Saline, Michigan, named after it’s plentiful salt streams, had a flood of angry parents fill its district school board meeting Tuesday after reports emerged of high school students sending racist social media messages to their Black peers.
Local outlets reported Black athletes shared a video of the racist group chat on a popular social media app, Snapchat. Two white student-athletes created the group, later adding Black students, and sending messages using the word n****r and historically racist phrases such as “The south will rise again,” The Metro Times reports.
Students in the group, which was titled “Racist” and included two gorilla emojis, continued to taunt their Black peers. District officials referred to the taunts as “derogatory terms about African Americans” and said the chat included praises of “white power.”
DataUsa reports the Midwest town has only 73 Black residents totaling .0764% of its population. The town's school district's website lists an all-white school board.
On Monday, in a message to the community, Superintendent Scot Graden said Saline Area Schools “uses a process known as restorative practices (or restorative justice), where in conjunction with clear discipline for infraction of school rules, we work with those who created the harm as well as those who were harmed to repair the damage.” Graden, however, didn't provide specifics on the athletes' punishment.
“Hate, prejudice, and racism have no place in our schools or our community,” Graden said in the letter. “Our School and our District find the words used in these posts to be deplorable and we strongly denounce the actions and words of these students.”
The next day, a previously scheduled board meeting was full of community members, including one of the Black students invited to the group chat, pleading with the district to take swift action.
“I honestly hope you can do something to make us feel comfortable walking the hallways of that school,” said student Karamba Kaba.
“Our reputation as a city is that we are racist,” a parent told board members.
The school district created a “Diversity Equity and Inclusion Advisory Committee” which says it aims to address "the inequalities that may exist with our historically marginalized communities.” The committee’s website lists it’s most recent meeting in October of 2019 with their proposed agenda intended to discuss "the origins of the N-word.”
Back in 2017, Saline High School athletes made the news when the football team brought out a float with a dummy in a noose dressed in the rival team's uniform. Local news outlets reported players began shouting “Saline is racist,” but some community members dismissed the allegations as “silly controversies.”
In 2008, the school district's former superintendent Beverly Geltner was embroiled in multiple scandals after she was named in a 2008 lawsuit alleging she referred to Black staff as “dumb Blacks.”
