A Dallas mother is calling for the firing of a school staffer who likened her son to a monkey, then refused to apologize.
Brittany Miner said the incident unfolded in November when an Edna Rowe Elementary School employee approached her son as he was playing and made the monkey comment. She said the staffer then proceeded to comment on her child’s appearance.
Brittany Miner said she was willing to give the employee the benefit of the doubt until she proceeded to comment on her son’s appearance. (CBS 11 / video screenshot)
“He was jumping around and playing, 5-year-old kid behavior,” Miner told CBS Dallas-Fort Worth. “As she approached us and got closer she was like ‘oh he’s running around, he’s like a little monkey.’ ”
Miner said she told the employee it wasn’t okay to call her son a monkey, but that didn’t stop the woman from commenting further.
“She then proceeded to say ‘Oh look at his little face,” Miner recalled.
Frustrated, the mother said she was willing to give the staffer the benefit of the doubt until she chose to comment on her son’s appearance afterward.
“That lets me know that she doesn’t have any regard to what she was saying to people of color,” said Miner, who has since hired a lawyer.
If the district refuses to terminate the employee, Miner said she’s going to explore a civil rights suit.
“We want to make sure that an employee like that is not around children of color or children in general,” her attorney Justin Moore said.
Dallas ISD officials said the employee in question has been placed on administrative leave.
Watch more in the clip below.
