Teenager Writes Letter To School After Receiving Racist Threats From Peers

After years of enduring racial abuse at school, 13-year-old Za'Khari Waddy wrote a letter to school officials reprimanding them for their failure to properly address his numerous complaints.

The black student from Tabb Middle School in Yorktown, Virginia reached his “breaking point” when a fellow student said “horrifically racist things to him” during a bus ride home after a football game.

Za'Khari's heartbreaking letter, published by the New York Daily News, details some of the abuse he's had to face at the hands of his white classmates. The letter reads,

To Whom It May Concern: Yesterday on the football bus coming from our football game a kid ... started saying racist things to me. He then started saying he does not like blacks and he told me 200 years ago my ancestors hung from a tree and after he said that I should I hang from a tree. That made me super mad, so in the locker room I told him not to call me n----r or that I should be hung on a tree. The coaches took me away from the kid because I was really mad and they think I was going to fight him but I want someone to do something about it because I'm tired of boys messing with me because of my skin. I'm at my boiling point with this. Please do something about this because when I bring it to the office/principle you do nothing about it and I'm tired of the racism.

Both Za'Khari and his mother, Zettrona Powell, have reported the racism on several occasions, but to date, nothing “substantive” has been done to remedy it (a rep for the school says they're “investigating” Za'Khari's claims).

Powell hopes publicizing the letter will force school officials to address the blatant discrimination they've continued to ignore and "serious[ly] punish" those responsible.

Citations: Teenager Pens Heartbreaking Letter to School Detailing History of Racial Abuse (Complex), The heartbreaking letter of a Virginia teenager detailing the racial abuse he faces daily at school (NY Daily News)