A TikTok post showing four white female students darkening their skin to recreate a viral meme has sparked student walkouts and protests in California’s Santa Barbara Unified School District (SBUSD). The controversy started at San Marcos High School, but the backlash has spread beyond the campus, with parents and civil rights advocates questioning how the school handled the incident and why families were not notified sooner.
The four students reportedly shared a slideshow recreating a viral, AI-generated meme titled “meet the gc,” short for group chat. The original image featured four young Black boys in school uniforms, but the teenagers darkened their skin to imitate the boys and added a caption containing ninja emojis. According to the Santa Barbara Independent, the emojis are widely used in online teen culture as a way to get around content moderation filters when referring to the N-word.
