Source: Owen Franken – Corbis / Getty
Remember when country music star Jason Aldean dropped his song-slash-MAGA infomercial titled, “Try That in a Small Town” and people immediately thought it was racist due, in part, to the Black Lives Matter protest footage he eventually edited out of the video, but mostly due to the racism often associated with small, rural white towns? Well, a predominately white town in Nebraska appears to have proven the point Aldean’s detractors were trying to make. According to white parents who say they fled their home due to the constant racial abuse their adopted Black child had suffered.
Lee and Brittny Graham told the Lincoln Journal Star they moved their family from California to the small town of Wayne, Nebraska, in April 2023 hoping they’d found a small, close-knit community where they could raise both of their Black sons, the oldest of whom had graduated high school before the family moved. The younger child wasn’t so lucky.
[The boys parents] said it began with one student calling their child the n-word, but other Klan cadets joined in, calling him the n-word and a baboon while making monkey noises at him
The Grahams said that soon after they enrolled their son–whose name they didn’t share for his protection–in a local high school, they found out his classmates were calling him racial slurs and antagonizing him while the “educators” in charge were doing nothing about it. They said it began with one student calling their child the n-word, but other Klan cadets joined in, calling him the n-word and a baboon while making monkey noises at him similar to the white Ole Miss frat bro who went viral after making monkey noises at a Black woman in video footage that was celebrated at the Republican National Convention last week.
The Grahams said that after their son made his school’s football team, he started hearing the taunting and racial slurs during games. They said he told his parents of the bullying but said he didn’t want them to intervene, which they agreed to until a November 2023 incident in which he was lying on the floor after running sprints when a classmate allegedly placed a knee on his neck and asked him if he could breathe, a white and racist reference to the murder of George Floyd.
“Finally, our son came to us and said, ‘I can’t do this anymore. I need you to get involved. I can’t live like this,’” Lee Graham told the Journal Star. “It was about to break him.”
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Sorry Not Sorry
Wayne Community Schools Superintendent Mark Lenihan said the district could not take action since there were rarely witnesses or evidence to prove the racist incidents happened. But, according to the Journal Star, there was an incident in which a teacher overheard the students calling the Grahams’ son racial slurs, but, instead of reporting it, the teacher wrote their son an apology letter.
So, after one semester, the Grahams withdrew their son from the school and he completed the following school year from home. Instead of enrolling him in a different, hopefully, less racist school, they decided it would be best to leave Wayne altogether, which they did in May.
“It was exhausting, heartbreaking, devastating,” Lee said. “Watching our son and hoping our son is not permanently injured emotionally and that he can process through this.”
The Grahams said they gave Lenihan an ear full about the racism their son endured before leaving. Lenihan reportedly said the district plans to implement more extensive faculty training to teach teachers and staff to report bullying and harassment in accordance to district policies that supposedly already exist.
”I want to make sure that he continues to be diligent,” Lee said of Lenihan. “I want to make sure that it wasn’t just to appease a family that had left. I want to make sure that the entire staff and leadership of Wayne schools is dedicated for years and years to come to eradicate this.”
As the saying goes, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
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