A Pittsburgh-area school district has launched an investigation into a “completely inappropriate and offensive” photo two students took while wearing “racist” blackface in school.

Two Pine-Richland Middle School students–one in a gray shirt, and the other in black—posed in a bathroom for a photo that was captioned “drip?” on social media, local outlet CBS News Pittsburgh reported. Both students are seen with their faces covered in dark paint or makeup. A third student in a green shirt is also shown in blackface in a subsequent post.

“Pine-Richland School District values a school culture that is safe, supportive and welcoming for all students,” Pine-Richland School District Superintendent Brian Miller said Thursday in a statement to The Daily Beast. “We are opposed to racism in any form and the actions of these students.”

According to CBS Pittsburgh, the photo was taken Wednesday during field day activities when students learn about other cultures and countries, and paint their faces.

The district went into detail about how a welcoming environment is a necessity for students to learn.

“It is our goal to strengthen a positive culture for every student at Pine-Richland,” the district said. “The building administrators are conducting an investigation and will take appropriate next steps.”

The school district reportedly encountered another racial incident at the beginning of the school year in which a Pine-Richland High School student allegedly spread a racist message on social media in September. According to CBS Pittsburgh, the district said it would take the “appropriate next steps.” A statement issued to families at the time was nearly identical to the letter issued on Thursday.

In a request for comment, Pine-Richland School District did not provide any other details regarding the matter.

Nex Benedict's death wasn't just for being transgender, it was for being native too. 2 Spirits are revered in many native cultures and it is a native-specific identity. This wasn't just a hate crime against trans & NB individuals, this was also a hate crime against Natives of Turtle Island.

You cannot separate Nex's trans identity from their native identity - this is a case of MMIWG2S (Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and 2 Spirits).

Native children being killed at school is nothing new, so it's equally important to talk about Nex's native identity and being intersectional, this is a devastating tragedy for indigenous people, the queer community & especially those of us who are both indigenous and queer.

May Nex rest in peace 🪶

The Milliken v. Bradley case began in 1970 when the NAACP sued Michigan’s governor, William Milliken, and other top officials on behalf of a Detroit student. The NAACP argued that the state had intentionally segregated Detroit’s public schools through its housing policies, and should be obligated to desegregate them. A district court judge agreed, and issued a metro area-wide desegregation order that included the mostly black schools in Detroit and 53 mostly white suburban districts. Suburban politicians and families organized against the plan, as they would elsewhere in the country. Sometimes these demonstrations led to violence: In a show of opposition to a similar busing plan, the Ku Klux Klan bombed a school bus yard in Pontiac, outside Detroit.

Kalyn Belsha, 45 Years Later

Nex Benedict — a nonbinary, Native American, 16-year-old sophomore — was reportedly beaten to denath on February 7 by three older female students in the bathroom of Owasso High School in Oklahoma. The school refused to call an ambulance for the injured teen and didn’t inform police of the attack until Benedict was later admitted into the hospital — they died from their injuries the next day.

I know you don't usually do these kinds of posts, but you're probably one of the most implicated in black history month people that I follow so I wanted to ask you, as I already value your opinions in Acotar, what do you think of the documentary where actual historians claim Cleopatra was a black woman? Lately, this has been a pretty active topic on my fyp on TikTok, and I wanted to know a black woman's perspective on this.

Thank you in advance, and if you usually don't answer these questions or don't want to answer this one, I'll totally understand, and there's no problem at all.

I didn’t know there was a new documentary out, but when I saw the name Cleopatra I automatically sighed because I knew what was coming. This is a subject a know a little 🤏🏾 about, actually, because I researched it a bit myself in my last year of high school (and stopped because of the uh. NASTINESS associated with this particular subject) and though it’s been a few years I remembered some main, basic things, and I wanted to check a few things first.

