A San Marcos father is upset about a post on his daughter's Facebook page. He says someone posted a derogatory term about African Americans but when he reported it to Facebook, administrators said there is nothing they can do.
"It's showing kids that it's OK. You can do what you want,” said Cody York of the post that used the N-word. York says he immediately responded to the person who posted it.
“After I saw that and made a comment to him about think of yourself talking to your mother or would you talk to your loved ones like that.”
York said he immediately reported the comment to Facebook Administrators saying it contained hate speech or symbols. He was surprised by the response.
“Facebook got back to me today (Wednesday) and said they reviewed it and it doesn't violate their community standards.”
The post used the N-word but spelled it with an “ah” at the end, instead of an “er.”
Dr. Roy Whitaker, a professor at San Diego State University, said this is a touchy subject. He isn’t surprised some people may feel free to use the N-word, especially on social media, and don't see it as offensive.
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"It's obviously going to be a touchy term, particularly when those individuals not in the black community use the term," Whitaker said. "Of course the context will of course matter in terms of who uses the term and how they use the term.”
He went on to say, “In terms of youth culture in particular, and the social media networks, with them listening to hip hop and other forms of music, there’s a currency to the term and so it gets brought into different communities and different sectors.”
But York said in no way is it acceptable.
“Just getting the word out to parents, saying monitor your kids Facebook," York said. "They may talk one way in front of you, but you never know when they are with their friends or away from home.”
A Facebook spokesperson sent NBC 7 this statement:
“We aim to find the right balance between giving people a place to express themselves and promoting a welcoming and safe environment for our diverse, global community. Not all disagreeable or disturbing content violates our Community Standards. For this reason, we offer people who use Facebook the ability to customize and control what they see by unfollowing, blocking and hiding the posts, people, Pages and applications they don’t want to see.”
