What happens to racist people the likes of this group of high schoolers who wore shirts that spell out the N-word or these other high schoolers who thought it was okay to dress up as the Ku Klux Klan? They grow up and throw racist college parties, as the record shows. Three white college students from a California university, who among other things, put a bike lock on a black student's neck and called him "three-fifths", have been found not guilty of hate crime charges.
A jury decided Monday that San Jose State University students 21-year-old Joseph "Brett" Bomgardner and his 20-year-old accomplices Logan Beaschler and Colin Warren were not guilty of a hate crime against fellow SJU student Donald Williams Jr.
The Huffington Post cites NBC Bay Area as reporting that back in 2013 Bomgardner, Beaschler, and Warren, put a U-shaped bike lock on the neck of then 17-year-old freshman Williams Jr. In another occasion the three tried to lock Williams Jr. in a closet NBC Bay Areareports prosecutors as saying. The four shared a dorm suite.
The Associated Press reports Williams Jr. bullying was discovered after his parents visited him and saw a Confederate flag hanging in the dorm. There they also saw a dry erase board with racist phrases like "three-fifths," which is what they called Williams Jr. To show you why that nickname is appalling let's brush up on some history shall we? The three-fifths compromise determined how slaves were accounted for to determine a state's population and representatives for the state because, as you'll recall, slaves weren't equal.
Mercury News reported Beaschler said the flag was his and was "displayed as a symbol of states' rights" as The Huffington Post put it. He defended a swastika and other Nazi symbols on the dry erase board calling them satirical.
An all-white jury of six men and six women would let the three assailants walk away from hate crime charges convicting them of misdemeanor battery.
Former Judge LaDoris Cordell, who is black, and current head of San Jose State University's task force on racial discrimination said of the verdict:
"I am saddened that 12 jurors could not agree that calling a black male 'Three-fifths' or 'Fraction,' or forcing a lock around his neck, or creating an environment promoting racism with Confederate memorabilia, or hearing how this young man was humiliated, amounted to a hate crime. This verdict demonstrates that we are a long way from living in a post-racist America."
