Racism in Oklahoma schools is, once again, showing its ugly head.
Last week, a photo showing six Tishomingo high school students with Scrabble letters taped to their shirts as part of some brainless “Homecoming Spirit Week” activity went viral online, and has since hit the mainstream and tabloid news-sphere.
The idea is that students wear the letters, gather with their friends to spell words or phrases like "Go Team," and then pose for a photo. What a fun, swell, and totally innocuous idea, right?
Well, it is—until you remember it involves moronic, tasteless teenage boys from rural Oklahoma.
Apparently, a sextet of these fine young gentlemen got together and, while wearing the vowels “E” and “I” and consonants “N,” “R,” and a pair of “Gs,” decided to spell a word that, sadly, wasn’t “Ginger.”
You can check out the pic below. If you didn’t know better, you’d think it was the new pledge class at OU’s SAE fraternity.
Jesus H. Christ!!! I know teenage boys are the dumbest humans. And yes, I know many of them from rural Oklahoma are also racist red-neck chodes, but how could any of them think that not only spelling that word, but then posing for a photo, is a good idea?
First of all, it’s not even a valid Scrabble word. Second, it’s triple-word-score racist!
On the topic of racist, Oklahoma State School Superintendent Ryan Walters hasn’t issued any sort of token statement admonishing what the students did. For him to do that, the students would have had to do something really bad, like spell out the domain name to an online public library.
And honestly, it’s probably for the best that Ryan didn’t release a statement, because he likely would have said the student's were simply dealing with low blood sugar.
That being said, Kevin Stitt did find the time to hammer out this statement nearly five days after the story spread across the Internet:
“The Governor signed the Dignity Index Pledge earlier this year and encouraged every Oklahoman to join him in holding ourselves to a higher standard of discourse. There’s no place for hate in Oklahoma, let alone in our schools. Those responsible should be held accountable, and Governor Stitt hopes that the Tishomingo community and all Oklahomans will take this opportunity to evaluate the way they speak to each other and choose dignity over contempt.”
Say what you will about Stitt, but it’s impressive how he and his PR team managed to turn yet another blatant display of racism in Oklahoma schools into a chance to pat himself on the back for signing a “Dignity Index Pledge.” That’ll definitely stop the hate. Problem solved.
Actually, who am I kidding? Kevin Stitt could have responded perfectly, but as long as Oklahoma remains a Bottom 10 state in everything but denial, that racism problem isn’t going anywhere.
In the meantime, we can only hope that these students—even the one in the middle who looks like he was in Puddle of Mudd—will take a moment to reflect on their actions and learn and grow from it. Though, at this point, that might be too optimistic. Because in Oklahoma, dignity may be a pledge, but stupidity? That’s a way of life.
