EJ MONTINI

Montini: N-word isn't Desert Vista's problem; P-word is

EJ Montini
opinion columnist

Six girls at “senior picture day” at Desert Vista High School in Ahwatukee pulled a little stunt, rearranging themselves after the official photo so that the letters and asterisks on their t-shirts spelled the N-word.

A snapshot was taken, went viral, and nearly broke the Internet.

Grown-ups from the district responded immediately to the racial slur.

“That was not a school photo,” said Jill Hanks, executive director of community relations for Tempe Union High School District. “That was taken off to the side somewhere and I don’t know who took it...They do not represent DV or the community as a whole. These are six students who made a really bad decision. They do not reflect the rest of the student body, the 3,100 other students that go here, staff that work here or anyone in our district.”

Yes, they do.

Change.org petition asking for expulsion of six girls who spelled out a racial slur

The kids represent the community and the adults who live there – the White adults – need to own it.

If this were a group of minority kids using an ethnic or racial slur in such a brazen way one of the first things we would have heard was, “Where were their parents?”

There would have been comments, some public, some not, about certain type of kids (poor ones) growing up in certain types of neighborhoods (poor ones) among certain kinds of supposedly less-than-responsible parents (minority ones.)

But in this instance the district's PR representative explains it as “six students who made a really bad decision."

That's true. But why would the girls feel comfortable taking such a photograph?

The answer is simple: because they could.

Because they felt safe.

Where I grew up, if teens played a photographic prank like this they had better be ready to fight. It was a town with mixed races and mixed national origins. Not everyone appreciated everyone else but there was, at least, respect.

This picture by these girls demonstrates a lack of respect.

Why is that?

There are lots of explanations, of course. Young people face many possible influences. No single thing explains all of the choices he or she makes. Parents are only one of them.

But it’s the parents who pick where the family lives. And which schools the kids attend.

A lot of parents select schools in which their kids aren’t going to be exposed to a diverse group of students but mostly to a group that looks very much like them.

The parents will say their choice has to do with “academics” and “extra-curricular opportunities” and “school facilities.” And that's probably true. But another reason is that it makes the parents feel safe.

The kids feel safe, too, otherwise, the girls at Desert Vista would not have done such a thing. So the N-word isn’t the only problem here. It’s also the P-word.