On February 26, 2016, I was sitting in the top row of bleachers in a high school gym, watching a basketball game unfold below me. My high school, Bishop Noll Institute, was playing Andrean High School, one of two other Catholic schools in the area. The game itself was heated, but as the evening continued, the fan sections got even more heated. Both sections were in costume; Bishop Noll with no theme, but Andrean with a "USA" theme. Decked out in red, white, and blue, they made sure their nationalism was known, chanting "USA" over and over again at the beginning of the game. Eventually, they added to the section by bringing out signs.
I had to do a double take at first. Why were they holding up pieces of paper with Dora the Explorer on them? And other ones with Consuela from Family Guy? Wait, and they had a sign reading "ESPN DEPORTES" with the letters in "deport" bolded? What? Our school did that; were they doing it just to make fun of us? And then it all made sense. They brought out a fathead of Donald Trump.
Bishop Noll Institute, located in Hammond, Indiana, has been voted the number one most diverse private high school in Indiana on Niche. The majority of its student population is made up of Latino and black students. A number of students are bilingual. While it is a Catholic school, a large portion of their students identify with other faith traditions. Most students' families are middle to lower-middle class.
Why'd they have a fathead of Donald Trump? The answer was in the chants that followed: "build a wall, build a wall!" Later, Bishop Noll, as a typical chant at games, chanted "Si se puede," meaning "Yes you can," to players to encourage them. In response, Andrean began shouting back, "We speak English." It was appalling. When I went home and told my parents, expressing my disappointment in the situation (nobody stopped Andrean. No signs were taken down. Everybody ignored them), they didn't believe me. Surely they couldn't get away with that. The next day, the Facebook post about it went viral.
Ashley Howard, a Bishop Noll fan and journalist, took a video at the game of the Andrean fan section. She posted it along with a long message admonishing Andrean for not reprimanding their students. As another Catholic school, she believed they needed to be held to a higher standard. Racism is not acceptable, especially when your school's motto is "Christ is our teacher." Ashley's post spread like wildfire; within mere days we had moved off of Facebook and instead were on ABC7, CNN, Fox News, the Washington Post, the UK Daily Mail, USA Today, the New York Post, and Buzzfeed. I, along with my peers, read all the articles and watched all of the news stories almost religiously. We talked about it in all of our classes and in any downtime we got during the day. We were infuriated, not only because of the blatant racism present at the game, but in the news stories that followed afterwards.
What is "alleged racism"? Is there any such thing? I would wager that there's not. Something is either racist, or it's not. Alleged, according to Merriam-Webster, is an adjective that means "accused, but not proven or convicted; asserted to be true or to exist; questionably true or of a specified kind." So how can racism be alleged? Especially when we view it with our own eyes? Whether in person or via video, how can you deny straight-up racism? I mean, that's what they were doing! Who uses hateful language as a "joke"?
These students were using Trump's rhetoric to insult and personally victimize the Latino students at Bishop Noll. Everything they had in their fan section supported that argument: they chanted "build a wall," while holding up Trump's head. Trump's comments about Latino people had been widely circulated; they were well-known. They bolded "deport" in their "ESPN DEPORTES" sign. They chanted "we speak English," which again, is a well-known instance, where white people verbally, and in some cases, physically, abuse those who speak a language other than theirs.
In the days that followed, the news segments and articles became increasingly infuriating. It felt like we were the ones getting blamed for the exchanges. We were the ones who incited their racism. We were the ones who, after calling them out for being racists, were in the wrong for taking "jokes" too seriously. We were the ones in trouble. We got in trouble for sharing our feelings and thoughts about the event on social media. We had a letter sent to our parents talking about not spreading it online.
So what does this have to do with larger society? Why should this be taken so seriously? In my mind, it needs to be talked about because even though there was video and photographic proof of Andrean and their tirade, we were still told, and the general public was still told, that nothing was wrong. There was no real racism; it was "alleged" instead, and it was excusable because it was a joke. We had no proof that they were being malicious. There was one news interview that had a student from Bishop Noll address the game, and that student wasn't even Latina.
What this all shows is that the media is too afraid to call out racism when they see it. They ignore it and try to sweep it under the rug. They publish things that keep them neutral so that they can appeal to the largest amount of people. That is disappointing to see. If we do not address racism when we see it, it is allowed to continue. If we do not call out those who are racist, they are allowed to continue making "jokes" in very poor taste. Ignorance breeds ignorance. If you do not provide people with modern-day examples of racism, it is allowed to continue. We need to start calling it when we see it, and we need to demand more sincere apologies and actions from the institutions or people the racism is coming from.
Facebook is a massive platform that got this story rolling, and it was used to share all of the links to things published later. We are able to have conversations via Facebook, but it was sad to see how little news articles contributed to these conversations. Since the news is more likely to garner attention than a Facebook post, we need to stand up for what is right. We have no problem writing opinion pieces about everything else under the sun, but when it comes to real issues, like racism, the media seems pretty quiet. Something in particular that really struck me was reading Buzzfeed's article about the game. Buzzfeed, which is typically considered to be a corporation to stand up for minorities (like with their section Pero Like), used the idea "alleged racism" in their article title. I expected more from them, but I expected more from all the news outlets. Who was going to stand up for us? None of them did. None of them interviewed a Latino student to see how the student body was affected. None of them asked our parents what they thought of it. Instead, we heard over and over again a bunch of upper-middle class and upper-class white people tell us that we don't know how to take a joke. It's despicable.
Later, the news outlets and the Internet said that the signs were taken down immediately and that students were reprimanded by school officials. That never happened. They ignored it. They said that Bishop Noll received an apology from Andrean. That never happened. Their principal sent us a letter saying that they would pray about it. We need our media to do better. We, as human beings, need to do better.
I knew racism existed. I'd seen it through Donald Trump's rhetoric since he began his campaign, and I'd heard about it from my classmates. The thought of media playing a role in perpetuating and allowing racism never crossed my mind. I had the view of media as a way to voice opposition to injustice; it was disappointing to see the media behave in a way that let this school off the hook. I invite you to take a look at these articles linked throughout and see just how many of them dodge calling Andrean's actions what they were: racist.
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