A Texas mother is outraged after reports of her son being harassed in school have not been taken seriously by school officials.
In an effort to stop the months of bullying and messages of hate that have terrorized the teen, a formal complaint has been filed with the Friendswood ISD Police and the local NAACP chapter.
With the allegations now being made public, the district is saying it will investigate the allegations, reinforcing its “strong stance against bullying” and commitment to providing a safe space for all children.
The probe comes months after Brooke Gary says she first let administrators at the Friendswood Junior High School know that her 13-year-old son was being targeted by other students because of his race.
The biracial seventh grader has found himself on the receiving of multiple racist jokes and eventually a threat since earlier in the school year, his mother claims.
Gary says she found out her son was being bullied because of his race accidentally during a routine check of her son’s phone.
“It’s really sad. I cried this morning. It’s hurtful,” the mom said in an interview with FOX 26 Houston.
“They had called him monkey at school and made a remark about black jokes; about being able to jump, shoot and steal with basketball,” she continued. “They told him to go pick cotton,” invoking the practice of forced labor during American slavery.
According to the mother, the school’s administrators brushed it off as “kids being kids.”
“They said they don’t have racism or racist kids at their school. It was just bad jokes. It was just distasteful jokes,” she said.
Over the weekend of May 20 and May 21, the tasteless jokes became more radicalized. Gary said she read one message that used derogatory racial slurs and emojis that communicated violence.
“It used the ‘N word’ like spelled it out with ‘er’ at the end,” Gary said.
Additionally, the text messages dripped with negative stereotypes like “We don’t want your drug money.”
One message in this batch featured an emoji of a Black boy followed by a water gun pointing at his head and a police officer punctuating the pictorial sentence.
The mother said in disgust, “I was told this morning that that was not an official threat. I’m sorry, but a little gun emoji to a kid’s head? I kind of don’t take that lightly.”
Eugene Howard, Texas NAACP Criminal Justice Committee, was contacted on Monday, May 22. The civil rights activist reached out to the school district’s superintendent on behalf of the mother to resolve the harassment.
“The Superintendent assured me that the school district would do an investigation and handle the issue in a timely manner, reasonable manner, not sweeping this under the rug, not let this go away,” Howard said.
After being made aware of the harassment, a Friendswood Independent School District representative released a statement, declaring, “Our district takes such allegations very seriously, and we maintain a strong stance against bullying and racist remarks.”
“We strive to create a safe and inclusive educational setting where every student feels respected and supported,” the statement said in part. “Instances of racist remarks and bullying contradict our values, and we have zero tolerance for such behavior.”
Friendswood is a small municipality with a little over 40,000 residents living within the city’s borders. It is also not very diverse. More than 83 percent of the people that live in the city identify as white. Only 3.4 percent of the population is Black and 5.6 percent is mixed race, according to the U.S. Census.
The town boasts a relatively low crime rate for 2022, accounting for everything from drug-related crimes, assault, and shoplifting to fraud in its annual crime report. However, there are no designations for hate crimes.
Gary contacted the local police department regarding the incident with her son. While the FPD was alerted, it has not released a statement regarding any official probe into Gary’s complaint.
