Men and women's basketball teams from Labette Community College were mocked with racist calls during a game against North Arkansas College. The Parsons Sun reports that during last week's games in Harrison, Arkansas, fans of North Arkansas hurled monkey noises and crow caws at the players. 

Footage of one member of the North Arkansas crowd shows them making sounds of a crow cawing several times when black Labette players shot free throws, the Sun reports. The crow noise was allegedly a reference to Jim Crow. It could also be interpreted as a reference to Herman Melville's Moby Dick, in which crow caws were mentioned as a derogatory phrase said by the character Pip, a black deckhand in the book. 

In addition to crow caws, fans also made monkey noises, a much more obviously racist offense — especially in light of the recent H&M scandal. The monkey noises directed at Labette players, often whenever Labette was on offense.

Labette's women's basketball team is predominantly black with 10 of the 11 players while North Arkansas’ roster has four black players out of 14 listed on its website. Labette’s men’s team is also predominantly black, while North Arkansas men’s roster is half black.

Micki Somers, the public relations representative for North Arkansas, has gone on to say that the school condemns disruptive actions from fans.

“We definitely don’t condone any kind of conduct that includes any kind of insults or slurs, especially any that would target any kind of ethnicity,” Somers said before proceeding to assure that the school would investigate any allegations of racism at its athletic events.

Mark Watkins, president of Labette, said the college encourages diversity.

“The opposing team will try to distract us, to cause us to lose our focus,” Watkins said in a statement to the Sun. “But, as long as we continue to focus on utilizing our strength through diversity, we will overcome distractions, such as discrimination.”

This behavior should seemingly come as no surprise. Apparently, The Arkansas Times called Harrison the “most racist town in America” in 2016. The Knights of the Ku Klux Klan are nationally headquartered in Harrison, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. Slate credited the town with “the normalization of white supremacist ideology” in 2017 while the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, the newspaper of record for the state, characterized Harrison as a “haven for white supremacists” in 2017.

This behavior is expected from racists, and Labette does not seemed to be fazed by it. However, for any of the black students on the roster of North Arkansas, we need to have a moment of prayer. 

KansasSchool-Racism