I was working on an in-class assignment in seventh-grade when I overheard two of my friends talking at the table next to me. “Dog eater!” one called out. The other responded with: “Border hopper!” The first was Hispanic, and the second Korean, each picked up on slurs used against the other’s racial identity and gave each other “The Pass”— part of a game that was popular in my grade at the time. To play “The Pass” you need two participants of different races. These two people then agree to give each other permission to say slurs or other racist terms targeting their respective race or ethnicities. Students were playing it all the time. Social media mobs canceled celebrities like TikTok star Alix Earle for the same stuff that my classmates were saying in service of this ‘game.’ Eventually it reached a point where I wasn’t sure that these were jokes or even participation in a game.
It seems shocking that middle school students would develop such a so-called game — until one realizes that adults play this game in the press and social media all the time.
My school was relatively diverse—our student body population was 24 percent minority enrollment, according to the U.S. News & World Report listing. When a student jokes around with their Asian or Hispanic friend, giving each other “the pass,” it can feel like it’s fine. But the problem is that words can be very hurtful regardless of intention — or lack of it. Multiple studies, including a 2024 paper published in the Journal of Affective Disorders, found that racism and racialized microaggressions can cause both physiological and psychological stress in minority students, worsening their academic experiences.
And even if they aren’t, kids still grow up with a false sense of what’s appropriate to say and what isn’t. More importantly, referring to this set of behaviors as a “game” feels both misleading and dismissive of the harm it can cause; games have winners and people who don’t win. When kids throw around slurs and make light of racism and other forms of discrimination, no one wins, but we as a society all lose.
A group of middle schoolers will often be inclined to joke around in a way that tests each other’s limits, and peer pressure can persuade kids to participate in these activities, especially when they think that what they’re saying has no weight. But normalizing similar behaviors also makes it harder to call them out: when I confronted some of my classmates about insensitive jokes in the past, they simply brushed my comments off. When politicians, celebrities, business executives, and community leaders do something abjectly racist and get away with it, they do not only neglect their duty to act as role models for younger generations, but also send the message that narrow-minded and offensive attitudes can be tolerated. Teenagers, who are remarkably perceptive and quick to pick up on those signals, intuit what’s going on in the world around them, internalizing and mimicking inappropriate words and actions.
In September, for example, Louisiana Rep. Clay Higgins doubled down on President-elect Trump’s false claims about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, OH eating pets: “Lol. These Haitians are wild. Eating pets, vudu, nastiest country in the western hemisphere, cults, slapstick gangsters…” he posted on the social media site X. When asked about his comments a few days later, he defended his tweet; he feels entitled to a pass. In March, United States Rep. David Trone, a Democrat from Maryland, used the derogatory term ‘Jigaboo’ during a House budget committee hearing. While Trone promptly apologized for what he described as inadvertent use of an offensive word, he faced no disciplinary action. We’re playing “the Pass” with him, too. Before the election, the Miami New Times ran an ad that used the n-word explicitly; while it was in a paid advertisement and not part of the editorial copy of the publication, the news outlet took money to inject the epithet into conversation.
Of course, part of growing up is testing limits and venturing into the forbidden; it’s like the first time someone says a swear word. I know many students aren’t racist and they felt a scary thrill by doing something they knew was wrong.
But if you ask anyone who uses foul language regularly, they know if they had never started to use it, they wouldn’t have engaged that slippery slope into bad habits and carelessness with words. That’s my worry about “The Pass.” It’s a gateway to more open hostility.
While a middle school game may seem harmless compared to the stakes in the political world, who are middle schoolers but the leaders of tomorrow? They’re testing the waters and learning that they’re warm, welcoming to the use of racial slurs.