Two white suburban Michigan students have been suspended after school district officials viewed a video of them calling their black classmate the N-word.

Bloomfield Hills Schools Superintendent Robert J. Glass called the incident “egregious.”

“We take these things very seriously,” he told WDIV-TV. “I think we took the appropriate action in this case.”

One of the students was suspended for two weeks –the other for two days.

Shanari Williams, the mother of Phoenix Williams, says the students should be expelled in accordance with the school’s zero-tolerance policy for their behavior towards her son.

The slurs allegedly started last spring just days after a video of a University of Oklahoma fraternity chanting racist slogans surfaced. While speaking to WDIV, Phoenix said students began looking up racist jokes online during class, then turned them on him.

He said teachers did not intervene, and he never spoke up because he didn’t think anyone would believe him. So he decided to record the incident during a school field trip.

Phoenix, who is an honor student and athlete, has been completing his assignments at home because the family fears for his safety for coming forward.

The families of the students involved in the taunting have issued statements:

“As parents we are both embarrassed and disappointed by this inexcusable behavior by our son,” the family of one of the students said in a statement. “Under no circumstances do we condone such behavior.”

An attorney representing the other family said in a statement:

“My client is deeply remorseful for his ugly action. He has learned at a very young age a valuable lesson in tolerance [and] not treating people differently on the basis of race.”

Phoenix said he decided to come forward to spark a conversation about race so other students won’t go through what he has.

“I want a peaceful life,” he told WDIV. “When I come to school, I don’t really want to be confronted like this.”

What a shame.

Watch WDIV’s report below: