The story in Pennsylvania came courtesy of a 14-year-old white idiot racist who allegedly posted a Snapchat directed at a 16-year-old black student in which the white kid recorded the black kid eating chicken wings, and then called him the n-word and joked that he was on government assistance. Northampton County District Attorney John Morganelli announced charges: cyber harassment of a child and ethnic intimidation. He stated, “Harassment, whether it’s based or otherwise, is a crime.” The Snapchat became an issue because the 16-year-old black student attacked the white kid during a football game, drawing charges in juvenile court.
Then there’s the second story, from Chicago. In that story, four teenagers allegedly kidnapped and then tortured a developmentally disabled white man on tape, all the while shouting, “F*** Donald Trump, n*****! F*** white people, boy! F*** white people, boy!” Here was the Chicago Police Superintendant Eddie Johnson, explaining that the attack wasn’t politically motivated: “I think some of it is just stupidity, people just ranting about something that they think might make a headline. I don't think that at this point we have anything concrete to really point us in that direction, but we'll keep investigating and we'll let the facts guide us on how this concludes.”
So when a 14-year-old white kid drops the n-word, that’s not just stupidity, that's racism. But when a black teenager screams “f*** white people” and “f*** Donald Trump” while actually torturing a white man, that's not racism, that’s just stupidity.
And then people wonder why racial politics is so polarized