Two years after Black Kentucky sisters filed a lawsuit claiming that they had been called the N-word hundreds of times by other students, the U.S. Justice Department has ordered the school district to fix its racist and hostile environment.
The DOJ said an investigation into the Madison County School District “uncovered numerous incidents of race-based harassment.”
“No student should be subject to racial harassment, including racist taunts with the Confederate flag that are clearly intended to surface some of the harshest and most brutal periods of our country’s history. Racial harassment inflicts grievous harm on young people and violates the Constitution’s most basic promise of equal protection,” said Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Kristen Clarke.
Now the DOJ has submitted ways to support the district as it works to resolve racial harassment and remedy various places where systemic racism is creating an environment of discrimination.
Related: ‘Something Has to be Done’: Concerned Texas Mom Says 13-Year-Old Son’s Been Taunted with Racist Texts, Threats for Months, and School District Had Done Nothing
In a press release distributed on Monday, June 12, the DOJ announced that agents performed a two-and-a-half-year probe into the MCSD and discovered that many of their Black and multi-racial students were discriminated against by their classmates and that the district often turned a blind eye.
Not only were students called racial slurs like the N-word, but they were also harassed. White students repeatedly taunted students of color, many times by using painful and racially charged imagery like Confederate flags to intimidate them.
Because the district did nothing to stop this, despite reports of the harassment running rampant, Black and multi-racial students were “deprived” of “equal access to the district’s educational opportunities.” The DOJ also concluded that the inaction of school officials…
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