According to The Newberg Graphic, a special education assistant at Mabel Rush Elementary School in Newberg, Oregon, showed up on campus last Friday wearing blackface. Yes. That is still happening. The reason? According to an anonymous staff member, she was protesting a vaccine mandate and used iodine to darken her skin. This move was going to somehow compare Rosa Parks’ fight for civil rights with this person’s disregard for public health protocols. The Daily Beast has confirmed that an employee had worn blackface on campus, with school officials calling it “unacceptable.”

In a statement, Newberg Public Schools wrote that “The employee was removed from the location, and HR has placed the employee on administrative leave. The administration of Newberg Public Schools condemns all expressions of racism.” This is the third controversy surrounding the Newberg school system’s problems with racism and bigotry. Just last week Newberg High school was investigating a student who reportedly posted super-racist social media content to a Snapchat group called “Slave Trade.”

Of that incident, Superintendent Dr. Joe Morelock wrote:

Of course, that comes about one month after the Newberg School Board voted 4-3 to ban “divisive” “political” signage like Black Lives Matter, LGBTQ+ flags and … I guess swastikas? That led to Superintendent Morelock writing:

Tai Harden-Moore, a Black mother with kids in the district, told The Graphic that this wasn’t surprising, as conservatives keep attempting to pretend public health mandates are the equivalent of white supremacist and anti-constitutional post-slavery segregation laws. “This makes sense only because we have our county commissioner, Mary Starrett, who drew that line between vaccine mandates and Jim Crow. That was only a couple months ago. Our county leadership is saying basic public health measures are akin to Jim Crow. There is a line between our political leadership and something like this happening. Our leadership matters.”