Keaton Jones, a middle-schooler from Union County, Tennessee has gotten his 5 minutes of fame from a video his mother, Kimberly Jones, posted after he was reportedly bullied by fellow classmates for “how he looks”. This video has went viral on Facebook and has sparked outrage, starting an “anti-bully” response for the boy with even celebrities like Mark Ruffalo and even Nicki Minaj coming out in support of the bullied child. A GoFundMe campaign created for Keaton Jones has raised over $55k, and he has even gotten numerous invites to movie premieres by celebrities like Chris Evans.
But there’s a plot twist — Twitter detectives managed to find a series of hateful Facebook posts by Keaton’s mother, Kimberly Jones. The posts contained racist & typical patriotic American propaganda featuring many photos of her family holding confederate flags.
https://twitter.com/timmythick/status/940309240970989568?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Ashawnty Davis, a black fifth-grader from Aurora, Colorado committed suicide after a video of her with a bully was published online. Rosalie Avila, 13-year-old Latina committed suicide after years of being bullied by classmates.
This brings up the question: Why are we paying little to no attention to the numerous cases of young minority children being bullied severely, and in some cases, led to committing suicide? Why does a white boy being insulted at school suddenly spark an outrage with hashtags like #GiveTheJonesAGoodChristmas and tons of support for him being shown on social media?
https://twitter.com/DrTGIF/status/940296610445185024?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Now while Jones’ may have gotten bullied (there’s actually reports of him calling fellow classmates the n-word, and that the bullying may ACTUALLY be in retaliation to that), what is the point of creating a GoFundMe when money can’t erase the humiliation he’ll suffer due to his mother’s exploitation of him?
Raising money is NOT a solution, and we as a society cannot fix bullying if parents still teach hatred.
