A Minnesota high school is apologizing after it decided to edit the slogan “Deport Racists” off a student’s T-shirt in a school photo.
According to the Star Tribune, the incident started Thursday when Fridley High School tweeted out a photo of a group of students congratulating them on their art and writing awards.
Normally, there would be nothing strange about that, and there seemed to be nothing wrong with the photo, until one of the students noticed that there was something off about his T-shirt.
“I don’t recall myself owning a white t shirt,” student Chris Vazquez tweeted. “The shirt actually said ‘deport racists,’ and i would love [to] know whose decision it was to edit my shirt.”
“FHS claims to be a school that celebrates diversity of opinion, yet censors something expressing an anti-racist viewpoint,” Vazquez added on the thread.
Vazquez’s tweet immediately took off, with more than 50,000 people retweeting it and criticizing the school for the action taken. Some even tried to fix the photo by adding their own editing to replace the slogan.
By Friday, the school had offered an apology, calling it a “miscommunication,” and saying that the reasoning behind removing the slogan was to “make sure that focus remained solely on the scholastic arts awards that our outstanding students have earned.”
Because, ya know, there’s nothing more distracting than someone being against racism and expressing an anti-racist stance. Oh, the controversy!
The statement made by the school noted that there would be more to come, which seems required because no one appears to be buying the apology, especially since the original photo that was taken is still nowhere to be seen.
Read more at the Star Tribune.
