He is also wearing a belt.
A school district outside of Fort Bragg, North Carolina, has issued an apology after one of its yearbooks featured an image of a white teen wearing a Confederate flag T-shirt, holding a shotgun and standing in a cotton field.
The controversial photo appeared in the Cape Fear High School yearbook, in a section devoted to senior students, reported Spectrum News.
Jay and Tracy Butler, who have a son enrolled at Cape Fear High, say they found the photo disturbing on multiple levels.
“In light of all the publicity we’ve had lately over shootings in schools, I thought it was kind of tacky that we’re featuring photos publicizing guns,” Jay Butler told the Charlotte Observer.
It was a minute or two later that I noticed he was standing in a cotton field, wearing the Confederate flag. That’s when I thought: ‘This is appalling.’ But I don’t blame the parents or the student, I blame the school.”
Debate over the message conveyed by Confederate battle flags is central to a contentious debate in the Carolinas that got several students suspended last week from Burns High in Cleveland County, reported the Shelby Star. The teens refused to stop flying Confederate flags from their trucks on school grounds, and school officials accused them of being disruptive, The Star reported.[…]
The Observer asked the school district for details on the existing policy for submitting yearbook photos and was told “there is not a yearbook policy.”
Social media erupted in arguments both for and against the photo after it was posted on Facebook and Twitter by media outlets. Some supported the teen’s right to freedom of speech, while one blogger likened it to “troubling” photos posted by Dylann Roof in the months before he killed a group of African Americans at a Charleston church.
“This issue is much bigger than the simple question of how a photograph was approved for a yearbook,” wrote blogger Kevin M. Levin. “Local authorities need to get involved.”