A Black Kansas cheerleader says that she was kicked off the team after refusing to remove her bonnet during cheerleading practice.
Talyn Jefferson, a junior at Ottawa University, said that she wore her bonnet to practice to prevent her from hitting a teammate in the face with her almost 3-foot-long box braids. Jefferson told The Kansas City Star that once she refused to remove it, the coach berated her in a racist rant. She was then kicked out of practice and ultimately removed from the team.
“I got kicked off because I was standing up for myself against microaggressive comments that the coach made toward me, that made me and others very uncomfortable,” said Jefferson. “Instead of the university addressing the fact that the comments were out of line and made me uncomfortable and the coach should have apologized, their solution was to kick me off instead.”
Jefferson’s story went viral on January 16th when a close friend of hers detailed the incident in a tweet, where she also tagged the university.
In a statement posted to their official Instagram, Ottawa shot down claims that Jefferson was removed due to her hairstyle and called the “misleading information” circulating on social media “unfortunate.”
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However, Jefferson stands by her account of what took place that day, saying that she has “no reason to lie” in this instance.
The 20-year-old told The Kansas City Star that she would be transferring to another school.
