First Grader Disciplined for “Any Life” Matters Drawing, Mother Sues School
The mother of a 7-year-old girl is suing her elementary school after they forced her to make a public apology after writing “any life” on a Black Lives Matter drawing, according to the Daily Mail. The incident itself is a year old but another parent had just told her what happened recently.
Chelsea Boyle’s daughter, a student at Viejo Elementary School in Mission Viejo, was disciplined after one of her friends took home the drawing she made. The original drawing had the words “Black Lives Matter” accompanied by four shapes in various shades of brown, intended to represent her Black and brown friends, according to the Daily Mail. Right in between the “BLM” and shapes, Boyle’s daughter penciled in “any life.”
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As a result, school principal Jesus Becerra punished the girl by ordering her to publicly apologize to her classmates and she was banned from recess that day.
Boyle insists her daughter didn’t do anything wrong and said she uses art as a therapeutic outlet to cope with ADHD.
More on the incident from the Daily Mail:
My daughter’s rights were taken away, and I just started reaching out to find out what compelled speech was. I didn’t know what it was until I spoke to attorneys,’ she told Fox News on Wednesday.
Her attorney, Alexander Haberbush, added: “Every single student in this country has a right to free speech. Now those rights are even stronger when a school tries to compel speech – when a school tries to make you say something as opposed to just telling you that you can’t say something. That’s exactly what has happened here.
It’s even worse than that because not only was she made to apologize for a totally innocuous drawing, one that I don’t know how you could look at that and see anything but racial tolerance and respect for other races in that picture. But not only was she made to apologize for that, she’s actually been punished on top of it.”
Boyle told Fox her children “see color as a color” and that she’s trying to raise them the way the world should be and not “the way it is.” Well, that sounds like an “all lives matter/we don’t see color” household to me.
“That’s how I’m trying to make my personal change. Her best friend is brown — not black, but brown — and she didn’t understand why she didn’t matter, why her friend didn’t matter,” Boyle said via Fox News.
The punishment may have been excessive for a 7-year-old, especially if she doesn’t know what she’s apologizing for. Ultimately, it comes down to the parents. They have to teach their kids why Black lives matter and why “Black Lives Matter” doesn’t mean “all lives” don’t.
See, this is where critical race theory would come in handy.