A Florida Sixth Grader Was Arrested After Refusing to Recite the Pledge of Allegiance! 😒😒

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A Florida Sixth Grader Was Arrested After Refusing to Recite the Pledge of Allegiance!😒

The boy faces misdemeanor charges.

A Florida middle schooler was arrested and charged with multiple crimes earlier this month in the wake of a confrontation with a substitute teacher that began when he refused to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. The boy was taken to a juvenile detention center, and now faces misdemeanor charges.

The instructor who initially removed the student from class, Ana Alvarez, relayed the story in a statement to Polk County Public Schools. After being asked to stand for the pledge of allegiance, the student allegedly refused, telling Alvarez that the flag and national anthem—which contains a little-sung third verse that references slavery—are racist against black people. In her statement, Alverez said she asked the boy why, if racism is so bad in America, "he did not go to another place to live."

"They brought me here," the boy reportedly replied.

"Well you can always go back," said Alvarez, "because I came here from Cuba and the day I feel I'm not welcome here anymore I would find another place to live." The substitute said she then called the school’s office because she "did not want to continue dealing with him."

According to The Washington Post, the school officials say the boy yelled at school officials and called them racist. He was arrested by the resource officer, and now faces charges that include resisting an officer without violence. The school district says that it no longer employs Alvarez.

The Supreme Court ruled in 1943 that students cannot be forced to salute the flag or recite the Pledge of Allegiance. According to the Polk County school district’s handbook, students are required to produce written parental authorization before being permitted to sit out the Pledge. Some 26 states have similar statutes requiring that students obtain the permission of a guardian before exercising their constitutional right forego the Pledge of Allegiance. In a case last year, a black high schooler in Texas was expelled for refusing to say the Pledge. The teen was later reinstated.

In 1969, the Supreme Court offered its ruling in Tinker v. Des Moines, finding that students retain their right to free speech unless their actions constitute a "substantial disruption." In writing the majority opinion, Justice Abe Fortas famously observed that “it can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.”

The Florida branch of the ACLU, an organization that regularly defends students' right not to participate in patriotic traditions, tweeted a condemnation of the school’s action, making reference to the fact that black students are suspended, expelled, and arrested at rates that far exceed that of white peers who commit similar offenses.

The disproportionate rate of punishment inflicted upon black schoolchildren may be connected to research that has found that many people view black kids as being older and less in need of protection than their white counterparts. One study found that, on average, people misperceive black boys to be adults when they are just thirteen years old. Other researchers have found that adults believe black girls between five and 14 "need less protection, know more about sex and need less nurturing than white girls."

The Florida boy’s mother, Dhakira Talbot, told local reporters that she’s angry and hurt on behalf of her son, who she says is in gifted classes. "My son has never been through anything like this. I feel like this should've been handled differently. If any disciplinary action should've been taken, it should've been with the school. He shouldn’t have been arrested."