Christian McGhee, 17, has secured a significant victory for free speech in North Carolina after the Davidson County Board of Education settled a case over his suspension for using the term “illegal alien.” What is disturbing is that, once again, the school officials themselves appear to have escaped any accountability for their abusive treatment of this student.
Christian received a three-day suspension for using the phrase while discussing word meanings during his English class at Central Davidson High School in Lexington on April 9, 2024.
A teacher gave the teen an assignment that used the word “alien,” and he asked, “Like space aliens or illegal aliens without green cards?” After a Hispanic student in McGhee’s class “joked” that he was going to “kick Christian’s ass,” the teacher escalated the matter to Central Davidson’s assistant principal, Eric Anderson.
It was Anderson who “declared that his comment was racially motivated” that resulted in the suspension. When Leah McGhee attempted to appeal the suspension, school administrators refused to back down. The Board members also gave her the stiff arm.
She then retained an attorney with the Liberty Justice Center’s Educational Freedom group and filed a lawsuit under the first amendment.
The board has now agreed to remove all references to racial bias in McGhee’s school record and issue a public apology “for the mischaracterization of racial bias” in his record, documents show.
The problem is that there is no indication that the school officials or Board members responsible for this travesty will be held accountable in any way. They not only abused his young man, but they cost the county money in litigation and settlement. After forcing this family into court, they are now just shrugging and walking away.
Until these officials incur real consequences for such actions, this pattern will continue to repeat itself.
*. Presuming both students have an inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness which includes the inalienable right to freedom of speech there is no action required.
The classroom is the microcosm of showing an error was made at some point in the past regarding land borders, law and biology acted out culturally. Were the young men black or Asian using language such as illegal alien and kicking ass.
Inalienable right to speech lead to a discussion of culturalism. I guess the Asian kid won? Wetback is pejorative and crushes children who’ve never heard it before. Alien 👾 is an emotional word because it places blame on lawbreakers. Culture dominance is an ancient, primal trait.
There are no winners without losers.
“Wetback” is slang. “Illegal Alien” was and maybe is still is a legally acceptable way to describe a person in the country illegally. Stop the BS of trying to give respect and “street cred” to border hoppers for breaking into America to take an American job a publicly supported couch-surfer won’t do.
*. I don’t think I was attempting to justify anything here except freedom of speech. I won’t attempt to justify your response, grasshopper.
*. inALIENable –> oops
“…take an American job a publicly supported couch-surfer won’t do…”
Serious question. If no American will pick strawberries all day for $15/hour without benefits, and if you round up all the wetbacks and kick them out, you’re saying you’re okay with having no strawberries or at the least, strawberries becoming a luxury item? Please, address the question without any snark. I’d like to understand how this will work.
Anon 11:20AM – Prior to the democrat party opening our borders in Jan. 2021, we already had “legal”(documented) agricultural workers in the U.S.. The deportation of “illegal aliens” has little to no impact on those numbers. The majority of them are on public assistance in democrat “sanctuary cities/states” and are living off of “other people’s money.” Your argument is based on leftist propaganda.
*. Put an engineer onto a task of mechanical strawberry pickers, you know, LIKE THE COTTON PICKER , Eli Whitney?
MIT can do it with tax donations.
*. Warrior, the last thing anyone should be is a traitor. My personal perspective is –> life is God’s weigh station, temporary.
There is a sovereign border, grasshopper.
*. GrassHOPPER.
The one common thread in a nation is its language. And we can note how vigorously the progressives have acted to remove that cultural binding agent by moving for several alternative languages on government forms, how spanish has become our “unofficial” alternate language and soon we will be hit with an arabic/farsi requirement for all communications.
The fact that this boy has won his right to speak true and proper English words is a step towards reuniting this nation through language. If we do not make this happen we will continue to fragment and become, even more, a piece of real estate inhabited by tribes and sects separated by customs and languages until we lose our national identity and then we are done.
Bravo, whimsical. No longer permitted for a white male student to use the proper legal term, but OK for movie star Marty Short, earlier this week on the new TV prime-time game show “Match Game,” to fumble with his fingers opening a folder and remark, “son of a b_ _ _ _” with impunity. Iconic male stars refer to their husbands, while Ellen and Rosie O’Donnell refer to their “wives.”
How about the music singer referring to another one as, “She be good!” Try to teach a student that “they” and “them” are supposed to designate plural pronouns, -not alternatives for gender-altering preferences.
Proper English is no longer indicium of educated, polite, refined society–it is now a hated vestige of racist, colonizing Whiteness.
