California High School Football Team’s Season Canceled Following ‘Slave Auction’ Prank

A high school football team’s season in northern California has been canceled in the light of the team taking part in a racist and offensive prank.

The River Valley High School football team in Yuba City, CA, shared a video on social media where team members appeared to act out a slave auction with Black teammates, according to a report from USA Today and various media outlets.

“Re-enacting a slave sale as a prank tells us that we have a great deal of work to do with our students so they can distinguish between intent and impact,” Yuba City Unified School District superintendent Doreen Osumni wrote in a statement to the media. “They may have thought this skit was funny but it is not; it is unacceptable and requires us to look honestly and deeply at issues of systemic racism.”

Below is an excerpt from the USA Today article.

The team members involved in the video were kicked off the team for the remainder of the season for violating the school’s student-athlete code of conduct, and that left the football team without enough players to compete for the rest of the 2022 campaign. River Valley forfeited the rest of the games on its schedule.

In a school email, obtained by the Sacramento Bee, Osumni previously wrote to parents and District members: “I received a copy of a recording of River Valley High School football team members acting out a reprehensible act of a slave auction. The recording clearly demonstrates that this situation was orchestrated and organized, which underscores my concern that students spent time contemplating this terrible act without the slightest regard that this action is hateful and hurtful.”

To read the full story from USA Today about the California high school football team’s season being canceled, click here.