Social media has exposed a group of white teens who allegedly showed up to Fright Fest at Six Flags wearing Blackface and racially harassing park visitors, per REVOLT TV. The teens were accused of AirDropping racist memes and slurs to troll whoever was in the immediate area.
A TikTok video posted by user Asiah shows a group of white teens walking up to the line of a ride with black paint smeared on their faces. It’s unspecified which Six Flags location they were in but commenters suspected it was Six Flags Great America in Gurnee, Ill. In the video, one of the teens appears to ask a Black person waiting in line if he likes his face paint. “What are you supposed to be?” they ask in response. The teen then explains he was trying to paint something else but messed it up.
Asiah also claimed in the TikTok that the teens AirDropped a meme from the name “Jigaboo Jones.” The image was a screenshot with a picture of a Black boy holding a toy with the message “Buy me one.” The response read, “No. Black people can’t be sold anymore.”
People in the comments identified the ringleader as Isaac Handley. Whoever it was, Yahoo! reported his social media accounts have been deleted.
Check it out below:
Some people in the TikTok comments tried to run to teens’ defense, claiming they didn’t mean to be offensive. Though, others said they experienced the same thing, AirDrop and all, when they previously visited the theme park. At the moment, it’s unclear whether these teens are connected to the meme.
If they were adults, I wouldn’t hold it past them to make old racist jokes. However, the instances of young white kids making a mockery of slavery and post-slavery racism seem to be more frequent. Spitting the n-word at Black people, slave auctions, cotton-picking pranks or even whipping Black students are all examples of the horrors that happened not only in our past, but right now in our high schools.
For the past year, we’ve been advocating for critical race theory, believing it can build a new generation of anti-racists by teaching white kids the significance of things like Blackface. Who’s to say these kids aren’t just treating this as a joke?