Santa Barbara parents packed a school board meeting to demand answers after a blackface TikTok posted by four students roiled the district.
The video surfaced last month at San Marcos High School, where four blonde teenage girls darkened their faces and mimicked an AI-generated image of four young Black boys. The post carried the caption “Meet the gc🥷🥷🥷🥷🥷🥷🥷…,” with the ninja emoji — known online as a substitute for the N-word. Principal Dare Holdren confirmed the students “portrayed blackface” and said the school “instituted consequences,” but parents fumed that notification lagged roughly two weeks.
“Parents deserve to know,” Leticia Forney Resch, an executive director for Healing Justice Santa Barbara, said at the Tuesday meeting. “They had pictures and images going out to students for a week-and-a-half… Y’all didn’t do your job.”
Attendees waved handmade signs reading “Don’t be a bystander, stop ignoring racism” and “racism doesn’t disappear when it’s swept under the rug.” The organized protest pressed the Santa Barbara Unified School District for stronger action and faster transparency when racist incidents erupt.
The photo was taken inside an African American studies classroom, compounding the offense for faculty. Abel Gonzalez, the ethnic studies teacher whose room was used, said Black students across campus were reeling from the fallout.
“When black students are harmed, every student is harmed,” Gonzalez said. “Black and brown students are very upset and trying to heal.”
Charlotte Gullap-Moore, speaking for another educator, delivered a blistering assessment of district leadership. “Doing nothing tells this community that anti-Black bias and racism is woven into the fabric of Santa Barbara schools,” Moore said, reading a statement from teacher Tahnia Mark. “So be honest, do you really care about black students? If you don’t, just say it…Otherwise, show through action.”
Gullap-Moore also framed the incident as part of a national pattern. “When a nation refuses to confront institutional and structural racism, the harm does not stay contained, it escalates,” she said. “Santa Barbara Unified has watched that escalation in its own schools.”
The district has faced prior scrutiny over racist episodes. According to the Santa Barbara Independent, a substitute teacher at San Marcos read the N-word aloud during a classroom reading of “Of Mice and Men” last year after being explicitly told not to, and was subsequently removed from campus. The local NAACP has previously faulted the district for failing to build clear protocols.
“SBUSD has struggled to establish protocols to respond to racial incidents and execute them with humanity,” NAACP Santa Barbara President Connie Alexander wrote in a Santa Barbara Independent op-ed. “Principals need clear guidance; parents and students need accessible information about district investigations and potential disciplinary actions for racist incidents.”
The four girls’ TikTok, which circulated for days before administrative response, has become the flashpoint for broader grievances about how the district handles racism. Holdren has not publicly explained the delay in notifying families.