Accountable Essay

Accountable by Dashka Slater is a true story documenting the aftermath of a racist instagram account created by a student at Albany High School back in 2017. Systemic racism and laws contributed to incidents like the one at Albany High School to occur. Implicit bias allowed continued racism in individual and institutional responses.

Systemic racism and laws contributed to incidents like the one at Albany High School. Systemic racism, which are written and unwritten laws that affect ethnic groups, contributed to online incidents like the one at Albany High School by allowing similar incidents to happen every year. At Albany high school, there was a private Instagram account run by a student, posting targeted, racist, and offensive ‘jokes’, using his classmates' photos. “The Instagram account wasn't a hate crime, as much as people sometimes said it was. Being racist and sexist isn’t illegal, and even language like ‘on the verge of bringing my noose to school’ didn’t meet the standard for being a criminal threat, which California law says must be ‘so unequivocal, unconditional, immediate and specific’...” (Slater, 156). Part of California’s Penal Code states that criminal threats are threats of death or of bodily injury. The penal code does not include online threats or hate crime. According to California's penal code, there are more certain crimes that are much more serious than hate crimes. Hate crimes seem to be dismissed and treated like they are not just as bad as actual crimes. By “so unequivocal, unconditional, immediate and specific”, it means crimes that are specific in who it’s to and who they want to harm. A crime needs to be specific enough to be incriminating and in a serious situation. The school is again dismissing all regards and all harm that something online could be so hurtful. Even if it’s targeted, they are dismissing the potential harm it could cause the victim. “By now, the school’s top administrators seemed to have lost interest in sorting through the levels of culpability… Every student who followed the account was now receiving the maximum suspension allowed under California state regulations: five days.” (Slater, 165). The principal, Jeff Anderson, was trying to keep the situation calm but also keeping the students who were connected to the account away from school because of their actions. By keeping them away, he was both protecting students who had been attacked by the account, and from protestors or anyone who would now hate on the students involved. Everyone who had the same level of involvement got the same punishment. But by California’s regulations, it wouldn’t be able to stay like that for a long time. Incidents like the one that occurred at Albany High School were allowed to happen again because of systemic racism and laws and contributed.

Implicit bias allowed continued racism in individual and institutional responses to racism. Negative attitudes towards social groups allowed for racism to continue because there were no responses to stop them. At Albany High School, it seemed like no one cared about attacks towards certain groups of students, not even enough to give out more than a few words to scare off the attackers.“It wasn’t the first time this kind of thing has happened at Albany High School. It seemed like there was a social media scandal every couple of years. In 2012, a group of junior and senior boys set up a competition to see who could have sex with the most ninth- and tenth grade girls, keeping score on Twitter.” (Slater, 62). This quote is important because it is saying that the school allowed for the same kind of situation to happen again. Apart from just targeting girls and making them feel used, it only looks terrible for them while others could praise the guys. The school seems. “In 2015, a group of twelfth-graders created an account on Instagram they called Broke boys where they posted degrading pictures of female classmates… In each case, the administration's response seemed lackadaisical at best,” (Slater, 62). The school seems to not care as much as they should. These kinds of situations could be mentally and in some cases physically harmful to the students attacked. The administration not helping the situation or speaking made it seem like the situation was important enough to speak out about or to even care after the students. Individual and institutional responses to racism were allowed to continue because of implicit bias.

In conclusion, systemic racism and laws allowed for incidents like the one at Albany High School. Implicit bias permitted for continued racism in individual and institutional responses to racism to continue. If the events that occurred at Albany High School were to happen at San Rafael High School, I believe that the principal, Mr. Dominguez would take action the second he hears about it. From incidents like this, people could learn to not spread hate online or around the school but to keep their opinions to themselves. Spreading unwanted hate could ultimately be harmful for both the hater and victim and lead to more.