Turn on television to watch the evening national news, interrupted by a string of commercials touting minorities, interracial, gay couples, grossly disproportionate to their representation in society-at-large. Obama’s “transformation” of America?
I thought I was well-adjusted, having a few gay or black friends and listening to their perspectives. Never thought I would be looked down upon in my own “my country, ’tis of thee.”
Every conqueror knows that in order to hold a territory, you must first destroy the one you have conquered. Ignoring this fact brought about the end of many an empire when they allowed the core culture that created their empire to be diluted with those of their conquered. This was obama’s (the progs who pulled his strings that is) goal in disrupting our western culture as it had evolved in America. We used to be a melting pot, as in -you assimilate to the culture to which you fled – and strive to be American. Now we have hordes of ignoramuses shouting death to American. We are on the edge of losing our nation.
GEB wrote:
I also remember the term “wetbacks”. I don’t see how that could be construed as racist since it only alludes to people crossing a certain river.
Ive been called wetback more times I care to remember. When Americans asked me how long it took Cubans to swim to Florida, I would reply, “it depended on the direction of the currents in the Florida Straits”. True story.
Note to Lin and whimsicalmama, please teach Americans how to speak proper English. This wetback is tired of correcting y’all’s terrible English.
ps: I’ll be participating in prison ministry again this weekend with other Catholics from my church. Please tell your “conservative” friends that welcoming strangers, feeding the hungry, visiting prisoners, caring for the sick, etc will result in the King of Kings calling them righteous, that and possibly cure their incessant kvetching about everything
¡Muchísimas Gracias!
He will place the sheep on his right and the goats on his left. Then the king will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me.’ Then the righteous* will answer him and say, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? When did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? When did we see you ill or in prison, and visit you?’ And the king will say to them in reply, ‘Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.’ Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you accursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, a stranger and you gave me no welcome, naked and you gave me no clothing, ill and in prison, and you did not care for me.’ Then they will answer and say, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or ill or in prison, and not minister to your needs?’ He will answer them, ‘Amen, I say to you, what you did not do for one of these least ones, you did not do for me.’ l And these will go off to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”
Gospel of St Matthew 25:33-46
Estovir: Thanks for the Bible quote. I thought we were talking about language and proper/legal terminology.
But now that you bring it up, Many of us who stand on the Father’s right do so in silence and anonymity.
Your friendly gringo, lin.
(heard frequently when traveling South of the Border).
Your ideology only appeals to like-thinking peoples. I believe in helping only those who truly find themselves without hope and who earnestly want to change and improve.
I do not believe that unrepentant illegals, murderers, drug addicts and those capable of work should receive any assistance, I would personally help only the aged, the infirmed, the children of parents without morals and the mentally ill. I would repeal all welfare agencies in a hot minute and let all those stolen tax dollars remain in the pockets of individuals who may then donate to whichever agency they feel does the most good at the least cost.
Pandering to all who present an open hand is not, in the end, helpful but enabling.
“Please tell your “conservative” friends that welcoming strangers, feeding the hungry, visiting prisoners, caring for the sick”
Estovir, as you respect and understand, the Torah teaches compassion for the stranger and protection of the border. One without the other is either cruelty or chaos. Together, they form the moral architecture of a just society.
Compassion for the stranger
Exodus 22:20
“You shall not mistreat a stranger, nor oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.”
Leviticus 19:34
“The stranger who sojourns with you shall be to you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.”
Protection of the border
Deuteronomy 19:14
“You shall not move your neighbor’s boundary, set by the first ones, in your inheritance that you will receive.”
Numbers 34:1–12 (Parsha Masei- read this past Shabbat)
Paraphrasing: God Himself gives Moses the precise territorial borders for the children of Israel. The land is apportioned with care, east, west, north, and south, leaving no room for boundaryless possession.
Proverbs 22:28
“Do not remove the ancient boundary which your fathers have set.”
Pirkei Avot 1:1
Make a fence around the Torah.”
Robert Frost: Mending Fences
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
But he says again, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’
The neighbor is right. A wall does not mean enmity. It means clarity. And only with clarity can peace endure.
*. Robert Frost?
Estovir-It was also called sarcasm. I guess I should have stipulated that. In Georgia “Cuban” was mainly used because when I grew up there that was almost exclusively our exposure to Hispanics. When I moved to Texas, that was when I started to hear the term “wetback”. Also my Mexican Attending physician, when I was a fellow in Houston, of course, hated the term and I understood why. He also made sure that we all knew he was “Mexican” and not “Hispanic”. He also helped me learn better Spanish and taught me the various accents of Central America and the Caribbean.
