This is one of those occasions where you just wonder: “how many black people were in the room discussing this in these “meetings””?
Instead of addressing this racist incident with the seriousness it deserves, Pennsylvania school officials brushed aside a black doll hanging from the ceiling in a high school locker room, where it’d apparently been hanging for weeks:
“”
“After our administrators interviewed team members, both white and black, it appears that the students said this was a foolish prank and the intent was not to cause racial intimidation,” Dr. Cathy Taschner wrote to parents, staff and community members Tuesday.
“It was there for several weeks until a team member decided to use his tie to hang it down from the ceiling, where it was recently discovered, smeared with toothpaste.”
“Regardless, this is foolish and offensive, and not the kind of behavior we expect or accept from our students,” she continued.
Foolish prank?
It’s no coincidence the doll was black, just like it’s no coincidence it was placed in a high traffic area of the school. There were CLEAR racial epithets here, and shame on these school officials for not acting on this in a way to comfort students who may have seen this and feared for their safety, as well as discourage racist, frightening actions like this for future perpetrators.
I’m sure not everyone took it as a harmless or “foolish prank”.
Do better, so-called leaders.