This one’s right out of Donald Trump’s school of thought. An 11-year-old Black student in Florida refuses to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance, and he got arrested. Now he is facing misdemeanor charges.
The story goes that the sixth grader wouldn’t stand when the rest of his class was reciting the Pledge. The teacher, which happened to be a substitute that day, asked him why he wasn’t participating, and in defense of his brothers and sisters of color, he says the flag is racist. The teacher tells the kid if this country is so racist, why doesn’t he go live somewhere else. He says, “They brought me here.” She says, “Well, you can always go back, because I came here from Cuba, and the day I feel I’m not welcome here anymore, I would find another place to live.”
So the school resource officer is called, the scene escalates and the 11-year-old is charged with disrupting a school facility and resisting an officer without violence. The American Civil Liberties Union is now involved, calling the situation “outrageous.” The ACLU reminded school and law enforcement officials that the Supreme Court decided in 1943 that schools cannot require students to salute the flag or recent the Pledge. The teacher has since been removed from that school district.
