Racist heckling, graffiti, slurs at Sacramento-area schools: Soccer game is the latest report
Saturday night’s “blatantly racist” heckling at an El Dorado Hills school during a girl’s soccer final comes after a string of similar incidents in the Sacramento region.
During the Division I Northern California girls’ soccer game between Oak Ridge High School and Buchanan High School, taunts against the visiting team came from the Oak Ridge student section.
What happened at the Oak Ridge soccer game?
Daisy Torres of Buchanan, who is Hispanic, was taking her kick when a person from the Oak Ridge student section “made loud dog-barking noises in an otherwise silent stadium,” The Bee reported. Ciara Wilson, who is Black, was also heckled with what Buchanan coach Jasara Gillette recalled as “gorilla” sounds.
The person who made the taunts has not been identified and Oak Ridge High School will investigate the incident, said Aaron Palm, the school’s principal.
Racist taunts at 2016 basketball game
This isn’t the first time a Sacramento-area school is under the spotlight for harassing students of color. In 2016, during a girl’s playoff basketball game between, again, Oak Ridge and McClatchy High School, racial and body-shaming jeers were directed at players in the latter school.
At the Oak Ridge student section, derogatory comments were made against Asian American players on the McClatchy team, as well as insults targeting the athletes and cheerleaders’ physical appearance, according to Bee report from 2016. It was unclear how many people participated in the taunting.
Palm, who was also Oak Ridge’s principal at the time, addressed the incident and issued a statement, saying “that the school does not support intolerance or racism on campus and outlining steps taken in response to the basketball game.”
According to the 2016 report, Oak Ridge’s student body had 8% Asian American students in 2014 to 2015. In 2021, according to the U.S. News and World Report, the school’s demographic includes 13% Asian students, 12.6% Hispanic, 1.3% Black and 66.6% white.
Racist incidents at other Sacramento-area schools
Most recently in 2021, Black students and staff members of Sacramento-area schools have also been harassed on campuses — from a Sacramento City Unified teacher using racial slurs to anti-Black rhetoric graffitied on walls of West Campus High School, directed at the school’s Black vice principal.
In January, a family in Folsom withdrew their daughter from Folsom High School after the school failed to address months of racist harassment. Students were pulling 15-year-old Aniyha Pier’s braids, calling her slurs and bullying her on social media.
And just last month, Abraham Lincoln Elementary School in Rancho Cordova was vandalized with racial profanities and a swastika. Sacramento County Sheriffs identified two high school students from a nearby high school responsible for the graffiti, according to the Sacramento City Unified School District.
Berry Accius, founder of Voice of the Youth, a nonprofit organization that advocates for the next generation, addressed the most recent incident in an interview with The Bee, pointing out this is not new for the district, referencing the other reports.
“Let’s look at all the other things, one we have white students that participated in Abraham Lincoln, two we had a white teacher that said the N-word, and third, we still don’t know what happened to West Campus,” Accius said.
“Folks that believe that we’re ‘searching for’ or ‘creating’ racial issues because of what happened at McClatchy,” Accius said. “This is not us creating anything. We are here trying to support students, support faculty and create change. That’s all we’re trying to do.”
The Bee’s Marcus D. Smith and Joe Davidson contributed to this story.
This story was originally published March 7, 2022 at 12:56 PM.