An Ohio teacher is out of a job after an image was shown during a Black History Month segment featuring an orangutan eating a watermelon.
Community uproar led by angry parents and students pressured the unnamed teacher at Bexley Middle School in suburban Columbus to submit his resignation.
“This was a planned, thought out, premeditated, intentional, deliberate insult,” one parent said to school district officials.
On Feb. 3, students attending Bexley Middle School in Bexley, Ohio, saw a photo of an orangutan eating watermelon on a green screen immediately following a Black History Month fact segment during the morning announcements.
Bexley Middle School has 549 students enrolled. About 80 percent of them are white, and 8 percent identify as Black, according to Public School Review.
The racist image sparked immediate outrage among students.
“We are the children who sat there and had to look at the image the whole time in the news show. It was hurtful. It was wrong altogether,” Damiah Milner, a seventh grader told WSYX.
The students’ parents were equally as upset.
“I really don’t believe your school is really trying to do something about it because if you were, you would have fired that guy immediately, swift justice,” a parent said to Bexley City officials.
Hours after the racist image appeared on school televisions to the dismay of many, the Bexley Middle School Principal and Assistant Principal sent a letter to parents explaining to them what happened.
“After this morning’s school announcements, which featured a historical fact as part of Black History Month, an image of an orangutan eating a watermelon appeared on the green screen background. This was and is highly offensive to our staff and students and does not align with our values as a district.”
The letter went on to say an investigation was immediately launched and apologized.
School superintendent, Jason Fine, issued a statement saying the image, “directly targets and reinforces racist tropes and stereotypes about Black people.”
