Racism?????????

[Gob]

SAN ANTONIO - A local school district is apologizing after an apparent incident of racism at a boys high school basketball game this past weekend.

When the final whistle blew Saturday, Alamo Heights celebrated a convincing victory over San Antonio Edison.

Alamo Heights Head Coach Andrew Brewer said he was proud of his team.

"Tremendously proud,” Brewer said. “Tremendously. It's the best group of kids."

But it was just after the trophy presentation when the coach was not proud of the chant coming from Alamo Heights fans.

"USA, USA, USA," they chanted.

San Antonio Independent School District officials took the chant as a racial insult to a school with all minority players from a school with mostly white ones.

On the KSAT 12 Defenders Facebook page, Santos Villarreal's post reads “this has to stop.”

SAISD Spokeswoman Leslie Price heard about the incident after it had happened.

"This is very disrespectful to our students,” Price said.

She said the district is glad the coach put a stop to the chant immediately and hopes Alamo Heights addresses it quickly.

"It is surprising and it's disappointing to hear that anyone would be out there making those kind of remarks," Price said.

Edison students who attended Saturday's game were shocked when they heard the chant. Some thought the fans of the victors should have been better behaved.

Ruby Arredondo and Forest Lebaron are seniors at Edison and Julian Castellano is a junior.

"I was very surprised,” Castellano said. “Very appalled."

"They didn't really have any class," Arredondo said.

"It just rubbed us the wrong way," Lebaron said.

Alamo Heights Superintendent Dr. Kevin Brown also apologized for the chant.

"We just hope that people know that that's not who we are and we're not going to let it happen again," Brown said.

Alamo Heights has apologized to SAISD and the students identified will also have to apologize and have been banned from the state title games.

"We think that you have to earn a right to be there and that's not a reflection of our school district," Brown said.

Both districts are now just trying to move past this disturbing incident.

Another SAISD school, Lanier High, faced a similar incident within the last year from students in the Cedar Park school district.

[Sean]

Tell me that this is from The Onion...

[Gob]

Nope, sorry Sean, it aint.

[Lord Jim]

If I were a liberal, I would be particularly pissed off about this, because this is precisely the sort of unimaginable, jaw dropping idiocy that plays right into the hands of folks like Bill O'Reilly...

Now, I'm going to make a prediction that somebody is going to come forward here to defend this...

I'm not going to say who, but I'm going to send my prediction to another poster now, so that it can be verified later if I was right...

[dales]

You'd be surprised how "sensitive" some groups are over here.

Another "tempest in a teapot" over nothing of consequence.

USA!...USA!...USA!

[rubato]

Chanting that their team is "USA USA USA" says that the other team is, well, not "USA".

Which is, if not specifically racist, then some other form of bigotry which is equally objectionable. They are then asserting that a team from a "non-white" school is not 'really' American.

Nasty. Very nasty. Very ugly business.



yrs,
rubato

[dales]

VIVA LA RAZA!

[liberty]

USA!...USA!...USA!

[The Hen]

I am agreeing with Rubato on this one.

I would imagine it made the other school feel un-American.

Chanting the name of theplayers, the team, the school or the State would be appropriate.

The country dOes not belong to either side.

[Crackpot]

So being un-american is racist?

[Sue U]

I agree with rubato and Hen, so Jim can add me to his list of suspects..

[Crackpot]

How is it racist? unsporstmanlike. poor taste, and a litany of other things to be sure but what does it have to do with race?

[Scooter]

You have a bunch of white students yelling "USA, USA" at their opponents who are all minorities, probably largely hispanic. It's as if the white players were saying, "this is our country, not yours." They may as well have yelled "wetback, go home."

[Crackpot]

What if they were black?

[Crackpot]

what thtreshold of minorites makes it racist?

[Sue U]

The Edison team is described as "predominantly Hispanic." Looking at pix of the game and the team on the San Antonio and Edison High websites, I saw only one black kid.

Why were the Alamo Heights boys shouting "USA"? Did they think they were playing for the US Olympic team? (Which, by the way, is a nauseating enough display of mindless nationalism.) The only explanation is that they viewed themselves as "real Americans," while the Hispanic kids were "foreigners." If they had been playing a team that was actually from Mexico, there might be some justification to the chanting. But they weren't; they were playing boys from across town.

[Scooter]

The population of San Antonio is 63% Hispanic and 7% Black - you do the math as to the most likely race of most of the players.

The question is whether they would have yelled the same thing had their oipponents been all or predominately white. I would say almost assuredly not.

[Crackpot]

you ask me yelling USA doen't make sense either way and it doesn't require a charge of racism to cite it as unsportsmanlike (and nonsensical) conduct.

[Sue U]

So then what makes it "unsportsmanlike"?

[Crackpot]

the implication that the opposing team was unamerican. One does not have to be of a different race to have that accusation hurled. Or did they not report that outside of "the real America"?