Social 9-Year-Old Kills Herself after Bullies Mocked Her for Having a White Friend

[Madmick]

9-year-old killed herself after bullies mocked her for having a white friend, mom says

Ever since the start of the school year, 9-year-old McKenzie Adams endured bullying from other students at her Alabama school.

Eddwina Harris, the girl’s aunt, told The Tuscaloosa News that the fourth-grader, who is black, was often targeted with racist insults because she drove to school every day with a white family. She attended U.S. Jones Elementary School in Demopolis, family says.

“She was being bullied the entire school year,” she told the newspaper, “with words such as ‘kill yourself,’ ‘you think you’re white because you ride with that white boy,’ ‘you ugly,’ ‘black b-tch,’ ‘just die.’”

Her mother, Jasmine Adams, says that taunting is likely why McKenzie killed herself on December 3, according to CBS42. The 9-year-old hanged herself inside her family’s home, police say, and the girl’s grandmother found her body.

“Part of it could have been because she rode to school with a white family,” Adams told CBS42. “And a lot of it was race — some of the student bullies would say to her, ‘Why you riding with white people? You’re black, you’re ugly. You should just die.’”

The Pine Hill Police Department mourned the passing of the “little sweet angel” in a Facebook post.

But Adams, who says her daughter warned school officials about the bullying multiple times, says she wishes more had been done.

“I just felt that our trust was in them that they would do the right thing,” Adams told CBS42. “It feels like to me it wasn’t done.”

Data from The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that the suicide rate of U.S. children ages 5 to 14 has nearly tripled between 2007 and 2017.

Among teenage girls, the suicide rate in the U.S. hit a 40-year high in 2015. And between 2007 and 2015, suicide rates for teenage boys and young men increased by over 30 percent and doubled among girls. According to the CDC, 5,900 kids and adults aged 10 to 24 died by suicide in 2015.

Last December, 13-year-old Rosalie Avila hanged herself in the bedroom of her family’s California home.

Bullies relentlessly called the California teen ‘ugly’ and made fun of her braces, her father Freddie Avila told ABC6. One bully posted a video on social media of Rosalie sitting by herself at school as she was taunted, NBC News reported.

Rosalie cut her wrists because of the bullying, her father said, and kept a list of people who bullied her in a diary.

That same diary would detail the teenager’s last words to her parents — and the world.

“Sorry, Mom and Dad. I love you,” she wrote in her diary, according to CBS Los Angeles. “Sorry, Mom, you’re gonna find me like this.”

This is beyond despicable (assuming the mother's account is true because she doesn't substantiate it with facts). Fucking Florida.



There is a second dimension to this that the above article digs into a bit. This is acutely affecting girls, since 2011, and nobody has articulated why more brilliantly than NYU psychologist Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff. I was pleased to discover Sherdog has had a thread on Haidt.
Parents coddling their kids and not letting them unsupervised time

Spoiler: Here's a book for the WR book thread

He succinctly summarized the ideas of this recent work on Maher's show this past fall (with the Mooch!). He traces how this is symptomatic of a wider cultural problem that is being driven by the leftist ideas embraced by the iGen despite that most of us would acknowledge this girl's tragedy, if rooted in racism, is more likely specifically correlated to redhat toxicity. I especially appreciate his comments at the end explaining the gender impact disparity precipitated by a question from the Mooch beginning at 6:59:



Keywords related to this work are "Helicopter parenting", "Bulldozer parenting" or "Concierge parenting".


*Edit*
So I noticed this story disappeared from Reddit rather suddenly, and it triggered a suspicion in me. I did some Googling to find out more about what was going on.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-new...-suicide-after-racist-taunts-bullying-n946411

Police in the family's hometown of Linden said they are still investigating the death of 9-year-old McKenzie Nicole Adams and that there are conflicting reports of what happened leading up to it. Police also said they have not seen any reports that McKenzie was being bullied.

Adams' aunt, Eddwina Harris, told the Tuscaloosa News that the alleged bullying her niece experienced at U.S. Jones Elementary School in Demopolis stemmed from her friendship with a boy at her school.

“She was being bullied the entire school year, with words such as ‘kill yourself,’ ‘you think you’re white because you ride with that white boy,’ ‘you ugly,’ ‘black b----,’ ‘just die’,” Harris told the paper.

The family said Adams was found dead at her home by her grandmother. They told the outlet Adams died by suicide.

An official cause of death for Adams has yet to be released. Linden Police Chief Robert Alston told NBC News repeated attempts to try and obtain a copy of the autopsy report from the coroner have so far proven unsuccessful.

According to Adams' family, she was also bullied at another elementary school she attended previously, leading them to transfer her to U.S. Jones Elementary School. They told the Tuscaloosa News that the State Board of Education was made aware of the alleged incidents.

Linden School District Superintendent Timothy Thurman confirmed in a statement that Adams was a student at Linden Elementary School when she was in kindergarten. He said the child was at the school for only 22 days, and left for unknown reasons.

