Two high school students from Grapevine, Texas were forced to write letters of apology after they recorded “a highly offensive, racist rap,” the Grapevine-Courier reported on Thursday.
The two students were required by the high school’s school district to write letters of apology, which were circulated in a district-wide email this week for the rap which they reportedly recorded in June 2013. The names of the students were not released.
The song, which was posted to social media two years ago, began circulating among Grapevine High School students and the school only recently had been made aware of it.
According to one of the letters by the students, the freestyle rap was recorded when they were naive about the potential repercussions because they “were just getting into social media,” the Grapevine-Courier reported.
“That was almost two years ago,” one of the students wrote. “Being new to social media then, I did not fully understand the swift and large impact that one posting can have.”
The other student also spoke of their naiveté.
“Racism was not the talk of the country nor had we ever witnessed the true power of social media, twitter was still fresh and we had never heard of anyone getting in trouble for posting anything on social media, it was the beginning of this social era,” the student wrote. “I was 14 years old and was ignorant to the words coming out of my mouth. As kids, we hear racist jokes all times of the day. It’s what we’re around, it’s the jokes we heard.”
The Grapevine Colleyville Independent School District released a statement on Thursday addressing the incident, expressing how “appalled” the district was and noting that it didn’t have “legal disciplinary authority,” according to the Grapevine-Courier.
Grapevine High School Principal Shannon Tovar also issued a statement in which she expressed how sorry she was for the incident and thanked the students who stood “up for the values that uphold the proud heritage” of the school, the Grapevine-Courier reported. Tovar also stressed the fact that the school, located near Dallas, couldn’t legally punish the students, but she mentioned future efforts that would be undertaken to “reinforce the diverse values” of the community.
This apology comes after a frat at Oklahoma University was recorded using the n-word during a chant about hanging black people from a tree. The frat member who led the chant and was expelled from the university was from the Dallas area of Texas.
Listen to the audio below, courtesy of Complex.
(Warning: Song is explicit and contains violent and racist lyrics.)
http://www.complex.com/pop-culture/2015/04/texas-high-school-students-white-supremacist-song
