Last week, some racist graffiti was found at Parkway North and Parkway Central schools in the Midwest American state of Missouri. Somebody had scrawled ‘HOPE ALL BLACK PEOPLE DIE’ and the n-word across the bathrooms.

A protest erupted. Students ‘boycotted’ classes to show their disgust. But then the sense of outrage suddenly fell flat after it emerged that the person who had scrawled the racist graffiti was in fact black.