Michael Eric Dyson says racist slur was hurled at his 6-year-old grandson at D.C. PE school
A prominent African American scholar and commentator says a racist epithet was hurled at his grandson Tuesday at a public elementary school in a mostly white and wealthy neighborhood in Northwest Washington.
Michael Eric Dyson, a sociology professor at Georgetown University, said a boy threatened his 6-year-old grandson at Horace Mann Elementary as first-graders raced to be first in line for pizza during lunch.
Dyson said the boy called his grandson the n-word and threatened to go home and retrieve his father’s gun and shoot him.
“He said he felt sad and scared. It’s ridiculous for a 6-year-old to be subjected to this,” Dyson said in an interview Tuesday evening. “You never feel as powerless as when your children suffer something you can’t immediately fix or resolve.”
In a letter to families, the school’s principal, Liz Whisnant, said “the incident did not include any language about race or ethnicity” but that “harmful” language was used and a “threat of physical harm” was made. She said a third student was involved.
“We responded immediately by removing the student from his peers and taking a number of actions that involved communicating directly with the parents of the three students involved,” she wrote in the letter.
A D.C. police report on the incident says a nearby officer was flagged down after the “verbal altercation.” According to the report, a student threatened two other children with his father’s gun if they kept cutting the lunch line.
The D.C. school system said the allegations are under investigation.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/prominent-scholar-says-a-racist-slur-was-hurled-at-his-6-year-old-grandson-at-a-dc-public-elementary-school/2019/05/01/ead88da6-6cca-4d8c-9414-d4270dda75a9_story.html?fbclid&utm_term=.c22e85b27209
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