So…
An elementary school in the East Bay area recently released this year’s yearbook, which included an interesting article from decades ago as part of the yearbook’s theme, “Celebrating 100 Years.” Unfortunately, the people in charge of the yearbook’s content found out the hard way that if you go far back enough into virtually any American school’s history, you’re probably going to find some dark history that certainly isn’t appropriate for children or for celebration of any kind.
According to ABC 7, parents and students at Oakland’s Montclair Elementary School discovered last week that an abhorrent racial slur was buried in an article from the 1940s, which was included in the school’s yearbook. Somehow, a passage about a Bay and Girl Scouts game called “n****r babies” made it past everyone responsible for reviewing the yearbook before it was mass printed, so copies were distributed to students from kindergarten through fifth grade, angering parents and confusing the kids.
“I was mad. I was very upset,” said Natalie Golden, the aunt of a student.
Brenda Mitchell, another student’s grandmother, told ABC, “I was like, what the hell is this?”
From ABC 7:
To go along with the theme of “celebrating 100 years,” parent volunteers on the yearbook included some articles about the school from The Montclarion newspaper. One from 1940 discussed the annual carnival: “Boy and Girl Scouts will have charge of booths and many attractions such as n****r babies.”
Beyond exposing their kids to the N-word, parents scrambled to find out what that game was about. The Jim Crow Museum produced this video called “Blacks as Targets” that included a skit from almost 100 years ago about the “N-word babies” game.
Museum video said, “I usually have a little colored boy who places his head in the hole and the natives throw the ball at him. I sell them three balls for a nickel.”
And there is an authentic photograph of the game from a Wisconsin summer camp brochure from 1942.
Bruh — I know these were volunteers, but somebody needed to get fired on their day off for this.
PTA president Sloane Young, who claimed responsibility for the oversight, told Fox 2 that the parent volunteers simply missed the offensive language in the article.
“Unfortunately, they skimmed the first paragraph of that article and scanned it into the software we use for the yearbook,” she said.
“I have a very bold, outspoken 8-year-old, and when she saw it, she said, ‘Mom, why did you allow this to go in the yearbook when you’re Black?’” Young added.
Young said the PTA immediately ordered reprints of the yearbooks that exclude the article, which is a damn sight better than what the school’s principal, David Kloker, initially offered as a resolve for parents who didn’t want their children exposed to the language.
More from ABC:
He sent an email apologizing, calling the article “deeply hurtful and entirely unacceptable” and telling parents to remove that page or use a sticker provided by the school to cover it up.
“Put a sticker over it. What do you mean, put a sticker over it?” asked Mitchell.
Golden said, “Yeah. That’s unacceptable. What they should have done is collected all the yearbooks and redone them, and then passed them back out.”
Mitchell adds, “First of all, they should have checked all these. They should have checked it at least. Where was that? Where was the proofing of that? Who did? Who? Who put that in there? We want to know.”
That man really told them people to put a sticker over the “n****r babies” part and pretend they never saw it. Just — wow!
Ironically, the school’s “n****r babies” history is exactly the kind of history a certain administration and political party is trying to ban from K-12 schools across the country, because they consider such teachings to be “woke” and anti-American, which would make them part of an “illegal DEI” curriculum.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s a history that should certainly be taught in schools, arguably, even to elementary school students — but not like this, man.
Hopefully, the fine folks at Montclair Elementary will be a lot more careful when putting together next year’s yearbook.
Maaaaaybe go with a different theme.
American history ain’t all good history. In fact, most of it isn’t.
SEE ALSO:
Several Lawsuits Filed In Louisiana To Combat Environmental Racism
The Downfall Of Allensworth: How Racism And Lies Destroyed A Black Town In California
Oakland Elementary School’s Yearbook Accidentally Included Racist Article About ‘N-Word Babies’
was originally published on
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