A New Jersey high school has been exonerated of any racist intent after its football team used a banana to plug a hole in the door between its locker room and that of a majority-black visiting team. But, this being America in the 21st century, the school is being punished nevertheless.
The story goes back to last year. Before one game, the Summit High School team needed to plug the gap caused by a missing doorknob, and someone came up with a banana. The team won the game, and eventually the league championship, and the banana became a superstition. In this year’s opener, the opponent was North Plainfield, a slender majority of whose players are black. They saw the banana as a possible racial reference and complained to the authorities.
In a simpler time, the two teams’ coaches would have worked this out between them, but in Obama’s America, no grievance can be left uninvestigated. The New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association convened a special committee, which performed a thorough investigation that included six hours of testimony. Since the committee “unanimously determined there was insufficient proof that the incident was an intentional act of racial bias or harassment,” one might think that would be the end of it, along with an apology perhaps.
Not a chance. The NJSIAA ordered the two teams’ captains to meet, which seems sensible enough, but beyond that:
Second, to promote understanding, Summit High School must submit a Corrective Action Plan to the NJSIAA for review and approval. This plan should include, at a minimum, an in-service training program for the entire coaching staff focused on sensitivity to and understanding of racial bias incidents.
And third, to avoid repetition, the Summit High School athletic director must submit a certification to the NJSIAA — prior to the start of each of the next three sports seasons — certifying that he has reviewed with the school’s coaches all NJSIAA sportsmanship rules, in detail.
So a silly high-school tradition of surpassing triviality that clearly had no racial animus behind it must be expiated with large doses of the racemonger’s panacea — sensitivity training — along with lecturing all the school’s coaches, from bowling to swimming to cross country, on how to play nice.
Imagine if they had actually done something wrong.