A 17-year-old Michigan girl is speaking out more than two years after her parents filed a federal racial discrimination lawsuit against her school district following months of taunting and harassment.
The Detroit News sat down with Clara Malick and her parents, Rob and April Malick, for an interview published on Jan. 3, and she shared her experience while attending Croswell-Lexington High School in Croswell, Michigan, back in 2021.
Clara — who is adopted — said she was repeatedly called the N-word by her white classmates, who taunted her. Her suit reports Clara was one of three Black students in a district of more than 2,000 students.
The teenager said white students would often “call me the N-word or say the N-word in a sentence. And they’ll look at me for a reaction.” Clara added that she didn’t know how to react at first.
“I didn’t know how to react, because I didn’t really know what the word really meant,” she continued, adding that while she’d heard the word before, she’d never been called it.
The teen added that, eventually, she would laugh along. “What else are you supposed to do? Like, the jokes aren’t funny, but you’re just like, ‘everybody else is laughing,’ so you gotta laugh, too.”
According to the lawsuit, Malick was taunted by white students on a nearly daily basis with racial slurs and threats of pulling out her hair. Students taunted Malick with phrases like, “Go back to the plantation and pick cotton” and “Your hair looks like s—t.”
The then-freshman was also told, “I’m going to snatch your weave and burn it,” and “I bet your hair is dead.” The lawsuit also detailed an incident where Clara told the students to stop and was blatantly ignored.
“Two students were mocking C.M. and using the n-word in Snapchat conversation. C.M. told them ‘STOP, it’s…not funny’ and explained the history behind the word. One student responded, “free speech, n—a,” the complaint says.
Just days later, the lawsuit claims, Clara was told: “All the n—s will be shot after school today at 3:00 pm.”
A teacher was scheduled to protect Clara by walking her to class following the threat but was heard saying Clara was “playing the race card” and “which is what blacks do.”
The teacher also allegedly said the teen “deserved” what she got. The racial abuse prompted her father, Rob, to plead with the school for them to step in.
“Rob stated his ‘fear … that the racism and bullying is making her [C.M.]unravel…I would like to have a safe space for her at school’.”
However, the alleged abuse continued, and more faculty members also displayed racist behavior. One of the school’s civic teachers called Black Lives Matter a “terrorist organization” during a lecture, and another teacher told Clara that “not all racists are bad people,” according to their claim.
The Malick family filed a racial discrimination complaint with the Michigan Department of Civil Rights on Nov. 12, 2021. The complaint noted the racial discrimination Clara faced by both the faculty and students as well as the hostile environment she endured, including one student wearing a Confederate flag to school and not being disciplined.
The school board then passed a resolution to “reaffirm the commitment” to its existing anti-discrimination policy, but it was ineffective. Another Black student noted at the meeting that the racism came from the “same students, same families.”
Clara reports that days after that meeting, she was told by a white student, “I hate all you Black b—hes.”
After a student threatened Clara by aiming a slingshot with scissors at her head and said he was going to cut her with a knife, the Malicks filed a police report.
Clara and her parents filed a lawsuit against the school district in May of 2022, as well as the Croswell-Lexington Board of Education, Principal Kyle Wood, and the superintendent of schools, Dan Gilbertson, after the school failed to stop the abuse.
The bullying caused Clara to say she “wished she was white,” and she was diagnosed with anxiety, depression, and PTSD. Clara told her parents that she couldn’t handle the harassment any longer, and she took classes virtually before her parents took her out of the school permanently in the spring of 2022.
“They showed me that different is wrong,” said Clara of the abuse. “I felt disgusted with myself because I was different.” She now sees a therapist regularly and takes medication for her mental health.
The lawsuit also notes that the school’s “deliberate indifference to the racial harassment and bullying” also caused Clara’s parents to experience extreme emotional and mental distress and deprived them of their “right to control their daughter’s education.”
They are asking for compensatory, economic, and noneconomic damages, exemplary damages, punitive damages and court costs.
On Dec. 19, the court heard the defendants’ motion arguing to adjourn the scheduled trial and final pretrial deadlines pending a decision on their dispositive motion, and the court granted the motion to adjourn. The court also suspended outstanding deadlines until further order of the court, pending a decision on the defendant’s motion for summary judgment.
