A Florida man is under fire after being captured on video hurling racial slurs at Black teenagers. Parents wonder why the man was comfortable yelling at and disrespecting the children but refused to speak with one of the boys’ fathers.
In an exclusive interview with WSVN, the mother of one of the teens, who wished to remain anonymous, said she was “boiling” after her son reported what he considered a verbal assault outside of the South Miami Middle School in the 6700 block of Southwest 60th Street on Monday, May 2.
The argument happened in the morning before school started.
Allegedly, the man thought the boys had hit his car and confronted them. When it seemed his energy was elevated, one of the teens pulled out his phone and started to record the interaction.
The disturbing and racialized language was captured on the cellphone. The middle-aged white man, said, “[expletive] you better get the [expletive] away from me. You better get away from me. I’ll go to jail, but I’ll knock you on your [expletive].”
He continued to slam the children, saying, “Listen, negro, get the [expletive] out of my face, [expletive] negro mumbling cracker.”
The boys are also heard in the footage. At one point calling the man a “cracker.”
“I’m proud to be a cracker. I’m happy with what I see in the mirror every day, are you?” said the man in response. “Are you happy when you see Black in the mirror?”
The altercation did not become physical. But the mother said, from what she observed in the video, the man was inappropriate and offensive.
“I was boiling, I was boiling. I was very upset. I was disappointed, this is not the way a person should talk to a child,” the mother said off-camera.
She explained the story from her perspective saying, “He started coming at them and talking about he will beat their ass … calling them [expletive] and kept coming at them and coming at them.”
The unidentified man continued to antagonize the young man who believed the adult was going to strike him.
The son reportedly said, “You’re gonna hit me? Hit me, hit me, hit me,” and walked up to the man’s face.
“The guy just kept going,” the mother said, “and you see from the video he said he was going to beat his ass, he kept calling them negros.”
The next day, one child’s father approached the man at the school, but he would not engage. Video shows him getting into his vehicle, refusing to talk to the African-American adult, and driving off.
They filed a complaint with the school, WFLA News reports.
“This is just ridiculous. My child should not have to come to school and deal with this. At the end of the day, you got to deal with the parents,” the mother declared.
“My son, yes, he’s a Black boy, he has a mother and a father, you need to talk to us. You don’t talk to him like that,” she concluded.
The Miami-Dade County Public Schools released a statement “disappointed by a recent incident” that transpired between a parent and a minor on the school’s property before the school day.
The statement ended by saying, “Currently, Miami-Dade School Police is conducting a thorough investigation regarding the matter. M-DCPS remains committed to fostering a welcoming learning environment by highlighting the importance of respect and restraint.”
South Miami Middle School seems to provide a supportive learning space for its diverse student body. Hispanics make up 76 percent of the population, with the white population rounding up at 13 percent. Blacks comprise 9 percent of the student body.
The middle school boasts above-average test scores — ranking in the state’s top 10 percentile in the following areas: algebra, biology, and geometry. It also scores above average across the board in other subjects.
