Texas elementary school segregated kids by hair color for lesson on racism, parents say

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Parents at a San Antonio elementary school are outraged after they say their kids were segregated by hair color and shown a Spike Lee documentary during a lesson on racial discrimination.

Parents told News 4 San Antonio that fifth graders at Leon Springs Elementary were segregated into two groups according to their hair color and then treated differently based on what group they fit into.

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"All of the dark-haired kids, the brown- and black-haired kids, were treated as the privileged ones and the blond-haired and the redhead kids were the ones treated not so nicely," mother Brandi Lininger told the outlet.

The mother said the children in the fair-haired group were told they were not as intelligent as the dark-haired group, and they were made to clean up after the other children.

The students were also reportedly shown a Lee documentary called "4 Little Girls" about the 1963 bombing of an Alabama church, which includes graphic autopsy photos of the girls' bodies.

The teacher said she fast-forwarded past the graphic parts, but Lininger said her daughter still saw the photos, News 4 reported.

An elementary school classroom (iStock)

"The things that she said that she skipped over, my daughter was able to describe to us to a ‘T.’ So that night our daughter was unable to go to sleep in our own room, she was scared," father Mike Lininger said.

The Liningers said they weren’t notified of the lesson beforehand.

"They send us notes and newsletters about everything else," Brandi Lininger said. "Your child is going to see ‘The Polar Express,’ and it's pajama day on Friday before winter break, and we get no notice that they're going to do a social experiment on segregation."

Opponents of an academic doctrine known as Critical Race Theory attend a packed Loudoun County School board meeting until the meeting erupted into chaos and two people were detained, in Ashburn, Virginia, June 22, 2021. (REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein/File Photo)

The Northside Independent School District admitted in a statement to News 4 that the material was inappropriate for fifth graders.

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"The activity and video in question were part of a larger fifth-grade project-based lesson around the inequity of segregation," the district said. "While the campus did receive positive feedback from several parents . . . District and campus administration recognize the parent’s concerns and agree that the activity and video are not age-appropriate and will not be used again."

Northside did not respond to Fox News’ inquiry about why parents were reportedly not notified of the exercise beforehand.