Last week at Tara High School in Baton Rouge, school officials came to work and were surprised to find that someone had spray-painted racist graffiti on buildings near the school’s baseball field. The graffiti featured racial and homophobic slurs, alongside swastikas and a pentagram.
While there is an investigation going on to figure out who is responsible for the property damage, little has been done to address the issue with Tara High’s student body.
In fact, Keith Bromery, a spokesperson from the East Baton Rouge Parish School System, told The Advocate the school wouldn’t notify parents about the incident because the graffiti was not located at a “high traffic area where most students and staff normally go.”
The principal of Tara High doesn’t plan to speak to the students about the incident because they do not believe the vandalism was done by a student.
But what about the students that the graffiti was aimed toward? The LGBT, black and Jewish students at Tara High may be minority groups, but they are now attending school in an environment where they cannot feel safe.
The conversation that must be had with children and young adults concerning sexist, racist and homophobic prejudice is an uncomfortable one — that’s for sure. But it doesn’t benefit these students to pretend like the incident didn’t happen, that it has never happened before or it will never happen again.
And most importantly, for the students who saw references to the Klu Klux Klan, a group historically known for murdering people of color, alongside a phrase which mentioned lynching, it’s important for them to know the school they attend does not tolerate attacks on its students.
The innocence protected when we spare children from uncomfortable conversations about racism, sexism, homophobia and other tough issues is not protected during attacks like this. And this isn’t the first incident in which graffiti was used to display prejudice on Tara High’s campus.
Author Neil Gaiman said it best: “If you are protected from dark things, then you have no protection from, knowledge of, or understanding of dark things when they show up.”
For many of these students, the graffiti may not be directed toward them, and they may just take it as a joke. But these students would benefit from an open conversation about prejudice and the effect it has on minority groups, the same groups that they attend school with each day.
When Bromery told The Advocate he would not be speaking of the incident to students or parents because the graffiti was not visible from the street, he ignored the pain that minority students must now endure silently.
He may as well have swatted them away.
And he told the students who were spared from the attack that spray painting hateful remarks on the side of a public school building, which children as young as 13 years old attend, is okay, as long as it isn’t a “high traffic area.”
I am thoroughly disappointed in the men and women of Tara High School and the East Baton Rouge Parish School System. They have been trusted with the education and protection of thousands of children, and they have failed them.
Jana King is a 20-year-old communication studies junior from Ponchatoula, Louisiana. You can reach her on Twitter @jking_TDR.