White Cheer Squad Use Black Mannequin as Unofficial Mascot

A cheerleading squad of white girls were seen in a picture posing with a Black mannequin head (nope, no body). They referred to the mannequin as their unofficial mascot, receiving backlash from Black students and parents. According to Fox News affiliate KTVU , the school district superintendent is getting all the smoke for it but not for the reason you think.

San Ramon Valley Unified School District Supt. John Molloy slammed the image as “offensive” and “racist” in a statement, per KTVU. However, a cheer mom is demanding his removal for “reckless perpetuation of false claims” that the cheer squad is racist. She said via news conference that he ruined their reputation and the girls have been bullied as a result.

Dhillon Group lawyers representing the cheer mom wrote a letter claiming the incident was the fault of a “disgruntled” mother whose Black daughter didn’t make the cheer team.

Read about the incident from KTVU:

Then, about an hour after the announcement of who made the team, the cheer advisor received messages from the mother of the one African-American student who did not make the team asking why her daughter’s number was not posted, according to the Dhillon Law Group.

But the mother couldn’t believe that her daughter didn’t make the team and with “malicious intent” retaliated against the cheer program by making up a social media post accusing the team of being racist, the Dhillon Law Group alleged.

When a Black mannequin head photograph first appeared on an Instagram account called “The Black Bay Area” in mid-May alongside the mostly white cheer team, Molloy called the image “intolerable,” “offensive” and “racist.” The squad had also referred to the head as “Kareem.”

Yawn. They lawyers also alleged a former cheer member gave the team the mannequin head to practice hairstyles and that the Black student’s mother photoshopped the head in the image to make it appear darker.

Molloy said he wasn’t going anywhere but did apologize for hurting the feelings of the cheer squad in his initial statement.

“Because it appeared that the students became the focus, that is the piece that in hindsight I wish our letter could have shifted that differently, because that was not what we wanted to do,” said Molloy via KTVU.