Racist Snapchat Picture Shows Black Student Surrounded By KKK Hoods

A racist Snapchat led to the suspension of two high school students this week in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The photoshopped picture, posted Tuesday afternoon, showed a black student surrounded by classmates donning KKK hats.

Students who saw the Snapchat on the Volcano Vista High School’s group in the app quickly reported it to administrators, local news outlet KOB-TV reported. An investigation led to the suspension of two students for 10 days. One student was also kicked off the football team.

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“It was awful,” Mary Morrow-Webb, the mother of the student in the picture, told KOB. “It was frightening. I just really got sick to my stomach. I was afraid for my daughters and for the other children there that are at risk for these types of threats.”

The two boys involved in posting the picture said it was meant as a joke, Albuquerque Public Schools told reporters.

“We took this to our police department,” said Superintendent Raquel Reedy, according to KOB. “They came and investigated and are really looking very carefully at whether we should file charges for hate crimes. This is something we’re looking at very carefully because it’s this serious.”

Reedy said the school’s new principal was working to make sure nothing like the incident ever happened again. The principal also addressed the situation in a letter sent home to parents.

“The students who doctored the picture and posted it to social media said it was supposed to be a joke,” principal Vickie Bannerman said in the letter. “Of course, it was in no way funny. In fact, I found it repugnant and hateful.”

Bannerman urged parents to discuss the incident as well as social media and bullying with their high schoolers. She also issued an apology on behalf of the high school.

“You don’t expect your kids going to school and having to deal with racism and discrimination in 2017,” the girl’s father, Lamont Webb, told KOB-TV. “It’s kind of appalling.”

The family had reported racist incidents and bullying in the past, both parents told KOB-TV.

“We’ve been coming in with complaints of my daughter saying someone called her the N-word,” her mother said. “Someone called her a porch monkey and different things like that on a regular basis.”

The girl targeted in the picture has not gone back to school. Neither have her two sisters.

“They say they can’t go back,” her mother said. “And we can’t afford to send our daughters to private school, so what options do they have? They finally have broken my girls. So what do we do?”