for not monitoring what their children are doing in their real lives and in their on-line lives. The first and easiest step in this is to move computers out of bedrooms and into family areas. The next step is to install blockers if it even vaguely appears necessary. Parenting is not a part time job, and defending bad behavior does NOT help the child recognize realistic boundries and the rights of others.
I also place a ton of blame on Facebook and other “social” networks which also allow such things to be posted. If they even vaguely threatened to close the accounts of those who have posted such things, and then publically closed a few, such behavior would likely drop off markedly.
I toss a few rotten tomatoes at schools who do not enforce anti-bullying laws because of the fear of parental confrontations. ALL students have the right to expect civilized behavior in schools and pretending not to see infractions of basic civil rights is flat out wrong.
And not least, I blame the instigators of these horrors. They are exhibiting psychopathic tendencies and need to learn civilized behavior or be treated like to sociopaths they seem to be becoming.
I have exactly ZERO tolerance for bullies and bullying behavior, and I don’t care about the age of the miscreant. I think our society has gone in the wrong direction in coddling those who harm and/or threaten others just because of their ages.
We are treading in various dangerous waters here…and I could tell stories of middle school behavior that would scare any reasonable person half to death.
Sorry for the rant…but this plain out infuriates me beyond rationality.
Thank you, Kel, for bringing this forward…
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November 26th, 2009 at 10:12 pm
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Well said, MsDoc. This story infuriates me as well. I just don’t understand this type of behavior and why it is allowed to go unchecked from the “adult” supervisors, whomever they may be.
Is this a case of “not my kid” and yet…? I don’t know.
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November 27th, 2009 at 10:18 am
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Rant on, msdoc. It should infuriate every one of us. The real problem here (and Calabasas) is the lack of parenting.
these adults are so self-absorbed, and they truly believe that living in an affluent community with Blue Ribbon schools is the extent of their responsibility.
Wonder how many more middle schoolers here are getting their own personal laptop this holiday season, so they too can join the Discrimination Parties on social network sites, while their parents cluelessly go about their own lives.
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November 27th, 2009 at 10:19 am
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I agree with you, 100%, MsDoc. I would also add that the schools need to have hall monitors. The teachers need to be involved. I know it is hard on the faculty, blah , blah, blah, but evidently no one feels safe enough to complain.
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November 27th, 2009 at 10:24 am
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Most schools have hall monitors and teachers generally stand in the hall to greet their classes…at least in my inner city world we did. The problems usually happen in the bathrooms or stairwells or other semi-isolated places. You also have to remember that many schools are understaffed due to budgt cuts.
No one likes to work in an environment where the onus of potential violence is always in the air.
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November 27th, 2009 at 10:25 am
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November 27th, 2009 at 10:45 am
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Maybe we should tell them some stories…
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November 27th, 2009 at 11:20 am
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the gang-rape on the high school campus last month in No. CA. was more than enough “story” for me.
I’ve seen how mean middle-schoolers are … most of them seem to get a grip on themselves in high school … but not all.
What troubles me most is that every kid seems in fear of reporting anything they witness.
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November 27th, 2009 at 10:52 am
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Budget cuts are inexcusable, but yeah I know. I remember only too well the bullies and how they lurked in the bathroom. When I was in 1st grade I hit one over the head with my lunchbox for pushing my head into a water fountain. Fortunately we had a principal who kew the score. So many teachers have too much on them, now. Truly it is difficult to know what to do.
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November 27th, 2009 at 11:05 am
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It is not at all difficult to know what to do. The trouble is in doing it.
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November 27th, 2009 at 11:15 am
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most parents claim they simply do not have the time to monitor — I find that hard to believe
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November 27th, 2009 at 11:34 am
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with classes beyond capacity, 45-50 students in each high school class this year, it’s easy to understand how some of this stuff slips by a teacher’s radar.
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