A depiction of an auction where an enslaved person is sold.

In an otherwise normal football season, two California high schools abruptly canceled the remainder of their games for the same reason. Players on both teams participated in troublesome acts of racism.

In October 2022, Amador High School in Sutter Creek ended its season after school officials learned that several players joined a Snapchat called “Kill the Blacks.”

In nearby Yuba City, members of the River Valley High School football team produced and filmed a modern-day slave auction.

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In the film, three teammates – all young Black men – were offered for sale.

“They needed another person to be in the video, and being the only Black person left in the locker room, they all turned to me,” one of the Black students said. “I made it clear I didn’t want to do it and tried to leave, but wasn’t able to.”

Clad in their underwear and with their eyes downcast, the three were paraded through the locker room and put on an auction block. At least one of the Black teens had a belt representing a noose looped around his neck.

Their white and Latinx teammates feverishly bid on them. Even through the lens of the video camera, the “mock” enslavers’ excitement and frenzy were palpable.

Many are upset with the Black youth for participating in their own degradation. I understand that. But as I outline in my recent book, Bodies Out of Place: Theorizing Anti-blackness in U.S. Society,

I also understand that “public degradation ceremonies are meant to debase and dissuade Blacks from walking in their full humanity, as full citizens.”

Less than 2% of the students at River Valley High – 31 out of the total 1,801 – identify as Black.

These numbers render Black students both extremely visible and invisible at the same time.

In my view, the slave auction operated as a perverse public performance used not only to reinforce the Black students’ inferior status in their own minds, but also to signal the same to those watching.

Source: Student ‘Slave Auctions’ Suggest White Supremacy In US Schools Is Alive And Well