The piece, shamelessly titled “SEE IT: Covington Catholic High students in blackface at past basketball game,” begins by saying snarkily, “This won’t help Kentucky student Nick Sandmann’s case.” It then “reports”:
A photo said to be featuring Covington Catholic High School students clad in blackface during a 2015 basketball game made the rounds on Twitter Monday morning amid last week’s Indigenous Peoples March controversy.
The photo depicts several white students, some in blackface, shouting at an opposing black player.
While the photo’s origins couldn’t be verified, the official Covington Catholic High School YouTube account published a video last January boasting its basketball school spirit, and several clips, including one from 2012, showcase attendees chanting in black face, a mockery of the opposing players. The school took down the video later on Monday.
Here’s the photo that the Daily News describes as showing the high schoolers in “blackface”:
VIDEO: https://t.co/pFgrJA1N0Q From :06 to 1:06 you can see a teacher or coach of #CovingtonCatholic leading the teens in a chant– several of the Covington students are in blackface. At this game, black players on the opposing team were verbally abused. pic.twitter.com/gqyNRUjYXD
— Marcus Henry Weber (@MarcusHWeber) January 21, 2019
But, many have since pointed out, rather than showing high schoolers in “blackface” (wearing black makeup in order to imitate in a derogatory manner an African American), the photo clearly shows students in a “blackout” event. Matt Walsh summed up the arguments succinctly in an op-ed for the Daily Wire:
Anyone with, say, a third of a functioning brain rattling around in their skulls will immediately understand the scene. The kids are all wearing black because the fans of sports teams often will come to games all in the same color. Oftentimes fans will wear black as part of a “blackout.” Other times they’ll white as part of a “whiteout.” Or sometimes they’ll wear blue or red or any other color. This is standard operating procedure in American sports, especially scholastic sports.
Why are they screaming at the opposing player? Well, because he is the opposing player and that’s what the home fans do and have done in every basketball game or football game ever played anywhere on Earth. Why is the opposing player black? Well, because that just happens to be his race. If he was white, they would be just as unwelcoming. This is part of the pageantry of sports.– READ MORE