Sacramento school investigating racist graffiti found on water fountain: ‘It has to stop.’
The Sacramento City Unified School District on Friday opened an investigation into racist graffiti scrawled over a water fountain at C.K. McClatchy High School with a message that alluded to segregation.
A photo of the dual-water fountain shows someone wrote “colored” on one side and “white” on the other. The image was taken earlier Friday and it quickly spread throughout various social media outlets.
Sacramento City Unified School District Superintendent Jorge Aguilar said in a press release that it has been removed.
“I am both angry and heartsick that racist graffiti was discovered on the C. K. McClatchy campus today. We take this incident very seriously. Racism and racist language will not be tolerated in our schools,” said Aguilar.
The district plans to investigate the graffiti with the Sacramento Police Department.
The graffiti at McClatchy follows several other racial incidents in the Sacramento city school district, which last month appointed a community liaison to investigate issues at two schools. The district recently terminated a 7th grade teacher for using racial slurs in a discussion with students.
Conrad Crump, a Black father, who saw the photo of the water fountain, has two daughters at the school. One of them is a part of the Black Student Union on campus.
He said his daughters were upset at what took place and were not available to speak at the moment.
“She was basically like, ‘this is wrong, this is messed up, they put it up there right after lunch,” said Crump, according to what his daughters told him.
Richard Owen, a concerned father of five children, says “it’s really sad” what’s going on in the school districts.
“There’s something about our culture in the Sacramento City school district that has to be addressed,” said Owen. “The inequities, the performance of Black kids, the racism, it has to stop.”
Berry Accius, founder of the nonprofit Voice of the Youth, said the graffiti is a serious matter and urged the district to take a harder stance on racial incidents.
“This is simply an enactment of the 1950s in 2022,” said Accius. “More hateful images and racist rhetoric . Until these schools adopt a more zero tolerance Policy on racist behavior, there will be others bold enough to attempt more racist acts.”
This story was originally published February 11, 2022 at 6:17 PM.
