White Maryland Student's Anti-Black Lives Matter Video Goes Viral: Mount Hebron High School Condemns Footage

A video that circulated online showing a white Maryland high school student making inflammatory remarks about the Black Lives Matter social justice movement has highlighted for some students' racial tensions that have been brewing at the school for years, the Washington Post reported Friday. Mount Hebron High School officials condemned the video — in which a student said black lives don’t matter because “they are an inferior race” — as disturbing after the footage spread rapidly on social media this week.

“Who the [expletive] cares about some black man who dies?” the student reportedly asks in the video before holding up a $5 bill with the image of Abraham Lincoln. “This guy is a traitor to the white race.”

A video that resembles the incident can be seen on Mobypicture.com. There is no confirmation that it's the actual video but the wording the Post reported is consistent with what the person in the video says.

Black Lives Matter is a social justice movement that works to bring attention to alleged police brutality against African-Americans — a movement that gained traction after the fatal shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014. Protests have been common in cities where similar incidents have occurred, such as Baltimore — located about 30 minutes from Mount Hebron High School — where Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old black man, died while in police custody, the BBC reported.

Howard County superintendent Renee Foose said the video reflected poorly on the students involved and the students who stood by silently, adding that the behavior wouldn’t be tolerated. The student later apologized on social media, but some students at the school told the Post they have seen racism spewing from other students at the school before.

Some students said it was not uncommon to hear students use racial epithets around school. Foose asked students to delete the video and not share it online, but it has already been shared hundreds of times.

This week’s incident was not the first time the school has had to deal with racism. In 2009, three Mount Hebron High School students were arrested for breaking into the school and spray-painting swastikas and “KKK” in a classroom, the Baltimore Sun reported.