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A senior student at Caldwell High School, Idaho, was pulled out of class on claims of violating the dress code by wearing a brown pride hoodie. It did not sit right with the student, as she led a brown pride protest on Tuesday, January 17. Photos and videos of the protest went viral on social media.
Brenda Hernandez, the student whose hoodie started the controversy, staged a protest to uphold her Mexican culture. Netizens responded to the demonstration in varied ways. While some made fun, others backed the students and their cause.
One user shared a photo of Martin Luther King Jr. and wrote:
"Really? This is where we are?"
According to Brenda Hernandez, she wore a hoodie with the words "brown pride" and an Aztec mural on the front. She added:
“Same thing in the back, but in the back, it had lowriders, nothing inappropriate; I was covered, and I wasn't breaking the dress code that I knew of."
Hernandez was pulled out of class for wearing this hoodie and violating the dress code the school had set. She was informed that the hoodie had gang affiliations. Hernandez has already started a petition for her cause, and it already has over 400 signatures.
Idaho's Brown Pride protest raised a debate on social media
Brenda Hernandez shared a video of the protest on her TikTok and Instagram accounts. In the video, she wrote in the subtext that the teachers told her to take off the brown pride hoodie because it could come off as racist and was similar to wearing a white pride shirt. Hernandez claimed that the teachers lied to her when they told her that she was allowed to walk inside the building before her class. She wrote:
“...and told me last sec I couldn’t”
Though she received positive comments from people who supported her for calling for a protest, people on other social media platforms did not all have a similar opinion on this matter.
Many mocked the students for putting up a protest to defend Mexican culture while writing their slogans in English on placards and not using Spanish. They also made fun of how these students were trying to keep their Mexican culture alive while they were living in the United States instead.
While a few others jumped in to speak for Caldwell High's student movement and elaborated on how it was wrong to draw similarities between brown pride and white pride or call it reverse racism.
Edin Alex Enamorado shared the protest video on their TikTok account and pointed out how the state of Idaho is known to be racist and uphold bigotry. They said 81% of Idaho's population consists of white people, and people of color are more than often discriminated against.
Executive Director at Poder Idaho, Estefania Mondragon said:
"It's just disturbing and disgusting behavior from adults toward students, as we saw in some of these TikTok videos. There is even physical violence against students of color within the Caldwell school system.”
State Director for the League of United Latin American Citizens, Sunny Ligas said:
"I'm not trying to be racist, but it's mostly white people that don't understand the terminology or culture, and they keep on twisting it, saying its gang and gangs and gangs. That's not the thing."
Calwell High’s principal, Anita Wilson, addressed the matter and said that their dress code is relatively more strict than other school districts because their school has had gang troubles before, and ‘Brown Pride’ bears a direct link with gangs.
Following the Brown Pride protest at Caldwell High School on Thursday morning, graffiti saying “white power” were drawn all over the school. The Caldwell Police Department and the Caldwell School District are currently investigating the vandalization as a hate crime.
