Videos posted to social media showing a young, white Christian school student repeatedly saying the N-word has triggered calls for more severe punishments for students who use racial slurs and hate speech.
The Kansas City Defender reported on two videos, originally posted on Snapchat last October, showing the student in a school bathroom saying, “You stupid n****r,” and “Come here little n****r.”
Students who saw the videos reported them to their school administrators at Summit Christian Academy, but administrators reportedly made no effort to punish the student at the time.
The Kansas City Defender said several students reached out to their outlet with their concerns and shared their belief that the girl skirted punishment because of her mother’s position on the school board.
One student noted on a post shared to the Defender’s Instagram page, “Because her mom is on the school board she knows she can get away with anything and she has.”
They told the Defender that it wasn’t until April — when the outlet made an official inquiry to the school about the videos — that the girl was finally disciplined.
The head of Summit Christian Academy sent a letter to the school’s students, faculty, and parents after the Defender’s report started circulating assuring the community that the student faced punishment before the Defender reached out.
School officials also sent an initial statement to the local outlet pointing to the student’s use of “inappropriate language” that failed to address the racism and harmful ramifications of hate speech.
The school president addressed the remark as an “inappropriate/racial comment” in the letter he sent to the SCA community while denying the claim that the student received preferential treatment because her mother is a school board member.
“The real question at hand — does SCA have a race problem?” the president wrote in his letter. “I know when asked the question, the answer is as a school ministry we are not there yet, and work remains to be done.”
Numerous Black students and alumni sent the Defender personal statements recalling a widespread culture of racist bullying and harassment at SCA during their time at the school.
One alumnus stated that students have been “trying to hold SCA accountable for years,” and shared that they received death threats from peers while attending the school. Others noted the toxic school culture is an “ongoing problem,” and recalled several racist bullying incidents, including a time when some students wrote the N-word on a wall.
An SCA spokeswoman said that the punishment for using racist remarks is a one-day, in-school suspension or a one-day, out-of-school suspension and a parent meeting. The student’s mother told the Defender she received in-school suspension.
For one parent who enrolled her son in SCA years ago, it’s a substandard disciplinary measure. Toriano Porter wrote an opinion piece in the Kansas City Star, calling for the school to impose harsher measures for using hate speech, including a 10-day suspension for the first offense, 90 days for the second, and expulsion for the third.
Porter also recommended the school should consider banning students from extracurricular activities, like sports or after-school events.
The school currently enrolls 1,250 students. Less than 240 are minority students.
