A teammate from the Crimson Hockey Club East posted a photo of a KKK member in the team chat. The team’s only Black member, Laquan Mongo, is now speaking out about how the incident has made him feel.
It happened last Sunday after a game. Laquan, 12, said that his fellow player sent a photo of people wearing Ku Klux Klan robes with hoods to a group chat, reported WCVB. The picture immediately sparked alarm within the preteen.
“I felt scared and sad because I’m the only Black kid on the team,” Laquan said.
The incident was reported to the governing body that oversees teams such as the Crimson Hockey Club East, the Eastern Hockey Federation (EHF).
A spokesperson for the EHF, David Turk, told WCVB that the matter had been referred to Massachusetts Hockey, a more superior governing body for youth hockey in the state.
Turk said the teammate who sent the image is no longer a member of the hockey club nor the federation.
“As a league, we have a zero-tolerance policy for this type of behavior and under the guidelines from USA Hockey, these incidents are headed by the U.S. Center for SafeSport,” Turk wrote in an email.
Laquan’s mother was also hurt by the KKK photo that her son and his teammates received.
“It brought tears to my eyes. I was mortified because he’s a kid and the other kid’s a kid,” she said.
Turk has said that the league will abide by whatever decision the USA Hockey National Office and SafeSport hands down.
This is not the first time racial intimidation has crept into interactions between children in the New England area. Last year, the Laconia Daily Sun highlighted the racial bullying problem in New Hampshire schools. The problem extends to children as young as elementary school.
Last May, a white student in Connecticut was arrested in connection with a Snapchat post where he asked why a Black student was not in chains and called him the N-word.
