Students at a Texas middle school were disciplined after conducting an online game that “slave-traded” students of color.
The social media group chat was labeled with a racial slur and the word “auction,” WFAA reported. The game, conducted through Snapchat by students at the Don R. Daniel Ninth Grade Campus in Aledo, put prices on children of color. Students “traded” them for prices ranging from $1 to $100, KXAS reported.
Aledo Independent District Superintendent Susan Bohn sent parents an email on Monday afternoon and said, “There is no room for racism or hatred in the Aledo ISD, period.”
Bohn said that “racial harassment and cyberbullying had occurred and assigned disciplinary consequences in accordance with our policy and the Student Code of Conduct.”
It was unclear what the extent of the discipline was.
“It makes me sick from the standpoint, ‘Who do they think they are? What gives them the right to think they can do that to someone else?’” Mark Grubbs, a father of three former Aledo ISD students, told KXAS.
“My reaction is, ‘What, again? Again?’ How many times we got to go through this?” Eddie Burnett, the president of the Parker County NAACP, told WFAA.
Burnett said he is tired of the excuse that racial incidents in schools are simply bad jokes.
“‘It’s just kids. They’re just playing. They don’t know any better,’” Burnett told WFAA. “Well damn, teach them better.”
