High school students stage walk-out to protest racist, homophobic Snapchat videos
Fed up with racist videos, several dozen students at South Hadley High School in Massachusetts staged a silent protest after another student posted racist and homophobic clips on Snapchat.
The students, wearing red to show unity and holding signs, walked out of their classes for a mile-long march from the high school to a local shopping center to protest the racist videos.
“We decided to walk because the video was very vulgar, had very explicit terms,” Calvin Bridges, a senior at the school, told Mass Live.
The student behind a series of repugnant Snapchat videos is known to school administrators but was reportedly not identified due to her age. According to MassLive, after posting the racist videos she had to be held separate from the other students in an office with the vice principal after the Snapchat videos circulated the school campus last week.
Black and LGBT Lives Don’t Matter
In one of the racist videos, the student belittled the Black Lives Matter Movement and wished for the days when Black people were relegated to picking cotton.
“Black lives don’t matter, they should be out there picking my cotton, and they should do my [expletive] work for me,” she said.
Apparently not one to just hate Black people, the student went on to insult LGBT people as well. She bragged about her friends being all straight, white, smokers who vape with e-cigarettes and drink on the weekends.
“I think I’m living pretty good. Like, all my friends are white, none of them are gay and we drink on the weekends. We all Juul it’s actually a pretty good life,” she said in another Snapchat video.
In yet another video, the student says that she is not a “piece of sh**” but all LGBT people and Black people are.
“I’m not a piece of sh**. And any queer, any Black person, that’s a piece of sh** because Black people literally look like sh**.”
The Latest Racist Rant Caught Online
The unidentified South Hadley High School student is just the latest in a line of young adults facing a searing backlash over racist rants that have gone viral in recent weeks.
Earlier this month Harley Barber, a sorority girl at the University of Alabama, repeatedly said the N-word in a social media post on MLK day and claimed that she could use it as often as she wanted because she was in the South. The New Jersey native was kicked out of both the university and her sorority. Surprisingly, her mother said she deserved it.
Indiana high school student Mat Blood, claims he was dared by his friends to scream “f*** n***ers” into a bullhorn while wearing the Nazi flag around his shoulders. The consequences for the 17-year-old’s actions were swift: He lost his job and is now worried that his parents might lose their jobs too. Blood says his family is ashamed of him.
And just last week, Natalie Martinez, of Georgia State University, was suspended from the school’s soccer team and left school after using the N-word on her Finsta page.
The School’s Response
South Hadley High School Vice Principal Patrick Lemiuex confirmed to MassLive on Tuesday that the administration was dealing with a “racial incident,’ but declined to comment directly about the videos.
By Wednesday, South Hadley Public Schools released this statement about the racist videos:
“South Hadley Public Schools is aware of the inappropriate and discriminatory Snapchat videos that were posted by a student. While these occurred off school grounds, this school system does not tolerate behavior of this type and plans to take all actions within its authority to address this matter to include working collaboratively with the South Hadley Police Department. Rest assured we are taking this incident very seriously and will use this as an educational opportunity to initiate conversations about respecting individual differences and promoting equality and respectful treatment for all.”
South Hadley Public Schools Superintendent Nicholas Young told MassLive that though the district is appalled by the content of the racist videos, behavior off of school grounds can not always be addressed by the school system.
“We won’t tolerate any inappropriate comments of a racial nature and we will address it fully within the scope of our authority. At the same time, we can’t police everything that occurs outside of school,” said Young.
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