A California high school football team is sitting out an entire season over a racist video that emerged with some team members engaging in a slave auction.
On September 27, the superintendent of Yuba City Unified School District, Doreen Osumi, was sent a damning video of the slave auction. The footage showed students from River Valley High School pretending to auction off three of their Black teammates in the locker room.
Osumi called the incident “unfortunate and extremely distressing.”
About suspending the River Valley High School football team for the season, she said, “They violated our student-athlete code of conduct which they all signed and committed to follow, and that will not be ignored or minimized. As a result, we do not have the necessary number of players to safely field the varsity team and must thus forfeit the remainder of the season.”
Osumi also expressed that the incident “tells us that we have a great deal of work to do with our students.”
“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. We know that corrective action may be required in accordance with policy, but it is education, honest, open discussions and instruction that will guide our students to realize that their choices and actions have consequences.”
Although the video was initially shared via a group chat, one student alleged that the alarming footage was now on social media
“I seen it on TikTok,” a student told the news outlet. “And I sit next to the guy that recorded the video, in my second-period [class] … It’s really shocking because especially after I seen who [recorded it], because, y’know. I never thought he would do that.”
The school board plans to make the offensive incident a teachable moment.
The school only has a 3% Black student population.