racism

Well this certainly was a graduation that the students will never forget.

At the TNT Academy commencement ceremony in Georgia on Friday, the Valedictorian’s speech was accidentally left out of the program, so the crowd had started to disperse when he got up to speak, and not everyone was paying attention.

That’s when the school’s founder/director Nancy Gordeuk stepped up to the microphone to tell everyone that they were being rude.

“Look who’s leaving… all the black people,” she said.

As the video shows, the room quickly reacts to the racist comments with some people approaching the podium and others walking out in disgust.

Gordeuk has since apologized in an email to parents, in which she says “the devil was in the house and came out from my mouth,” according to 11 Alive News in Atlanta.

She also issued the following statement to NBC News.

Frustrated with the prospect of ruining the once-in-a-lifetime ceremony the graduates have worked so hard for, my emotions got the best of me and that is when I blurted out ‘you people are being so rude to not listen to this speech.’ I deeply apologize for my actions made in the emotional state of trying to let this last student finish his speech.

Here’s another video of the incident that includes a moment before the racist remarks where she calls someone a “goober” and a “coward.”

“She’s off her rocker,” says one of the men in the video.

To encourage discussions about race relations in the United States, Starbucks has asked its baristas to write #RaceTogether on coffee cups and engage in serious conversations with customers.

Turns out that’s the last thing people a bunch of disgruntled people want first thing in the morning while waiting for their first jolt of caffeine.

CEO Howard Schultz describes the initiative as “an opportunity to begin to re-examine how we can create a more empathetic and inclusive society – one conversation at a time.”

He organized an internal meeting back in December in which employees shared stories and discussed all the recent shootings and events which inspired protests and riots from Ferguson to New York.

The company held similar forums around the country over the past few months, and now they’ve decided to extend this initiative out to their customers through the “Race Together” initiative.

Despite all the good intentions behind the campaign, it has turned into somewhat of a joke on Twitter.

After the backlash, Starbucks’ senior vice president of communications, Corey duBrowa, eventually deleted his Twitter account, which is not a good sign.

“I was personally attacked through my Twitter account around midnight last night and the tweets represented a distraction from the respectful conversation we are trying to start around Race Together,” he told Business Insider.

Here are some of the responses on Twitter that Starbucks likely did not see coming:

Do you want guac with your hate speech? Chipotle’s Twitter account was hacked over the weekend, posting lots of racial slurs and anti-government rants - most of which aren't fit to publish.

Members of the neo-Nazi National Democratic party (NPD) in Germany were supposed to participate in a rally in Freiburg last Saturday.

Unfortunately (for them) the rally never happened, as they got on the wrong train and ended up in the city of Mannheim.

Their original train was overcrowded with soccer fans, so police forced them to take the next one. They failed to check the destination, however, before boarding.

“We didn’t miss them,” said the mayor of Freiburg.

These neo-Nazis aren’t exactly the brightest bulbs in the box.

Last year, the village of Wunsiedel turned an annual neo-Nazi march into a fundraiser supporting an anti-Nazi group called EXIT-Germany, and the neo-Nazis had no clue.

WARNING: Obviously work-unsafe things are being said and expressed in this video. Also, bonus on-the-job drinking!

WARNING: There's a copious amount of racially-charged foul language in this video. Fair warning for those who may be triggered by that.

This is the video of startlingly casual racism that's been making the rounds on the internet in the past 24 hours. According to the uploader (a man going by the handle OYAB), this incident occurred the previous Friday, May 30th. By his account, he started up his car, prompting his stereo to play automatically. That's when this mother decided to go off in front of her children and throw out the hate speech.

If her twitter profile (again, warning for language in that link) is any indication, this kind of behavior isn't new to her. In a recent radio interview defending her actions she also brought up the old "but I have black friends/relatives" defense, which never ends well. The incident also prompted her ex to request custody of their children, for reasons that might be obvious.

Nice work by OYAB keeping calm in this kind of situation. Clearly we still have a long road ahead of us when it comes to race relations in America.

Update: Narvell Benning, the guy behind the camera, tells his story in an interview on 93.7 WBLK.

WARNING: Explicit language.

It didn't seem possible for Bieber to be even more of a douche, but alas...

Here's how the players are reacting:

Commissioner Silver thank you for protecting our beautiful and powerful league!! Great leader!! #BiggerThanBasketball #StriveForGreatness

— LeBron James (@KingJames) April 29, 2014

Big ups to Adam Silver. I think this is a very appropriate way to handle this situation. Now it's up to the owners to make him sell.

— Mario Chalmers (@mchalmers15) April 29, 2014

'Standing ovation' for Commissioner Silver. Big time decision standing up for the league and it's players. Now, Gotta see it through

— Stephen Curry (@StephenCurry30) April 29, 2014

Great move by the @NBA today! #NoPlaceInOurGameForThis #NoPlaceInLifeForThis

— JR Smith (@TheRealJRSmith) April 29, 2014

The FC Barcelona defender Dani Alves was preparing for a corner kick on Sunday's match when he noticed a banana tossed at him onto the pitch. Without missing a beat, Alves responds to the racist gesture excellently by picking it up and eating it.

"We have suffered [racism] in Spain for some time," Alves said after the game. "We aren't going to change things easily"

Friends, teammates, and fans responded to Alves' actions with pride in a similarly humorous fashion on Instagram and Twitter.

Roberto Carlos... #NoAlRacismo #somostodosmacacos pic.twitter.com/K2U9wzKKQc

— PeriodistasyAnónimos (@PeriodistasAnon) April 28, 2014

From a CNN iReport:

At the most recent Pep Rally for Waverly High School, located in Waverly NY…three white students were to perform a skit in black face, depicting Chris Brown and Rhianna most notibly. In this skit they would display acts of domestic violence as satire to an audience that included not only students but parents, faculty, and various members of the media and community leaders. None of them stopped the skit.

Kids these days. (Also, the faculty, and the parents, the classmates defending the skit...)

JetBlue, ever the customer-friendly airline, is making waves once again, after it booted an 18-month-old toddler whose name allegedly appeared on a no-fly list. The family believes they were profiled because of their Middle Eastern heritage and the Transportation Security Administration claims that the girl's name was never flagged. JetBlue offered the generic explanation/non-apology:

We are investigating this particular incident. We believe this was a computer glitch. Our crewmembers followed the appropriate protocols, and we apologize to the family involved in this unfortunate circumstance.

[newsfeed]

Two men have been arrested for being connected to series of shootings on Friday in Tulsa. What brings these shootings together is that all the victims were African-American, thus making these crimes not of coincidence, but alleged hate crimes. Sadly, this also makes the idea of a post-racial America seem like an even less likely truth.

[gawker]