Brooklyn Ohio’s high school coach resigned after his team was calling out plays with names like Nazi. And shouting racists comments to the opposing team. The opposing team was Beachwood, a Cleveland suburb that is about 90% Jewish. This resonates with me as I was the only Jew on my Western PA, high school football team. My father was the Rabbi in town. I didn’t hide who or what I was. I was subjected to Jew hate comments quite frequently. It’s a shame things have not changed. Honestly, they are worse. As a society we need to do better.
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Amen to that! We have to be concerned with who we vote to lead our nation, and shut racism down completely. The past couple of winters we stay in Florida, we were appalled by the number of racist bumper stickers adorning people’s pickup trucks. Sometimes I think racism has again become acceptable.
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Here’s my question: the entire week they practiced, not one assistant coach or player spoke up and said “this is some F’ed up crap. We shouldn’t be doing this.” Clearly the coach should be fired but what kind of systemic issues exist at that school to have everyone go along with it? That’s actually even more troubling to me.
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It’s infuriating that, in this day and age, we still confront such blatant acts of prejudice and bigotry. It’s disconcerting how some people feel increasingly emboldened to express despicable and, frankly, pure evil views, as if it’s a form of humor.
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100%, not to mention that Brooklyn has made no comment whether the students involved will face disciplinary action.
My wife and her sister went to Beachwood (we’re all Jewish). This kind of despicable crap happened when they went to BHS years and years ago, but for it being this obvious was shocking. Unfortunate it happened and there needs to be hell to pay, but at least it’s getting media attention to bring light on this issue.
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Constitution allows free speech, even if stupid and awful.
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Yep, it sure does. And that coach should feel free to accept the consequences of losing his job and everyone now knowing he is a complete piece of garbage.
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There are limits to free speech protections. I am curious, would you make the same comment if it was a racist term used towards a black team?
Right. So none of those coaches and players should be prosecuted by the government for their speech. That being said, there’s no 1st Amendment prohibition preventing the school sh!tcanning and suspending the lot of them.
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The systemic issues go way beyond that school and are pretty much ingrained into the character of this country.
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I don’t believe the country is fundamentally bad. I do believe there are pockets that are. And I will always believe it’s rogue foreign nations that work hard to divide us and use social media to spread their disease. And that people can change for the better if they have desire to be better.
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Putting aside the Constitutionally-protected matter of Free Speech, there remains no Constitutional Amendment banning stupidity… Some people will always choose to be a thoughtless idiot.
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Actually, no there aren’t. That said, the coach was rightly fired for this.
Plenty of limits such as inducing a public panic, inciting a riot, making threats against an elected official or intimidating a witness are exempt from 1st amendment protections and eligible for criminal prosecution.
And 1st Amendment protections don’t protect someone from being fired or sued for libel for their speech. It’s only meant to shield them from criminal prosecution by the government.
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Blackbird-yes, there are limits to free speech. And many cases discussing this. But in general broad categories, incitement to violence, true threats, fighting words, obscenity (see Miller v. California, 1973, three prong test), defamation, speech integral to criminal conduct-unlawful or unprotected conduct, targeted, discriminatory harassment, generally in a pattern. Those are a few of the major broad categories not protected. For a small retainer I will give you the lecture I have presented to law students! 
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You are correct. I was addressing political speech, which I should have specified.
No problem!!
Limited free speech.
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Totally outrageous and completely unacceptable.