At best, in the most CHARITABLE interpretation as far as I in my limited knowledge can tell, it would be correct to say that’s it’s POSSIBLE that she MAY have been mixed Black because, though she was part of the GREEK Ptolemaic dynasty that ruled Egypt (Ptolemy being one of Alexander the Great’s generals who got the Egyptian portion of his empire after Alexander died), that’s on her fathers side; her mother’s exact ethnicity isn’t known. Not that this won’t stop the hoteps from running off and claiming her and all of ancient Egypt as Black though So some have ***speculated*** that her mother—and thus Cleopatra—may have potentially been part Egyptian (and that goes into the issue of deciding that the “Egyptian” in this instance had to have been Black rather than MENA but that’s again a whole other can of worms). BUT it’s more likely that her mother was Greek due to the uh, PRACTICE™️ of inbreeding and it not being common for the dynasty to marry Egyptians. So it’s more probable that she was fully Greek/Macedonian and not part Egyptian, much less part Black. (Also some historians speculate she may have had Persian blood? I guess? Again it’s a can of worms, not something i’m digging deep into because of the nastiness that you often stumble across) Unless there’s a new study confirming her mother’s identity or something that I missed, it’s simply incorrect to claim that Cleopatra was undeniably Black, because though it is ***possible*** she most likely ***wasn’t.***

But this topic really upsets me, because there are LEGITIMATE Black kingdoms and empires who were mighty and well developed and powerful like the Aksumite empire and kingdoms of Kongo and Loango and the Great Zimbabwe empire and the empires of Ghana and Mali and Songhay and the Ashanti kingdom and the WHOLE SWAHILI COAST THAT WAS INVOLVED IN THE INDIAN OCEAN TRADE ROUTE and they had their own great rulers, their own kings and queens and emperors and empresses, their palaces and castles, their own cities and towns, their own complex civilizations and dynastic royal families that deserve the attention Cleopatra and ancient Egypt get. They were erased—and Egypt was not—by white people to prop themselves up as the only race capable of forming civilizations and advanced societies as a means of justifying colonization and imperialism to “civilize” the rest of the world and as a result many of those other empires have been erased from our education system here in the states and many people cling to ancient Egypt as proof that we’re not inferior and aren’t savages like white people claim due to believing that since Egypt’s in Africa it had to have been mostly Black when Egypt, and the Ptolemaic dynasty and Cleopatra in PARTICULAR, are literally the worst example that could’ve been chosen and were the only African kingdom spared erasure FOR A REASON.

Anyway, I don’t like it, it’s disingenuous and does US wrong because we need to give that energy to other African kingdoms that need and could use the fame Egypt + Cleopatra get, and we deserve a better education system to teach us this stuff. I hope this answers your question? And I don’t mind any kinds of asks 🥰

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/08/30/indian-boarding-schools/

For those who can't read the small texts, every purple dot you see on this map of the United States is a residential school that the U.S. Department of the Interior recognized. There are 408 of them.

The black dots are 115 MORE schools that the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition recognizes with their new criteria.

Residential school deniers tried to dig up suspected unmarked grave sites at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School, not believing a May 2021 announcement from the Tk'emlúps te Secwépemc that as many as 215 Indigenous children had been buried there, according to a new report. "Denialists entered the site without permission. Some came in the middle of the night, carrying shovels; they said they wanted to 'see for themselves' if children are buried there," said a Friday report from Kimberly Murray, the independent special interlocutor for missing children and unmarked graves and burial sites associated with Indian Residential Schools. She did not say who the denialists were or when they came to the site. But the unauthorized visits to the site are the work of a "core group" of Canadians who continue to deny, defend or minimize the physical, sexual, psychological and emotional abuse inflicted on Indigenous children in the Indian Residential School System "despite the indisputable evidence of survivors and their families," Murray said at a Friday news conference. [...]

Continue Reading.

Tagging: @politicsofcanada

Btw what was her problem

"Struggling immigrant family" about two citizens with stable careers and their kid attending a private school

Why did we let her get away with that 🤨

I think its really cute that Manuel gets the most love from comments! I think he deserves it, because even I have dubbed him as the Best Boy. But, Mani has mixed feelings about receiving praise and being considered the favorite. He’d sooner think people are lying to him than believe they actually like him that much. Because, why would they?

His view of himself comes from years of being stuck in the middle.

