Parent upset by school's 'colored entrance'https://t.co/yqbfuxU9lI
— Cindy Saalfeld (@CindyLSchroeder) February 3, 2017
Parents are sounding off after an Ohio high school decorated for Black History Month with a “white entrance” and “colored entrance” poster.
St. Bernard-Elmwood Place High School has removed the sign after complaints, but school officials are still defending the decoration, which superintendent Mimi Webb said has been “taken out of context.” The poster was part of an annual contest at the school in St. Bernard.
“[It shows] how far we have come in society while acknowledging that we need to do more as a society,” she told news station WCPO on Friday.
But parents are still shocked by the school’s approval of the poster and are demanding an apology.
“My interpretation of Black History Month is that it’s a time to celebrate how far we have come as a nation, and this did not demonstrate how far we came,” said parent Jennifer Berry. “It demonstrated taking it back.”
Berry, whose daughter is a student, said the decoration made her biracial daughter uncomfortable.
“I feel like that door made her ashamed of who she is,” Berry said. “And she should never feel that way.”
According to high school junior Cheran Sherman, who helped design the poster, it was intended to be about love and equality.
“I started off with the black paper, which represents the colored entrance only, and then the white paper represents the white entrance only, and how they were separate; the Jim Crow laws—separate but equal—I had it in that state of mind,” Sherman said.
Sherman said she never meant to offend other students.
“It wasn’t meant to make people feel bad… and I guess people took it the wrong way,” she said.
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