An Iowa high school athlete was playing in his first game for Charles City High School since the COVID-19 pandemic was met with racist chants from the crowd. Jeremiah Chapman a junior was playing a baseball game against Waverly-Shell Rock High School. Chapman was called “Colin”, “You should have been George Floyd” and told “Get back to the fields.” The teen says the incident left him heartbroken according to CNN.
“I try my hardest to have everyone like me because that’s just my personality,” Chapman said. “And it’s just hard seeing that no matter how hard I try, people can’t accept me because of my skin color.”
Champman’s mother Keisha Cunnings wasn’t at the game, however, received messages from people in attendance about what happened. She hopes this is a learning experience for everyone.
“I was angry because as a parent, this is the one fear I have for him,” she said. “The other part of me was kind of relieved that it did happen because it opened Jeremiah’s eyes to not be so naive and colorblind and ignorant to the fact that things like this still happen.”
Cunnings says she doesn’t believe the people shouting things to her son were racist but cited the incident was an attempt to take her son out of his game.
“I feel like they were being kids and just trying to say whatever they could say to throw him off his game and unfortunately they took it to race,” she said.
Cunnings posted a picture of her son and a message in response to the incident. “He is kind, sweet and talented.. if you can’t see beyond his skin color then sucks for you!” adding “he doesn’t care who you support politically..and he doesn’t remind you of George Floyd!”
At this point it isn’t clear who made the comments, but both the Charles City and Waverly-Shell Rock school districts said the incident was unacceptable. The Waverly-Shell Rock Community School District apologized in a Facebook post.
“This behavior is unacceptable. We make no excuses, because there are none,” Waverly-Shell Rock Community School District said in the post. “We do, however, wish to make a sincere apology to the Charles City school district and community and, in particular, the young man towards whom these comments were directed.”
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