6-Year-Old Banned from Arkansas Daycare for Wearing Black Lives Matter Shirt

Tara C. Mahadevan
·2 min read
1

An Arkansas daycare kicked out a 6-year-old girl for wearing a shirt that said “Black Lives Matter.”

Journei Brockman had been attending His Kids Preschool for six months when she was told not to return, Arkansas’ Fox16 reports. The child’s mother, Deval Brockman told the news station that last Thursday, an employee at her daughter’s school called them and said she didn’t “like” or “agree” with the shirt. The employee asked Brockman to not let Journei wear the shirt to school again.

Brockman filed a complaint with state officials, asserting that she was told her daughter could wear what she wanted unless it included profanity. “If I’m supporting something, I’m going to wear it, my child is going to wear it, to help say that our voice needs to be heard,” Brockman said.

After the first warning, Journei went back to school last Friday wearing a shirt emblazoned with a raised fist on the back. When Brockman picked her daughter up later that day, she was told Journei couldn’t return, with an employee claiming that the shirt promoted racism.

“I got very upset. I’m just like are you serious? Over a T-shirt?” Brockman said. She also said that a school director reportedly told her, “I am not going to tell you how to raise your child, but you need to reevaluate how you’re parenting her.”

“It’s not political, it’s everyday life, it’s all over the news. Right is right and wrong is wrong,” Brockman said.

Patricia Brown, director of His Kids Preschool, said in a statement to FOX16, “We feel a childcare environment is not a place for a parent’s political views to be addressed or played out, regardless of race.”

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