Ground News - Texas students disciplined after holding online slave auction of Black classmates
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Texas high schoolers held fake slave trade that named Black classmates
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By Kaley Johnson and Domingo Ramirez, Fort Worth Star-Telegram (TNS)
FORT WORTH, Texas â A group of students at a school in Aledo, west of Fort Worth, were disciplined based on a slave auction they set up on social media to pretend to sell their Black classmates, according to local activists.
The Aledo Independent School District learned of an incident where students at the Daniel Ninth Grade Campus cyberbullied and harassed other students based on their race, according to a statement from Superintendent Dr. Susan Bohn. The district started an investigation that involved law enforcement.
The district did not specify what the incident involved and said administrators learned about it more than two weeks ago. Local activists told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram that a group of students set up the slave auction. A screenshot provided to the Star-Telegram showed a Snapchat group with various names, including Slave Trade and another name that includes a racial slur. One
Origin
In March 2021, Texas school district administrators learned of a purported mock slave auction organized by high school students on Snapchat. The students attended the Don R. Daniel Ninth Grade Campus at Aledo High School. They were subsequently disciplined by the Aledo Independent School District. Aledo is a suburb of Fort Worth.
Mock Bids and Racial Epithets
The news was first reported by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram on April 12. It published that the students who participated in the group pretended to sell their Black classmates. They placed mock bids and posted comments about the bids.
A screenshot showed that the group name had at various times included the words “slave trade,” “farm,” and “auction.” When the screenshot was captured, the group name appeared to be a racial epithet followed by the word “auction.”