"This story happened to one of my close friends during our senior year at Franklin, and she recently posted about the experience on her Facebook this year. I’m sure many people have already seen and read it, but as no one has submitted anything to the Franklin section, I feel obliged to share, especially because Franklin high’s current student body is the direct result of discriminatory zoning policies.

 

In 2015, it came to my friend’s attention that she was the subject of an incredibly racist GroupMe chat created by her fellow soccer teammates. Some of the attacks directed at her included calling her a “monkey,” saying that she should live in the “back” of her neighborhood instead of the front, and commenting on her hair as “Afro n****r pubes.”

 

When she brought the situation to our principal, Willie Dickerson, she was told that there was essentially nothing that could be done, and the principal was worried that my friend’s white friends would not support her, despite evidence of the chat and our knowledge of the perpetrators just being generally shitty people.

 

My friend posted about this experience on her Facebook last week, and she named all of the perpetrators, which caused them to immediately untag themselves from her post and basically beg her to take it down and offer false apologies. Now their parents are attacking her and trying to guilt trip her into taking it all back so these girls don’t get sacked from their colleges. One of their dads even hired a PR person, and one of the moms tried to shame her for not “realizing the implications” of her post. Racism is TAUGHT and subsequently enforced by the environment we grow up in. It’s no coincidence that the girls who grew up in gated or well-off communities, went to a school that tried to re-zone lower-income students from attending, and have been taught that they are the standard of beauty for having European features went on to bully an innocent black teammate. They absolutely deserve everything they get.

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Literally ANYTHING could have been done, but I believe because all the perpetrators involved were white, upper-class, and school athletes they were untouchable. They could have at least been kicked off of their respective teams or suspended for a semester or a year, but they were hardly reprimanded."