A Texas high school is dealing with the fallout from a group of students holding what is being characterized as a “slave auction” on Snapchat, in which white students “sold” black classmates for anywhere from $1 to $100.
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The horrifying story comes from Aledo, Texas, a town within the greater Dallas-Fort Worth metro area, where students at the Aledo High School Don R. Daniel Ninth Grade Campus conducted what they dubbed a “n****** auction.”
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Though it’s unclear from media coverage when the activity took place, KDFW-TV reported that it “obtained the district’s initial response to the student group posting—what some parents complained was a ‘softball approach.’”
The school news item, dated the week of April 5 from Principal Carolyn Ansley, stated “We had an incident of cyberbullying and harassment,” going on the focus “on the difference between a bystander and upstander on social media.”
“A bystander allows things like bullying to happen without speaking up,” Ansley wrote, “but an upstander has the character to speak up to the bully and or tell a teacher or administrator.”
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Parents and community leaders aren’t satisfied with the lexical lesson. Parker County NAACP president Eddie Burnett, planning to address Aledo ISD board members at its next regular board meeting on Monday, noted, “You have to be unambiguous about what your policies are, what the rules are, what the consequences are and what the reason is for putting so much emphasis on it. You can’t be trying to excuse the behavior at the same time you address the problem. Because if you do, you cancel that anything you’re trying to do.”
Civil rights attorney Lee Merritt published an alleged screenshot from the students’ online activity on his Twitter account, along with the comment, “The racism pouring into our politics, our public safety, our national security is being incubated in our schools.”
This past Monday, the district addressed the incident more specifically, noting its racially offensive nature and said disciplinary action was taken—though, according to several media sources, it wasn’t clear either how many students were disciplined or how severe the punishment was.
*First Published: April 15, 2021, 5:44 am
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