A teacher is facing the sack after telling one of her students to speak in English after the boy refused to hand over his phone and appeared to have teased the teacher by responding in Spanish.
The incident occurred at Socorro High School in Texas where the Latino community is predominating.
In the short footage shared on social media, the teacher in question approaches Carlos Cobian who was busy watching a soccer match during her lecture and tells him to hand over his phone.
After the boy responds with “Por qué [why]?” the teacher tells him: “Speak English, we’re in America.” She also called the security who removed the teen from the classroom and questioned him.
“I was shocked, and then I got a little mad. For her to come to teach at Socorro, being a sub, like 90 per cent of the students here are Mexicans and Latinos,” Cobian said in an interview with KVIA-TV.
“I thought it was a little racist because you know, we live on the border and it’s all Mexican, Latinos.”
The boy also insisted that other students got away with using their phones in the class and that he didn’t do anything to provoke the teacher.
“She actually tried to say that I pushed her, but I didn’t and some of the videos come out that I didn’t really push her,” he added.
After the incident went viral, Socorro Independent School District announced that the issue is under investigation and that proper action will be taken.
The confrontation has also sparked fury among Latino civil rights groups who condemned the teacher for telling the student to speak English even though Spanish hasn’t been banned in public schools since 1969.
“It is abominable that this institutionalized racism against the Hispanic community in Texas hasn’t ended,” Domingo Garcia, the League of United Latin American Citizens President, said in a statement.
While some have defended the student and condemned the teacher, others have suggested that Cobian was mocking the teacher on purpose by asking her ‘why’ in Spanish as he refused to hand over his phone.
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Replaced!