One might think the nationwide debate over police violence and racial profiling Americans have been having over the past year would have made people at least a little more sensitive to the damage caused by hateful expressions of bigotry and intolerance. But some people never seem to learn. How else to explain the blatantly racist comments recently posted on a Facebook page for Bowley's Quarters residents suggesting a trio of unknown black men supposedly seen in the neighborhood should be hunted down and shot? That's advice for idiots offered by morons, and despite the authors' misguided attempts at humor, there's nothing funny about it at all.
The incident might be dismissed as just another adolescent prank akin to the racist chants recently recorded by members of a University of Oklahoma fraternity on their website before college officials shut down the chapter and expelled the student participants. In that case, university President David Boren vowed to have zero tolerance for hateful expression and accused the fraternity brothers in the video of "disgraceful" behavior that "violated every principle that this university stands for."
What's different about the Bowley's Quarters postings was that they do not appear to have been the work of callow youth but of adults who presumably should have known better. Baltimore County's school system is investigating the matter because one of the posts was apparently made by Rob Bartosch, a teacher at Stemmers Run Middle School who also works as an adjunct professor at the Community College of Baltimore County.
Baltimore County Public Schools spokesman Mychael Dickerson said he could not comment of what action his department might take regarding Mr. Bartosch, other than to describe it as a "personnel" matter. The system's bland statement noted only that "when an employee's behavior inside or outside of school causes a disruption to the instructional environment, we will thoroughly review the situation."
That mealy-mouthed declaration hardly seems calculated to reassure the parents of students at Stemmers Run that the school recognizes the seriousness of what happened. We understand the system's need to investigate precisely what one of its teachers did or did not do. But the least officials could do is acknowledge the nature of what they're investigating: the public expression of the most hurtful and ignorant form of racism. CCBC President Sandra Kurtinitis did better, denouncing what she termed a "disturbing, racist and violent comment" and promising to take "appropriate action."
There's a famous line from the classic Rodgers and Hammerstein musical "South Pacific" that goes: "You've got to be taught to hate, you've got to be carefully taught." Evidently, that lesson has already sunk in for some members of the community, and now is not the time for school officials to hide behind carefully worded statements but to clearly and forcefully denounce the attitudes behind those postings. If the posters on this page felt comfortable enough to express those thoughts in public, how many others harbor them in private?
The response to the shooting last year of an unarmed black teenager, Michael Brown, by a white police officer in Ferguson, Mo., and to the killing in Florida of black teen Travon Martin by a white neighborhood watch volunteer before that, among far too many other similar incidents, has brought painfully to the fore how racially divided this nation remains. The federal government's recent report on racially disparate policing in Ferguson was shocking and demonstrated just how badly justice can be perverted if bigoted attitudes, voiced or subconscious, are allowed to flourish unchecked. Sadly, the path toward reckoning and reconciliation in that community was dealt a terrible setback Wednesday night when two policemen were shot while they were monitoring an otherwise peaceful protest near a police station.
Obviously, the musings of some fools on a Facebook page don't begin to compare to what's going on in Ferguson. But it requires constant vigilance to make sure an incident like this doesn't fester into something more. That's why it was heartening to see someone so well respected in all corners of the community as Orioles outfielder Adam Jones publicly call attention to the posts and condemn them in personal terms. "This could be my son and I," he wrote on Twitter. Whoever the three men were — if they even existed — they were someone's sons or someone's fathers. It's sad to see that anyone needs to be reminded of that, but we're glad Mr. Jones stepped up to do so.