What a world we live in where there are people who don’t think racism still exist. Recently, at J.W. Dodd Middle School in Freeport, New York, a white female teacher by the name of Shelly Scully assigned her students a Reconstruction era assignment. It’s not bad that the teacher wanted to discuss the era in time and slavery, but what is bad is what she ordered her students to do.
What Shelly told her student to do in the social studies class was to,
“write something funny about these pictures of slavery and make it real funny because she didn’t want to be bored”
The parent who shared this story, via her facebook page, (which has been shared over 1600 times) was completely furious by the assignment being issued to the students. The teacher shows her obvious racist tactics, prejudice views, and blatant insensitivity towards a very serious topic.
Moreover, the fact that this teacher had the audacity to think it was naturally ok for her to instruct this lesson to her students is beyond asinine.
Under some of the pictures the students wrote,
“Black girls work hard, play hard”
Us Black people need to Get Out”
“Getting that money”er Why
What could possibly be funny about any of these captions? What is even more strange about this story is that the news outlets like yahoo or local media outlets in New York, wouldn’t even name the teacher at J.W. Dodd Middle School. We wonder why?
According to Yahoo, the superintendent released a statement that followed,
“The emotional and social wellness of our students is always our highest priority and we take any insensitive comments made by staff very seriously. I have directed that an investigation of these claims be immediately conducted. Since this matter involves a District employee and is a personnel matter, there will be no further comment until a thorough investigation and careful consideration of the facts of this matter are completed.”
Why is the teacher still employed? The Superintendent stated, their conducting a thorough investigation to get all the facts before reprimanding the teacher. Sounds like a causal excuse to find a way to keep the teacher employed.
There is no excuse for racism. There is no excuse for our teachers to be issuing assignments to students encouraging them to share the same biases and prejudices as the teacher constructing the assignment.
Not all racist have to wear hoods to reveal who they really are. It will naturally come out through your actions.
Flip the page to see the original post of the article, and local news outlet’s story on the racist predator actions.