-Angelot Ndongmo-
Cousins!
Whew chile, you better have a seat for this one. Four parents, whose children attend Park Hill South High School, are suing the school district in Kansas City. They claim their child’s civil rights were violated, after getting suspended for their ‘Start Slavery Again’ petition!
Local 12 reports, the parents feel the suspension for their child’s Change.org petition, violated their “freedom of speech, due process and right to education.”
There were disturbing revelations outlined in the lawsuit. Five students were involved in this shameful display of human dysfunction towards one another. However, only four were disciplined. “Two white students who commented “I love slavery” and “I hate blacks” both got 180 days suspension. A biracial white and Asian student, who commented “I want a slave,” also was suspended for 180 days. A biracial Black and Brazilian student who typed the petition was expelled.
Upon learning of their children’s predicament, which was a direct result of their alleged primitive behaviors, the parents reached out to diversity consultant Nicole Price.
Price told the media “It seems like the school district has a wide range of inconsistencies, in terms of how they discipline children. When the information first came to me, I was disheartened. I was disappointed.”
The consultant assessed the deplorable circumstances and felt the students were remorseful. She believed a 10 day suspension would have been more appropriate.
“And so how can you then say that we’re living in conjunction with our mission when you just decide to kick kids out when it gets hard to educate them,” Price said.
The lawsuit highlights that racial aggressions like this are not uncommon at the school. Details of the overall environment there were problematic. The culture “was infused with frequent casual use of racial and ethnic epithets and slurs.” It also states coaches “only occasionally asked students to watch their language,” but mostly “condoned heavily racialized interactions.”
Price feels that the “School’s responsibility is to teach us about the history of racial terror in this country. These kids had almost no insight into that.”
The attorneys are requesting that three of the four students be allowed to return to school should they succeed at getting a temporary injunction. The families’ attorneys are also seeking for the district to cough up some dough for “damages suffered by the teens and their families.”
An official on behalf of the Park Hill School District, felt they did what had to be done saying they “took prompt, decisive action to enforce our policies prohibiting discrimination, harassment and uncivil behavior.”