Watch: Mother Shares Experience After Son’s Suspension Over Innocent Inquiry About Undocumented Immigrant

When students can no longer ask simple questions about hot-button issues without fear of disciplinary action, then you know something has gone terribly wrong in the American education system.

Especially when that disciplinary action essentially accused a student of racism, when he just wanted clarification on an assignment.

The student in question was 16-year-old Christian McGhee from Central Davidson High School in Lexington, North Carolina, who received a three-day suspension for using the term “illegal aliens” in class.

According to the New York Post, McGhee was asking about his teacher’s use of the word “alien” with regard to an assignment on April 9. He questioned what she meant by that word, asking “Like space aliens or illegal aliens without green cards?”

A Hispanic student then joked he was going to “kick Christian’s a**” over the comment, which then led to the teacher escalating the situation to the assistant principal.

The assistant principal, Eric Anderson, according to Fox News, then gave McGhee a three-day suspension over the incident.

According to the report, the student’s legal team produced audio recordings of Anderson saying he believed not doling out such a punishment would be “unfair” to students facing the same punishment “for saying the n-word.”

It should be obvious to pretty much anyone that the “n-word” and “illegal aliens” are not remotely in the same category.

“Illegal alien” is a factual term referring to an immigrant who entered the country without proper permissions or documentation, while the “n-word” is a racial slur dating back to the days of Jim Crow and slavery.

To equate the two via a three-day school suspension (one the parents could not appeal, no less) was simply absurd.

McGhee and his mother, with the aid of the Liberty Justice Center, have therefore filed a lawsuit against the administrators for this ridiculous punishment, with McGhee’s mother, Leah McGhee, speaking about the case with Fox News.

McGhee clarified that, after the exchange between her son and the other student, the teacher had called Anderson, who took the three of them out into the hall.

According to McGhee, “both boys said the exchange was innocent, and that there was no offense taken” but the assistant principal insisted that “no, this is a big deal, these words do carry weight.”

McGhee then told Fox that the three-day suspension resulted in her son missing several important track meets, as well as creating anxiety that her son would be branded as a racist on his permanent record.

She and her family attempted to handle the issue privately, but after four weeks of emails with no response, “we had no other choice but to file a lawsuit.”

All for a word which, as McGhee said during a recent school board meeting, “there certainly isn’t a case for racism, due to the fact that ‘alien’ is not a race.”

And, indeed, she was absolutely correct.

The word “Alien” merely refers to a foreigner, and “illegal” is a necessary qualifier.

It was absurd for Anderson to punish McGhee for a question that was not racially motivated, as well as to insist that it was a big deal when neither student involved felt that way.

Such a disciplinary measure for alleged racism could harm McGhee’s chances at getting into college. As his mother told Fox, it has already resulted in retaliation from the family’s community, before the whole truth was known.

Things got so bad that McGhee pulled her son out of school and is now homeschooling him for the rest of the year, according to a report by the U.K.’s Daily Mail.

But that, of course, is how liberalism works.

Everything is about race, even when it isn’t, and these newly racially insensitive labels must be offensive, even when they aren’t.

They believe those who inadvertently utter the newly forbidden words must be punished for their offense, even if no offense was meant or given.

Therefore, words everyone could use in jest five minutes ago could result in a three-day suspension with no appeal, potentially jeopardizing a teenager’s future in the name of “tolerance” and “fairness.”

There might be plenty of “tolerance,” but there will never be any mercy.