Riverhead High School and Middle School rocked by racial incident at football game
RIVERHEAD, N.Y. - A Riverhead high school and middle school student are being disciplined following their alleged racist behavior during a football game.
The school district said the troubling racial incident targeted kindergarten and first grade student victims and their parents.
The Riverhead school community is reeling following the disclosure that two teen students are being investigated, accused of hurling racial slurs at local schoolchildren as young as 5 years old during a home high school football game on Sept. 9.
The innocent victims, police said, are great grandchildren of Robert "Bubbie" Brown.
"I'm not looking for revenge on these kids, because these kids got it from somewhere nobody is born with hate in their system," Brown said.
The superintendent said the two white students attend the middle and high school, and allegedly began taunting a Black family at a playground and then followed them into the bleachers. The alleged racist behavior became public at the school board meeting.
"I've lived Riverhead all my life and I never dreamed that my great-grandchildren would be subjected to the N word in 2023," Brown said at the meeting.
School board member Virginia Healy said she was a witness.
"We were all appalled by that, and we stand with your family. Everybody heard it, and it's not acceptable," Healy said.
A letter has gone out to parents.
"Based on a review of the video footage from the playground and bleachers, it appeared words were exchanged racial slurs voiced defamatory gestures," the letter read.
"Sometimes the dust has to settle. If people have been hurt, even deeply," Pastor Philip Hardt of Riverhead United Methodist said.
The church community is offering a space for healing.
So far, the students in question have been banned from future football games. Other disciplinary measures are to follow.
School administrators are meeting with Riverhead's anti-bias task force this week.
"I know that we are the majority. I don't believe that most people out there are like the people that we confronted on that Saturday. but it's time for everybody to speak out," Brown said.