Three teachers at a middle school in Nassau County, New York, have been placed on leave after displaying a picture of nooses labeled “back to school necklaces.”
The incident happened at Roosevelt Middle School on Long Island last week, according to news reports.
The noose images were part of a larger collage in one of the classrooms that featured two nooses and the words "ha" and "#yes," according to NBC News.
The Roosevelt School District issued a statement saying it is investigating what it called "inappropriate conduct," WPIX reported.
“The Board of Education has zero tolerance for the display of racially offensive images,” the statement said.
The three teachers are white while a majority of the students at the school are Hispanic or African-American.
School district President Alfred T. Taylor told NBC that the incident is dividing the community because some people do not understand the historic significance of a noose.
"When you have half the community saying, 'This is an atrocity,' and then you have another half defending it saying, 'Oh, it was supposed to be a joke,' that's an easy way for something to get lost in translation," Taylor said, according to NBC.
"You have a generation of youth that is so desensitized to it that they don't understand the graphic nature of it even in seeing pictures. It doesn't move some of them," he said. "That could be disturbing because it's creating a communication gap between our communities."
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