Football game has this sign. “Trump Perry” using the play on words to “beat Perry.” Perry students get offended because it is racist.
Can you tell me how this is racist? I don’t think I can clearly follow the line of thinking to make this connection.
Rick Perry, who serves as Trump’s Secretary of Energy, owns a hunting camp that has been known by a racist name.
I can see where the “racism” complaint is coming from - and please note, that’s different from me saying that I agree this is racist.
The kids who made the banner are clearly making a political reference. They also come from a predominantly white school. The school they’re playing against is predominantly black. It does look a bit like the thought process behind the banner went something like, “We want to make a sign that will upset our opponents. Our opponents are mostly black kids. What do black people really hate? Trump!” I don’t think that’s necessarily racist, although any train of thought that begins, “What can I do to really piss off a particular ethnic minority,” is a train best disembarked at the earliest opportunity.
I also think part of the reason the other school got so mad about it is that the banner also echoes some of the reaction by far right groups to Trump’s election, who see Trump as reestablishing a proper order of white people on top, everyone else on the bottom. To be clear, I’m not saying this is the motivation of every Trump supporter, or even a significant percentage of them, and I don’t think it’s fair or reasonable to impute that motive to the students who made the banner, at least not based solely on what’s been reported so far. But I suspect that impression plays into why this whole thing has blown up.
The problem is that the school that made the sign is mostly ‘white’ and the other school the sign refers to (Perry) is mostly ‘black’. Some at Perry thought the sign meant to treat Perry in the way they perceive Trump to be treating African-Americans. The sign makers claim innocence, that the word Trump was unrelated to the name of the president. They apologized, but still defend the sign. I believe the student council created the sign. I think it was one of those dumb decisions not realizing that using the word ‘Trump’ could be misinterpreted in all sorts of ways. Students doing this doesn’t surprise me but there should have some adult with better sense providing oversight.
This has nothing to do with Rick Perry. Perry is the name of one of the high schools playing in the football game.
If you listen to the CNN story, the students were aware of the double entednre, they just claim there was no racism in their intent. They claim they were just making a political pun. The banner is obviously political, given the colors.
The sign was supposed to be political as that was the theme of the event. So they chose Trump because it matched the political theme. It makes sense to me that Trump would be a easy choice for a political sign, it was clearly supposed to mimic a political banner.
I just don’t get the leap from political banner to racist statement. Is the hosting school not supposed to mention Trump at all if a predominately black school is playing them?
Confirmed by someone who lives a couple miles at most from the school.
Because of where Perry High is located, the make-up of the students and neighborhood, and a lot of other factors they/we may be a little overly sensitive. But given the emotions of high school football in the area, especially between our region and neighboring states, I am not sure that a simple political pun was the only intent.
(AFAIK Perry was named for Commodore Perry and nearby is a “famous” painting of the Commodore going into battle with his air conditioner – as some people have pointed out. They absorbed most of the students from neighboring Oliver High a couple years back.)
As a senior in highschool, one of the cool things we got to do was to make posters , when our team played our cross town rivals. They were cardinals. So I in my infinite 17 year old wisdom made a sign with a raised fist with middle finger raised, the slogan was “shoot a bird”! I got in so much trouble, you wouldn’t believe. So adults should supervise these things, they don’t necessarily do it though!
Too often ignorance is used as an excuse when people should know better.
If through ignorance you say or do something that is insulting or hurtful to others, then the proper response is “I am sorry.” This should be followed by an attempt to understand why your words or actions caused the unintended negative response. The teachable moment.
Great story, and I suspect it’s a good analogy for what happened here. Remembering how clueless I was in high school, I can believe that the high school students who made the sign did not understand why it would be so offensive - even if they superficially recognized the facts of the matter, they probably thought it was harmlessly funny and genuinely didn’t know it would be such a big deal.
For sure, an adult should have intervened.
Dang it…I still am not following WHY it is offensive. I get it that people were offended…But I don’t know WHY they consider it to be a racist offensive act. Is it really that mentioning the president of the US’s name in anything but a bad way makes it a racist statement?
Is the thinking that if someone walked around Perry school with a sign that said “Trump!” that this would be construed as a racist comment?
