Just a warning. This episode contains some explicit language that's important to the story of what happened in South Lake.

We don't want you to be caught off guard. Thanks for listening.

October 20th, 2018. The dance floor at the Hilton in South Lake's Town Square was packed.

In a video the DJ later posted to his Instagram, you can hear hundreds of kids shouting along to the Drake song, God's Plan.

It was Carol High School's Homecoming Dance.

Girls in designer dresses, sweaty boys in half-unbutton dress shirts, all of them crowded up around the stage, hands in the air, under flashing lights,

shouting every lyric as the DJ stood behind turntables. But what was supposed to be a night to remember for a bunch of teenagers would instead mark the beginning of South Lake's racial reckoning.

Raven Roll, a black senior, came ready to have a good night with her girls, snapping pics in a red long sleeve dress and gold heels.

But she says things quickly got uncomfortable. As the DJ, a black man, turned on one of the most popular songs from 2018.

That was the year that Mo'Bamba came out, which...

Mo'Bamba by Shek West. How do I explain the impact of that song? It was to kids Raven's age, what Hot N Word by Bobby Schmert was in 2014, or No Hands by Waka Flaka was in 2010.

In other words, an unmistakably black song that a certain group of young white people absolutely lose their minds too. And that's what happened in the ballroom that night.

The DJ, I think he was playing the clean versions of all the songs I think you have to do that at school dances.

You know where this is going. The unedited version includes a whole bunch of words that administrators wouldn't want students screaming at an official school function. Most importantly, the N word.

In the clean version of Mo'Bamba that played that night, the word brother is dubbed in for the N word.

But I specifically remember pointing out with my friends, like, oh listen, all these white people using the N word in all these songs.

We spoke to a half dozen students who remember the same thing all through the night. A room full of mostly white students, many of them singing the N word and other explicit lyrics over censored versions of songs.

It was like extremely uncomfortable is the best way to describe it for me at least. And I'm sure for that DJ, I can't even imagine.

That's Jack Tucker, a white senior and student body president that year. He helped plan the dance.

You just hear a horde of white privilege, geniuses. You just hear the N word. And you can't like sing like a rock because it's everyone.

If you ask around, Carol students will probably tell you what Jack told us. Hearing the N word on the dance floor wasn't all that surprising.

In fact, you could hear white students using it at most Carol dances. And even more often in the halls of the high school.

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