Racial mascot debate at Boone County High School

Boone County High School Rebels, meet the Anderson High School Redskins. The latter, after years of protests from their school community, changed their racist mascot and replaced it with Raptors.

And just like the east side Cincinnati Anderson High School did until 2021, traditionalists in Boone County are holding on to their offensive, outdated school spirit symbol by a fingernail. Sadly, this is always how these school based changes happen, drip by drip, until the old holdouts are finally drowned out by the more modern, principled voices from within.  

And it’s fitting that at Boone County High School the most articulate voice from within is a young African American writer and comedian who now lives on the West Coast after graduating from the school in 2005. Recently, Akilah Hughes went before the school’s decision making board and appealed again (they’ve faced similar requests before) that they drop their mascot that harkens back to slavery and even the KKK.

And make no mistake, Rebels isn’t used at the school because of the old Rebel Without a Cause movie as some defenders claim. 

When the school agreed in 2017 to finally phase out its Mr. Rebel caricature, a dude in a Confederate uniform, we all had proof that the roots of the nickname were, well, racist. (Editor’s note: However, the board has waffled on phasing out the Mr. Rebel mascot.) Understand, about a quarter of the school’s student population are kids of color, so the effect of using a mascot with racist roots are personal and harmful. 

Sadly, controversies involving repugnant school mascots aren’t new, and Anderson’s mascot change can show the way for the kids, staff and parents across the river. 

For decades, some constituents from Anderson High School clamored for the decision makers to drop Redskins pointing out that the term Redskins was even defined as offensive and racist in the high school library’s dictionaries. But it took decades for the Forest Hills School Board to finally face the fact that words matter, especially when their mission includes shaping the minds, values and character of children, their children.

Not surprisingly, it was ultimately the children who turned Redskins to Raptors there. On the night of the key vote at a live streamed Forest Hills School Board meeting, the president of the board stated that while he had voted to keep Redskins when the controversy had previously blazed, it was a recent conversation he had with Anderson High School’s principal and athletic director that turned him this time. He said they told him that the use of the mascot was now dividing the student population. And how could we use a sports spirit mascot that was making half the kids uncomfortable?

Look, Boone County, Kentucky, is essentially a suburb. It’s not tobacco fields and country stores. And the parents of the kids at Boone County High School often work in the same corporate offices in Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky as the moms and dads from Ohio’s Anderson Township. And when Akilah Hughes rightfully brings the issue back home that their kids’ school uses a nickname that harkens back to a time when one man could own others, and that guys like their Mr. Rebel fought to keep human ownership legal, well that makes gentrified folk squirm. 

But just like in Anderson Township, it’s going to take youthful innocence, the pure hearts of lots of students at Boone County High School, to put moral pressure on the adult decision makers to bite the bullet, buck years-long tradition and come up with another mascot, one that unites and not divides or worse yet hurts.

My money is on Akilah Hughes in this fight. Google her and you’ll see that after Boone County High School, where she served on student council, he graduated from Berea College in Kentucky and now is a social media influencer with plenty of establishment media credentials as well. So she’s the hip elder who could break through to both the kids and parents. Smartly, she’s launching a national podcast in September called Rebel Spirit where she’ll chronicle in real time her effort to change the mascot, a national spotlight Boone County won’t want for long. 

And just like Anderson High School, Boone County High School will finally do the right thing.

Editor’s Note: The views expressed in this commentary piece do not necessarily the express the opinions of The Cincinnati Herald.