Prom is a magical time for some teens: corsage exchanges, slow dancing under disco balls and awkward photos.
But guns and a confederate flag?
You betcha.
At least, that’s how one group of Chaparral High School students decided to celebrate prom.
And a lot of people – peers, parents and teachers – are furious. After all, nothing spells racist terrorist insurgence like a bunch of hormone-amped, armed teenagers clutching a rebel flag.
But what they did is not a crime, and it’s unclear whether or not the school has punished them.
CU Boulder professor Arturo Aldama released a statement about the prom pic from Parker: “The image is pretty disturbing, especially if they have real assault rifles in their hands. Not to mention, the Confederate flag and its legacy of white supremacy, Klan violence and the Jim Crow South.”
The glaring question: Why the double standard between armed U.S. teenagers aligning themselves with symbols of white supremacist, terrorist organizations like the KKK and these young people below bearing arms in front of an ISIS flag?
Apparently, at least in Parker, gunned-toting youths in tuxes and Barbie gowns aren’t nearly as scary as, say, armed teens wearing more practical terror attire — camo and face masks.
The Chaparral High School students get off easy. They’re middle-class and white. They say their extremist pose is just ironic. They believe in Southern pride. They live in a relatively stable suburban world where white-supremacist terrorism isn’t such a big deal.
Unless you take into account the Oklahoma City Bombing, or the growing number of mass shootings perpetrated by white men, or churches that have burned in the South, or the disproportionate mass incarceration of African American men over white men, or the disproportionate shooting of African American men by white police officers, or the muscular states-rights revival, or…
But, oh heah, the difference is irony, right?
Top Photo: Released by Fox 31.
Bottom photo: ISIS uploaded this photo to a file-sharing site, and the UK Daily Mail published it.
