Image: Facebook/Dover High School
Dover High School in Delaware, United States recently came under fire after two students in class sang a jingle in the tune of “Jingle Bells”, with the refrain bearing the line, “KKK, KKK, let’s kill all the blacks.”
A video of the students circulated on Snapchat before making the rounds on other social media sites. Jen Green, a parent of one of the students in the class, took to Facebook last Dec. 3 where she shared the Snapchat video.
“This is a ‘project’ done at my children’s school!” wrote Green. “How is this in anyway ok?!?”
In the 1-minute long video, the students can be seen standing in front of the class where they sang their Ku Klux Klan-inspired jingle.
“KKK, KKK, let’s kill all the blacks,” they sang amid their classmates’ laughter. “Burn a cross on their front yard and hope they don’t come back.”
Dover School District superintendent William Harbron has since released a letter to the school district community last Dec. 3, calling the event “an incident of extreme racial insensitivity.” The incident occurred in an 11th grade U.S. history class who were tackling the period after the Civil War, as per Foster’s Daily Democrat on Dec. 3, and came to light following an assignment given by the teacher.
“They were given an assignment to select some event during reconstruction and to make a jingle out of it,” Harbron was quoted as saying.
Dover High School principal Peter Driscoll and Harbron, however, shared that they do not think the students’ jingle had any malicious motivations. It is still uncertain, too, whether the students would be disciplined.
John Carver, the history teacher involved in the class, was reported to have been placed on paid administrative leave. Harbron shared that Carver’s leave would allow the school administration to “really dig deep into the investigation,” according to Foster’s on Dec. 4.
Meanwhile, one of the students who sang the jingle, came forward on the evening of Dec. 3 and clarified that it was not their intention to offend.
“We were simply trying to make a factual reference to the KKK and the history,” the student said in a WMUR News 9 report on Dec. 4. “We were just trying to bring to light the terrible history of the KKK and about what they did, well, just people throughout all of history.” Cody Cepeda/JB
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