Joel Mungo, a Black teacher at Menchville High School in Newport News, told WAVY that a student of his left a banana outside of his classroom door in what was “clearly a deliberate act.”

“Someone left a banana at my door. The banana was perfectly placed in the doorway,” Mungo told WAVY, who viewed photos of the incident. “Then it happened once a month.” 

The bananas play on the racist trope that compares Black people to monkeys. After the sixth incident, Mungo reported the issue to school administrators, who used surveillance footage to determine that the culprit was one of Mungo’s 10th grade students. 

“Initially when the parents were contacted, the parents seemed to be truly embarrassed. Then when the student was suspended and the parents were informed, then the parents were irate,” Mungo told the outlet. “It’s 2022. Just to have some type of hate crime is absolutely ridiculous. I was sickened.”

He added: “It’s time to take a stand and just let people know it will not be tolerated. I know I’m not tolerating it. You have to speak up. You can’t allow it to go on because then it will just continue to go on.”