Daughter accused of instigating a serious incident. Is she really wrong?

[wasshereallywrong]

I have name changed for this to not link to previous threads as this is outing and I have told people in real life.

I am going to preface this be saying my DD 13 is a gobby little sod so I know she can be annoying and hasn't got the best school record but she has no time for injustice which has led to conflict for her in the past but to todays incident...

My DD has several black friends (we come from a very white area). She was told today that one lad was going around using the N word. This isn't the first time and so she took it upon herself to confront him and tell him it isn't right and it is racist. Like I say she is gobby so I imagine she was heated when she said it. He pushed her away and told her to leave him alone, everyone gathered around and she said she wasn't going to fight and went to move away, he pushed her again and ran off. Two of her friends then caught up with the lad and several punches were thrown. I am not saying the fight was acceptable. It was 2 on 1 and he was hurt and fighting is never ok.

My DD has now been given a day of internal exclusion because she initiated a serious incident. Did she though or did she call out unacceptable racism? Was it not the lad who was using the n word the person who instigated it? I have said that she has to accept that she was wrong to get involved in something that wasn't to do with her but was she wrong? If people don't call out racist behaviour how is it stopped? I am going to be speaking to the head teacher tomorrow as I missed his call today but AIBU to be proud of her for taking a stand against racist behaviour and to be arguing with the punishment for starting this when if he hadn't made the comments it wouldn't have been necessary to 'talk' to him about it. And is the school wrong for punishing someone for calling out this behaviour?

Totally agree with this and made the same point myself. Your daughter stirred it up and now two black children are in trouble for being in a physical fight. It was quite the drip feed for the OP to reveal that. Your daughter trying to be the big girl lead to potentially quite severe consequences for those two boys which would have been unlikely to happen if she had dealt properly with what she heard from someone else rather than go blazing in. You said it’s a mostly white school, your daughter didn’t have one thought for the problems she was causing for black students. If your daughter is so committed to standing up for her friends she should feel terrible at the position they are now in. It’s nothing to do with being anti racism and everything to do with your daughter being a mouth.

YABVU. She didn’t “call out” racist behaviour, she went after someone and started a row, based on a rumour, and the person she had a go at was physically attacked and injured because of her actions
. She should have raised any concerns with a teacher.

It’s a little like me hearing that someone hit my son and instead of notifying the police (or school) I assemble my own mob of vigilantes and go start an argument that ends in violence.

If you can’t see that what she did (inciting physical violence) was worse than a child using a racist word then you are probably the problem with her behaviour.

Give over.. he pushed her away as she was in his face. That isn’t violence, that’s standing up to a bully, because lets be clear here, that’s what OPs daughter is - a bully who probably has a reputation of jumping in before she engages her brain, and she has been manipulated by others who clearly know what she’s like.

I don’t see that she did anything terrible. Sometimes there is a price for speaking up, but it doesn’t mean we should never do so.

I’m loving the way you say several punches were thrown like - into thin air?

OP why aren't you acknowledging that she didn't hear what was said herself?

She did not confront racism.

She hard gossip about another pupil and, armed only with rumours, took it upon herself to deal with the matter.

She created the situation by not checking her facts before kicking off.

He pushed her twice. It's the fact th that she confronted him about something she "was told". That she was pushed more than once i.e. He had to get her out of his space on more than one occasion. That is not showing control...remember she's being trained how to use physical force in r potentially deadly way.

Shocking behaviour from your DD, hoping to earn her stripes for calling him out. I’ll bet he is not a popular boy either!

No doubt your daughter got caught up in the excitement and behaved accordingly. Her actions certainly gave the others who punched him a free shot. The school is 100 percent right in what they said- she did create an incident. All children know the best thing to do is tell someone in authority. Had she done that, the boy would have been picked up immediately and dealt with. She was trouble making, plain and simple.

QP, have you any idea how disruptive to the safe running of a school a fight in the full view of other students, during break time is? It creates a very unhealthy buzz amongst other students, whose lessons are then disrupted and learning destroyed by the endless muttering and recounting of what they think happened. It becomes not just a distraction but an unhealthy excitement amongst other students, often leading to other unrelated fights during the day. Violence begets violence.

We wonder daily what’s happening to our kids on MN, why are they are so out of control, why are so many teachers leaving, why does my kid have so many lessons with cover staff. Look no further than yourself OP, and all those people keen to congratulate your daughter.

She is very lucky she only got internal exclusion, I’d have excluded her for two days.Children don’t run schools, adults do.

I am glad you are going into the school tomorrow, to apologise for your daughters behaviour I hope.

Fuck that. It’s essentially girl blamed for serious incident aka violence because she opened her mouth.

That’s not how it works. Violence is violence and even if instigated unacceptable by the perpetrators. Her friends should be hauled over the coals 2 on 1 is outrageous behaviour and the racist boy who pushed her should also face punishment.

She should have told a teacher about the racist language rather than sorting it out herself. However speaking up is a real skill which is more likely to be appreciated once she’s out of education.

Some little dickhead who thinks it’s okay to go around using racist degrading language isn’t going to care what some teacher says. He’ll just deny it anyway. Let him hear from his peers how out of order he is. Sounds like he got what he deserved and your daughter was very restrained. The two lads shouldn’t have hurt him but then words like that are very powerful and get a strong response.

Except the daughter wasn't standing up to racism, she was reacting to gossip with no proof that anything racist actually happened.

Good for her for standing against racism. However, in this instance, she based her actions on his history and rumours, not on facts. It also sounds like she acted in anger and without thinking. Like you say, 13 year old gobby behaviour. So, I would be talking to her about evidence, facts and other ways she could have done. She's only 13 year old now but she needs to be able to calm down her gobbiness so she doesn't make this type of mistake again.

Well ideally, it would have been best if she’d dealt with the racist kid in the proper way and told the teachers. But would their way of dealing with it really have had much of an impact?

She sounds like a girl after my own heart, I tend to deal with injustice head-on too. I do think that being publicly called-out and then beaten-up will definitely help him to reconsider what he deems appropriate. He also should not have pushed your DD.

She did however get involved with trouble so needs to accept the punishment and maybe next time try to deal with it in a more mature way.

@TiredandHungry19 Firstly I have reported your comment with the use of ‘mental’ as a slur - that’s absolutely unacceptable language. How can you be condemning racist language whilst using such terminology?
Secondly, don’t try and call others racist because they don’t agree with how OPs daughter has conducted herself. No one has defended the lad in question or his alleged behaviour, all four children have been punished and OPs daughter has been given one days exclusion for her part which seems fair.

Stop creating your own agenda here. There’s absolutely no evidence that he was racist. She heard from a friend of a friend of a friend…..Sounds like she loves drama, probably didn’t like him and just bleated about this being the reason because some idiots would actually believe her, as this thread proves…

Lol and your clearly not a bloke. This kind of thing happens all the time in bars. It’s a life lesson for men evacuating yourself from verbal escalations before violence occurs.

I’d respond but it’s hard to read your posts. Punctuation is your friend here.

Oh wise up!!! The girl is a slabber. She started a row and then tried to run away after lighting the blue touch paper. This is not a feminist issue. I absolutely cannot stand those who rile up everyone else and then try to say it’s nothing to do with me. The girl was obviously trying to impress her friends. Now there’s been a fight and they’ve probably been excluded and have a record of punching someone. Brava, not…