The mother of a Walker County high school student said Tuesday that she has filed a federal complaint after a teacher allegedly called her son a “terrorist.”
Sarah Hall was accompanied by the Georgia chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) at a press conference in front of the U.S. Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights in downtown Atlanta. The organization says the teacher, Perry Fouts, violated Title VI of the federal Civil Rights Act, which protects people from discrimination based on race, color or national origin. Hall’s son, James Darraj, is Palestinian American.
Fouts, a Career Technical and Agricultural Education teacher at Lafayette High School in northwest Georgia, taught Darraj’s former girlfriend, CAIR-Georgia said. Fouts made the comment when he approached the girl and her friends at lunch one day, according to the organization’s attorney Keon Grant.
“They were discussing their significant others and (Fouts) commented, ‘Is this the one you’re dating now? The junior terrorist?’”
Darraj, a sophomore, said the rhetoric he said Fouts used can be harmful, especially amid news coverage of the Israel-Hamas war.
Credit: Contributed
Credit: Contributed
“I believe a formal apology is not too much to ask,” he said. “Being labeled a terrorist because I’m Palestinian is not only hurtful to me, but perpetuates dangerous stereotypes at a time when children across this country, both Jewish and Palestinian, are experiencing unprecedented violence based on their religious and ethnic origins.”
Fouts did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.
Walker County Schools Superintendent Damon Raines issued a statement to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that says “the matter was promptly and thoroughly investigated” in compliance with school board policy. Raines added: “An apology letter was provided and personnel action was taken. If this matter has risen to a complaint with OCR, the system has no additional comment.”
CAIR-Georgia provided the AJC a copy of what it says is Fouts’ full apology, which reads: “I had much rather this conversation be face to face. I made a statement in my classroom that was taken completely out of context. If that has offended anyone, I am sorry.”
CAIR-Georgia Communications Manager Nazia Khanzada said the statement does not address Darraj nor accept fault for Fouts’ remarks, so the organization still demands a formal apology.
CAIR-Georgia has documented a surge in harassment of Palestinian Americans since the conflict in Gaza began Oct. 7. Grant said in 2022, civil rights complaints comprised just over half of the complaints the group received. Since October, he said, they’ve made up 87.6% of the organization’s complaints.
Hall said she complained to the Walker County school board that Fouts violated the state’s so-called “divisive concepts” law. The 2022 law bans nine concepts from being taught in schools, including teaching one race is superior or making students feel uncomfortable due to their race.
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