There are a lot of teens in the center this year who hadn’t been around for summer camp or in previous years. As such, the newbies are bound to test the limits of discipline and structure.
Some are more exuberant than others.
For this spectacular blowup, I had a strictly observational perspective. Not that I’ve been doing much but observing these days. The last thing I wanted to do was jump into the situation and try to impose myself on people who didn’t know or trust me yet.
Our biggest “problem child” at the Center is a 16-year-old (he may even be 17, most of them lie about their ages) boy with an imposing physique. He’s tremendously smart, outgoing, and the kind of person to whom others naturally gravitate. He’s also a born leader and simply a commanding presence in any room.
So of course he wields his powers for evil.
But I want to believe that he can be turned back to the light side, just like any good Jedi person. And while there is potential for that, I certainly won’t give up on… Darth Vader.
Darth and a few younger teens were hanging out in the common room. He must have called another one of them a “faggot” or something of the sort, because when I walked in the room, Co-Worker was already telling him that kind of language isn’t tolerated here. Darth, naturally, wasn’t having any of it. He was adamant that his dislike of gays was cause for his frequent use of the word.
“I hate gay people,” he insisted louder, for purely theatrical purposes.
Co-Worker then tried to explain that it shouldn’t matter if he hates homosexuals or not, that doesn’t make it the correct thing to say. When that failed to yield an understanding response, Co-Worker asked what warranted his “hatred” of a certain group. He tried to explain that it was similar to racism, like when someone decides he hates “all black people.” Still, Darth did nothing but continue yelling about his crusade against faggots.
“I’d shoot all the gay people. I’d just kill them all,” he ranted, as more teens began gathering in the room to watch — many of them younger.
Co-Worker asked what would happen if he came in here and said he wanted to kill all the black people. Darth responded that he’d shoot him, too.
A part-time staffer from Upstairs who is often down with us during homework time — someone you might say Darth even likes — asked, “what would you do if I told you I was gay? You would shoot me?”
“Of course I would,” Darth responded, completely missing the point.
As things were now beyond the point of control, Co-Worker tried one more attempt at illustrating the parallels between this and racism. He talked about how the blacks right here in DC fought for civil rights, and what [Darth] was saying about homosexuals is the same thing that people like Martin Luther King protested against.
“You know what Dr. King said? He said ‘I have a dream. A dream that all the gay people’d be shot up and dead,’” Darth mocked.
He got the reaction he wanted from the younger teens, which was fits of laughter. Finally, mercifully, Co-Worker invited him to either leave or go back to the offices for a private conversation. He actually took the latter.
This performance was purely for entertainment value; he loved feeding off his more-than-willing audience’s reactions. Because of that, I’m not quite sure how deeply this hatred runs, or if it was just hyperbolized for dramatic flair. I can already tell he’s smart enough to know when something is very wrong, but I doubt that sense will override his need for negative attention.
I wasn’t a part of the private conference with him, but the basic outcome was that Darth had no precursor to hating homosexuals. He didn’t have a bad run-in with anyone — no real, personal life experiences to shape his views. He only has what he’s heard from other people or seen on TV. But this isn’t abnormal. It seems no one considers how lessons from the past can be translated into today’s problems.
When it comes to ill-informed opinions and prejudices, Gay is the new Black.
