A Virginia middle school teacher was suspended after audio surfaced of a racist rant in which she tells a student to “go back to wherever that Spanish-speaking country is and speak it,” ABC 8 News reports.
The approximately five-minute audio clip has created a firestorm after a local Hispanic radio station published the audio recording from Boushall Middle School in Richmond.
The teacher, who has not been publicly identified, is heard on the video saying “English is spoken in this class, period.”
The student replies that her “native language is Spanish, so I can talk in Spanish-” before the teacher cuts her off.
“Right, well go back to wherever that Spanish-speaking country is and speak it,” the teacher says.
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“But when you in America you gonna speak English in the classes that are spoken here.”
“I can speak it anywhere,” the student asserts.
“You not gonna speak it in here. And I’m gonna prove to you that you’re gonna write that essay and you’ll never do it again,” the teacher replies, before sending the student to the office.
The child’s mother during a school board meeting Monday said the incident has affected her daughter.
“El dia que pasó esto mi hija llegó a la casa y se encerró en el cuarto y no paraba de llorar,” she told the board in her native Spanish, which translates in English to “The day this happened, my daughter came home and locked herself in her room and wouldn’t stop crying.”
“Nosotros los padres, tenemos que estar dispuestos a defender a nuestros hijos,” she said, which translates to “We as parents have to be willing to defend our children.”
Nearly half of Boushall Middle School’s students are Hispanic (44 percent) and more than a third are English learners (38 percent), according to the report.
The League of United Latin American Citizens' Richmond chapter President Dr. Rachel Gomez told the board that such incidents are commonplace across the school division.
“District-wide, this is a systemic issue that is not being handled properly, and that is why LULAC requested a task force on the status of Latino and English-Language Learner (ELL) students,” she said.
A Richmond Public Schools official in a statement confirmed that the teacher had been suspended, the report said.
“Racism, bigotry, and intolerance of any kind will not be tolerated at Richmond Public Schools,” RPS Chief Wellness Officer Renesha Parks said in a statement.
“The employee is currently on administrative leave pending the outcome of an internal investigation by the Employee Relations team.”
The school board issued a statement re-affirming its non-discrimination policy, writing that“unequivocally condemns all forms of racism, discrimination and prejudice, issues which are deeply ingrained in our society and must be challenged and dismantled in all their forms.”
