Freedom Folks: Thank You Goddess Diversity!

Source: Daily Bulletin

****UPDATED BELOW*****

FONTANA - Bottles, rocks and fists flew during lunchtime Friday at Fontana High School.

Students poured out of classrooms around noon when, they said, a fire alarm rang. They then saw what they described as a racial or gang-related riot erupting among about 500 students on the quad of the campus near Citrus Avenue.

Some flocked to the chaotic melee with their cell phones taking pictures and recording video while others fled to get out of the way. Helicopters circled over the school.

“There were fights everywhere girls and guys,” said Dalila Lizarraga, 16.

Campus police officers sprinted across four lanes of traffic on Citrus to the high school from the district offices when they got the call about a disturbance.

The fight started when one black student and one Latino student exchanged words, verbally taunting each other during a pep rally on campus, said Fontana police Sgt. Doug Wagner. It then became physical.

“After the two students started fighting, additional students of the same races joined in,” he said. “At one point, a Samoan group joined in the fight, and that is when it got out of control.”

Wagner said he did not think the fight was gang-related.

More than 100 police officers from different agencies, including the Fontana Police Department, San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department and members of the Fontana police SWAT team converged on the campus and pried students apart.

At least six students were arrested, Wagner said. “Two of them were charged with assault with a deadly weapon, meaning rocks,” he said. “And the rest of the charges were for resisting arrest.”

Sophomore Abigail Orozco said the fight was the biggest one yet at the school.

“It’s Friday the 13th so maybe that’s why,” she said.

But students say fights are common on school grounds.

“It all started with blacks versus Mexicans, as always,” she said.

But this fight quickly escalated to a big brawl with 500 of the campus’s 4,100 students involved.

Yet another example of the healing power of diversity! Thank you goddess diversity, can't wait to see wat other treats you have in store for us poor inmates here on Dr. Moreau's island.

H/T beyond borders blog who sez..."What is at the root of tensions between black and Latino students? It’s a complicated question, but I’m confident that part of the answer is a multiculturalist culture that accentuates the differences between these groups rather than emphasizing their common humanity, meanwhile doling out various benefits on the basis of those differences. Whether one is talking about identity politics or the place of the groups within society generally, the result is a dynamic in which Latino power is understood to come at the expense of black power and vice-versa.

Colorblindness may be an unattainable ideal, but the closer we get to it the less likely we are to have black and Latino students fighting one another in ongoing conflicts that eventually become school riots involving hundreds of students."

Or maybe race does matter, loathe though the elite lords of our culture would be to acknowledge this inconvenient truth. Maybe all people aren't the same, perhaps we need to take a long hard look at what differences race may play in these sorts of events. If anyone's head just exploded by my noting possible racial differences, gosh, I'm sorry.

****UPDATE*****

From LATimes via immigration watchdog

Students said the brawl began at lunch after someone pulled a fire alarm, sending hundreds of students into an open quad.

Black and Latino students shouted racial slurs at one another and exchanged blows, students said.

Officers from city and county agencies — some in protective helmets wielding beanbag shotguns — helped school police break up the fights over the course of two hours.