Melanie Bowers and her family need some re-education on immigration and prejudice, I think.
Earlier this week, Melanie Bowers brought a poster to school protesting illegal immigration, then claimed that it was taken away from her by a gang of students who beat and threatened her. The poster was assigned as homework and her protest read “If you love our nation, stop illegal immigration.”
When school administrators went back and reviewed surveillance tapes, they found a different story. It seems that while the poster was taken from her, no one touched her.
After Melanie’s accusations, administrators reviewed school survellience videotape of the incident – which, instead of showing students beating or attacking her, showed Bowers scratching herself on her arms, face, and neck, and walking through the halls of the school calmly long after she claimed the incident happened.
It doesn’t surprise me all that much to hear that a 13-year old girl with some pretty heavy-handed opinions on illegal immigration might make much more of a small incident than it was, but I give kudos to parents’ response.
Bowers’ parents have apologized to school administrators for their daughter, and Bowers’ father, Gary Bower Jr., is agreeing with the charges against her. “I have reviewed the recording and agree with the charges that will need to be filed,” he has said today.
Melanie’s mother, Shera Bowers, released a statement which reads, “I see my daughter was not assaulted, and put the marks on her body. No gang violence as witnessed. She filed a false report.”
No excuse-making. No blaming of the school authorities. No backhanded efforts to blame anyone but the one who should shoulder the blame. Credit where credit is due to them, and good for the school for following through and getting to the truth.
Seriously, this could have been a colossal mess. Blaming, angry parents on both sides, showdowns at the school board, op-eds written about how dangerous our middle schools are, and so on. If I were one of the parents of the students accused, I’d be furious, and honestly the only thing that might have been left out of the Bowers’ statements was an apology to the kids unfairly accused. That, and an acknowledgment that their own racism has been transferred to their daughter quite efficiently.
Melanie’s lie played up to the deepest fears in all parents — the idea that by sending their child to a school with a diverse population of students, she was at risk for beatings and gang threats (that’s implicit in Ms. Bowers’ statement) and all manner of other unspeakable and unimaginable dangers. Of course, the local news media played right into it with their sensational headline and sound bites from the father, who made the following statement after the initial report, but before the facts were known:
“They handled this wrong, you know, they put a child back in danger,” said J.R. Bowers. “It was a very racially motivated crime.”
He went on to say this:
“I won’t be happy until the kids that did this are out of school,” Bowers said.
If any good comes of this, let it be that the Bowers look at their own knee-jerk response against the truth and understand that they reaped what they sowed. What their daughter believes about immigrants, legal or otherwise, and about people who are different from her reflects what they believe.
If their apology is to have any meaning at all to the falsely accused students, it should come with a resolve on their part to change those racist views and begin to understand that speaking a different language and looking different doesn’t equal evil or violence. If that were to happen, real good could come from an otherwise pathetic incident.
Technorati Tags: Melanie Bowers, racism, school attack, illegal immigration
