Marquise White, the Maryland teacher who was criticized after a viral TikTok video showed a group of female students unbraiding his hair, once again addressed the incident and claimed he was targeted because of his looks.
Initial reports claimed White was terminated following the backlash after the video went viral. But it was later established he had rather been placed under investigation, Vibe reported.
WUSA9 also reported that White is a Prince George’s Schools employee. The news outlet further reported that he wasn’t fired but was rather “reassigned out of the classroom pending the outcome of the investigation.”
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White in a video that was shared on TheShadeRoom on Sunday touched on his issue and questioned why other educators who acted similarly did not face any criticisms whatsoever. White shared examples, with the first video showing a group of White female students bedazzling a male teacher’s head.
“Why isn’t this man not being publicly executed like I was,” White says in reference to the male teacher getting his head bedazzled. “Just few subtle differences but we essentially did the exact same thing.”
White also stated it wouldn’t have been a problem if he were a female teacher. Elsewhere in the video, White shared a post of a teacher who shared a video of her backside with the caption, “Y’all think my 10th graders looking at me?”
White said he “firmly” believed he was attacked and explained why that was the case. “I firmly believe that I was attacked, and let me add this in here, mainly attacked by my own community,” White stated. “I was mainly attacked by my own community for the most part. Anyway, I firmly believe that I was attacked because I’m a young, handsome, Black man.”
He added: “People who watched this video and thought anything weird, or anything suggestive, saw me, was attracted to me. I got tattoos, I got an attractive energy, [an] attractive aura, you can sense that through the video. And, since you can sense that attractiveness, or sense you are attracted to me, you projected your own thoughts, ideologies, traumas, and experiences, onto me and my children. And that is a hill I’m willing to die on 1000% of the time.”
The school district’s code of conduct stipulates that teachers must respect the “personal boundaries” of a student by “maintaining proper space and demonstrate appropriate behaviors” that ensure all students experience a safe learning environment, WTOP News reported. Employees are further told not to record the faces and voices of students unless they’re being taught in a performing arts or career technology class.
But White claimed that his TikTok videos that included his students had been approved by their parents.
