Recently, a 4-year-old video of a Callisburg ISD student dressed as a Ku Klux Klan member has surfaced. In the video, the student, wearing a cone-shaped white hood and clenching a cross, grooved to Miley Cyrus’s “Party in the USA” before several students and teachers.
Although the incident took place a while back, anti-racism activist Jessica Luther Rummel wasn’t having it, as she decided to post the video on social media.
“This is a culture of racism that is long outdated, and this kind of behavior has obviously been normalized,” Luther Rummel said. “One can tell that based on the comments of those defending it.”
The notorious clip caught the attention of Callisburg ISD leadership. They claimed that the video is against the values of the school district, and they will investigate the students and/or teachers involved.
However, soon after, Callisburg ISD superintendent Donald Metzler claimed that the horrific video had “nothing to do with the KKK”, and instead Metzler tied the student’s racist costume to Pyramid Head of the film/videogame franchise Silent Hill.
In the Silent Hill films, a shirtless, muscular character named Pyramid Head wears a dark pyramid-shaped helmet. He also brandishes a sword-like weapon, which Metzler said the student had attempted to recreate but failed to properly execute, ending up with something that looks very crosslike.
Sadly, this isn’t the only racist incident in Callisburg ISD, which is located about 80 miles north of Dallas, near the Oklahoma-Texas state line. Jessica Luther Rummel has also shed light towards a volleyball coach wearing blackface, although the district states that the said coach is no longer employed by the district.