Day 25: Virginia vs. Black - Thursday 5/5

Today we had two main objectives: (1) visiting a company that is called Sports Endeavors and (2) visiting the UNC School of Government.

Sports Endeavor is the worlds largest company for soccer, lacrosse and rugby. They sell everything you need to play the sport and are the main distributors for Nike, Adidas and many more. They don’t have a store and sell everything thru the internet sites soccer.com and lacrosse.com. They ship directly to the customer. We had a sneak preview of the newest Adidas shoe manufacture for Kaka, but it was no pictures allowed.

Now at the UNC School of Government I thought I wouldn’t see anything that would have interested me, but I was wrong. We ended up in a big classroom were some high school teachers were learning some things about law and how to teach it in a fun way to their children. We saw the case of Virginia vs. Black before the US Supreme court. Basically it’s about burning a cross and weather this is a crime or not. To be more precise, the KKK is know for their hate against the african american citizens in the US and they burn the cross as a symbol for their cult. While in Europe we don’t quit understand the real negative meaning from that, here in the US it’s a symbol for hate and racism. You gotta know that the KKK killed a lot of blacks with no reason what so ever and although it doesn’t exist any more on paper, they still have a few believers.

Now this case is only from 1998 to 2003, but for al the details please check http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_v._Black because I couldn’t explain it better. But let me be very brief. The KKK organized a cross burning in Virginia. Burning a cross is a felony and the mane organizer was sentenced to a fine, but he didn’t except that so he took it to the supreme court. They stated that it is only a felony when you burn the cross when you want to offend somebody. The cross they burned in a field in Virginia as only a part of their ritually and was not meant to offend any body, so he walk out as a free men. Now giving the bad nature of the KKK that was an un expecting outcome. Even Obama publicly disagreed with the ruling, but nevertheless it stands.

It wasn’t only interesting to learn about this ruling, but also the interaction with the teachers and how they look at the first amendment ‘freedom of speech’ was nice to see. I really had a blast and felt like I was back at university.

We didn’t have to give a presentation, but we got invited for a picnic in Chapel Hill. A nice way to end the day.

Nick