They had created a chat on Snapchat called 'Slave Trade', in which they assigned a price to African American schoolmates by changing the price from time to time based on clothing, hairstyle, behavior.
Thus a group of white students from a Texas high school was subjected to disciplinary measures by the top of the school, which however dismissed the episode as "a cyberbullying incident".
But many parents don't like it and talk openly about racism and racial hatred.
The incident took place in the Texan town of Aledo, not far from Fort Worth.
In the chat, reports the New York Times, an African American student was rated '100 bucks', as they say in the jargon 100 dollars.
While another guy was only quoted for a dollar: "The price would be better if his hair didn't look so bad," the chat comment.
The conversation group was then characterized by an emoji depicting a white policeman pointing a gun at an African American farmer and the comments are peppered with racist slurs.
According to the latest official data from the city of Aledo, among the 499 first-year students of high school, the one attended by the students involved in the affair, 390 are white and only 6 are African Americans.