Bullying Culture Needs to Stop

Reading Time: 2 minutes

“…Suttner was overweight and spoke with a speech impediment: two prime targets for bullies at Glasgow High School in Glasgow, Mo…”
[source: http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/a-horribly-bullied-teen-committed-suicide-now-his-former-dairy-queen-boss-has-been-charged-with-involuntary-manslaughter/ar-AAmx8hs?li=BBnbfcL]

Reading this today made me sad.

A young man’s life is gone. His parents, family and friends must be shattered and devestated.

A lot of disturbing things about current society and North American culture from reading this article.

“…Suttner was overweight and spoke with a speech impediment: two prime targets for bullies at Glasgow High School in Glasgow, Mo…”

In an ideal world, “…overweight and spoke with a speech impediment…” should trigger us to be empathetic to Suttner and offer help to someone who suffered from some slight physical disadvantages, but instead, these two elements are “two prime targets for bullies”. Does anyone else see anything wrong with this?

This is what our society and culture teaches us? That when we see or encounter someone with some slight disadvantage, those are signs to “pounce” on the poor kid???

To me, the people who bullied him must be suffering from low self-esteem because the way they treated this poor boy meant they needed to make him feel bad in order for them to feel better about themselves. To me it’s clear as day.

The bullies have inferiority complexes.

“Glasgow School District Superintendent Mike Reynolds admitted bullying took place in his district, but he claimed it wasn’t too bad. Others disagreed.”

Clearly, education officials are falling short and turning a blind eye to bullying. “It’s not my problem” right?

But it is your problem.

It’s only not your problem until it happens to you or your loved ones. Then who’s problem is it?

Combating bullying starts in the home with parents. But whether you like it or not, it also extends to our schools, teachers and education officials.

And then there’s the work supervisor, what she did to that boy is considered harassment. Yet no one did anything.

When do people start looking in the mirror and ask themselves when a boy kills himself due to severe bullying and those who turned a blind eye or participated in the bullying ask themselves, “Is this really the kind of person I want to be???”

It’s not like this is anything new.

I’ve seen bullying like this back when I was young, and that was over forty years ago, how things haven’t changed in all these years, isn’t that something to be shameful about?

It makes me wonder even more when the US now has a narcissistic bully as your President.

It’s time to start teaching and instilling a mindset of empathy and showing kindness to someone who is different. Not the current mindset of seeing an opportunity to put someone down.

I can only hope. But then again, after forty+ years of seeing this kind of behaviour, and nothing much has changed. =(

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