White student wears blackface to Texas party to 'honor' Tupac

Houston's Mirabeau B. Lamar High School doesn't lack racial diversity. But that hasn't stopped some students from embracing the age-old tradition of blackface.

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The school's student body demographics are similar to the city's racial demographics: Lamar High School is 28 percent white, 29 percent black, 37 percent Latino and 4 percent Asian. Over the weekend, at least some of the school's white students met at an off-campus party, and one showed up in black body paint wearing a Tupac Shakur T-shirt.

The student has not been identified publicly, but was reportedly told by an upperclassman to wear a costume for initiation into a secret student club called Wichaka. A screenshot taken of a Snapchat video eventually found its way to the public at large. Another white student may have revealed a bit more than she intended by trying to convince local reporters that the photo was being misinterpreted.

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"It's not anything with blackface, we didn't even know what blackface was," senior student Reagan Shadwick said to Click2Houston.

Shadwick also said that the paint was intended to be a shadow, and it was just coincidental that the student in the picture was wearing a Tupac shirt.

For the school's black students, the incident has been especially painful. "I thought it was blackface and I was immediately offended," senior student Ogechi Anene told local reporters.

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