The football team at River Valley High School in Yuba City, California, has thrown in the towel after a viral video showed players holding a mock “slave sale.”
The incident, which went down in the team locker room and was uploaded to TikTok, came to the public’s attention late last week.
The video opens with the cameraperson entering a completely dark locker room. The lights turn on and a plethora of high schoolers are shown placing bids on three Black students standing at the front of the room.
We should add that at least one of the students appears to have something dangling around their neck — seemingly with the purpose of signifying that the boys in question are pretending to be enslaved.
Furthermore, while many of the teammates who yelled out prices were fully clothed, the Black players pretending to be on the auction block were dressed only in their underwear.
You can watch the now-deleted TikTok clip, which was obtained by The Neighborhood Talk, below.
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In response to the video, Doreen Osumi — superintendent of the Yuba City Unified School District (YCUSD) — slammed the incident as being “deeply offensive.”
“Re-enacting a slave sale as a prank tells us that we have a great deal of work to do with our students so they can distinguish between intent and impact,” Osumi wrote, CNN reports. “They may have thought this skit was funny, but it is not; it is unacceptable and requires us to look honestly and deeply at issues of systemic racism.”
Osumi went on to share that YCUSD is “working in earnest to identify lessons and programs to help our student body learn from this situation.”
“When students find humor in something that is so deeply offensive, it tells me that we have an opportunity to help them expand their mindset to be more aware, thoughtful, and considerate of others,” Osumi explained.
Notably, those who participated in the “unfortunate and extremely distressing incident” were officially barred from playing for the remainder of the football season, as they directly violated the school’s student-athlete school of conduct, according to CNN.
However, this disciplinary action resulted in the varsity team having an inadequate amount of players. Therefore, forcing the team to forfeit the remainder of the season.
Additionally, further disciplinary action may be taken against the students in question, though it’s unclear what exactly the punishments would entail.
What do you think about the video?