I think that’s the only way I can understand it…any mention of Trump in a positive way is a racist comment to this school district.
I think I can understand it that way if that is what is the reality.
Mention him? Sure, they can do that. Use him in a slogan about beating the predominantly black school? No. It would be the same if they punned on any other predominant racist’s name. In my area of the country, there is Thomas Robb, leader of the Knights of the KKK. So if they had a banner that invoked his name instead of the word “rob,” I would find that racist, too.
I can buy that the people making the sign didn’t realize the implications. They are young, in a predominantly white district. They likely don’t repeatedly hear about Trump’s racism, like with the NFL thing or the Nazi thing or the KKK thing. And high schoolers just have mixed up priorities anyways, thinking often thinking stuff like school pride is more important than anything.
But they still invoked the name of a racist as a pun about beating a predominantly black team. Regardless of what was “in their hearts,” it comes off pretty racist to me.
That appears to have been what happened, btw. The parents got upset, but the student body president issued an apology.
Even then, there are a set of high schoolers that will do something ‘hilarious’* that will get themselves in trouble, so they try to avoid it instead of picking something less hilarious* but G to PG rated.
We had some seniors at my high school that painted up for one of the games (no shirt, body paint in the school colors). They showed up to the pre-game fundraiser cookout and made sure their teachers saw them in solid color body paint. Then, they went into the game, pulled out the extra body paint (that was for ‘touch ups’) and wrote one letter on each person’s body. The game was against our cross-town rivals, Lakeside High School. They spelled out ‘LUCK FAKESIDE’. HaHa, so edgy. When they were inevitably noticed by an actual adult, their defense was “Mrs. SoAndSo saw us painted before the game and she said it was great!”. Luckily for Mrs. SoAndSo, she had taken a picture of then sans writing.
I forget what punishment they got but they never painted up again, unfortunately. I have a feeling something similar will happen here. “Hey, I bet this will piss off the other team. We’ll tell Mr. Smith we’re going to make a sign and he’ll say that’s great, we just won’t tell him what’s on the sign”. The reason of the season nobody is going to get to have signs.
According to the story, the game occurred during “Patriotism Week,” which isn’t really the same as politics being the theme of the event.
When you’ve got a group of people who very likely are convinced that Donald Trump is opposed to civil rights, and his name is invoked as a means to assert dominance (on the football field) of people in that group, I think it’s pretty easy to see how it can touch a nerve.
I’m not sure I would call this a racist act, though. It is definitely a kind of trolling that touches on racial division in this country. But I think the distinction between “racist statement” and “trolling statement that touches a racial nerve” is a fairly nuanced one, so perhaps the accusation of racism should be taken seriously but not literally.
IMHO, I can see that the students who made the banner may well have had no idea that they were treading on such sensitive matters. It could be that they genuinely thought that they came up with a really clever sign. But that doesn’t mean that it didn’t have implications far more serious than what some people are suggesting, which is in the line of, “Hey black people, lighten up! It’s just a joke!”
No, they don’t need to lighten up. An apology is deserved, and it appears one has been issued. Parents of the students who made the sign would be wiser to just back up the apology, rather than argue that their precious kids did not make a mistake.
I don’t see this as racism myself. It was the students of one school taunting the students of another school. Yes, the students of the first school were predominantly white and the students of the second school were predominantly black but that doesn’t make any taunt automatically racist.
I agree, not automatically racist. But it does make the sign-makers either racist or ignorant.
Color me ignorant then. I hate Trump with the fury of a thousand suns, and can see the sign as offensive since any mention of that SOB is offensive. I really have to stretch to see racism there, though.
Because the sign wouldn’t have “worked” if it was one all-white school taunting another all-white school. They would have used “defeat” or “destroy”, but they went with “Trump” possibly because of how he’s treating minorities. Otherwise, what’s the message? “Lose to Perry in the popular vote!” “Lie to Perry with every word that comes out of our mouth!” “Hire and fire senior members of Perry’s administration in a generally chaotic way!”
Of course, trump the word, not the name, has other meanings, but they said they meant to reference the president.
I’m not saying that it’s definitely racist, but definitely insensitive and tone-deaf.