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When I first saw the video on social media in February, I was shocked.

Police and black students were clashing in a Minnesota high school gym, and one grainy clip showed a black girl tussling with a police officer, then getting tackled and arrested. The chaos, I quickly learned, had come after white Owatonna High School students had made Snapchat posts that used an anti-black slur.

There was viral outrage online, and the story could have ended there. But it didn’t.

When I contacted some of the black students involved in the unrest, they made clear to me that they long had been frustrated over what they believed was a culture of racism at their school. What’s more, when I met with some of them in Owatonna, I was surprised to see one of the girls who had appeared in the racist post accompanying them.