Four years ago, 15-year-old Mimi Groves, then a freshman at Heritage High School in Virginia, was excited to get her learner’s permit. After receiving it, she sent her friend a 3-second Snapchat video in which she said: “I can drive, [n-word]!”
Somehow, the video was circulated among a few students at school. It survived for years, and, last year, Jimmy Galligan, who was a senior along with Groves at Heritage, ended up seeing it. Galligan, whose mother is black and whose father is white, said he was offended by the video. Instead of explaining the issue with a white girl using the slur to Groves herself, Galligan held onto the video and waited until he could use it against Groves to destroy her.
Typically, such an act would be seen as bullying, but in today’s pro-cancel-culture society, Galligan received a New York Times profile and the story presented from his point of view, along with a headline clearly favoring his actions. “A Racial Slur, a Viral Video, and a Reckoning,” reads the Times headline about Galligan’s act.
The “reckoning” refers to what Groves endured at the hands of Galligan. Groves had been accepted to the University of Tennessee and was set to join the school’s cheer team, which at the time was the reigning national champion. When Galligan posted the video of Groves online and it went viral, she lost her position on the cheer team and was forced to withdraw from the university after facing pressure from admissions officials. The officials apparently told her they received “hundreds of emails and phone calls from outraged alumni, students and the public,” the Times reported.
Groves told the Times that she didn’t “understand the severity of the word, or the history and context behind it because” she was so young. She told the outlet the slur was used in “all the songs we listened to, and I’m not using that as an excuse.”
There’s something for everyone to hate in this story: A college freshman gets her life destroyed by being videoed quoting a rap song when she was 15. The crusading New York Times, staffed by journalists who earlier this year exclaimed that a Tom Cotton op-ed somehow endangered them, is thrilled to sic the social media dog pile onto her. And college administrators who take their lead from that mob. A whole lot of people who should know better need to ask themselves:
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