Earlier this month, Maryland educator Marquise White was placed under investigation after he posted a TikTok video showing his young Black female students taking out his braids.
Now, the Maya Angelou French Immersion School teacher has shared his thoughts on why he is being criticized β and they absolutely make no sense. White, who has continued posting on social media since the incident, believed that his only mistake in the video was being young, attractive and Black.
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Yes, you read that correctly. In a video he posted to TikTok, White explained his line of thinking.
βI firmly believe that I was attacked, and let me add this in here, mainly attacked by own community. I was mainly attacked by my own community for the most part...because Iβm a young, handsome, Black man.β White said.
Of course, he didnβt stop there. White continued;
βPeople who watched this video and thought anything weird, or anything suggestive, saw me, was attracted to me. I got tattoos, I got an attractive energy, attractive aura, you can sense that through the video. Since you can sense that attractiveness, or sense you are attracted to me, you projected your own thoughts, ideologies, traumas and experiences, onto me and my children, and that is a hill Iβm willing to die on 1,000% of the time.β
White also said that if he was white, there wouldnβt have been any backlash. In the video, he also gives examples of educators at other schools engaging in what he believed to be far more inappropriate behavior.
βYβall mad at me for creating bonds with my students. At least theyβre not fighting me, at least theyβre not fighting the teacher. At least my students arenβt smoking crack in the bathroom,β White explained.
What this βyoung, handsome Black manβ seemingly fails to understand is that students should never touch their teacherβs hair, regardless of what race the teacher may be. They also shouldnβt be carelessly made the fodder of social media posts for Likes. There are other ways to bond with students that donβt include having them run a makeshift hair salon.
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