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Juelz “JT” Trice, 13, was a student at Berry Miller Junior High School when he told multiple news outlets that then-assistant Principal Tony Barcelona told him on April 17 that his haircut, which highlighted an “M” design, was a violation of the school dress code.
“He came over and said, ‘You have two options: You can either go to [in-school suspension] or color it in,'” Juelz told ABC affiliate KTRK.
he school is in the Pearland Independent School District, about 20 miles south of Houston in the city of Pearland. The city’s population is about 62 percent white and 16 percent Black, according to U.S. Census records.
The lawsuit filing Atlanta Black Star obtained maintains that Juelz was a track athlete who had never been in trouble when he was accused of breaking the dress code. He chose the marker because he didn’t want to jeopardize his participation on the school’s track team, according to the suit.
Randall Kallinen, the attorney who filed the suit on behalf of Juelz’s parents, named the school district, Barcelona, the discipline clerk Helen Day and teacher Jeanette Peterson in the lawsuit.
Kallinen said Barcelona sent the student to Day’s office and later joined them to witness Day handing Juelz a jet-black Sharpie marker.
When he started coloring his hair, the markings made the design more prominent and Kallinen said at that point Day took over coloring in the child’s scalp.
She only stopped after allegedly asking Peterson, who happened to stop by the office, to pick up where the discipline administrator left off.
All three employees laughed at the child, Kallinen alleged in the lawsuit.
“J.T. was not laughing but very frightened of these three much larger Pearland ISD employees coloring his scalp jet black,” Kallinen said in the lawsuit.
When the employees finished, Juelz was sent to study hall because he had missed Spanish class, Kallinen said.
He called the coloring job, which took many days to scrub off, “highly offensive.”
“There are hardly any African Americans in America with jet black skin and, of course, neither does J.T.” Kallinen said. “It is commonly understood among scholars and the general public that depicting African Americans with jet black skin is a negative racial stereotype.
“During the Jim Crow era slaves were often depicted as happy in their slave existence and with jet black skin as a means to disguise their humanity and imply that they are unlike ‘white’ people.”
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Lawsuit: White School Employees Laugh as Black Boy's Scalp Colored With Jet-Black Permanent Marker
Lawsuit: White School Employees Laugh As Black Boy's Scalp Colored With Jet-Black Permanent Marker A federal civil rights lawsuit was filed Sunday after a
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