@GEB
Thanks for pointing that out. ‘Hispanic’ implies Spanish descent, as in Europe. Additionally, ‘Latino’ is not universally applicable to all native Spanish speakers. And lastly: the indigenous peoples of Mexico and South America ‘*did not speak Spanish at all*. Good luck telling a modern progressive any of that, being most are unrepentant racists/bigots squeezing a single brain cell for all it’s worth.
*. Yep, and you and your catholic cohort can pay for it yourselves. Not with my money…
*. The US does that, Estovir, by providing jobs from the least to the greatest. We call it—> get a job.
*. Turn it off. It’s annoying.
*. We are done? Transformed into a 3rd world.
I’ve enjoyed seeing God’s timeline, mam. Quite a story of 2000 years compressed into a mere 4 years. Because the clock is huge man can’t see it.
If you are a student of deep history, you would have noted the long slog of progressivism throughout the western world. This is not a “4 year” project by no means. Rome did not fall over night, nor did Britain; it was the slow, continuous erosion of native culture by accepting one little change after another. We are at that point now and if we do not hold our ground against the rising islamic influence (which will be competing against our hispanic nationals for dominance) we will lose the ethos that created this great nation and become just another battle ground for tribal dominances within our borders – losing ourselves to more and more small enclaves of foreign elements.
Oh gosh, shucks, thanks for the correction and you would have noticed that time is done , lived out by actors upon God’s stage. Take care to get a good part in his next story?
Thanky, whim 😂
*. My money is on the Hindus.
My time is short before I’m off to the great actors’ studio in the sky, mam. Right now I’m not God’s fave.
Sayonara
*. Yes, whim, it’s a wrong-doing and a KNOWN language link among a cohesive group. Social psychology has it down to a science. Destroy the language is a necessary doing. It was all fixed as sabotage, treason against the United States. AG Bondi will follow through on Gabbard’s work. They’ve repeatedly tried to kill DJT and his gloves are off. Everything is sygoglin and cattywhompus.
*. Yes, it’s psyops . It’s right there.
Professor Turley writes, “They not only abused his young man, but they cost the county money in litigation and settlement.”
Like I always said, they didn’t build that but they sure love to hijack it. They have no skin in the game, so they don’t care what damage is caused. When individual communists can get sued for their actions, watch how fast they turn into compliant money grubbers.
The right is too afraid of the fight to put anyone in jail. Until they grow a spine, this will keep happening. We saw it during Trump’s first term good as it was, it could have been phenomenal if they’d had the guts to go after the real criminals.
*. You bet. Wait until their jug of milk is watered down. I can spend your money real good.
Time is done. You’ll recall the oceans on fire with spilled oil and fighter jets and choppers plunging into the lakes of fire? I, too, Diogenes.
*. Oh everyone is more righteous and works harder and is better than the rest of the people. Racism exists and it must be fought within oneself through laws. It’s unnatural. It’s ignorant not to know that.
It’s the reason for segregation by continent.
Birds of a feather …
Thanks
The only racism was on the part of the school officials/school board. Any person, of any color, can be an illegal alien (Canadian, German, Polish as well as Mexican, Guatemalan, etc.).
No one should be surprised at the outcome. There is no personal responsibility, for that matter any responsibility in the state sector. It’s in your face right or wrong, if you don’t like it lawyer up. If you win, a public apology and we’ll give you some tax payer money. The question is will this ever change, unlikely unless someone is held responsible for their actions, you know like we are.
This all starts at the top, and people might be astonished to learn how corrupt their local school boards are.
This is why I vote for *everything*. Everything I can. In some ways voting in not just your city elections, but district elections has more of an impact on day to day life than national elections do. Most people don’t, and you’d better believe that fact is exploited. We can’t stop at the White House and Congress – we need to keep the momentum going closer to home.
Granted, in my former bluer than the sky city, we managed to elect a non-dem in our district; the mayor simply declared the result invalid for ‘reasons’, held a runoff, in which the dem candidate magically got significantly more votes in what was previously a very close race (sound familiar?). It is pervasive at all levels, and we must pay attention.
I also remember the term “wetbacks”. I don’t see how that could be construed as racist since it only alludes to people crossing a certain river.
If you want to straighten out the schools then any states that have teachers unions should decertify them and also remove the right of teachers to be unionized. Teachers should have constraints on what they can bargain for. The national teacher’s unions are, for the most part, mouthpieces for the left and need to be severed from the local schools. That might more moderate some of their actions.
