Even if the teacher's intention was to show that the young man that he didn’t have to cave to peer pressure or manipulation, his choice of words and comparison should cause pause for the school district employing him.
A North Carolina teacher has been suspended after a video that was recorded at Apex Middle School on Wednesday went viral, showing the teacher comparing a black student's behavior to that of a slave.
Ayona Wilson told WNCN her seventh-grade son was yelled at by a teacher because he started laughing while another student was dancing.There were several different analogies the teacher could have used, and an investigation is reportedly underway.
Some of the video is inaudible but Wilson said you can hear the teacher say: “Did I call you a n*****? No. I said you’re being controlled by him and that’s exactly what happened to slaves. They were controlled by their owners. You’re letting him control you.”
Wilson’s son told WNCN the teacher later clarified by saying he was using the slave term as an analogy. He said of the teacher’s remarks, in part, “He could have used a better type of analogy or a better word to describe what I was doing instead of calling me a slave.”
