UA student arrested for terrorist threat

What I find interesting about this article and video are the ways in which white masculine privilege affords someone a positive portrayal in the news.Women and people of color are rarely afforded the same positivity, even when we are assumed or actually victims of crimes. Women who have been sexually assaulted are often questioned about their attire, while their sex lives (and moral associated of such) become the focus of the story. From Trayvon Martin to Mike Brown, and all the Black men and women who have been killed by police in between have been portrayed as drunks, thugs, and hoodlums, while the pictures they choose to show aren't ones of the victims and their mom on their first day of college, but from their facebook and twitter pages of the victims in supposedly threatening attire, in supposedly threatening poses and environments. The many Muslims, Sikhs, and Hindus who have been stereotyped as associated with "terrorist" activities have never been afforded such a homely and quaint television appearance. Even the people who protest such injustices aren't afforded such consideration.

I also find it a bit unsettling the way that many alumni of the University of Alabama talk about being fourth or third generation in their families to attend the University of Alabama (or any other historically racist and segregated university). Simmons is a fourth generation student at UA, meaning at least two of his ancestors were attending an all-white institution, and were likely to have been at the school and partaken in protesting the (attempted) entrance of the first two Black students to attend UA not that long ago. It always baffles me how many southerners imagine the racist south as if racism simply ended after integration. When in fact, these same racist people who were part of the KKK and other horrific organizations quieted down a bit, raised their kids, and now their kids are attending the same schools they were, in all-white fraternities and sororities and making n-word jokes on twitter. There was no real change in the racial ideas and beliefs of the south, only a nuanced shifting. And I say that as someone born and raised in Alabama.