Teen who uploaded video of classmate using racist slur has no regrets

A Virginia student says he has no regrets about sharing a video online of a white high school classmate using a racial slur that forced her to withdraw from her dream college.

Jimmy Galligan, of Leesburg, revealed to the New York Times how he had been in history class at Heritage High School last year when he received a text from a friend which included a video of classmate Mimi Groves using a racial epithet.

The three-second clip, sent by Groves to a friend on Snapchat in 2016, showed the then-15-year-old freshman looking into the camera saying ‘I can drive, n*****s’ as she was sitting in traffic.

Galligan said he had flagged the clip to teachers and administrators but his complaints reportedly yielded no response.

Frustrated and angry, Galligan said he decided to hold onto the video until he thought it was the right time to post it publicly. He posted it in June this year.

‘I wanted to get her where she would understand the severity of that word,’ 18-year-old Galligan, whose mother is black and father is white, told the Times.

‘If I never posted that video, nothing would have ever happened. I’m going to remind myself, you started something,’ he continued. ‘You taught someone a lesson.’

Groves’ video had originally circulated among some students at Heritage High shortly after she recorded it in 2016, but it reportedly did not cause much of a stir.

Galligan said the racial slur used by Groves had regularly been hurled in classrooms and in hallways during his time in the Loudon County School district.

He also said he hadn’t seen the video prior to receiving it last summer, when both her and Groves were seniors.

Groves, a championship-winning cheerleader, was planning to attend the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, whose cheer team were reigning national champions. She was accepted into the team in May.

Weeks later, following the Memorial Day police killing of George Floyd in Minnesota, racial injustice protests broke out across the nation.

In response, in a public Instagram post in June, Groves urged people to ‘protest, donate, sign a petition, rally, and do something’ to help support the Black Lives Matter movement.

One responder to the post, who Groves said she didn’t know, reportedly replied: ‘You have the audacity to post this, after saying the N-word.’

Groves said her confusion quickly turned to panic as friends began calling her and directing her to outrage that was erupting on social media.

As it would later transpire, Galligan had publicly posted the Snapchat video from four years ago to Instagram earlier that afternoon, having waited until she had selected a college.

Within a matter of hours, the clip had been shared widely across social media, including on TikTok and Twitter.

As views of the footage continued to mount, as did furious calls from members of the public demanding the University of Tennessee revoke its admission offer to Groves.

In the weeks that followed the killing of George Floyd, teenagers leveraging social media to call out classmates and peers for racist behavior became common place across the country.

In many cases, anonymous pages on Instagram were set up devoted to holding classmates accountable and Loudoun County was no exception, the Times reported.

In the case of Groves, within two days, she was kicked off the university’s cheer team and forced to withdraw from UT under pressure from admission officials, citing hundreds of emails and phone calls from outraged former and current students.

‘They’re angry, and they want to see some action,’ an administration official told Groves and her family, as reported by the Times.

In a thread posted to Twitter on June 4, the university wrote: ‘The University of Tennessee has received several reports of racist remarks and actions on social media by past, present, and future members of our community.

‘The university takes seriously our commitment to fostering a Volunteer community that values equity, inclusion, and that promotes respect for all people. We have a responsibility to support our black students and create a place where all Vols feel safe.

‘On Wednesday, following a racist video and photo surfacing on social media, Athletics made the decision not to allow a prospective student to join the Spirit Program. She will not be attending the university this fall.’

Groves would become one of many incoming freshman across the US who saw their admission offers revoked after similar footage emerged on social media showing them using racist language.

In Groves’ ... (Read more)

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