by any means necessary... including posters

so i have come to discover that the high school i am teaching at has some issues with cultural sensitivity. and by cultural sensitivity i mean racism. teachers have relayed to me some rather outrageous and terrible things students have said in class, or in response to a woman having pictures of her family (with African American members) on her desk, but that type of intolerance seems so 1964 that it's hard for me to comprehend. on friday, the librarian showed me the latest instance of this sort of behavior: obama's face on a newspaper with monkey-type drawings added to him. when she showed me i gasped out loud. a loud gasp, especially for a library. she'd been having scolding sessions with every class that came in there.... i get that kids can be racist, and in vermont it's that weird kind of racism where the kids have probably never even been in contact with a person of color... the kind of racism that exists in my midwest homeland. but damn. for real? i'm just hoping that no student of mine says something during class because i will lose it. and they are getting absolutely INNUNDATED with pictures and anecdotes and everything having to do with people of color. i've got more posters up about civil rights and malcolm X and the dalai lama than these kids will know what to do with. my room is going to be COVERED in color. and black people.