Shayla Harstick was a student in the Mesa public school system in the state of Arizona. Yesterday, a tweet posted by a young man who appears to also be a student in the same school contained a screenshot of a very racist snap chat. This young woman posted a snap chat photo of a young black man sitting at a desk in a classroom with a Popeye’s bag on it. The snap was captioned “Of course these niggers are eating Popeyes chicken rn *chicken emoji*”. Oh no she didn’t…

Known on Twitter as @KanyesbleachedT, this young man decided he was going to take action, and rightfully so. Along with the screenshot from snap chat he also took a screenshot from the young woman’s Twitter page, where she had posted tweets defending her unexcusable behavior. These tweets included the statement “The second I state a fact on snap everyone hmu all mad *girl with attitude emoji*”. This girl is really tripping…

My faith in humanity is generally pretty low, but to scroll through the responses to Shayla Harstick’s statements and read how angered people were, some of that faith was restored. I was also very impressed with social media’s response to @KanyesbleachedT’s call to action. In his original post he asked everyone to get into contact with the school district via an email address he provided. He asked, and social media users obliged. Hundreds of Twitter users responded to his tweet with screenshots of their emails to the school district. I am sure that the school districts inbox was flooded! I’m talking about a noah’s ark kind of flooded. The original tweet itself racked up over 25,000 retweets and 20,000 favorites.

Since all of this has begun Shayla Harstick has deleted her Twitter, Instagram and Facebook accounts. The same young man who posted the original tweet has also updated his Twitter account to let everyone know that this young woman has been expelled from her school.

It’s unfortunate that this young woman has had to become the center of a lot of social media hate and scrutiny, BUT, someone had to be made the poster child for this unconscionable behavior and that’s what she gets. It is astounding that in the year 2017 people are still so out and out racist. Although I am 100% against racism I am not naiive enough to think that because we’ve made slight progress that everything is all sunshine and rainbows. I realize that there continues to be a major problem when it comes to racism in this country, and I have seen and experienced it first hand. But it still surprises me when young people are so out in the open about it. It is just completely unacceptable to throw the word “Nigger” around, and be blatantly racist on social media.

What are parents teaching their children? Shayla Harstick should be ashamed of herself, and the parents of Shayla Harstick should be even more ashamed of themselves. Racism is a learned way of thinking, it is not something you are born with.

“Hate people because they are a douchebag not just because of the color of their skin” -Anonymous









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