In a clear case of political correctness gone wild, a mother in Britain was ordered by a school to declare her 7-year-old son guilty of racism.
The reason for the demand? The boy asked a 5-year-old classmate: “Are you brown because you come from Africa?”
The UK Daily Mail reported Sunday that 29-year-old Hayley White was told to sign a form admitting her son, Elliot Dearlove, is a racist after the incident.
According to The Daily Mail, White "received a phone call last month to say her son had been at the centre of a ‘racist incident’."
"She was then summoned to a meeting with Elliott, his teacher and the deputy head of Griffin Primary School in Hull," Russell Myers wrote.
"When I arrived at the school and asked Elliott what had happened, he became extremely upset," she said.
"He kept saying to me, 'I was just asking a question. I didn’t mean it to be nasty' and he was extremely distressed by it all."
White was then asked to read the school's rules, which includes a zero-tolerance policy on racism.
"I was told I would have to sign a form acknowledging my son had made a racist remark which would be submitted to the local education authority for further investigation," she said.
But White refused to sign the demand and said her son was simply being inquisitive.
"He always likes to ask questions," she said. "But that doesn’t make him a racist."
These days, however, it does.
But the local city council is standing behind the school.
“There is a statutory duty to report any incident that is perceived to be racist by the victim or any other person,” a council spokesman said in a statement.
But the victim in this case is not alleging racism at all, according to a post at This is Hull and East Riding:
A MOTHER has denied her son was the victim of racial abuse after a seven-year-old asked him if he was "brown because he was from Africa".
Nicola Allen, of east Hull, said the matter had been blown out of proportion after the Mail revealed how Griffin Primary School had launched an investigation into the playground comments by Elliott Dearlove.
Allen, who did not name her 5-year-old son, said that she did not feel Dearlove was acting in a racist manner at all.
"He is seven years old," she said. "The race thing has come from the school."
"It is not the case that I said Elliott was racist," she added.
Allen said she thought the matter was resolved after Christmas when White apologized.
"The boy's mother, Hayley, apologized to me and my son and I accepted her apology and that was the end of it as far as I was concerned," she said, adding she considered the matter "dealt with."
The Blaze added:
White is now trying to get her son transferred out of the school.
The local member of parliament, Karl Turner, believes that “common sense” should make it obvious the boy wasn’t being racist.
“[H]aving spoken to Hayley, I’m satisfied that her seven-year-old son, Elliott, was not being racist in his remarks but just inquisitive,” he said, according to the Daily Mail.
“It seems the matter has been taken out of all proportion and common sense seems to have gone completely out of the window.”
The Daily Mail adds that last year, thousands of children were branded racist or homophobic following playground incidents.
According to the Daily Mail, over "...20,000 pupils aged 11 or younger were put on record for so-called hate crimes such as using the word ‘gaylord’," a male given name.
Yet, we are supposed to believe that educators, not parents, know what's best for children.
----------------------------------------------------------
If you like this article, you can follow Joe on Twitter @jnewby1956, visit his Facebook page, or click the Subscribe button to receive email updates when a new article is published.
Comments