At Wilcox County High, Your Prom Date Must Be the Same Race As You

Impact

This year, Wilcox County High School in Rochelle, Ga., held racially segregated proms; white students in one, black in the other. A biracial student was turned away, by the police, from trying to enter the white prom.

The king and queen were of two separate races, so they took separate pictures in the yearbook. The queen still wasn’t invited to the exclusively white homecoming.

Luckily, we live is a post-racism world (we have a president of color and affirmative action!) so nothing like this would happen today; the fact that it is happening as we speak is a statistical anomaly.

Yes, all these things are the norm at Wilcox County High, where privately sponsored and racially segregated proms are held each year, with entrance allowed or denied based on the melanin content of a person’s body.

Of course, I'm just a liberal minority college student with a victim-mentality, a sense of entitlement and millions of government dollars in my bank account so take all this as part of some propaganda movement that I can't even name.

A group of students at the high school — Stephanie Sinnot, Mareshia Rucker, Quanesha Wallace (the aforementioned queen in the example,) and Keela Bloodworth — hope to change the high school’s eighteenth century approach by actually starting an integrated prom because they think the situation is “kind of embarrassing.”

“We are all friends, that's just kind of not right that we can't go to prom together,” said Sinnot.

In a really surprising move completely unaligned with the kind people over at this high school, however, some vicious outliers have been ripping down the posters for this integrated night of punch spiking and groping in the name of dancing.

According to Rucker, “When people around here are set in their ways, they are not too adamant to change.”

To even think of such hostility from the classy folks at this institution. I'm guessing the guy who won "Most Ambitious" in the yearbook was the one who figured out how to tear down three posters at once.

The school, which does not sponsor any prom and does not even have a policy on the matter, has said nothing on the issue. I think they are just objective proponents of freedom of speech … or states’ rights … or the Constitution; sorry, I forget which one we are supposed to use to defend racism.

The senior class is currently raising money for the integrated prom and school officials will not be involved. The school has, however, offered a solution: they have green-lighted the integrated prom to co-exist with the segregated prom.

Hello, 21st century.

Now, let’s make this a story about some distant place (the foreign-er the name, the better) and criticize how their dated values are causing all this sectarian hatred. Because, as we know, it is not an individual group but an entire culture that is the criminal.

Actually, because these segregated proms are privately held, their right to sweet freedom means these people aren’t even criminals, right?

The integrated prom will be held April 27. I wonder if its pictures will be in the yearbook.