These boards also have insurance and re-insurance so it will be difficult to actually get to the board members pocket or the teacher. I would certainly look at the insurance contract and make sure that it covered this kind of act. I am disappointed in the verdict. Seems the family gave up a little too easily. I definitely would have demanded an apology.
Also not surprising if you look at Davidson County on the map. A very blue area of North Carolina. Outside of Greensboro and right next to the Research Triangle. UNC, NC State, Duke.
“All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service… The employer is the whole people, who speak by means of laws enacted by their representatives.”
“A strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent on their part to prevent or obstruct the operations of Government until their demands are satisfied. Such action, looking toward the paralysis of Government by those who have sworn to support it, is unthinkable and intolerable.”
*. I think it’s restricted to wage, hours and conditions. The political donation is voluntary.
Their influence takes two forms. They shape the schools from the bottom up, through collective bargaining activities so broad in scope that virtually every aspect of school organization bears the distinctive imprint of union design. They also shape the schools from the top down, through political activities that give them unrivaled influence over the laws and regulations imposed on public education by government, and that allow them to block or weaken governmental reforms they find threatening. In combining bottom-up and top-down influence, and in combining them as potently as they do, the teachers’ unions are unique among all actors in the educational arena.
. . . .
Before the 1960s, the power holders in America’s public school system were the administrative professionals charged with running it, as well as the local school boards who appointed them. Teachers had little power, and they were unorganized aside from their widespread membership in the National Education Association (NEA), which was a professional organization controlled by administrators. In the 1960s, however, states began to adopt laws that for the first time promoted collective bargaining for public employees. When the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) launched a campaign to organize the nation’s teachers into unions, the NEA turned itself into a labor union (and eventually kicked out the administrators) to compete, and the battle was on in thousands of school districts. By the time the dust settled in the early 1980s, virtually all districts of any size (outside the South) were successfully organized, collective bargaining was the norm, and the teachers’ unions reigned supreme as the most powerful force in American education.
https://www.hoover.org/research/staggering-power-teachers-unions
So, the root problem lies with state laws which allow collective bargaining by public employees.
After taking over our education system the left, under Soros, public unions and government funded grifting NGOs as well as other “agencies” have used city councils, school committees and D.A. offices to promulgate their radical agendas in blue areas all around the country.
Check out the votes of city councils in blue, barley blue and even non-blue cities and towns and see how far left they are. Many times they pass laws that even leftist mayors aren’t happy about. Then these leftist city councilors feed the pipeline into mayoral races and eventually even statehouses and again the left wins.
Nonsense.
Yes you are.
It is past timed that when people act extra-Constitutionally that they are required to pay out of pocket even in settlement…….This should include Prosecutors and Judges!!!!!!!!!!!! The use of taxpayer dollars to pay settlements and judgements must be stopped. Lest the conduct continues!
The teachers union has insurance, so no one is accountable.
A $20,000 settlement with no admission of wrongdoing or disciplinary consequences for the teachers and administrators isn’t a loss. It’s a huge win for the school. This isn’t about greed; it’s about accountability. The only deterrent these institutions seem to recognize is the sting of real consequences, say, a $2 million judgment and the termination of those responsible. From a cost-benefit perspective, this outcome teaches the district that it can weather these storms and continue business as usual. The lesson learned: it is cheap and effective to keep punishing free speech.
Sounds like what insurance companies do to avoid a trial. Cheaper to settle and walk awy
$2M judgement? How in the world do you think can can be done? Pick the judge? You’re too far fetched to understand.
Unfortunately School Boards, Public officials, Public employees, teachers etc do not face any punishments, dismissals. except in rare occasions or in deep Red States. School boards/Public Officials are elected and its the voters that have to vote them out. In the meantime, these School Board members continue on with their Left Wing Woke policies, even though they lose in courts or pay Settlements. The Voters have to stand up and clean house.
Mamdani is the future. Until we fully embrace communism, and then fail spectacularly, and hopefully recover, we will have to fight the idiotic socialist disease.
Dumb voters think socialism will work this time. We failed in the schools, as kids are no longer taught American philosophy, and we embrace immigrant socialist ideas. We are taught to be ashamed of ourselves and country, which is just sickening. Capitalism offers the best way forward, though it is far from perfect.
Once you accept communism, there is no going back. It was only the strength of the US that broke communism in Russia. When we are gone there will be no force remaining to stop this continually failing ideology. We must fight it now while we still can. We had a revolution 250 years ago to remove one form of oppression, let us not fall into the trap of “free stuff for everybody” and lose our freedom again.
