A young Clarence Michael Robinson Jr. was sitting outside his third grade teacher’s classroom when he heard his father rise out of his chair inside the room and slam a fist on a desk.
Robinson’s parents were speaking with his teacher, a nun at his private Catholic elementary school. The teacher kept saying their son was “different” and that he shouldn’t be in the school. His father asked her what she meant.
“She said, ‘Well, I’m just saying he doesn’t play with the other children,'” Robinson said. “He said, ‘And what you’re saying is basically because my kid is Black you don’t want him here?’ She said, ‘That’s not what I’m saying.’ He said, ‘But that is what you’re saying.'”
