On October 28, three videos taken by students at a North Carolina school surfaced and spread across the internet within a couple of hours. The videos depicted a black teenage girl being put in a headlock and flipped over by a white police officer while she was still sitting in her desk. The officer then proceeded to wrestle her out of the chair and drag her across the room until putting her in handcuffs.

“The trend of police brutality against people of color is unacceptable; It’s time to put an end to it,” said senior Chiara Lucchesi.

It was later revealed that this altercation was the result of the student putting her phone away too slowly and then refusing to leave class when the teacher asked her to. The officer was called by the school to manage this situation.

“School should be a safe place for learning. They [students] should not have to fear a police officer harming them in a school atmosphere,” said sophomore Emi Mulay.

This situation accurately portrays the disconnect between the black Americans who are being discriminated against, and the white Americans who feel that there is nothing wrong with the policing system in the USA today.

The real problem, however, is that black students are being forcibly thrown on the ground to be escorted out of a classroom while back in June, a white terrorist who killed nine black people in a church was calmly escorted without being harmed. Even after openly admitting that what he did was a hate crime against the African-American community, the police treated him with more respect than the teenage girl in North Carolina.

The problem does not lie solely on the shoulders of the police. After the videos spread, many people took to Twitter to express their support for the police officer responsible and their opinion that the girl deserved it. Racist comments are not eradicated, they are simply masked by the word “opinion.”