I don't blame them because of how today's PC standards are with online shaming and bad PR.
That said, wouldn't it be nice to know that intent matter more than false perceptions? Feeding false ideas as being true while shunned the truth seems counter productive. That's my whole in responding to Fish's initial post.
Yeah, but it's a risk. Few are willing to take risks. Fewer are willing to take risks in good faith.
What I mean is, most who would take the risk would do so because they didn't care if it was a racist gesture or not. Very very few would take the risk because they believed, hoped, took the kids on their word that it wasn't a racist gesture.
Let's get something straight here. The circle game prank is, in and of itself, not appropriate for your yearbook pictures. Is it a serious offense? No. But all the same, these kids put up a concerted effort to put inappropriate gestures in their yearbook pictures. Was their motivation to play the circle game? All of them? They are all just innocently playing the circle game? But hey, there's also this double meaning. One that a group of kids conspiring with one another to make this gesture should obviously be aware of.
So let's talk about the circle game for a second... The point is to trick people into looking at the circle below your waist so that you can punch them in the arm.
So if these kids are playing the circle game, they're doing it wrong. They all agreed to make the same gesture. There was no trick. They didn't play the actual game.
But what if the circle game was a way of explaining away their actual desire to make a racist gesture? Well, ****! Now it actually makes some kind of stupid sense. They all agreed to make a racist gesture that they could all deny by claiming to actually be playing the circle game. Now the actual game they're playing makes sense. It's still stupid, but it isn't self-contradictory.