'Build A Wall': Black Basketball Players Taunted At High School's 'American Pride' Night

One of the more recent examples of this time-travel back to the early 1900s was the Dover-Jefferson high school basketball game on January 27. There is video footage of the Jefferson crowd taunting a Black Dover High School basketball player by calling him "ashy knees." Let's go to the tape.

Now let's call a thing, a thing. Black folks know that when you refer to somebody being ashy, you're talking about somebody who is Black. White folks don't get ashy--or at least if they do, nobody can see it. Forgot to mention that some of the Jefferson crowd was also chanting "build the wall." No need to explain what they were getting at, right?

The irony in all of this is that the theme for that night's basketball game was American pride. According to NJ.com, several people in the crowd were sporting clothes in patriotic colors and adorned with Old Glory. How fitting. One of the people in the crowd committed fully to the theme and even waved a full-size American flag.

As you would expect, some of the Dover parents were not having it. Dover High School has a strong representation of Black and Hispanic students and it was obvious that the taunting wasn't just about distracting a player from making free throws.

Michael Moore, one of the Dover team parents, had this to say: "Their intent was disrespect, not to promote the country as a whole." He also called out the Jefferson High parents and adults because they "allowed this and put this together."

The atmosphere was hostile as Jefferson committed "a lot of hard fouls, dirty fouls." Moore also said that after one of these fouls, a Jefferson player stood over a Dover player "for an excessive amount of time" in an intimidating manner.

Of course the worst part of all of this is that Jefferson High Superintendent Patrick Tierney is making excuses for and justifying the behavior of his students. 

"We are currently doing the investigation," he said. "There has been no discipline [of students] administered at this point." He condemned their racist chants, but believes that Dover asked for it. "I’m not excusing this incident, but to say it was a one-sided incident is completely misleading."

And of course, Jefferson High School students who come out in support of the school's teams are not bad children, blah, blah, blah... "I’m not excusing the comments or behavior of my children," he said. "In my experience, kids who show up to cheer on games aren’t bad kids. These kids have school spirit, and they got caught up in the moment and they said something stupid."

Sorry, folks. There is no middle ground here. Either what happened was wrong and some people get reprimanded, or you defend them and let everybody know that you support racist activity on your campus. If you want to make sure this sort of thing doesn't happen again, make an example of those who participated. Don't sit on the fence. Either condone or condemn. Condone or condemn.