Quantcast
Connect with us

Black student burned with hot glue gun in Missouri high school’s latest racist incident

Published

on

A white student at Missouri’s Ladue Horton Watkins High School reportedly burned a black student with a hot glue gun in a racially motivated attack — the latest in a series of racially charged incidents that have taken place at the high school since the election of Republican Donald Trump as president.

The St. Louis American reported that police are investigating the incident, which took place two days after Election Day.

ADVERTISEMENT

Students walked out of class on Wednesday over an incident on a school bus in which white students chanting “Trump! Trump! Trump!” ordered their black classmates to sit at the back of the bus.

Lynette Hamilton — the mother of the burned boy — posted Tuesday Nov. 15 on Facebook that white a student cornered her son in a classroom on Thursday Nov. 10, taunted and insulted him and then gave him a “third-degree burn” on his arm with a hot glue gun. The student, she said, also poured hot glue on the victim’s chair so that he was burned again when he sat down.

Hamilton wrote that she went to the school on Friday to speak with principal Brad Griffith, but was told that she needed to make an appointment. On Tuesday when she posted, Hamilton said the principal had still not contacted her.

“This is sickening, what is happening to our children and the response and action the district is taking when it comes to African-American students,” said Hamilton. “It saddens me.”

Student Tajah Walker was one of the black students ordered to sit in the back of the school bus. She participated in the student walkout on Wednesday and told the American that she feels shaken in her confidence that she is safe at school.

ADVERTISEMENT

“I literally had a mental breakdown in the middle of the school day yesterday,” she said at Wednesday’s walkout and rally.

In her Facebook post, Lynette Hamilton said that the school — which is located in Ladue, a suburb of St. Louis not far from Ferguson, MO — has long had a history of racial strife.

“After an anti-racism/bullying meeting today,” she said, “I learned that this problem has been in this district for years and years now. With little to no consequences. Get to the back of the bus, being burned and being told get on the ship to go back to Africa is just a piece of what this district has going on and try to sweep it all under the rug.”

ADVERTISEMENT

“I’m only a sophomore, yet I’ve had so many racial issues already,” said a student who did not wish to be named in a statement addressed to school officials. “From the two years that I have been here, I’ve already had so many racial issues — and the only time you have done something about it is when you get busted for it.”

Students have said they plan to protest every day for the time being.

ADVERTISEMENT

“We have to continue doing this,” said a speaker at Wednesday’s walkout, “until we can go to school and not feel threatened.”

Watch video of the walkout and protest, embedded below:

ADVERTISEMENT


Report typos and corrections to: [email protected].
READ COMMENTS - JOIN THE DISCUSSION
Continue Reading

Elections 2016

Vietnamese women strive to clear war-era mines

Published

on

Inching across a field littered with Vietnam war-era bombs, Ngoc leads an all-women demining team clearing unexploded ordnance that has killed tens of thousands of people -- including her uncle.

"He died in an explosion. I was haunted by memories of him," Le Thi Bich Ngoc tells AFP as she oversees the controlled detonation of a cluster bomb found in a sealed-off site in central Quang Tri province.

More than 6.1 million hectares of land in Vietnam remain blanketed by unexploded munitions -- mainly dropped by US bombers -- decades after the war ended in 1975.

At least 40,000 Vietnamese have since died in related accidents. Victims are often farmers who accidentally trigger explosions, people salvaging scrap metal, or children who mistake bomblets for toys.

Continue Reading

Elections 2016

Chief Justice John Roberts issues New Year’s Eve warning to stand up for democracy

Published

on

In a progressive welcoming move, Chief Justice John Roberts issued his New Year's Eve annual report urging his fellow federal judges to stand up for democracy.

"In our age, when social media can instantly spread rumor and false information on a grand scale, the public's need to understand our government, and the protections it provides, is ever more vital," he wrote. "We should celebrate our strong and independent judiciary, a key source of national unity and stability."

Continue Reading
 

Breaking Banner

Trump’s next 100 days will dictate whether he can be re-elected or not — here’s why

Published

on

According to CNN pollster-in-residence Harry Enten, Donald Trump's next 100 days -- which could include an impeachment trial in the Senate -- will hold the key to whether he will remain president in 2020.

As Eten explains in a column for CNN, "His [Trump's] approval rating has been consistently low during his first term. Yet his supporters could always point out that approval ratings before an election year have not historically been correlated with reelection success. But by mid-March of an election year, approval ratings, though, become more predictive. Presidents with low approval ratings in mid-March of an election year tend to lose, while those with strong approval ratings tend to win in blowouts and those with middling approval ratings usually win by small margins."

Continue Reading
 
 
You need honest news coverage. Help us deliver it. Join Raw Story Investigates for $1. Go ad-free.
close-image