In Texas, a white teenager invited some friends over to his home for a sleepover. Then - by his family's own admission - the night took a turn. The boys went from "playing" with BB guns - to
forcing their half-asleep Black classmate to drink their urine in the middle of the night.
Then, one of them
posted the video online. It quickly went viral.
That was five years ago. But now, a jury in Texas has just decided the
Black teenager's mother will need to pay his white tormenter $3.2 million in damages and lawyer's fees.
Sign the petition to demand he donate this money immediately to anti-racist causes or return it to the family!The viral video was 9 seconds long. In it, viewers can hear off-camera
laughs and snickering from boys in the background, as they pressure their Black classmate to drink from a cup filled with yellow liquid. In the cup was a
mixture of urine and apple juice. The boy had been asleep while they devised their plan. Then,
they woke him up and pushed him - while he was groggy, disoriented, and sleepy -
to drink while they filmed.The ringleader - the boy who had invited everyone over - even officially admitted to this in his own court filings.
When the Black teen's mother heard about this, naturally she was horrified and angry. She asked the police and school to investigate, but that didn't lead anywhere. The school claimed that since the horrible event occurred 'off-campus,' it supposedly couldn't do anything at all. Finally, she sued the ringleader's father for improper supervision of children.
In retaliation, he counter-sued her.So why did a jury award him - and not his bullied classmate - $3.2 million? Because
supposedly being called a racist was far worse. After the video went viral, the ringleader received lots of backlash from people who disapproved of his callous behavior. But
neither the victim nor his mother posted that video.Even more absurd, the jury awarded this money due to the white ringleader's privacy supposedly being violated and him experiencing emotional distress. Wasn't being betrayed by one's classmates and forced to drink urine, while a whole group of people laughed and filmed it,
the real emotional distress here? And again, regarding privacy - one of the ringleader's own friends and fellow perpetrators is the one who posted that viral video!
This whole situation is abhorrent and disgusting. There is no way a white family - that allowed their son to feed urine to a Black classmate - should be, quite literally, profiting off of this. The white teenager who launched this whole mess should do the right thing and give the $3.2 million back to the family he harmed, or at the very least donate it. Sign the petition!