A South Carolina teacher was recently ordered to stop teaching about systemic racism after showing her class a video on the subject ahead of a writing assignment. The writing assignment would have been based on Ta-Nehisi Coates’ book, “Between The World & Me” , which was a callback to James Baldwin’s “The Fire Next Time”. Both authors write to younger relatives about surviving systemic racism and living in a country fraught with obstacles to success for Black Americans. Two students in Mary Wood’s class objected to being shown the video because, “it made them feel ashamed to be white”.
Eyeroll. Seriously?
If a couple little snowflakes get their fee fees hurt by Ta-Nehisi Coates in an AP Language course, what on earth on they going to do in the real world? Besides avoid anyone not white?
Talk about a generation gap. I went to public school in California in the late 70’s early 80’s ( I graduated in 1982) If I had sat in Mr. Allen’s math class and told him, “I’m sorry Mr. Allen but I don’t get fractions, they make feel ashamed and stupid” Can you please stop teaching them? First, he would shaken the campus laughing so hard, then he would’ve handed me detention or given me even more math homework. Incidentally, Mr. Allen is the only teacher who ever flunked me. I totally deserved it, I never did my math homework and I still suck at math today. Is that Mr. Allen’s fault? Hell no, It’s mine.
So, now the party of spare the rod... has found a reason to flip flop. Racism. Now, if their little babies are made uncomfortable by teacher’s trying to prepare them for a world that has lots of diversity in it, they can just tell that teacher to quit it. With lots of nasty laws to back them up. Talk about snowflakes.
We go to school to learn. We go to school to learn history. How can we avoid repeating history if everyone refuses to learn it? How can we learn from history if teachers aren’t allowed to teach it? If any subject makes us uncomfortable, it’s up to teachers to help us learn why it makes us uncomfortable and how to change it for the better.
The first video is the segment from Alex Wagner Tonight and the second video is the expanded video she showed a snippet of.
By the way, the following video is 4 years old, just fyi.
*=stupid ass white people