Teacher tells Black student he’ll be shot by the times he’s 16

A teacher in Kansas is under fire for telling a Black student that he would by shot by police by the time he was 16 if he didn’t behave in school. Malachi Pearson, a 10-year-old Black boy, says his teacher used the prospect of his death in a police shooting to chastise him when he was goofing off at school, reports the Huffington Post. And now there are people in the community calling for that teacher to be fired. Pearson is a fourth grader at Rosehill Elementary School in Lenexa. He says he was goofing around with a friend during lunch and a teacher came up to them and pulled them apart, thinking they were fighting. “She told me when you turn 16 and the police shoot you, the only person you can blame is yourself,” Pearson said. The youngster said the comment made him cry. His father was shot and killed in Kansas City when Pearson was just an infant. Mahogany Foster, Malachi’s mother, said she was outraged when her son told her about the incident, and she pulled him out of the school two days later. “That was a low blow, and that was something personal,” she said of the teacher’s comment. “You shouldn’t say it to any child.” Foster said the district assistant superintendent told her the yet to be identified teacher has been put on leave. But a representative for Shawnee Mission School District told FOX 4 News that according to federal law, the districtt cannot discuss any disciplinary actions against the teacher. One Twitter used shared Pearson’s story online, writing, “I don’t think people talk about the cruel things people in positions of authority say to Black children enough. Black children face this type of stuff from the home to classroom and it’s extremely harmful. This teacher deserves to be fired.”