Black middle school basketballers pelted with racial slurs at New Jersey game: report
On Thursday, NJ.com reported that at least two members of a girl's basketball team at Lakewood Middle School in New Jersey were pelted with racial slurs by opposing players during a game this week.
"One player was called a 'Black b----' during the third quarter of the game at Russell O. Brackman Middle School while a second was told she was 'homeless' on multiple occasions because she wasn’t wearing basketball sneakers, according to Michael Inzelbuch, an attorney for the Lakewood school district who issued a statement on the incident Thursday morning," reported Jeff Goldman.
“It’s reprehensible,” Inzelbuch said in a phone call with reporters for NJ.com. “The fact that it was players and not fans makes it even worse. As reprehensible as (the racial comment) is, the other comment bothers me equally because a lot of these kids can’t afford certain things.”
Lakewood is the only majority-minority public school system in majority-white Ocean County, and has been the site of tensions for years. In 2019, a report showed that Hispanic and Black student athletes at Lakewood High School were subject to frequent hate speech by opposing players, fans, and even coaches.
Schools all over the country have been forced to respond to similar incidents, including a school in the Houston area where a student put violent lynching threats in a group chat, and a viral video at Prior Lake High School in Minnesota showing a student targeting a 14-year-old classmate with the N-word and telling her to "f**king kill yourself."
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