Earlier this month, Maryland educator Marquise White was placed under investigation after he posted a TikTok video showing his young Black female students taking out his braids.
Now, the Maya Angelou French Immersion School teacher has shared his thoughts on why he is being criticized — and they absolutely make no sense. White, who has continued posting on social media since the incident, believed that his only mistake in the video was being young, attractive and Black.
Yes, you read that correctly. In a video he posted to TikTok, White explained his line of thinking.
“I firmly believe that I was attacked, and let me add this in here, mainly attacked by own community. I was mainly attacked by my own community for the most part...because I’m a young, handsome, Black man.” White said.
Of course, he didn’t stop there. White continued;
“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, attractive aura, you can sense that through the video. 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 1,000% of the time.”
White also said that if he was white, there wouldn’t have been any backlash. In the video, he also gives examples of educators at other schools engaging in what he believed to be far more inappropriate behavior.
“Y’all mad at me for creating bonds with my students. At least they’re not fighting me, at least they’re not fighting the teacher. At least my students aren’t smoking crack in the bathroom,” White explained.
What this “young, handsome Black man” seemingly fails to understand is that students should never touch their teacher’s hair, regardless of what race the teacher may be. They also shouldn’t be carelessly made the fodder of social media posts for Likes. There are other ways to bond with students that don’t include having them run a makeshift hair salon.