“In these times we live in, a black boy carrying a white girl on his back is simply not acceptable.” – NAACP
Via EAG News:
SALEM, Ore. – When Judson Middle School seventh-grader Auzeen Seiffert entered her design for the school yearbook, she saw kids having fun in a lollipop wonderland with blue trees and candy cane lined pathways.
Her classmates also liked her design – which Seiffert described as “two friends playing in a Candyland-like park” – and voted to make it the yearbook cover for 2015-16, The Statesman Journal reports. […]
Seiffert’s older brother Shaheen Seiffert, told the news site the family posted a picture of the student’s drawing on social media with a message about school officials’ concerns and none of the more than 500 commenters thought it was offensive.
“She has been drawing since she was four, and she also won a contest when she was at Wright Elementary School,” he said. “She’s very good and we’ve had to keep her in colored pencils, paper and other drawing tools since as long as I can remember. She loves it, and this has just made her so sad.”
But local civil rights “leaders” don’t see it the same way, and allege school officials made the right decision to yank the picture because it’s “simply not acceptable” for a white girl to piggyback on a black boy.
“If the portrayal had been a black child and a white child holding hands, it’d be what we hope for, all children playing together,” Benny Williams, president of the Salem Keizer NAACP, told KGW. “But given the stark colors now, it harkens back to an uncomfortable time when blacks were depicted as subservient.
“Even without knowing the child, I have to say first impression is key,” he continued. “In these times we live in, a black boy carrying a white girl on his back is simply not acceptable.”