A Black history teacher at a predominately white high school in Newport News, Virginia, is gearing up to sue his former student for committing a series of racist pranks on him using a banana.
The teacher says the white teenager was caught on camera performing the acts that seemed intended to harass the educator based on his race.
According to WAVY, Joel Mungo has been teaching at the mostly white Menchville High School for 21 years.
However, in October 2021, he started being harassed by someone in the school. After he discovered who was responsible for the racist act, Mungo says he is considering taking legal action against the person.
Every month, for about six months, an unknown person would leave a banana outside of Mungo’s classroom.
“Someone left a banana at my door,” Mungo said. “The banana was perfectly placed in the doorway.”
“It was clearly a deliberate act.”
The banana would be positioned close to the door’s right-hinge bearing corner, strategically placed at the entrance’s threshold.
Bananas have been commonly used as racist symbols directed at people of African descent. The idea likens darker-skinned people to lower primates like monkeys who traditionally eat bananas.
In February, a viral video of white citizens mockingly giving African exchange students the fruit on the Moscow State University of Civil Engineering campus in Russia sparked outrage.
France 24 reports, “They give the students bananas and throw snow at them, all while laughing and calling them names like ‘monkey.’”
Last month, no longer accepting the inference that he was a “monkey,” Mungo decided he would report the racially charged incidents to the school’s administration.
In an effort to catch the culprit, the officials reviewed surveillance video from the school’s hallways — discovering a white 10th-grade boy was the one repeatedly perpetrating the bigoted prank.
A still from the video shows the kid, who was a member of Mungo’s class, walking with one of the bananas in his hand.
“I gave the student a chance to come clean. I asked him, ‘Hey, did you do this?’ He said ‘No,’ he played dumb, ‘No idea what you’re talking about,’” the teacher explained.
“So, I said ‘OK, go down to the assistant principal.’ I’m the only Black teacher he has. He has six other teachers,” Mungo revealed. “No other teachers were involved.”
The boy’s parents were contacted regarding the offense, and according to Mungo “seemed truly embarrassed,” but later became “irate” once learning the teen had been suspended.
“It’s 2022,” Mungo scoffed. “Just to have some type of hate crime is absolutely ridiculous. I was sickened. I was highly upset. So upset, I took the next day off. I didn’t go to work that Friday.”
The educator says he is considering taking legal action against the teen.
He said, “I’m just fed up with the racism around, especially at our academic institutions.”
“Coming from the HBCUs and other colleges, the bomb threats, the nooses, the bananas and now it’s streaming into public education,” he complained. “It’s time to take a stand and just let people know it will not be tolerated. I know I’m not tolerating it.”
While he did not identify the acts as a hate crime, Virginia law might.
The commonwealth’s Code of Virginia, § 52-8.5 “Reporting Hate Crimes,” identifies hate crimes as “incidents, as determined by law-enforcement authorities, intended to intimidate, or harass any individual or group because of race, religion, gender, disability, gender identity, sexual orientation, or ethnic or national origin.”
Mungo would have to have authorities examine the incident and side with him should he use this course of action.
In an interview with Newsweek, attorney Ali Shahrestani is skeptical about suing the actual child, but suggests “it might be the case that the teacher needed to take matters to court to make a bigger point here because the school issued a meager two-day suspension for an arguable hate crime and an act of malicious and racist harassment against an African American teacher in a predominantly white public school.”
“The 10th-grade student is arguably old enough to know better,” he added. “And a more appropriate punishment should have been immediate expulsion, especially when the school possesses video evidence of the student’s illegal actions.”
“If I were counsel in the matter, I would advise the teacher to consider a lawsuit against the school for supporting a hostile work environment via its negligent failure to dole out a reasonable punishment,” he said as he criticized the school’s decision to give him a two-day suspension, continuing, “[that’s] what a student should expect when he cheats on a test or gravely insults another student.”
“It sends a terrible message to other students, teachers, and the community when a student gets a slap on the wrist like this for such a disgusting series of alleged actions against a teacher,” Shahrestani believes.
Mungo says he is taking his first step to send his own message.
“One way to show he isn’t standing for these forms of racialized discrimination and harassment is by speaking up. He said, “You have to speak up. You can’t allow it to go on because then it will just continue to go on.”
