Pittsburgh Area High School Students Dress In Bananas and Yell Racial Slurs at Opponents

You can now add to that a Pittsburgh area high school game where, once again high schoolers wore Banana costumes, and then elevated it even further with disgusting racist behavior.

Valley Independent staff writer Jeremy Sellew has this account of what happened last week at a game between predominantly white Brentwood, a suburb of Pittsburgh, and nearby Monessen, an undefeated, all-African-American basketball team.

"After the buzzer sounded for halftime, though, things took a disgusting turn. Two or three members of the Brentwood student section donned full-body banana costumes and decided to run around the Greyhound players using racial slurs and referring to them as monkeys. Being at the scorer’s table, I couldn’t hear every-thing that came from the student section. I didn’t need to, though. I had heard enough. Did Brentwood’s Director of Security Joseph Kozarian do anything? No. At one point he was smiling and laughing with the entire student section."

KDKA in Pittsburgh has this report which includes a statement by the school district that includes these statements (full statement in link).

". . . After the game, the District conducted an investigation and spoke to a number of District students and staff who attended the game. Nothing has been revealed to indicate racist comments were made. It seems students dressing in costume for athletic events is not uncommon in high schools and colleges. Two students did dress in banana costumes for the Monessen game. The District understands that these students have dressed like this for past athletic contests without incident . . . ."

Well, they didn’t apparently talk to the journalist there covering it, but good to know that students and staff who knew the kids deny it. Let’s just agree that, at minimum, wearing Banana costumes to a game is stupid and borders on insensitivity, and pushes close to the edge where taunts then occur. If your tradition is wearing a Banana costume to a game, unless it is part of an ensemble Fruit of the Loom cast, find a new tradition.

[photo via Getty]