Yet another video of a black person being harassed while simply trying to live their life has gone viral. In this case, a white biology professor at the San Antonio campus of the University of Texas called campus police on a black student in her class Tuesday. Why? The student allegedly had her feet on the chair in front of her.
How many officers arrived? As shown in the video, three campus police officers, led by Professor Anita Moss herself, removed the student from the class. Unsurprisingly, several students recorded the incident.
One of those students was Apurva Rawal, who took the incident to Twitter.
The student in question also took to Twitter to identify herself:
The president of the university, Taylor Eighmy, released a statement, including the following:
Today we had an incident where one of our African American students was escorted from a biology class by members of UTSA’s police department at the request of a faculty member.
While the facts aren’t fully known regarding today’s incident, our Office of Equal Opportunity Services is already conducting an investigation into possible discrimination.
The university issued a comment, cross-posted to Twitter:
Most recently, UTSA offered another update, saying that instead of being out for just the week, Moss will be out for the rest of the semester. The student has been welcomed back to the class, which will be taught by someone else.
While this is moderately good news—at least, it’s not as bad as it could be—it’s impossible to see yet another video of innocent people being accosted, simply because of their race, without feeling anger and exhaustion.
Recently, two black women were harassed by a white woman while waiting for AAA assistance in a parking lot. Another white woman called the police on a nine-year-old black child, saying he sexually assaulted her (he did not). And yet another white woman literally tried to block a black man from entering his home (she was, at least, later fired). Hopefully, as people continue to call out this racism—including making it go viral on social media—it will continue to be stamped out.