More than two years after her parents filed a federal racial discrimination lawsuit against her school district, a 17-year-old Michigan girl is now speaking out. This action was taken in response to months of taunting and harassment she experienced.
On January 3, The Detroit News interviewed Clara Malick and her parents, Rob and April Malick. During the interview, Clara recounted her ordeal while attending Croswell-Lexington High School in Croswell, Michigan, in 2021.
Clara, who is adopted, revealed that she faced persistent racial taunts from her white classmates, including being repeatedly called the N-word. According to her lawsuit, Clara was one of only three Black students in a district with more than 2,000 students.
The teenager said white students would often “call me the N-word or say the N-word in a sentence. And they’ll look at me for a reaction.” Clara added that she didn’t know how to react at first.
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“I didn’t know how to react because I didn’t really know what the word really meant,” she continued, adding that while she’d heard the word before, she’d never been called it.
The teenager shared that, over time, she found herself laughing along with the taunts. She explained, “What else are you supposed to do? Like, the jokes aren’t funny, but you’re just like, ‘everybody else is laughing,’ so you gotta laugh, too.”
As outlined in the lawsuit, Malick endured near-daily taunting from white students, including racial slurs and threats of hair-pulling. She was subjected to offensive phrases such as, “Go back to the plantation and pick cotton” and “Your hair looks like s—t.”
The then-freshman was also told, “I’m going to snatch your weave and burn it,” and “I bet your hair is dead.” The lawsuit also detailed an incident where Clara told the students to stop and was blatantly ignored.
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“Two students were mocking C.M. and using the n-word in a Snapchat conversation. C.M. told them, ‘STOP, it’s…not funny’ and explained the history behind the word. One student responded, “Free speech, n—a,” the complaint says.
Just days later, the lawsuit alleges that Clara received a threatening message: “All the n—s will be shot after school today at 3:00 pm.”
Following the threat, a teacher who was supposed to escort Clara to class was heard dismissing her concerns, stating that she was “playing the race card” and making comments like “which is what blacks do.”
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The teacher reportedly said that the teenager “deserved” what she was facing. This barrage of racial abuse prompted Clara’s father, Rob, to implore the school to intervene.
Despite pleas for intervention, the purported abuse persisted, and additional faculty members exhibited racist behavior. A civics teacher at the school reportedly referred to Black Lives Matter as a “terrorist organization” during a lecture. Furthermore, another teacher allegedly conveyed to Clara that “not all racists are bad people,” as detailed in their claim.
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