A principal has been placed on leave after forcing a Black student to kneel while apologizing to his teacher.
The outrageous incident took place at a Long Island Catholic school in Uniondale, New York, where John Patrick Holian, the headmaster of St. Martin de Porres Marianist School, told an 11-year-old student to kneel.
According to the New York Daily News, the sixth-grader who was forced to kneel while apologizing was 11-year-old Trayson Paul who is a Haitian-American.
As the boy’s mother, Trisha Paul, insisted, her son was punished for starting a different task than the one he had already finished in an attempt to get a head start. The teacher, however, noticed that the student started doing a wrong assignment, prompting him to take the young boy to see the headmaster.
Once in Holian’s office, the principal allegedly told Trayson to kneel down while apologizing to his teacher. As the headmaster insisted, he learned from a Nigerian father that kneeling was a proper way to apologize in Africa.
“Once he started mentioning this African family, that’s when it just clicked,” the upset mother said in an interview with New York Daily News.
“Like, this is not normal procedure. I felt there was no relevance at all. Is he generalizing that everyone who is black is African? That’s when I realized something is not right with this situation.”
As the mother added, she believes her son was discriminated against because of his skin color and forced to kneel despite his roots being in Haiti, a Caribbean country, and not Africa.
Following the incident, Trayson has reportedly become very reserved and the family was forced to seek professional help to help the once bubbly and cheerful kid to recover.
“My son was humiliated, hurt, embarrassed, sad and confused. He reads about things happening because of your skin color. To experience it – he’s just trying to process it in his 11-year-old brain,” Paul added.
As the matter remains under investigation, Holian has been placed on leave. Meanwhile, the school’s acting headmaster reassured the parents that the incident doesn’t reflect their values.
“I want to assure you that St. Martin’s neither condones nor accepts the actions of our headmaster. The incident does not reflect our long, established values or the established protocols regarding student related issues,” James Conway wrote in a letter to students’ parents.
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Replaced!