In a school board meeting Tuesday, Nov. 15, Black students at Ladue Horton Watkins High School in Ladue, Missouri, shared the details of a racialized bus incident that occurred last Thursday.
According to high school officials, as Black students boarded a bus Thursday, other students chanted “Trump! Trump! Trump!” Those same students then told the Black bus riders to sit in the back.
Since the incident, the two students involved have been disciplined, however, parents of the victims still want answers, FOX 2 Now News reported.
“This is not an isolated incident. This is the fifth racially charged incident with my daughter since the beginning of the school year,” Tango Walker Jackson told the board.
Walker Jackson’s daughter, Tajah Walker, stood in front of board members weeping as she promised to protect her friends.
“I will not be mistreated and I will not let my friends be mistreated; white, Black or anything. … I will not be ashamed of my race,” she said.
Lisa Goebel’s son, one of the accused students, said their taunts were not meant to be racist, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported. He claimed they told one Black student to go to the back of the bus because her teammate was back there.
During the board meeting, school district officials acknowledged that there are racial issues that must be discussed. They plan on working hard with outside organizations to create a more inclusive and tolerant school district.
However, other parents are not confident in this new proposal.
Lynette Ursery had hoped that moving to the district would benefit her child but now feels this incident proves otherwise. “I moved into this district thinking it was a decent district, looking at the numbers and the academics,” she said. “It’s unacceptable.”
During her testimony, Ursery told the board she had to take her 15-year-old son to the emergency room last week for hot-glue burns. After pressing a hot-glue gun onto the student’s arm, the perpetrator allegedly said the student “didn’t belong here.”
“Regardless of your political ideology, we embrace one another’s race and ethnicity,” Principal Brad Griffith said during Tuesday’s meeting. “The issues of race, class and ethnicity are the issues that have the potential to tear us apart.”
