Black Girl Jumped By Three White Male Classmates, Who Cut Her Locs And Called Them “Nappy” And Ugly”

A 12-year-old Black girl was pinned down and assaulted by three of her white male classmates at a Virginia private school.

“Ugly” and “nappy” is what three white boys called Amari Allen’s hair during recess on Monday. The trio of sixth-grade boys ambushed Amari as she was about to use a slide on the playground at the Immanuel Christian School in Fairfax, Virginia, local outlets reported. “They said my hair was nappy and I was ugly,” said Amari. “They kept laughing and calling me names,” Amari told WUSA9. “They called me ‘ugly,’ [and] said I shouldn’t have been born.”

When the bell rang, “they ran off laughing, and I was just sitting there,” the girl added, in tears. The incident went on for five minutes, and there is no released information on where the school staff was at the time of the attack on Amari. Amari, who is a straight-A student and violin player, said the boys had bullied her in the past, adding that they have stolen her lunch and verbally abused her.

Amari never told her parents; it was only because Amari’s grandmother, Cynthia Allen, noticed her locs were shorter that something was wrong. “It’s very painful,” Cynthia Allen said. “I want to see them dismissed from the school. I want to see something done.” The girl’s grandfather, Dewaune Allen, said his heart broke when he heard about the trauma his granddaughter went through. “I was just paralyzed,” he said. “I couldn’t get myself together.”

The incident was reported to the police, and Amari’s family met with school administrators on Thursday to address the hate crimes Amari had endured. Head of School Stephen Danish said administrators were “deeply disturbed by the allegations” and that the school would be investigating. “We take seriously the emotional and physical well-being of all our students, and have a zero-tolerance policy for any kind of bullying or abuse,” he said in a statement.

This same school recently came under fire for banning gay and transgender students, and requiring jobs applicants to pledge marriage is only between a man and a woman.