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A Collective Failure

I was appalled by the recent incident in Guilford in which a high school student wore blackface to a Guilford football game against a Hartford team, and deeply disappointed in some reaction I saw on social media excusing the student’s behavior. Much of the reaction centered on the offending student’s feelings and minimizing it to the actions of one person.

The student made an extremely poor and hurtful decision and should face consequences. That he met little resistance to act in this way in public means it wasn’t just one person’s actions but a collective failure to stand up to racism. To reckon with this, we must consider the damage to the members of our community who are people of color, and to the visiting Hartford students.

Clearly, there is work to be done in educating our community about the deep and persistent roots of racism, and specifically about the racist history of blackface. I encourage our Board of Education, Board of Selectmen, and other relevant town boards and commissions to address this with urgency.

Lisa Kelly

Guilford