A family has filed a civil rights lawsuit alleging that a Massachusetts school district didn’t do enough to protect a Black student who was harassed and bullied, per WBZ News.
According to the lawsuit, filed with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, a 14-year-old student was called a “cotton picker” by a peer last December at Amos Lawrence Middle School of the Brookline schools.
In another instance, a peer kneeled on the Black student’s neck after he tripped and fell on the ground, according to the lawsuit. The suit states the peer yelled “George Floyd! George Floyd!” during the incident.
The eighth grader’s parents said Brookline school officials failed to help their child.
“All we wanted to do was to give our son opportunities that we didn’t have,” the child’s father, Ricardo, said.
“I really just wanted and truly believe that humanity exists. Like, caring about people, checking in on them, and that’s what I wanted them to do for my son. By not checking in on him, you are saying a lot,” Weddee, the student’s mom, added.
The family alleged that they reached out to school and district officials to facilitate meetings with the parents of the students involved to no avail.
“If my son had done something even remotely close to what had happened, he would have been expelled. God knows, he probably would have been in juvenile detention right now, depending on the circumstances,” Ricardo said. “What I was more surprised about is the fact that they were very nonchalant about the whole thing.”
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