Families in a predominately white town in Colorado are outraged at their local school district for its lenient discipline of a middle school student who made a racist video where he said Black people “should not be alive.”
Despite the severity of the incident, the student, whose identity is protected because of his age, reportedly received a two-week suspension, a consequence viewed by some community members as insufficient and akin to a mere slap on the wrist.
The incident happened early in the school year, on Sept. 25, as students from the West Middle School in Greenwood Village, were on the school bus. The children gathered to listen to the child spew hate speech in a 26-second video.
“Black n—ers are cotton pickers,” the child said. “They should not be alive right now. I hate their skin color. I hate how they talk. They just stink up the room.”
The video, which was created outside of school, was shared in a group text with a group of students.
One parent of a Black child who was on that bus addressed the video, claiming that his language was violent and should have required more attention from school administrators, particularly since the student was back at the school.
“One of the students laughing sent the video to my child. It was a racist manifesto. My initial reaction when I saw the video was if I’m going to hear about a mass shooting. It seemed like a preamble to someone that would mass shoot up a school,” the father said in an interview with CBS News.
Additionally, he emphasized that the disciplinary measures should have been more stringent to impart a lasting lesson to the students that hate speech of any kind is wrong.
“These kids don’t understand the gravity because he pretty much just got a two-week vacation,” the parent continued.
While the parents stated that the student was suspended for two weeks, Cherry Creek School District did not detail what his discipline was. They also stated…
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