Indiana school sorry for encouraging racist ‘Obama’ and gorilla masks at game

According to the News and Tribune, Highland Hills Middle School students were encouraged to create a “blackout” by wearing all black to the game against Parkview Middle School earlier this month. The Highland Hills team was mostly white, while Parkview had a number of African-American players.

At a Tuesday meeting with the New Albany Chapter of the NAACP, New Albany-Floyd administrators apologized to parents and students from Parkview and promised to follow up with a formal letter.

“There were more than three masks, it seemed like a whole cheering section right in back of our basketball team that either had on black nylon masks, they had on Obama masks and a bunch of gorillas and monkeys,” Lisa Barnett, who is a parent of one of the Parkview players, recalled during the meeting. “I couldn’t focus on the game because of these masks behind our boys.”