Samuel Martin - Teenager Arrested After Racist Threat Shuts Down Schools for 2 Days

Teenager Arrested in Charlottesville After Racist Online Threat Shuts Schools for 2 Days

Summary

A 17 year old boy in Charlottesville, Virginia was arrested after making racist threats on a website called 4chan. His threats on this forum-type, message board were referring to ethnic cleansing targeting mainly blacks and Hispanics at his school. The online messages shut down the public school system for two days in Charlottesville, only being reopened after the student was arrested. The student was not publicly identified but we do know that he was arrested for threat to commit serious bodily harm as well as harassment. This threat comes about two years after the rally and protests in Charlottesville and many see this as a way to rub some salt into the local's wounds that are still healing. The worst part for the teachers is having to explain to the students, ranging from kindergarten to 12th graders, why the school was closed for two days.

Analysis

The article was written on Friday March 22, 2019. I didn't know anything about this recent incident before I read the article, but I did remember that this is the same city where the protests took place two years ago leading to riots. This relates to the ethnic cleansing of the Cherokee tribe through the Indian Removal Act in 1830 where the Native Americans were forced on the Trail of Tears killing most of their people. The audience of this article is everyone in the US because we are all effected by threats to our public safety and to the children that go to the schools that are being threatened each day. This article is important because we need to be educated about what happens in our country and how it is responded to because it could very easily happen to our schools in our city.

Source

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/22/us/charlottesville-schools-closed-threat.html