Racism Erupts in Racine County

Waterford Union High School.

The incident happened last week at Waterford Union High School in Racine County. Students at Milwaukee’s Rufus King High School said they were subjected to racist remarks when they competed at a track meet hosted by the suburban school on May 7.

Lea Byrd, the parent of a Rufus King senior with four years on the track team, told WISN her daughter was one of the students targeted: “For my daughter, it was a traumatizing experience.”

“I was told that there were references to animals, references to being gangsters, and just some stereotypes that are racist,” Byrd said.

“We stand with parents and coaches who witnessed attendees hurling demeaning slurs—invoking ‘chicken and watermelon’ and comparing athletes and their parents to ‘monkeys’—even as Rufus King staff worked to de-escalate the crowd,” noted a statement by nine Milwaukee County supervisors. “When that abuse persisted and the well-being of our student-athletes was at risk, our coaches rightly withdrew the team for their protection.”

The Rufus King team thus forfeited the match and Waterford Union was officially the winner, adding a sickening capstone to the entire incident.

Luke Francois, superintendent of Waterford Union, released a statement saying “We take all reports of discriminatory or inappropriate behavior with the utmost seriousness. We are actively investigating the matter and are in contact with Milwaukee Public Schools to better understand what occurred and to ensure a full review.”

The Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association also released a statement saying that “Member schools involved will review the incident, share findings, and work together toward a resolution…Please know we take allegations of this nature seriously.”

Mackenzie Benkendorf, a student at Waterford Union, told TMJ4 she has seen other incidents of offensive remarks toward students of color. One trend, she said, was particularly troubling: “They downloaded an app that when you moved your phone a certain way, you could make a whipping or a lashing noise, and it was a trend to follow around the Black students and make the noises and the motions towards them,” Benkendorf said.

It was just an hour’s drive south of there, in July 2023, that WTMJ reporter Taylor Lumpkin was “left humiliated” after reporting on a country music concert in Twin Lakes in rural Kenosha County. Lumpkin tweeted that “a guy ran up and yelled at me (unprovoked), and called me a N***** twice. No one helped. Everyone stared at me, and laughed.”

Just a few months before this, Beloit Memorial basketball players at a game at Muskego High School found “drawings of swastikas, the ‘N’ word and the word monkey in the dust on the top of the lockers they used,” as Fox 6 reported. “Parents recorded videos of Muskego students wearing black face masks and tank tops – outfits they say depict black people in a racist light. The students wore black ski masks, black tank tops, and pajama pants.”

And in 2021, a West Allis man, William McDonald, 45, slashed the tires and broke the windshield of a Black woman’s vehicle parked outside her apartment and left a note using the N word and threatening to slash her throat. He also left notes with racial slurs threatening other residents of color in the neighborhood and demanding they “go back to the North Side,” as reported by Isiah Holmes for the Wisconsin Examiner.

In short this is not just something that is happening in rural or Republican areas. As Urban Milwaukee has reported, there has been an increase in hate crimes against Blacks over the last decade. In the first six weeks of 2022, 57 historically Black colleges and universities and houses of worship were targeted by bomb threats, according to the FBI.

Since the first presidential campaign of Donald Trump in 2015, it seems increasingly as though racist language and threats toward African Americans are getting normalized. “President Trump’s verbal assaults against black reporters, candidates and lawmakers have renewed criticism that the president employs insults rooted in racist tropes aimed at making his African American targets appear unintelligent, untrustworthy and unqualified,” the Washington Post reported in 2018.

“Racial animus seems baked into his psyche,” political columnist Jennifer Rubin has written. “Whether being sued for refusing to rent to African Americans, demonizing the innocent Central Park Five, promoting the “birther” conspiracy theory to delegitimize the first Black president, announcing his entry into politics by slandering immigrants as murderers and thugs, refusing to denounce white nationalists at a debate in 2016, referring to non-White-majority countries as “s—holes”… Trump has never departed from a steady stream of racism.”

During his 2024 campaign Trump repeatedly told lies about how legal Haitian immigrants were terrorizing Springfield, Ohio, and warned that “Our whole country will end up being like Detroit if [Kamala Harris is] your president,” slamming a black candidate and majority-black city in the same breath.

But what really stands out is the glee with which he attacks people, sending the message that its fun to be nasty to others. Donald Trump is a national role model for meanness and cruelty.

“After the 2024 election, there was a spike in incidents involving neo-Nazi marches and racist and hateful messages sent online, stoking fear for residents in several states across the country,” PBS reported. Black Americans “in at least 25 states have been subjected to racist text messages telling them to report to a plantation to pick cotton.”

The reference to picking cotton echoes the Waterford Union students using the sound of whipping to deliver the message that Black students deserve to be slaves. Teenagers, of course, can be cruel, but why shouldn’t they feel such behavior is acceptable — and gleefully funny —  when it is modeled by the President of the United States?