![]() ![]() Officials said a video shows students from a Yuba City, Calif., high school pointing and yelling dollar amounts at Black students in their underwear. ![]() “By punishing people who are not guilty, what kind of lesson are you teaching?”Ĭalifornia California high school football team forfeits season after players staged ‘slave auction’ “It cannot possibly be every varsity player” who has done something wrong, he said. And they are also “punishing the entire town and all the other students,” he added, because everyone in town loves football and attending the high school games. “They’re punishing the entire team without knowing who the guilty parties are,” said Mike Mulvehill, who lives down the street from the high school and whose grandchildren attend district schools. Up and down the picturesque streets around the high school, it was almost impossible to find anyone who lacked an opinion and a heated one at that - even as many acknowledged that verified facts remained elusive. I could be totally naive,” he added, but he did not believe the students meant what some people think they meant. But he added: “This is not, in my opinion, a racist community. He said, like many in the community, he is still waiting to hear what actually happened. Lefebvre agreed with Connie - with whom he said he enjoys frequently spirited discussions because of their opposing politics - that it was “a bummer.” “I love this community, and I don’t regret a minute of living here, but we have always been able to have very lively heated discussions, without making it angry and ugly, and the fact that for the most part, you can’t do that anymore, it makes me really sad.” Later Blackman, who moved to Amador County from Southern California four decades ago, added that the towns’ debate over football had brought home how the tenor of political discourse had changed in the Trump era. ![]() ![]() “Do you think anyone here really meant they wanted to kill those kids?”īlackman shook her head, sadly. “How many black teams does Amador play, Dave?” Maybe it was referring to the fact that Rosemont’s jerseys are black, not to the race of the players?īlackman wasn’t having it. Perhaps the reprehensible title of the group chat was a misunderstanding, he said. On Facebook pages dedicated to the community’s schools, people have traded accusations of racism, questioned each others’ child-rearing philosophies and fulminated against the school administration.Ĭonnie Blackman, whose grandchildren attend Amador County schools and who supported the decision to cancel the season, said she found it remarkable that many people seemed more upset about the fact that kids aren’t allowed to play than they are about what they might have done.īut when Blackman, who is white, voiced that idea while sitting at an outdoor table in one of the many restaurants lining Sutter Creek’s Main Street, her friend Dave Lefebvre, who is also white, took issue with it. In Sutter Creek, the cancellation of football has prompted impassioned conversations about race, and racism in a community that is 90% white and in a county so far to the right that it signed more petitions per capita to recall Gavin Newsom than any other place in the state. Rosemont school officials did not respond to phone calls. “Discrimination in any form or any acts that are disrespectful or demeaning are unacceptable,” the organization said.Īt Rosemont, many parents said they were disturbed by yet another reminder that their children face discrimination and even threats to their safety because of race. The California Interscholastic Federation, which oversees high school sports, said in a statement that it supported the decisions by Amador and River Valley to end their seasons. Last week, the football team of another high school near Sacramento, River Valley in Yuba City, forfeited its season after a video showed several players staging a reenactment of a “slave auction.” And last spring at another Sacramento-area high school, Oak Ridge, a football player reportedly taunted a Black soccer player with “ape sounds” during a match. But Northern California has recently had more than its share of wrenching episodes. The incident comes amid a national conversation on racism in sports, and football in particular, ranging from the renaming of NFL teams to discrimination against Black coaches. ![]()
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