Updated with two students facing discipline over the memes.

Some alumni, parents and students at J.J. Pearce High School in Richardson were shocked to see racist memes making the rounds on social media this week.

Others say they saw it coming.

The memes began circulating days before Pearce and rival Richardson High faced off in a football game Thursday night.

Two Pearce students who were responsible for the offensive pictures have been identified, Richardson ISD spokesman Chris Moore said Thursday night. They could face punishment ranging from in-school suspension to alternative school assignment for violating district policies.

"No doubt it's appalling," he said. "It's hateful, it's repulsive."

One meme depicts a burning cross with Richardson High's emblem in the flames and members of the Ku Klux Klan bearing the J.J. Pearce logo in the background.

Another picture depicts a slave being whipped by a slave driver, their faces covered by each school's name.

Another shows Michael Brown and former Ferguson, Mo., police Officer Darren Wilson, who killed the teen in a shooting that triggered riots and fueled the Black Lives Matter movement.

Richardson High has three times as many black students as J.J. Pearce, whose student body is about 45 percent white, according to state data.

The photos include (clockwise from top left) a slave being whipped, Michael Brown and former Ferguson Officer Darren Wilson, the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, the World Trade Center, a KKK cross-burning rally and Lee Harvey Oswald after he was shot.

A letter was sent home to parents Thursday penned by J.J. Pearce principal Mike Evans saying, in part, that the pictures do "not reflect — in any way — the character of Pearce High School or the students and teachers who work hard to maintain the values established throughout our 50-year history. This behavior is hateful, repulsive and will not be tolerated."

Richardson police are aware of the posts, but so far there's no crime to investigate, said Sgt. Kevin Perlich, a spokesman. There were no reports of trouble between students at the game Thursday night.

“Kids made decisions and bad posts of what they think is humor,” Perlich said.

Parents, alumni and students took to social media to voice their concerns.

Some said the memes reflect their high school experience at Pearce, while others said the images were posted by one person who was a "bad apple."

"The generalizations being made about Pearce students here are just as damaging as the post itself," one commenter wrote on Facebook.

Alumnus Dezmond Ewell, who shed light on the posts on Facebook, said this isn't the first time people of color have felt alienated at the school.

"I had friends call me the 'whitest black person' they know and I still had things said to me that weren't appropriate," Ewell said.

His brother and cousin still attend the school and told him that some classmates voiced support for the pictures when they reposted them.

"I'm not saying everybody is like this. ... There are great people there, but it's more than just a handful of students," Ewell said. "They don't know the pain of calling [black students] those names or the pain in these pictures or where that comes from."

Nidya Teran, who is Hispanic and graduated from Pearce High last year, said she was not surprised to see the images, especially in the political climate after last year's presidential election. In her AP history classes, she recalled, students would say "build that wall," a popular chant at Donald Trump rallies.

"I just always saw something coming," Teran said. "It's sad that people like that go to my school and they're brave enough to post that."

She hopes the district "doesn't play dumb and try to ignore it," she said.

Some commenters on social media defended the memes' creator, saying it's "just a kid," but Ewell says the tension could escalate to violence — and the culprit should be expelled.

"But I know that the [discipline] is not going to be that way," Ewell said. "Until I see it, I have a hard time believing it because I've seen so many situations that were just slaps on a wrist."

Bryan Holland, who graduated from Richardson High and had two children attend Pearce, says despite the post, the environment in Richardson ISD has become more inclusive since he attended school.

"I see [the district] as a beacon of hope because we went through really tough stuff about 20 years ago," Holland said.

But, Holland says, topics like tolerance and multiculturalism should have a greater emphasis in schools. He says the post was by one "ignorant" student.

"It makes you sick and then when you find out who did it, you go 'He's just a dumb kid,'" Holland said. "The bigger view here is we all need to be talking about this. We have made some progress, but we still have a long way to go."

Staff writer Tom Washburn contributed to this report.

CORRECTION, 3:30 p.m., Sept. 28, 2017: An earlier version of this story misstated when the two schools' football teams play. The game was at 7 p.m. Thursday.