Teacher’s Aide Allegedly Tells Black Girl: Your Brown Tights Make You Look Naked. Leave Class!

A teacher’s aide allegedly instructed an 11-year-old honors student at Mount Gleason Middle School in Sunland, Calif., to go to the principal’s office on Friday because her brown tights made her look naked, KTLA-TV in Los Angeles reports.

Deja Tunstill had never been in trouble before according to her mother, Yolanda Tunstill. When the mother went to the school to check on her daughter, she took a photo (above) of her in the tights in question. During a television interview, Deja looked very embarrassed about the the incident.

Tunstill had this to say about the teacher’s alleged comments:

“I felt discriminated against,” Deja’s mother, Yolanda Tunstill, told KTLA. “Shocked… like, I mean are you serious? I can’t believe this.”

“I can understand if they said okay, this type of material, this type of clothing,” Tunstill said.

She continued: “But for you to make a remark to state becasue the pants were brown and to make a remark about my daughter’s skin color… That was not right to me.”

The Los Angeles United School District responded to the allegations, saying that Deja was not removed because of her skin color. It cited the school’s dress code that states that tights are not allowed to be worn by students. The district also sent a letter to Tunstill stating that her daughter was not asked to leave school over the incident.

The school system’s response did not seem to sway Deja’s mother at all.

“She wears them all the time, all the time,” Tunstill insisted. She said that 80 percent of her daughter’s wardrobe consists of tights.

“There has never been a problem before until she wore the brown ones, and then it became a problem,” Tunstill said.