The thing is. Bad/gross food is rarely a DISH - when food is bad it's because it's been badly made, whether because of skills or available ingredients. but a dish p much only exists recognisably and has a name because someone likes at least one version of it.

which is to say. there isn't really a way of naming a dish, school of dishes or specific food culture and going EW ISN'T THIS DISH UNILATERALLY CONCEPTUALLY DISGUSTING without denigrating quite a lot of people.

like you don't have to like it in any form. but it's eaten and shared because it's good to a not insubstantial number of people when cooked right.

(and I don't really understand how you approach that with total incuriosity when it's a dish you haven't tried like. ARE rocky mountain oysters good? Maybe! I would very much eat some to find out!!!!)

this is actually something the British food poll did in a way the American ones I've seen haven't really - they described how the food they're imagining is, specifically, badly prepared (grey meat and veggies; unseasoned shepherd's pie). which is wildly tipping the scales by calling it British Food but. like. that is an on point definition of why that food is gross.

(this also applies to American chocolate, which like. Broad category but I think most of us understand this refers to low-cocoa high-sugar chocolate, probably with bucolic acid. so we are being invited to imagine Badly Made Chocolate not. the concept of chocolate)

personally I just think it's very rarely a good or funny idea to shittalk how gross any given food culture is. partly because food is important and culturally evocative for most people, partly because it's very...alienating? to be like WHO COULD EAT SUCH A THING? just because you wouldn't, and largely because to be frank it says more about you than about the food that you have so little imagination or curiosity that you can't imagine why a food might be enjoyable to folks who aren't you.

yes this includes jello salad, I would like to try it. ONCE. if it wasn't appealing to someone it wouldn't be so widespread.

something happened recently in my small town that i think is a microcosm of white “liberalism”. it’s not a secret that since a new juvenile detention center was built a few years ago, the high and middle schools have been targeting young black men, particularly young black men with special needs/mental illness/disabilities to fill it with. the school administrators and our local judge, a corrupt, nasty, crooked white woman, are rumoured to be making a ton of money as a part of this conspiracy. my grandmother, an advocate for special needs children, and my dad and aunt(teachers), have watched the school to prison pipeline with their own eyes, and my grandmother and several others in town have been trying to build a case for years against the judge and other corrupt individuals. recently however, an old white widow who has been a teacher at the high school for almost 50 years, and beloved by all, was fired for saying the n-word. she heard some students saying it and took a few minutes to educate them on why it’s racist to say it, but in doing so, she said it several times. some students videoed her and cut it up to make it seem like she was the racist one. the school promptly fired her. i think that’s a perfect representation of white “liberalism”. actively participating in systemic racism but robbing an old widow of her livelihood to maintain the superficial image of being politically correct.

they banned ap psych in florida cuz the class ap discusses sexuailty and gender which violates ron desantis' piece of shit dont say gay law so fuck you ron for that

in the college board statement they say it was banned because "teaching foundational content on sexual orientation and gender identity is illegal under state law" which is bullshit because these gov leaders believe anything lgbtq is a brain disease so you'd think theyd keep the brain learning class

they banned ap african american studies because "it lacks educational value and historical accuracy" which is making it easier for them to erase black history that is so intertwined with the history of this country that most everything here is so deeply antiblack

this mf has his head so far up his ass that hes ruining our education system even more than it already was

it's not ALWAYS like this, of course; some of them were okay. but. A Worrying Amount Of Bad Stuff Gets Glossed Over

growing up in the southeastern US as a girl in the early 00s was like

"hey kids, this white woman did something unusual and independent in the early-mid 19th century, despite the misogyny of her time! girl power!"

[5-10 years later when you do your own research]

"so, here's how many human beings she, specifically, held in bondage, and-"

(I'm not saying this would be as easy to explain to kids as "if your classmate is really good at drawing, that's good, right? but it's bad if she also pushes people down on the playground. sometimes people do good things in one way, and bad things in another." but. it definitely would)

because she broke up a fight. BECAUSE SHE BROKE UP A FUCKING FIGHT!!!!!

THIS is why i refuse to send my black child to a public school. They are not here for us. SMFH!!