PUYALLUP, Wash — Audrey Carter didn’t think anyone would notice her hair wasn’t in her usual ponytail or braids. So the strange looks and immediate questions surprised her when she got to school.
“’What's wrong with your hair? Having a bad hair day? Why don't you put that under a hat or something?” were some of the questions Carter said her classmates asked her at Puyallup’s Stewart Elementary School.
The 11-year-old fifth grader is from a mixed-race family.
Last month, when she wore her hair in its natural state, she tried laughing off the initial reactions. But she couldn’t hold back after she felt a boy took the teasing too far.
“The kid called me 'Afro.’ And what I said was, 'My name's not Afro. You will assign me as my real name. My real name is Audrey. That's the name you'll call me by,’” Carter said.
The boy stopped bothering her.
RELATED: Sultan School Board member under fire for saying some special needs students are 'uneducatable'
Audrey’s mother, Adelle Carter, said she was so impressed with her daughter's reaction she wrote a post on Facebook.
“Talk to your kids about these types of issues even if they don't have this hair type," she said. "I think because I have these conversations with Audrey she was able to react the way she did. She knows those comments come from ignorance and she's here to educate. I'm proud of my baby.”
In the month since the incident, the Facebook post has had 37,000 likes, 11,000 comments, and 23,000 shares.
Audrey hopes the incident teaches people to be more considerate when they see something about someone that may be different.
“You can think, ‘Whoa it's different!’ You can't think it's ugly. You can't think that because it's not your hair. So you stick with your hair, I'll stick with mine," said Audrey Carter.