*A school student at Los Gatos High School near San Jose, Calif. said he was only trying to look like his Bitmoji when he wore brown makeup on his face to ask a girl to prom via Snapchat.
Needless to say, he’s now in the middle of a firestorm.
The school paper was tipped off that a student wore blackface for a promposal and the pics have since gone viral.
KGO caught up with the senior, who asked not to be identified, but explained that his promposal was nothing more than an attempt to look like a Bitmoji on Snapchat. (Bitmoji is your own personal emoji.) First, he asked his prospective date to prom by sending just his Bitmoji.
“He has black skin and he has a blue mohawk, blue eyebrows and a blue goatee,” the student said. When his prospective date wasn’t impressed, he had another idea: “I dressed exactly like the Bitmoji and then asked her.”
This included painting his face black with blue hair, eyebrows and a goatee.
“There was no intention of racism” he told KGO. “I did not mean for people to take it this way. I did not mean this in a racist way whatsoever. I’m very sorry if you feel offended,” he added.
The high school’s newspaper editor Danika Lyle, who is half African-American, says even with the Bitmoji explanation, she is still offended.
“What you’re saying when you make a Bitmoji for the purpose of being funny, and then make it black, which the student is not, you’re saying something about that skin-tone about it being funny,” she said.
The event prompted her to pen an op-ed on racism in schools and the lack of attention that the media sheds on these issues. (Click here to read.)
Sadly, this isn’t the first time a promposal has gone racist. The online version of the paper also covered another controversial junior prom ask.
“It was sick. It said along the lines of ‘do you want to be my N-word and hang with me at prom?’ And then it detailed a black person hanging from a tree,” Lyle said.
She is still holding out hope that racial issues at Los Gatos will get better, as the administration is now taking steps to educate students “on racism and modern-day nuanced racism” before the 2018 prom season.
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