There's a family of a middle school student in Jacksonville Florida.
They're suing the district after their son experienced a series of unbelievably
racist attacks.
And was capped by an even more unbelievable response from his teacher and
administrators.
Let's jump into this first incident of a few here, so according to a notice
of intent to sue provided to News4JAX, the incidents began on March 9th.
When a student used a derogatory racist word against Elise Beechem's son in
exchange that led to a physical skirmish between the two students.
Beechem's son, who was black,
immediately reported the incident to the school's dean.
And according to the document, the dean contacted Beechem and
told her that her son would be suspended for three days allegedly saying,
words don't hurt, and he needs to know how to handle things better.
The other student exchange was also suspended, but
no formal investigation was launched at that point.
Incident number one, he got suspended for
getting a fight after he was verbally attacked.
Almost a month later on April 6th,
the document alleges that another student stole Beechem's son's backpack.
And used the same derogatory term multiple times with other students and
his teacher present at the time.
Again, the document says Beechem's son, quote, defended himself.
After reporting the incident to Warner,
Beechem said her son's concerns were dismissed by the educator, and
that he was placed on a three day in school suspension.
That's incident number two, there's more.
Again on April 12, the document claims that the racist term was employed yet
again by a student and beat his son again reported to the teacher.
He's probably tired of hearing this and having to get into fights over it.
The teacher told Beechem's son that he gets mad when someone calls him
the n-word, but he thinks he can say it about himself is what the document said.
Beechem's son asked his teacher how would she feel if someone called her a cracker,
and she responded by calling him a n-word?
And saying, you don't have the privilege to call white people crackers,
because black people are beneath white people.
This is what his teacher said after he's been harassed and attacked and
his belongings have gotten stolen by multiple kids in his school, crazy.
So after all, there's three incidents and the teacher says, you can't even respond.
You can't give us this equal potentially offensive thing,
because you just don't have that stature as a black person.
Sounds like we've discovered the reason why she wants nothing to do with this.
So finally, as far as this potential legal activity or
action that's gonna come from Beechem's mom.
According to the intent to sue, another instance where the n-word was weaponized
against Beechem son occurred on May 4th.
This is the fourth time, maybe fifth, and
two days later was again dismissed by the school's Dean.
Quote here, the school and district are aware of this allegation a DCPS
spokesperson said, because it is a matter of potential future litigation.
The district is not able to make any public comments regarding the claims.
I wonder that teacher still talking,
I want how much more discussions are being had there.
So you gather this attack on this student over and over and over and over again.
He also left her classroom and has since put him behind even further,
because he probably can't concentrate in the school where he's being attacked.
But this is just a matter we can't talk about right now.
>> Okay, so look, if you saw the first one, you say,
okay, kid calls another kid a word, it's a terrible,
terrible word to get into a fight, but both are suspended, okay?
Now, the principle of the Dean says words don't hurt, that's problematic, okay?
But then it happens four more times, and the second time they steal his
backpack when he tries to get the backpack back, he's suspended again.
The guy who stole the backpack from what we can see not suspended.
The fifth time that he says they're calling me the n-word over and over and
over again in the school, and then he goes whatever, I don't care,
gee I wonder what kind of school this is.
Okay, and if you weren't sold on all of that [LAUGH] When the teacher that
quote was devastating.
Because black people are beneath white people, and
I guarantee you if you ask that teacher, are you racist?
She'll say no, I just think black people are inferior to me, I'm not racist,
I swear to God, she will say that.
Like for right-wingers,
they think well, if I haven't lynched a black man, how could you call me racist?
Brian.
>> Yeah, I mean like, what is there to say?
I mean, this is the kind of thing where anybody with any sentient being
would be able to look at this and see how ridiculous it is.
I mean, it's in a way with like the rise of social media,
it really does suck that we are exposed to so much of this.
But at the same time,
having this kind of exposure allows us to put these people under a spotlight that
they deserve to be under like this teacher in this school district.
And hopefully, see either litigation or just some social justice,
just people knowing who these people are, I guess that's one silver lining of this.
But I mean, it's just like a sad state of affairs and
just in terms of who these people are.
But also this kind of behavior is emboldened by a lot of what we see in
politics, and it's just this is why we fight against these people.
>> Yeah, look, to Brian's point, it's unnerving to all of us, right?
Where we all now deal with the stress when we see stories like this, and
if you're a good person that bothers you, right?
But think about all the things we haven't seen for hundreds of years, right?
Until the cameras came out, until the people started reporting it,
how many times has this happened?
Millions of times, and what happened every time?
They all say, no, just trust the white people, just don't trust black people,
trust the white people, it's disgusting.
And I'm really glad we're seeing it, especially for the coastal places,
California, New York, et cetera, the coast.
Because you might not live in a racist area, and
this might be like holy cow that doesn't really happen, does it?
Jared, doesn't really happen?
[LAUGH] How many stories have we covered Jr?
>> After they're talking about the police brutality,
every black person has a story to like, please that's because they're real.
>> Exactly.