The phrase illegal alien is used in federal statutes. Nobody had an issue with the term for decades. Then Democrats realized that because many of their policies are anti-reproduction (promoting abortion, birth control, recreational drug use, feminism, careerism, homosexuality, gender confusion, etc.) they were going to have to import millions more people to change the population for them to be viable in elections.
So the media conspired with far left NGOs to engage in a psy op operation against the public to soften perceptions about the illegal aliens. One way to do that is to turn the phrase “illegal alien” into a pejorative and then use social pressure to label people who continue to use the phrase illegal alien in public discourse as racist. So the media began using “undocumented immigrant” instead of illegal alien or illegal immigrant, and the cultural left used its cultural dominance to enforce the language change and punish those who don’t submit.
Except, of course, the phrase “undocumented immigrant” is a bald faced lie. There is nothing undocumented about illegal aliens. They are documented citizens of foreign countries – which is why the proper term to define them is “illegal alien”.
The goal of the lie, again, is to soften social perceptions about the illegal aliens. It’s propaganda. The idea is to use language that does not explicitly remind people that the very first act the foreign citizens engaged in when they came to the country was an illegal one. Democrats and their media apparatchiks and NGOs seem to believe that not reminding Americans of the illegal conducts of the aliens will make it easier to eventually ram through another amnesty program to turn tens of millions of illegal aliens into American citizens – to dilute the votes of American citizens. Since Democrats are the ones who have pushed hard to dilute the votes of American citizens, it’s logical to believe that once the illegal aliens get the right to vote they will reward Democrats for their willingness to dilute the votes of American citizens taxpayers.
What this case shows is how effective the psychological operation has been. A kid wants to know if the word “alien” in a writing assignment is defined as the one used in federal statues for decades to correctly refer to the documented foreign citizens as illegal aliens, or does the teacher mean space aliens. So he asks the teacher for clarification. For that he gets suspended and labeled a racist.
Beautifully stated.
The evil of pro death leftists leads them to have no living supporters so the must import new fodder sacrifice for them.
The most important point in your comment is that is was helped along by NGOs, groups of radicals using our money for their left wing grift.
Thank you for clarifying the absolute truth behind what is really happening
More evidence that school choice and vouchers are essential for the protection of liberty
Now now, people. Let’s not jump to any conclusions, we still haven’t heard from sooper internet genius George. When she’s done googling and becoming an “expert” in this topic, she’ll be right along to grace us with her “wisdom”.
When George comments I get to skip a 100-200 word example of bad education.
The nationwide campaign to restrict free speech by declaring certain words and ideas to be forbidden has apparently advanced well beyond what I once imagined to be implausible.
Where would an educated public school administrator get the bizarre idea that a simple classroom discussion could be the equivalent of hate speech raising an imminent danger of violence? Why wasn’t the student who “joked” about beating up the speaker expelled from school on the same grounds? This sounds like an ideal way to empty a schoolhouse and shut down an entire local school district.
Typical of the left/dems.
Check out the racial background of the kid that was expelled for using a term that is used in FEDERAL STATUTES vs the racial makeup of the kid that “joked” he was going to physically assault him. The schools today have strict zero policies for (some) language spoken by (some) people.
Hmm, it almost could make one think that there are civil rights violations going on, and since it involves multiple school officials, one might actually think that there’s a conspiracy to deprive someone of their civil rights. A simple settlement won’t make this go away so easily if the feds get involved.
Right. And the Hispanic student who threatened to, “Kick Christian’s ass” is simply ignored. That, right there, is your typical non-response to any kind of threat or harassment against white males today.
That was my first reaction when I read this. Why wasn’t the Hispanic student suspended?
“Why wasn’t the Hispanic student suspended?”
Racism.
*. You inferred Hispanic? It was a cracker looking for a fight.
With a little luck, the voters of that county will replace the school board members come election time….the ads have written themselves.
Below the level of mayor, most elections garner little attention and information on candidates is scarce. With a small infusion of cash to campaigns, outside organizations can influence the outcome very easily. This is how many school boards, local judgeships, state supreme court justices are chosen. More often than not, the public doesn’t know who they elected and is surprised when their extreme views and policies are revealed. The lesson is every election is important these days. Know who you are voting for. A good place to start is to check out who is financing their campaign.
Rather disgusting a ‘school’ would even attempt to harass this young man. I think back to when I was in college in AZ & was a volunteer deputy, we called them ‘wetbacks’
*. Thank you for that testimony officer. Do you collect nazi memorabilia?