Some Wisconsin residents are crying “racism” after students at a local high school discovered signs above a water fountain, with one designating it for “White” alongside a sign for “Colored,” while many of the African-American students are calling the incident by a far more derogatory name:
“A typical Tuesday at Franklin High School.”
Franklin High School is located in Franklin, Wis., and, according to U.S. News & World Report, has a diverse student body that is 2 percent black. The low African-American population is probably why the entire school district refuses to celebrate the Martin Luther King federal holiday (pdf).
On the other hand, when student Jacob Romanski posted a picture of the Post-it notes with “White” and “Colored” scrawled on them, taped above a school water fountain, maybe the signs were a tribute to the end of segregation in celebration of the holiday. You might think that explanation is implausible, but in a radio interview with Romanski, the bubbly Kiss-FM morning host said that she was only aware of who Martin Luther King Jr. was because they got the day off for his birthday when she was in school.
How implausible is that?
Romanski said that he saw the sign, took a picture and reported it to the high school’s administration because he found it “unacceptable and appalling,” he told the station. The 17-year-old said that the school began checking the security footage to find the culprit.
When news of the incident spread, the school district issued a statement saying that it was able to find the student who was responsible for the prank, and officials assured parents that the racist signs were “in no way part of any school, project, curriculum, or initiative.”
Wait ... what? Why would they actually feel the need to say that?
Well, maybe because Amber Smith, who has two sisters who attend the high school, says that her sisters were called “niggers” and the school did nothing about it. Perhaps it might be because Smith recalled students at Franklin making a video for a class project on why it’s OK to use the n-word with no reprimand from the school. (I thought Future Racists of America was an extracurricular activity.)
That’s probably why the district needed to let parents know that the student who committed the racist act did not receive a grade.
Franklin Public Schools has not released information on the identity of the student who committed the act. Principal Michael Vuolo would only say that the “administration was able to identify the individual responsible and address that student’s behavior.”
When asked for comment, Martin Luther King Jr. did not respond by saying: “You gotta admit ... given the school’s demographics, the signs were 98 percent correct. But at least they could’ve acknowledged my birthday. Who doesn’t like a day off?”
Racism, that’s who.
It never takes a day off.