00:00Chido was horrified when her 8-year-old daughter explained she'd been racially targeted at
00:07school several times.
00:09My heart dropped really.
00:11I wasn't expecting something like that to happen so soon.
00:14Floored by the revelation, the Brisbane mother made a plea to her parent group chat.
00:20Please talk to your children.
00:21My child can't change her skin colour.
00:24That's how she's born.
00:25Chido also met with the principal at the school in Brisbane's west, who she says downplayed
00:30the severity of the racist incidents.
00:33Why is my daughter being asked to continue as normal with a person who's constantly targeting
00:39her for something she can do nothing about?
00:41Recently, the Queensland African Coalition Council surveyed 150 African youth from both
00:46private and public schools and found 100% of them had been racially abused at school.
00:52A lot of young black kids are afraid to speak up and defend themselves when other people
00:58say the N-word.
00:59The teachers and the principal were the ones saying the N-word to them.
01:02So they just sit there and they think like, oh, if they can say it, I can say it too.
01:05School isn't enjoyable, but it's somewhere where they say you should have fun learning.
01:10But it's like when you wake up and you just don't want to go anymore, it's like...
01:14There was never a question in my mind that these kids actually experience racism, but
01:19it's just a matter of at what level and the degree of racism that they had to go through.
01:23The QACC's survey is part of a broader report which includes recommendations for tackling
01:29racism in schools.
01:31We need to make sure that they actually employ people from diverse backgrounds to support
01:37some of these kids during and after school.
01:40Frustrated she got little support from her daughter's school, Chita created a petition
01:45calling for racism to be grounds for expulsion.
01:48I would hate for my daughters in 20 years, 30 years time to be sitting down having an
01:52interview like this about race.
01:55She says she has hundreds of signatures already.
01:58Titenda Chibika, ABC News, Brisbane.
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