*A white teacher in San Antonio says she was fired after she declined to stop wearing a Black Lives Matter face mask at the school.
Lillian White was a teacher at Great Hearts Western Hills, a charter school on the city’s north side. According to KENS, she started attending weekly in-person training sessions at the school in July, wearing homemade masks printed with the phrases, “Black Lives Matter” and “Silence is Violence.”
“For about a week and a half I was wearing these masks and no one said anything. A couple of the other teachers came up and asked for some if I had any extras and I made them some,” White told KENS.
But she says one Friday, she received a text message from the assistant principal, saying, “We’d like you to stop wearing these masks. Parents will be coming around more and we don’t discuss the current political climate.”
White says she continued to wear the mask, citing her commitment to what Black Lives Matter stands for. She told KENS: “This is human rights and it should be something that is promoted at our school. It’s an excuse to not talk about it by saying this is politics, talk about it on your own time. It’s just an excuse because they’re uncomfortable with the conversation.”
Great Hearts Texas Superintendent Daniel Scoggin emailed the following statement to KENS regarding White’s termination:
Great Hearts respects the privacy of all current and former employees and as a result does not issue public comment on specific personnel matters. On the question related to face coverings, Great Hearts enacted, in this unprecedented pandemic environment, a policy that face coverings have no external messages. This policy was authored by school leaders and teachers in service to the learning environment of our classrooms.
Great Hearts was founded and exists today to serve the innate dignity and worth of every human being. We stand with the Black community and all who are suffering. Great Hearts deplores bigotry and its crushing effects on all those subjected to it. Great Hearts is committed to an America where racism, violence, and injustice do not happen, because such acts find no home in the hearts of a great people.
Watch an interview with White below from KENS:
