‘I feel like the school should have done more about it’

After Shanetta Jordan’s 14-year-old son was allegedly called a racist word on a Valparaiso school bus, he punched the boy who said it. Her son was suspended for a day. The other boys should have been as well, his mother says.

Along with every other school in the country, Valparaiso Community Schools does not tolerate derogatory epithets, racial slurs and biased language from any its students.

Nevertheless, teenagers will be teenagers. The school district’s behavior policy didn’t do much to stop one white student from allegedly offering $5 to another white student to call a Black student the N-word, according to his mother.

“I raise my kids to treat everyone the same, no matter what race they are,” said Shanetta Jordan, whose three children attended Valpo schools.

The alleged incident took place Sept. 24 on a school bus transporting students from Thomas Jefferson Middle School to the Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Northwest Indiana, just a few miles away in the city. After Jordan’s son was called the racist word, he punched the boy who said it to him.

“I don’t condone what my son did. But so many kids have taken their life over being bullied and called racist words,” Jordan said. “My son punched the other student because he is tired of others calling him and other Black kids that word.”

Jordan also is upset with the school district over how it handled the incident, specifically the punishment for the three students. Jordan’s son got suspended for one day, she said, but the two other boys did not.

“The other student was told he has to sit at the front of the bus,” Jordan said. “I feel like the school should have done more about it.”

Jordan said the school bus camera captured the incident, proving to school officials that it happened.

“The assistant principal told me she watched the bus video, and she understood what made my son upset,” Jordan said. “My son doesn’t understand why people have to be so racist.”

A Valparaiso Community Schools spokesperson told me the district does not discuss specific student discipline with media outlets.

“Students are disciplined for hurtful words and harmful actions using both punitive and restorative measures in accordance with our behavior policy,” said Allison Hadley, the school district’s communications coordinator.

She shared with me the district’s behavior policy in the online handbook for Thomas Jefferson Middle School.

The policy states: “Some

behavior is much more serious than other behavior and requires different approaches and clearly defined actions.” Punitive measures include verbal warnings, detention, restitution, suspension, expulsion, and referral to special personnel in the schools, such as a counselor.

A school official told Jordan that a counselor would speak with the boy who called her son the racial epithet.

“This was not the first time a student called one of my kids a racist word,” Jordan said. “Another student called my youngest son that word.”

Bullying, as defined by state law, means “overt, repeated acts or gestures, including verbal taunting by a student or a group of students against another student with the intent to harass, ridicule, humiliate, intimidate, or substantially harm the other student.”

Calling a Black student the N-word on school property certainly falls into this broad category, as well as fitting into the informal descriptor of hate speech. Some parents may roll their eyes about young teenagers being held accountable for using such words, but as we all know, adult racists are groomed from youth. No one is born a racist.

I’m not saying the two white boys involved in this incident are racist, or that they will be someday. I am saying that if this behavior is not put in check at a young age, it becomes habit. I’m speaking from firsthand experience with childhood friends of mine, raised in the 1960s and ‘70s, who didn’t think twice of calling Black people that hateful word. And they did it casually, without a hint of hesitance.

Was this the first time that the white boy in Valparaiso called a Black student that hurtful word or other racial epithets? I have no idea. Maybe the other boys’ parents will read this column and reach out to me to share their side of the situation. Kids will be kids and all that, right? I welcome their response for a follow-up column.

Meanwhile, Jordan said she has pulled her three children from Valparaiso schools because of that incident and the school’s unequal punishments for the three boys.

“I used to think Valparaiso schools were the best schools for my children to attend,” she said. “Until now.”

Jordan moved to Valparaiso from Michigan City to give her children a “better life and great education,” she said.

Jordan now lives in

Lake County. She plans to send her children to schools there.

“My son was sad to leave his friends and teachers,” she said.

I invited Valparaiso Community Schools to make a statement regarding this case. “We decline to comment further at this time,” Hadley said.

I asked Jordan’s son, who’s 14, how many times in his life he has been called that racial epithet by other kids. “Twice,” he replied. Once at a football game in Crown Point, and then on that school bus last week, he said.

I’ll be honest, I was surprised. I expected more than twice. Despite what took place on that school bus, maybe our society is evolving when it comes to race relations and younger generations, I thought.

After I spoke to Jordan and her son, I asked a childhood friend of mine, who’s Black, how many times he had been called the N-word by 14 while growing up in Gary.

“Are you kidding me?” he replied. “I couldn’t count how many times I was called that word. But all it takes is once and you never forget.”