Racist Time Travel Courtesy of Wilcox County, GA

A group of students at Wilcox County High School in Georgia are traveling back in time to fight their hometown culture–which is apparently suspended in 1950–in a long time WHS tradition: hosting one prom for white students and a separate prom for black students.

In case you’re wondering, they somehow manage to slither under the law by funding the events through student and parent money, rather than calling it an official school activity (though these certainly serve as the school’s only prom festivities).

And the sliminess is everything you would expect and more.

They literally involved police in turning away a biracial student from the “whites only” prom last year, for instance. And even when an African American student, Quanesha Wallace, was elected queen, she was not permitted to attend the same prom as the white king.

Oh and get this: the yearbook even made the white king and black queen get photographed separately.

This from a school whose mission statement is to “allow opportunities for all students to excel academically, socially and professionally.”

Don’t think this is a lone exception either. There are multiple towns strung up in time-suspension with these guys. One in Mount Vernon, Georgia even presents students with ballots where they should write in a name on two blanks. One blank is labeled “white girl” and the second is labeled “black girl”. Some are also known to vote for a “Most Successful White Girl” and “Most Successful Black Girl”, titles they immortalize in yearbooks.

And it happens at the University level too, as the student body at Towson University just found out when a group of 50 who call themselves the “White Student Union” recently began marching the campus  doing night patrols to look out for dangerous non-white activity.

So what to do when you stumble back in time forty or fifty or sixty years and find yourself in the face of racism you’re taught was eradicated?

There seems to be a variety of responses.

The students at Wilcox County High’s response? “It’s embarrassing.”

Wilcox school’s response? There will still be two proms this year. Neither proms are financed by or allowed to take place at Wilcox County High School. And here is the official statement from the Wilcox school website from superintendent Steve Smith which claims the school passed a resolution that all “school-sponsored” activities welcome all students. It just doesn’t happen to do anything about this particular “non-sponsored” event. Powerful resolution in light of the circumstances, don’t you think?

In contrast, we could look at the response of principal Chad Stone who oversees a different Georgia school with the same long-standing tradition. He squashed the non-official segregated prom celebration by putting $5,000 of discretionary money aside for an official prom that welcomed all students.

And the student body at Towson’s response? They staged a protest and a counter-march spouting all kinds of common sense like, “I was appalled that something like that would be in America at this time in this age.” They earned the praise of university officials and the legal support of the Southern Poverty Law Center.

And then there’s Matt, the leader of Towson’s White Student Union, who responds by saying those who don’t want to live in a multicultural nation should be allowed to secede and form their own nation.

Poor guy. Apparently no one told him visionaries have to cast visions toward the future. Better get working on that time machine, Matt.

What about you? Do you still see evidence of racism and other kinds of profiling, oppression or mistreatment in 2013? And what do you do when you witness shocking behavior or comments? Do you feel uncomfortable, wanting to melt away or awkward, not wanting to inflame the situation? Or do you, like the Towson students, get right to your counter-protest? Would love to hear your thoughts.