‘You don’t say that:’ Park Hill students protest after teacher repeated racial slur
Dozens of Park Hill High School students staged a sit-in on Thursday in protest of a white teacher who repeated a racial slur spoken by a student in an argument captured on video.
District spokeswoman Nicole Kirby said roughly 80 students gathered in the Park Hill High School gym in response to the incident earlier this week, in which the teacher was placed on administrative leave. The school is investigating, according to a letter Principal Brad Kincheloe sent to families.
Videos, shared with The Star, show the white, male teacher standing closely to a Black, male student near the doorway of a classroom. The student, who is visibly upset, is shown saying that the teacher used the N-word and repeatedly tells him that he cannot use the slur.
“You said N-----, bro. ... You don’t say that sh-t,” the student says.
“You called me that,” the teacher responds, saying he repeated the word while questioning the student.
The student later says, “Don’t put the f------ N-word in your f------ sentences.”
The teacher responds, “You put it in your sentence.”
The student says, “Yeah, because I can.”
“That’s illogical,” the teacher responds.
District officials have declined to confirm the teacher’s name.
“The message we shared earlier that we sent out to families has as much as we can share about the incident and the people involved,” Kirby said Thursday.
In that letter to families, Kincheloe said that, “A student used racist, inappropriate language, and then a staff member repeated the same racist, inappropriate language in questioning the student. The staff member is on leave as we investigate, and we are following our policies in handling this staff issue and the student’s discipline.”
Kincheloe said the school is providing counseling to students and staff.
Park Hill mother Jenny Sherrick told The Star that her daughter was among the high schoolers protesting the incident on Thursday. She said that students were protesting the teacher “only being on leave rather than fired.”
Video of the protest shared with The Star shows students chanting “Black Lives Matter.”
“It is disheartening to know that students have to go this far because they don’t feel like the school and administration support them,” said Bianca Fennix, a parent of a student who attended the protest.
A few parents said that their students were not surprised by the incident and were previously made uncomfortable by the teacher’s remarks in class.
This is at least the second racially charged incident in the Park Hill district this school year. This past fall, students at Park Hill South High School circulated a “Start slavery again” petition, drawing national outrage.
In response, the district suspended three students for 180 days and expelled another. The three were allowed to continue classes online. But the parents of the four punished students believed the school district’s response was too severe and filed a federal lawsuit against the district.
The lawsuit alleged that the students’ constitutional rights to free speech and due process were violated. On Tuesday, a federal judge ruled against the students who sought to overturn their punishment.
The Star’s Aaron Torres contributed to this article.
This story was originally published February 10, 2022 at 1:23 PM.
