*Yesterday was “Thank a Teen Day.” I’d like to offer a belated thanks to two young women who decided to report a video outing one of their white classmates who felt free to hurl the N-word at them the moment there was a disagreement.
Thank a teen day is to honor those young people who are standing up to change the things they don’t like in the world they are inheriting.
This was the action taken by 15-year-old Carmani Harris-Jackson, a sophomore at Central Cabarrus High School in Concord, North Carolina, and her BFF, 16-year-old Trinity Smith. The two participated in a discussion about a planned protest on gun control, in remembrance of the students killed by gunfire at Parkland School just one month ago. As is the case with any debate, some students were for the protest against guns, while others were not. An argument ensued…
It got ugly.
In the video, which has since been deleted, a white female student recorded her friend, a white CCHS student, in a Snapchat video filmed in a car, saying… “They?re putting laws on who can purchase a gun. No, nigger…”
Harris-Jackson and Smith re-posted it, and got suspended as a result.
Harris-Jackson is Black, and Smith is bi-racial.
BuzzFeed News broke the story reporting…
Two of the students, both black, were handed a two-day in-school suspension after republishing a video ? viewed by BuzzFeed News ? on social media of a white student saying the n-word while criticizing gun reform.
They told BuzzFeed News they didn’t think it was fair they were punished for drawing attention to racism among classmates.
Via the site…
“I was a victim in the situation and you all got mad at me for putting it out there,” said Carmani Harris-Jackson, a 15-year-old sophomore at CCHS, about school administrators.
Harris-Jackson, who describes herself as a liberal, said she started posting on Snapchat about gun reform after other students started slamming the proposed walkout.
“Someone posted on Snapchat how the walkout would be stupid, how without guns we wouldn’t have any of the stuff we have today, and that we were wasting our time walking out,” Harris-Jackson said.
She said she then posted a Snapchat Story saying people like herself weren’t trying to take guns away, but that she wanted more restrictions on who could buy them.
She said she and a few white students who identified as conservative went back and forth debating gun reform via their Snapchat Stories on Feb. 21.
A white female student then recorded her friend, who is also a white CCHS student, in a Snapchat video filmed in a car, where she said: “They’re putting laws on who can purchase a gun. No, nigger…”
BuzzFeed News spoke via Instagram DM with the girl who said the n-word, who said she didn’t want to speak about it as she had “moved on” and that BuzzFeed News had “no right” to cover it. She then deleted her Instagram profile.
The girl who shot the video didn’t respond to questions from BuzzFeed News. Both girls are minors.
Harris-Jackson took the racial slur to be a direct insult for her public Snapchat comments.
“Me and [the girl who said it] were friends before this happened. We had a class together. We would talk together. But as soon as I have a difference in views, you call me a very harmful and offensive racial slur? She said it in a joking manner, but there are boundaries of things you joke about and that’s not one of the things you joke about it,” said Harris-Jackson.
Harris-Jackson and her best friend Trinity Smith, 16, also a CCHS sophomore, reposted the video on their Facebook and Twitter profiles, naming the girl and mentioning that she attends CCHS.
It got over 10,000 views and 200 retweets on Smith’s Twitter alone.
Other students at the school have begun to speak out about their experiences. See Jared’s post directly below.
Read why the two young women were adamant about re-posting the racist video, and read other comments on the incident at BuzzFeed News.
