Students at Waverly High School in New York are in deep trouble after their jaw dropping skit during a pep rally, and not for good reason. White students made up with “blackface” did a satire skit on the domestic violence event involving Chris Brown and Rihanna. The “performance” was part of the school’s annual competition for the title of “Mr. Waverly”, but nobody’s laughing.
During the pep rally, which was to pump up the student body for their fall sports teams and football team, students, parents, faculty, and other community leaders were outraged as they watched the 3 white students make light of the serious situation which took place in 2009. However, no one stopped the skit.
CNN iReport contributor Matthew Dishler was not in attendance, but made a comment to the Star Gazette.
“I can testify there’s not a lot of racial diversity in that school whatsoever. We’re not really exposed to that at that school. I felt like something should have been done about this. I don’t believe the kids had any vicious intentions, but the administrators should have said that’s not exactly OK.”
Not exactly OK or not OK at all? Waverly, New York’s population is 72% white according to the 2010 Census. Some people went to Twitter to voice their opinion, calling students “ignorant” because of the racist connotations. Other users were more outraged about the students poking fun at the abuse, saying “it’s never ok to make a joke about serious physical abuse”.
BMWK – What do you think is the worst part about this pep rally performance? That it was done in blackface, or that it was a satire of a domestic violence incident?
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