By Olga Khazan

When I was in high school in McKinney, Texas, I won a “student of the month” award along with several other students. I went to a public high school, but the award was overseen by the local Rotary Club. The award ceremony was a typical luncheon: baked chicken, big round tables with the boys and girls of the month fidgeting and hoping their parents wouldn’t say anything embarrassing.

The only unusual thing about it was that, although no one had stated their religious affiliation, the ceremony opened with a Christian prayer. Better yet, the aim of the prayer was for God to grant George W. Bush a second term of his presidency.

At the time, this was not that surprising. McKinney was, and in some ways still is, a small, conservative southern town—the kind of place where people don’t always stop to consider whether everyone else in the room agrees with them.

I hadn’t thought much about the Rotary Club event until recently, when I saw McKinney pop up in the news for what would be the first of its two national incidents in as many weeks. On Wednesday, June 3, at least two students at McKinney’s Faubion Middle School were sent home after they wore shirts that said, simply, “Gay O.K.” Several others were told to cover over the message. The shirts, reportedly worn to support a seventh-grader who recently came out, bore a message that was deemed “not school-appropriate” by the administration, the students said.

Later, something even more chilling beamed out of my hometown and across the Internet: Police officers responded to a “disturbance” at a pool party in a wealthy part of town. According to some of the teens involved, a squabble broke out when several (white) adults began complaining that many (black and white) teens had arrived at the pool. A white woman slapped a black girl, one witness said, and a larger brawl involving hair-pulling broke out.

When they arrived, police officers told several black boys at the scene to sit on the ground. One white officer, Eric Casebolt, drew a gun on a couple of unarmed black boys. When 15-year-old Dajerria Becton, who is also black, began walking away, Casebolt threw her to the ground and pinned her there, his knees pressed against the small of her back.

Read More McKinney, Texas: A Small Town Turned Boomtown – The Atlantic.

By Carimah Townes

After a viral video of police brutalizing black teenagers in swimsuits in Texas sparked national outrage, a second video has surfaced of a party host detailing a violent encounter before the cops arrived at the scene.

According to 19-year-old community member Tatiana, who put together the event to celebrate the end of the school year, several white people at the pool hurled racial slurs at her friends, calling one a “black f-er” and talking about Section 8 public housing. When 14-year-old friend Grace Stone stood up for the group, saying the comments were racist, the man and woman started berating her. Tatiana alleges she stepped in to tell the white couple that they shouldn’t verbally attack a young girl, at which point they told her to “go back to [her] Section 8 home.” One woman, identified as Kate, allegedly slapped Tatiana in the face, before attacking the teenager with the help of another woman.

Tatiana’s mother, who was also featured in the YouTube video, responded, “I’m just upset that we couldn’t have a peaceful event. [If] it was any issue that they truly had, they should’ve came to me, the adult that was here at the event…and not go to that extreme.”

Brandon Brooks, a white teenager who filmed first video of the police encounter, explained to Buzzfeed News that many of the black kids had special passes to swim in the community pool, although some did jump the fence. “I think a bunch of white parents were angry that a bunch of black kids who don’t live in the neighborhood were in the pool,” he said. However, he maintains, many of the kids who were handcuffed and told to get on the ground were ‘innocent bystanders.’

Having seen the original video on YouTube, Tom Fuentes, a former assistant director for the FBI told CNN that the officer’s actions were unjustified, and that the main officer was “running around and escalating” the situation. “He’s out of control. He clearly has no self-discipline. He lost control of his temper. Nothing good can happen at that point. Thankfully he didn’t shoot somebody,” he concluded.

Read More White Woman Used Racial Slurs, Slapped Her, Texas Pool Party Host Says | ThinkProgress.