School guard suspended after joking at black student’s expense
Sep 4, 2014, 6:01 PM
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A white male security guard has been suspended from his duties after allegedly making an inappropriate joke involving a black student, Syracuse.com reported.
Syracuse, N.Y., resident Brandon Pearson, 12, has Down syndrome and was excited to start at a new school Tuesday morning. On the way to his new classroom, his mother, Brandiss Pearson, her husband and her father stopped to snap a few photos. A school guard then approached them.
“Wait, wait, wait, hold on,” Brandiss Pearson recalls the sentry saying. Then the sentry turned Brandon to face the wall and lifted Brandon’s hands above his head on the wall, as if to be frisked, she said.
“And he starts laughing and says, ‘Now take the picture, he’s in the right position,'” Pearson recalled.
Young Brandon did not understand the reference, but his family was in shock. Tuesday afternoon Pearson reported the incident to the school principal. She even tearfully confronted the security guard who thought it was “a funny joke.”
Pearson is a registered nurse at a hospital, while also studying for her master’s degree.
“Nothing that I’ve accomplished can change what some people see,” she said.