"There is no record of any bullying during that time and there’s no note as to why she withdrew," he said. "She transferred to U.S. Jones Elementary School in Demopolis and she’s been there ever since."

Demopolis City School System attorney Alex Braswell told NBC News in a statement that the district is "cooperating with the Demopolis and Linden Police Departments in their joint investigation of this incident" and will continue to make the district a safe place for children.

...and the 2nd school with the alleged unnamed "white boy"...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nati...ourself/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.34a76dd5c8e7

But the school — whose motto is, “Where hope begins and dreams come true” — disputes the family’s version of events. Officials said there was no record of bullying. Alex Braswell, an attorney for the Demopolis City Board of Education, told the Tuscaloosa News on Tuesday that the school system conducted an internal investigation and found no basis for the family’s claims.


“We have concluded our internal investigation to the allegations of bullying which led to this senseless death,” Braswell said. “There have been no findings of any reports of bullying by either the student or family. The findings of this internal investigation are consistent with the results of the investigation of the Linden Police Department at this point in time.”

Reached late Tuesday, Linden Police Chief Robert Alston told The Washington Post that his department was still looking into the matter.

“We weren’t able to confirm whether she was bullied or not at this point,” he said. “We’ve talked to several officials at the school, and all of them said they have no official report of any bullying.”

 

[DC23]

Different culture, hard for me to judge.

 

[nac386]

The fact that a 9 year old even had the concept of suicide in mind as a potential reality scares me. When I was 9 years old the idea of suicide was such a foreign concept that it never would have popped into my head no matter what happened. How did we get to the point where elementary school kids are committing suicides? Has this always happened, and I just didn't know about it?

 

[WhitebeltXL]

It's stories like this that make me think "that's enough internet for me today".

Whatever the reasons, it's awful that a 9 year old would feel that suicide was their only option (or even an option at all). We all know kids can be cruel to each other, but the taunts and abuse mentioned in the article seem to be at a different level than what I saw/heard at school when I was a child.

RIP.

 

[genecop]

RIP...but it’s not the bullying....it’s something bigger , the bullying didn’t help, but she probably had bigger mental issues..

 

[jamel]

Told yall.

 

[Madmick]

RIP...but it’s not the bullying....it’s something bigger , the bullying didn’t help, but she probably had bigger mental issues..

If you'd take the time to review Haidt's discussion on Maher, including his citation of statistics, there is a powerful argument that the bullying likely played a key role.


*Edit*

Told yall.

What's the lesson? I'm with you in having strong objections to halfway houses, especially this calculated deportation of sex offenders to rural counties by blue-shaded metropolitan politicians, but I don't see the relevance of that issue to this girl's suicide.

Ah

The death of the free range child.

I blame sex offender maps and halfway houses that are in close proximity to schools and neighborhoods.

Knowledge has been a blessing and a curse.

Pushback against helicopter parenting and safe spaces (such as the anti-bullying campaigns) has been a priority within the conservative platform for a while, now.

 

[tonni]

But isn't bullying supposed to be making kids tough? Pisses me off when people think that.

R.I.P.

 

[jamel]

RIP...but it’s not the bullying....it’s something bigger , the bullying didn’t help, but she probably had bigger mental issues..

Yes it is.

I finished my highschool years in Alabama, straight from Germany.

It's part of the curriculum to be fearful and hateful of anything different and confusing.

I made the mistake of enunciating my words and caught hell for it, was told I was using "big words."

Hell a couple times even my own teachers would say "YOU SPEAK SO WELL!"

Oh and I got married a year after they took interracial marriage off the books (blue law but still it was 2001)

 

[AGGAMEMNON66]

The fact that a 9 year old even had the concept of suicide in mind as a potential reality scares me. When I was 9 years old the idea of suicide was such a foreign concept that it never would have popped into my head no matter what happened. How did we get to the point where elementary school kids are committing suicides? Has this always happened, and I just didn't know about it?

Access to information has changed. Kids at earlier and earlier ages now have access to greater amounts of information to be influenced by due to advancements in technology (smart phones for example). Social media and media in general influences so much more now than it ever did before. Crazy, but this is the price paid for these things unfortunately. Sad

 

[babycart]

But isn't bullying supposed to be making kids tough? Pisses me off when people think that.

R.I.P.

It only makes a kid tough when they are taught ways to solve them. That's the problem with 'copter parenting: the parents solve it all while the kids don't have gradual exposure to pressure from problems. Not only that: did the kids learn how to solve their problems using resources available to them during the time the parents were fixing things out? I bet no.

 

[genecop]

If you'd take the time to review Haidt's discussion on Maher, including his citation of statistics, there is a powerful argument that the bullying likely played a key role.


Never denied the bullying played a “Role”

In the same way people in the 80’s died from Pneumonia who had Aids....

