Teacher told black 13yo he might be lynched over schoolwork

“[My son told us] his teacher had told him that if he didn’t get back on task, that his friends were going to lynch him, and we thought that he must have misunderstood,” Tanisha Agee-Bell, mother of the 13-year-old Nathan, told WXIX.

Agee-Bell said the comment was made during a social science class the first week of December and has haunted her son and family ever since.

Agee-Bell said the comment was made during a social science class the first week of December and has haunted her son and family ever since.

Nathan’s mother, who is on the Mason School District’s diversity council, confronted the teacher, Renee Thole, who admitted that she told the African-American boy “if you don’t get back on task, your friends are going to form an angry mob and lynch you.”

“I was actually taken aback because I said, ‘What you said is actually worse than what he said you said,’” Agee-Bell told WLWT.“He had told her, ‘That’s racist.’”

“For me, that’s enough for her, as a social studies teacher especially, to be removed from the classroom,” Agee-Bell said. “I don’t know if she’s racist, but I know that what she said is racist.”

A Mason School District spokesperson confirmed the exchange between Thole and Nathan.

“As educators, sometimes we mess up. Clearly that was the case here,” Mason Schools spokeswoman Tracey Carson said in a statement.“And, even though this teacher did not set out to hurt a child – clearly that happened too. It was amazing that this young black man was brave enough to confront his teacher when the incident happened.”

 

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