So my daughter recently got her hair braided night, you know, Brad’s coming out. She’s a mixed child, you know, and recently just a lot of racist things happening to her. But something so crazy happen on Friday that I just have to share it. I came to pick up my kid in the schoolyard. I walked up to where her door is and she comes out and do you want me to talk to one incident? And she’s like, no, mom, just send them an email. And I’m like, okay, wanted to just talk to our teacher about it. When another teacher from a whole another class walks up and grabs my daughter’s hair and just kind of like hold it like this. Why? My daughter is sitting there. I’m like, she’s like, who did this? And I was like, what? And then she was just like, yeah, who did this? And I was like, I braided her hair. And then she said, oh, that must took a lot of time and a lot of patience. And I said, you’re not supposed to touch her hair. She continued to hold her hair in her hand after that. And she was just like, I’m just saying it takes a long time to get those braids. You got a lot of patience. And then I put my hand between her hand and my daughter’s hair. I pulled her hair around and I said, yeah. And then I looked away and the lady walked away. So for me, this is like the ultimate disrespect, you know, it’s like, it’s very well known that you don’t just come up. And if I was to come up to her and just grab her hair and say, who died this? Who died the grays out of this? You know what I mean? She would be like, why are you touching my hair? That’s like inappropriate. But see, I think she wanted me to react. And when I didn’t react, she kind of just stood there. So I turned my head from her and she stood there. And then she had to walk away. She walked over to another parent to say something. And a parent did like this and did not talk to her either. If it was you, what would you do? Like I know and I’ve had to experience micro aggressions and racist things that I’ve noticed at this school. As soon as I walk in the school, everybody kind of like stops. Like, what are you doing here? Instead of like, hello. There’s always these eyebrows and like things when I show up. And I notice that all the other black parents in the school are not getting out of their cars and stuff cuz they don’t like to experience this negativity that’s coming from the staff, not from the children. Brown adults are giving dirty looks just for me being black because there’s no way they know me or understand me or ever had a conversation with me in order to hate me.
So what is it? You know? And it’s that I’m not staying in my place. I’m not just dropping my kid off and going on with the rest of my day, leaving my child out there with people. I like to come out of my car, pick up my child like a regular parent would. I think that’s important. You know? And they are so uncomfortably intimidated or something that they have to like make sure I know I’m not supposed to be there. No, I belong here. I live in this neighborhood. My child goes to that school. It’s very simple. You know, it should be, right? So anyway, I say that to say this, like, when it comes down to it, my daughter got grades and all of a sudden they’re like, oh, my God, she is black.
And that’s not the only story I have. There’s about six other stories where staff, repeat, staff is saying and doing something with my daughter that is inappropriate. And I’m at the point where I’m talking to a lawyer to see what I should do because I wanna. I don’t wanna react in a general way where they can demonize me as some black lady that snapped on, cuz that’s not who I am. I am definitely a lady. So I might have to have someone else deal with this, because I know as a black woman how quickly things can turn into something that they truly aren’t. You know, I’m just a woman that’s bringing her child to school and shouldn’t have to feel the heat of staff going, what are you doing here? You know, that should not be a thing. And I wanna encourage the other black parents to come up to the school because it’s not just my child.
Other children are complaining about racial behaviors happen through the staff. And that’s a real problem. You know, they shouldn’t have to experience that. They came as, you know, they’re coming as innocent children for an education. There should not be an issue with people racially profiling them and treating them as such. You know, like I’ve had to deal with that all my life. And so old, like at this point, like why is this still happening?