Never denied the bullying played a “Role”

In the same way people in the 80’s died from Pneumonia who had Aids

 

[tonysmasseuse]

So terrible that we live in a world where a 9 year old even knows about suicide, let alone how to do it efficiently...
Every day i realise how incredibly fortunate i was to grow up without internet, enjoyed a childhood spent mainly outside playing with other kids, roaming free, climbing trees, building stuff, making up games, being creative, playing sports and just having fun. Teenage years going to parties, falling in love, discovering sex and feeling like everything that happened was enormous, meaningful magical rites that had never happened to anyone before. Teasing and bullying was minimal but integral to learning about boundaries, facial expression, reading others and especially developing empathy: you could instantly see and feel if you'd gone too far, in the reactions of the group or the hurt on the other kid's face. Online bullying, with its distance and clinical execution, means never getting that feedback, kids don't see the hurt real person on the other end nor do they face the immediate emotional and social consequences of cruel or rude behaviour - it's all just words on a screen. And we may be saddled with new generations now that are virtually (no pun intended) devoid of real empathy.
It's a godawful conundrum. It's clear that the mollycoddling of the parents (and in my own country, the constant meddling from the super nanny-state) is a big part of the problem in making weak kids and future citizens handicapped by learned helplessness, but at the same time can easily understand why parents become overprotective in this day and age, with all the awful things going on, even knowing that creatives these oversensitive kids who are not equipped to deal with those awful things. What gives?

 

[SammyPops]

Sad story that should be learned from and not turned into a stupid identify politics argument on an internet karate forum.

 

[Fronk]

Access to information has changed. Kids at earlier and earlier ages now have access to greater amounts of information to be influenced by due to advancements in technology (smart phones for example). Social media and media in general influences so much more now than it ever did before. Crazy, but this is the price paid for these things unfortunately. Sad

It certainly has its drawbacks doesn't it? I've always been interested in what actual effects our constant connection with technology is going to have on our society, and I guess we are seeing the results now. Isolation and anxiety. We are basically addicted to our phones and require a constant feed of stimulation, be it music, scrolling through social media or whatever, I can admit this myself. Are kids these days just able to sit on a couch and do nothing for even 30 minutes these days? It's like we forget what it's like to be bored.

 

[Rusk]

But isn't bullying supposed to be making kids tough? Pisses me off when people think that.

R.I.P.

Challenges make people tough if they overcome them.

 

[panamaican]

This has nothing to do with helicopter parenting. If anything, suicides are taking place during unsupervised time.

This is entirely about bullying in the context described in the video. Kids of that age are extremely attuned to what their peers think of them. Developmentally, they are going through a phase where peer acceptance is much more important than parental approval. There is nothing that we can do about that, it is hardwired into how our brains develop and mature.

In that time period, if their peer group ostracizes them to a sufficient degree, they truly feel as if there is no place for them in the world. The constancy of the internet and the permanency of what goes on it makes it impossible for these kids to ever have a moment without the ostracization and the diminishing of their social value.

When people say "Toughen them up" it's pointless. You cannot toughen them up to such a degree that their brains don't go through the natural development need to maximize peer acceptance. You have to minimize their exposure to it. Not because the parents are overdoing it but because society is putting it out there at a level far beyond what we were designed to handle. And for the emotionally sensitive individual (which is an intrinsic thing, not a learned one), what is manageable for their peers is not manageable for them (like pain tolerances, some people just have a higher threshold).

It is a real problem that has its roots in the disconnect between social media and the developing child brain.

Kids need time away from the negative experiences to process them, to adequately understand and to develop resiliencies but that doesn't happen to the same degree anymore.

 

[Lord_Impaler]

Where the hell were the adults in all of this?

The parents, teachers, administrators etc....no one did anything?

They didn’t know that this little girl was getting incessantly harassed for a year?

Makes me sick.

 

[tonni]

This has nothing to do with helicopter parenting. If anything, suicides are taking place during unsupervised time.

This is entirely about bullying in the context described in the video. Kids of that age are extremely attuned to what their peers think of them. Developmentally, they are going through a phase where peer acceptance is much more important than parental approval. There is nothing that we can do about that, it is hardwired into how our brains develop and mature.

In that time period, if their peer group ostracizes them to a sufficient degree, they truly feel as if there is no place for them in the world. The constancy of the internet and the permanency of what goes on it makes it impossible for these kids to ever have a moment without the ostracization and the diminishing of their social value.

When people say "Toughen them up" it's pointless. You cannot toughen them up to such a degree that their brains don't go through the natural development need to maximize peer acceptance. You have to minimize their exposure to it. Not because the parents are overdoing it but because society is putting it out there at a level far beyond what we were designed to handle. And for the emotionally sensitive individual (which is an intrinsic thing, not a learned one), what is manageable for their peers is not manageable for them (like pain tolerances, some people just have a higher threshold).

It is a real problem that has its roots in the disconnect between social media and the developing child brain.

Kids need time away from the negative experiences to process them, to adequately understand and to develop resiliencies but that doesn't happen to the same degree anymore.

Couldn't have put it better. Thanks.

 

[tonni]

Challenges make people tough if they overcome them.

Alternatively, they get destroyed by them and their life is ruined.