New Jersey Student Racist for Wearing Confederate Flag Sweatshirt?
A 14-year-old middle school student from New Jersey has raised questions tackling both political correctness and racial tensions – causing an outcry in her community that resulted in the girl receiving death threats.
Torri Albrecht of Melvin H. Kreps Middle School was suspended for wearing a sweatshirt displaying a Confederate flag, a symbol of the South's racial past, to school.
The girl was born in Virginia and wore the controversial shirt because she believed it represented her Southern pride and felt the school was discriminating her.
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Albrecht later changed her story and said she was suspended because she was "disrespectful in her refusal to take it off," reported The Huffington Post.
Now Albrecht and her mother Jane West are threatening to sue the school and are seeking an apology from the school, as well as a reversing of the suspension and permission to transfer schools.
"The bottom line is there's no proof that anyone complained about the sweatshirt or that my daughter was disrespectful about taking it off. The only thing I have proof of is that Blount (the school's assistant principal) lied to me," West told the Times of Trenton.
According to ABC news, West claimed she didn't know about the history of the flag and said, "I don't pay attention. I don't know," and said she and her daughter are "far from racist."
The teenager has gotten in trouble for her poor choices in outfits before. Last year she was suspended for wearing a bracelet that read, "I love boobies," and on Halloween was in trouble for wearing cat ears and whiskers.
