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A high school in Lexington, North Carolina actually suspended a student for 3 days after he used the term “illegal alien” in class when asked a question by the teacher.

16-year-old Christian McGhee wasn’t using the term in a derogatory manner, but only in asking the teacher what she meant by use of the term “alien”.

Here’s the story from Newsweek:

Republicans on Tuesday expressed anger about a 16-year-old high school student suspended for using the term “illegal alien.”

According to the Carolina Journal, Christian McGhee was suspended from Central Davidson High School in Lexington, North Carolina, for three days last week after he allegedly said the term during an English class assignment.

The newspaper reported that the boy’s mother, Leah McGhee, said a teacher had given an assignment that used the word “alien,” and Christian responded by asking if the teacher meant “like space aliens or illegal aliens without green cards?”

Newsweek reached out to members of Central Davidson High School’s staff via email on Tuesday for comment. One staff member replied by saying they cannot discuss a specific student or their actions due to federal student privacy protections.

The Carolina Journal said it had obtained an email describing the incident that was sent to local officials. The email said another “young man in class took offense” to Christian’s remark and wanted to fight.

“Ultimately, his words were deemed by administrative staff to be offensive and disrespectful to classmates who are Hispanic,” the Carolina Journal wrote.

“Because of his question, our son was disciplined and given THREE days OUT of school suspension for ‘racism,’” Leah McGhee said in the email, per the Carolina Journal. “He is devastated and concerned that the racism label on his school record will harm his future goal of receiving a track scholarship. We are concerned that he will fall behind in his classes due to being absent for three consecutive days.”

On Tuesday, Leah McGhee appeared on The Pete Kaliner Show, which airs on the radio station WBT, and discussed the matter in more detail. She said the family had once lived in England, and Christian mentioned how people from that country also need green cards to reside in the U.S.

McGhee said she and her husband met with the school’s assistant principal and told him “illegal alien” is a term their son can look up in the dictionary.

“It is a term used as federal code, and it is a term that is heard frequently on many news broadcasts,” she said. “I feel that if this was handled properly in the classroom, it could have easily been used as a teachable moment for everyone.”

It’s absolutely bizarre that a school would suspend a student for using such an appropriate term, especially when it wasn’t used in a hateful manner. I kept thinking there would be more to this story when I went past the headline, but there really doesn’t appear to be any more. He just used a term that’s perfectly acceptable, but which the school declared off limits because they are run by Democrats or something.