One school district official stated that it was a prank that went sour.
According to a school official, a Black student at a California high school confessed to writing racist graffiti on water fountains.
“While the identity of the perpetrator in this incident is being investigated, we will also remain focused on supporting students and staff who were impacted by this troubling act vandalism,” Sacramento City Unified Schools District Superintendent Jorge Aguilar stated Thursday in a statement that the district provided Fox News Digital.
Mark T. Harris, the equity and race monitor for Sacramento City Unified School District, told CBS 13 that a Black student wrote the words “White” as well as “Colored” over two water fountains at McClatchy High. The name of the female student was not released by the school district.
According to CBS 13, Harris stated that “I don’t believe those words on those water fountains are racist.” Harris stated, according to CBS 13. It is partly because the perpetrator was a young African American woman.
Harris said that security cameras caught Harris in the act as well. Harris described the Jim Crow-style graffiti as a “prank”
“It was an elaborate prank, is what I characterized of the confession made by the young woman,” Harris stated at a press conference, The Daily Mail reported.
He said, “We don’t know why she did that,” according to the Sacramento Bee. “This situation is not the same as an overtly deliberate move to do something racist, destructive, or negative.”
Harris stated that he doesn’t consider graffiti a hate crime, but local activists disagree.
“I disagree that it is not a hate crime because at the conclusion of the day, we understand when you have coloured on one water tap and white on the other faucet what that means – regardless of whether it’s 1950s or 2022,” Berry Accius of Voice of the Youth stated to CBS 13.
According to CBS 13, Sacramento City Unified School District stated that they have implemented anti-racism training in staff and worked with law enforcement. They also hired a social justice-focused lawyer and promoted “social emotional learning.”
Superintendent Aguilar stated that Sac City Unified takes any case of racial intolerance very seriously as such acts can harm our students and the entire community.
