The alleged comment came after the Battery Creek High freshman wouldn’t stand for the Pledge of Allegiance, telling a friend standing doesn’t matter, “Trump is going to send us back to Africa”
By Rebecca Lurye | The Beaufort Gazette | April 28, 2016
A Battery Creek High School science teacher allegedly made what one mother considers an offensive, racial comment this week after her 14-year-old son refused to stand during the Pledge of Allegiance.
Nicole Whitmore says her son, a freshman, was sitting when the morning pledge began Tuesday and was among about half the students in the room who remained sitting when their teacher told them to stand up. When her son told a friend it didn’t matter because “Donald Trump is going to send us back to Africa,” the teacher allegedly interjected, saying he should go back.
School administrators and the Beaufort County School District human resources staff are looking into the incident, but spokesman Jim Foster declined to name the teacher in question or provide additional details. Complaints made against specific teachers are considered personnel matters, Foster said.
He did say that the complaint has prompted the district to remind teachers and staff that students are allowed to sit during the pledge. State law requires only that schools make time each day for reciting the pledge, but allows students to remain seated, leave their classroom or express their non-participation in any way that doesn’t infringe on others or disrupt school activities.
Whitmore says she she is still angry about the comment, made by a white teacher, and is waiting for news of the district’s investigation.
“I didn’t take kindly to it, and my son didn’t take kindly to it,” she said. “... You don’t tell my son to go back to Africa knowing you’re a different color than he is. I’m Puerto Rican and black, I know what I went through. I don’t want my son going through anything discriminative.”
The teacher, assistant principal Gilbert Sanchez and principal Edmond Burnes did not respond to requests for comment on Thursday.
Whitmore said she was not surprised her son did not want to stand for the pledge. He told her he hasn’t done so since seventh grade, and that he gets upset with what he reads in the news, from South Carolina’s debate over flying the Confederate flag last year to comments about blacks and other minorities by Republican presidential candidate Trump.
Her son’s statement Tuesday was likely inspired by Trump supporters’ shouts of “Go back to Africa!” at rallies in Chicago and Cleveland in March. Trump has also made comments about reducing food stamps, which Whitmore receives, even though she works full time at Burger King.
Recently, as the woman twisted her son’s dreadlocks, her son was reading about Trump again, saying to her, “Mom, look what this says, look what this says, this is someone trying to be the president of the United States.”
“These children are not dumb,” Whitmore added. “They can read and they see all of this going on and for (a teacher) to tell him to go back to Africa, of course he’s going to feel some type of way.”
Adding to the mother’s frustration, Whitmore says her son had to spend his first period in the media center Wednesday. Foster said he cannot comment on individual students’ discipline, and cannot say whether a teacher has the authority to send a student to another location for class or whether that would qualify as an in-school suspension.
The district’s Code of Conduct says in-school suspensions are a possible punishment for low-level offenses like disrespecting a school employee.
Whitmore says it’s the teacher who should face consequences instead.
“A teacher should never stoop to a child’s level,” she said. “My son is 14 years old, a freshman at Battery Creek. This teacher is supposed to be an educator. He’s supposed to teach him better.”
EDITOR’S NOTE: If Donald Trump promised to send all the blacks back to Africa, he would get almost all of the white vote, including that of the women he’s pissed off. All of the Latinos would vote for him, even those who are pissed off at him for his stand on immigration. Hillary would be left only with the black vote and the vote of a few diehard white uber-liberal women. And that would make Trump a sure winner with the largest landslide victory ever in November.
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