More dangers of comedy

Providence Catholic High School and the Diocese of Joliet have settled a lawsuit brought by the father of a white freshman student who was expelled from the New Lenox school in March following an alleged racist incident with a black classmate, the school's president said.

Terms of the agreement are confidential, but both sides expressed satisfaction with the outcome.

The suit claimed the boy's expulsion stemmed from an incident in the high school's cafeteria on March 13 between him, a black classmate identified in the suit as "TC," and two other students.

The four students were socializing after school when the plaintiff played a parody rap song that contained racially insensitive language, the suit states.

After the song played, the black student asked the plaintiff to play it again, and then took a video of the students listening to the song, the complaint states.

He later told his academic adviser that the song made him uncomfortable and his mother posted on Facebook an edited version of the video of the students listening to the song, according to the lawsuit.

The five-second clip, taken from the song "White is Right" by Pink Guy, contains the lyrics, "White is right, and white is good/Keep those (racial slur) back in the hood."

"I attempted to give my child what I thought would be a better education by sending him to private school, but instead he learned that racism still exists," the black student's mother, who did not return a request for comment, posted on Facebook along with the short video.

After a local television station ran a segment in which the black student's mother leveled accusations of racism against the school and said she had removed her son because of it, Providence held a disciplinary hearing and expelled the white student, according to the lawsuit.

The white student's father characterized the entire incident as a misunderstanding.

The four boys had been using a video chat app that pairs random users from around the world for brief, often profane, video conversations, when one of the random connections told the black student, "I don't dig on black people," and abruptly hung up on him, the father said.

"(My son) felt mortified that (the black student) was subjected to what he felt was racism," the father said.

In an effort to make light of the situation and buoy his friend's spirits, the white student played the Pink Guy song, which contains racially insensitive language in a satirical manner intended to criticize racist behavior not endorse it, he said.

"He played him this song because it's humorous and they all got a laugh out of it because it makes fun of rednecks, racism and the stupidity involved with having those types of feelings," the father said.

The song's artist, in an interview earlier this year with the indie music blog "Pigeons and Planes," stated that the song was intended as comedy.

SOURCE