Facebook racism from the Isle of Man
By Michael W. Jones
Racism raised its ugly head again on Facebook last week, this time from a very unlikely source: the Isle of Man, a tiny island in the stormy seas that separate England and Ireland.
Facebook last week shut down a newish group on that social networking site calling itself the “Isle of Man KKK.” The group was formed of 95 members from the Isle of Man, where there live more than 70,000 total souls. The group had a number of distinctly racist lines in their description and in their messages on Facebook, including:
“Keep the Isle of Man white and free from foreigners.”
“clense (sic) the Isle of Man”
“Damn blacks and indians (sic), coming over here taking our jobs – who the #### do they think they are?”
An Isle of Man newspaper has reported that at least 33 members of the Isle of Man KKK were also students at the local Ballakarmeen High School. It was actually the high school that first noticed the group, according to a story on CNET. Once they became aware of the group, Ballakarmeen High School alerted Facebook, who shut the group down with slightly better than their usually glacial response time in such cases.
In the end, the same school officials that took action could not believe that their students are racists. Deputy Head Teacher Paul Kane told the Isle of Man Today newspaper, “There are one or two ambiguous remarks from our students but we think these were intended as sarcasm. I’m pleased that the vast majority disagree with the sentiments of this group and want nothing to do with it.”
There was a dissenting opinion. It seems that after one Ballakarmeen High School student had left a message that the group was “racist and immature,” a student from King Williams College replied: “I’m not paticularly (sic) immature, but I am slightly racist.” That is probably a more honest stance than the one taken by the officials of the high school.
Where there is even just a little smoke in matters like this, there is usually at least a little fire. The removal of the group from the site was, of course, the right thing to do. In a larger sense, it would have been nice to see the school (and other) officials from the Isle of Man acknowledge that there is work to be done to combat racism on the Isle.
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